Mind Over Magic by Lindsay Buroker

4

Morgen’s handswouldn’t stop shaking as she walked around the exterior of the house, taking pictures from different angles. Deputy Franklin was toting the firewood box with the buck’s head inside to the back of his SUV. She had no idea if he intended to run fingerprints on the hinges of the box or do any kind of investigation or if he was simply calming the terrified newcomer to his town by taking it away.

Morgen had only screamed once, but it had been enough to bring him running up to her side. He’d admitted it was disturbing and apologized for not offering to go inside the house first.

After he put the box away, he took the keys from her and went in to look around. Normally, Morgen prided herself on being the independent type and not needing a man’s help for anything, but the last twelve hours had worn down her bravery. She poked around outside while Franklin went through the rooms inside, making sure there weren’t any more body parts in boxes lying in wait.

She came to an old root cellar, the grass grown up to either side of the yellow double doors. A path around the house to them suggested Grandma had visited often. Since she had the garden, that probably made sense.

Morgen tried to remember if she’d ever been under the house as a kid, but she didn’t think so. Curious, she reached down to tug one of the doors open, though a part of her wondered if she was making a mistake. Maybe she should ask the deputy to check out the root cellar first.

She was almost relieved when the doors didn’t budge, though it was puzzling, because she didn’t see a lock. Maybe Grandma had done some remodeling, and the cellar was now accessible from inside the house.

A star-shaped indention in one of the doors made her take a closer look. Cut into the wood and painted in dark blue that stood out from the surrounding yellow, it was a little larger than an old silver-dollar coin. She touched it, and a buzz of electricity ran up her arm.

Startled, she jerked back and looked at her finger. It was already turning red, as if she’d been burned.

“Because this day wasn’t weird enough,” she muttered, frowning at the indention.

She’d touched wood, not metal, so she didn’t see how current could have been conducted through it. She glanced up, as if she might spot high-voltage electrical wires running over the house that she hadn’t noticed before, but the only notable thing was a crow perched on the peak of the roof. Or was that a raven? It was large to be a crow.

“None of the wildlife is normal-sized around here.”

She touched the indention again, to see if it had been a fluke. It buzzed her once more. Almost as if it were an alarm or a warning not to touch the doors.

“Huh.”

“Ma’am?” Franklin had come around the corner of the house and frowned at the doors. “Do you want me to check down there too?”

“They’re locked.”

“Good.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Did you find something in the house?”

Something that would make him reluctant to explore further?

“Oh, no. I’m just…” Franklin gazed out into the woods again. Ready to get the hell out of here, his eyes said, though he didn’t voice the words. “No, there’s nothing in the house that you need to worry about. Your grandmother was a little quirky, but that’s all. You should be fine looking around. But uhm, I’m still going to recommend the hotel. I don’t think a woman should be out here alone in the woods at night.”

Never mind that Grandma had lived alone here for years after Grandpa passed.

“I have Lucky.” Morgen pointed to the dog, who’d taken a break from sniffing to roll on his back in the grass.

“He looks ferocious.”

She decided not to mention how he’d spent the night on the bed at the hotel with his head on both pillows.

Franklin handed her the keys to the house. “I can wait while you look around if you want.”

Though she was tempted to say yes, she didn’t want to keep him out here all day. “That’s all right. Maybe you could just take that head away and, uh, who should I call to have the rest of the body removed from the driveway?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled and tipped his hat. “Call if you need anything.”

Morgen flipped through the keys on the ring she’d inherited, looking for something to match the star-shaped indention, but nothing was similar.

Lucky bounded up to the deputy, demanding to be petted before he left. Franklin might not have been the badass law enforcer Morgen had hoped for, but at least he indulged the dog.

She headed into the house to look around and take more pictures. As she stepped into the living room, scents of sandalwood and sage enveloped her, and she remembered the pungent smells from visits in her youth. She vaguely recalled Grandma burning candles and pouring oils into diffusers.

Floorboards creaked as she walked through the house and into the kitchen. A surprisingly modern gas range was wedged between chipped yellow countertops, with numerous copper pans hanging from a rack over it. Maybe preparing meals here wouldn’t be that bad. Though the word icebox came to mind when she looked at the pale blue refrigerator with rounded corners. It probably ran on electricity, but she wouldn’t be surprised to find a compartment for a block of ice.

As she wandered through the second floor, the house large for only one person, more memories returned, mostly of her in her room reading while her brothers ran through the hallways and played outside in the yard. Her sister had always claimed the library full of books and locked herself inside, not even letting Morgen in to share the solitude. She’d done her reading from a ledge atop a closet, filling the nook with blankets and pillows. Their father had admonished them for spending their summer vacation with their noses in books and told them to go out and play in the woods. If giant wolves had been lurking in the trees back then, Morgen was glad she hadn’t heeded that request.

She’d never been in her grandmother’s room before, and when she ventured in, the scents were even stronger, as if incense had been burned in there recently. Wrinkling her nose, she opened a window wide to air the place out.

The artwork on the walls was an eclectic collection of pressed leaves, dried berries, and words in foreign languages. A number of ropes were coiled decoratively on the ceiling above the bed, made from braided horsehair or something of that nature. A desk held a mortar and pestle and numerous candles. Maybe this had been the room that had led Franklin to label Grandma as quirky.

A number of belts and necklaces dangled from a bedpost. Not that big on jewelry, Morgen started to ignore them, but a hunch drew her over, and she sorted through the collection. A silver chain with an emerald-green star-shaped medallion made her think of the root-cellar doors. She couldn’t see how it could be a key, but she removed it to see if the medallion would fit in the indention.

A caw came from the window, and she dropped it. The raven that she’d seen outside now perched on the sill. To her shock, the big black bird flew into the room, cawing loudly.

Morgen sprang back, bumped the bed, and almost pitched to the floor. Black wings flapped, feathers flying, and the raven dove toward the medallion.

“What the—” Though alarmed, Morgen lunged for it.

No way was she going to let some bird steal her grandmother’s jewelry.

Wingtips brushed her face, almost beating her about the head, but she snatched up the medallion. Talons flashed, and pain stabbed the back of her hand. She almost dropped the medallion again, but she tightened her grip and ran into the hallway. She slammed the door shut and plastered her back to the opposite wall.

Several caws of protest came from the bedroom before the house fell silent again. Morgen stared at bloody gouges in the back of her hand and the heavy medallion she gripped.

She was tempted to leave the door closed and walk away, but if the raven was left inside, it could tear up the room and make a mess.

“I’m starting to think that preparing this house to sell won’t be easy.” Morgen ran to the kitchen, grabbed a broom, and returned, bracing herself in case she had to battle the raven to drive it out of the house.

But when she opened the door, the bird was gone. After double-checking, she hurried to the window to close it. The raven cawed at her from the roof of the barn.

Lucky ran back and forth below, barking up at it.

“I guess that’s closer to a pheasant than the other things you’ve been trying to get,” Morgen muttered.

As she headed downstairs, she sent the photos she’d taken to her cousin. She resisted the urge to text: if you don’t hear from me again by tomorrow, send the police. Though maybe it wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

The raven was probably a fluke—weren’t they known for stealing shiny objects and squirreling them away in nests?—but the werewolf squatter was another story.

She left the broom in the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife. Just in case.

Outside, Lucky continued to race back and forth while barking at the raven on the roof of the barn. From thirty feet above, it looked down, indifferent to the dog.

Morgen kept the medallion close, in case the bird was still contemplating theft. Deputy Franklin had driven off, so she would be on her own if she had to retrieve it from some forest nest.

“You barking at it isn’t going to make it fall off the roof and into your mouth,” Morgen told Lucky as she passed him. This common sense did not leave an impression on him. She finally called, “Treat!” to get him to stop.

It didn’t always work, but this time, it did. He raced over and sat in front of her, his floppy ears cocked.

“Good boy.” She dipped into the treat bag she kept in her jacket pocket and gave him a piece. “How about giving your vocal cords a rest for a while?”

He licked her hand, dropped to his back, and rolled in the grass.

“That works.”

A call came in from Zoe as Morgen knelt in front of the root-cellar doors.

“What do you think?” Morgen answered, assuming her cousin had looked through the photos.

“It’s got good bones. You should remodel it before listing it. You’ll get a lot more. People with money want granite countertops, walk-in closets, and heated floor tiles in the bathrooms. Even better if there’s a steam shower, a jetted bathtub, and towel warmers.”

“Towel warmers?” Morgen placed the star-shaped medallion into the indention.

It was a perfect fit. Coincidence?

“After you spend a few million on a house, you don’t want to have to endure chilled towels when you step out of the shower.”

Morgen scoffed. “This place isn’t worth millions.”

“It’s only five minutes outside of town, and it’s on a bunch of land, right? And Bellrock is close to Bellingham and not all that far from Seattle. Trust me, that much land by the water is going to go for a fortune.”

“I think it’s mostly state land. There’s only an acre or so around the house.”

Morgen tried turning the medallion, though the indention was cut into the wood, so she didn’t see how it could turn. And it didn’t. It lay there, the emerald glass gleaming in the sunlight but nothing else happening.

“Are you sure about that?” Zoe asked. “It’s not unheard of, but it would be uncommon to find a private parcel surrounded by state land.”

“Pretty sure. If it was truly worth a lot, Grandma never would have been able to afford the property taxes. She was a retired librarian, and I don’t think Grandpa left her much when he passed.”

“Seniors can get discounts on property taxes. Let me check on it. Text me the address.”

“All right.”

Wingbeats sounded as the raven flew off. Lucky growled, but he wasn’t looking toward the bird but into the woods. Morgen didn’t see anything among the trees, but she again had the feeling that she was being watched.

“Let me know what you find,” she told her cousin, the urge to finish searching around and get out of there as soon as possible filling her. Another night at the Wild Trout sounded more and more appealing. “Bye.”

She was about to give up on the medallion doing anything but decided to try pressing it. It didn’t depress far, but a click sounded. When nothing else happened, Morgen pulled out the medallion. She tried opening the doors again. This time, they creaked open, revealing wide earthen stairs that descended under the house.

A hodgepodge of strong scents that she couldn’t identify wafted out, making her wrinkle her nose again. It was even worse than in the house. How did discerning buyers who liked jetted tubs and towel warmers feel about homes reeking of incense, dried herbs, and who knew what else?

“Stand watch, Lucky.”

He’d returned to sniffing around the barn, making Morgen wonder if another dog—or a wolf?—had been marking the area.

As she descended, she hunted for a light switch, but the walls were made of dirt. It truly was a root cellar.

Except that it didn’t contain jars of pickles and cans of tomatoes.

Enough daylight filtered down for Morgen to make out unfamiliar tools on pegboards and shelves filled with quirky potion bottles, ceramic crocks, and jars holding everything from powders to agates to organs and eyeballs in formaldehyde. Some of the powders were glowing. Would the real-estate listing have to mention that parts of the house were radioactive?

Boxes and crates were stacked against the back wall, along with bookcases that overflowed with weathered tomes that might have been older than the house. With some books stacked horizontally and others perched vertically or leaning diagonally, they didn’t seem to be categorized in any way, and the urge to spring into the morass and arrange them in a logical organizational paradigm made her fingers twitch.

But the sheer strangeness of everything collected within kept her feet rooted to the floor as she gaped around. The rest of the walls were lined with counters and workbenches, the tops cluttered with daggers, vials, bottles, cauldrons of various sizes, and more mortars and pestles. A staff with antlers attached to the top leaned next to the stairs. In the center of the sprawling cellar, the packed dirt floor held a pentagram in a circle painted in red. Blood red.

If one of Grandma’s motorcycle helmets hadn’t dangled from a hook next to the staff, Morgen would have thought she’d wandered into an alternate dimension. Or that Grandma had unknowingly rented out her root cellar to a witch.

But the key to this place had been in her bedroom.

Morgen shook her head and set the butcher knife down next to a wavy-bladed kris. The kitchen tool looked like a toy in comparison to it.

Her grandmother had kept to herself and been aloof, but that ran in the family. It wasn’t that weird. This… What was Morgen supposed to do about all this? Put it in the description for the listing for the house under bonus room?

Lucky barked, and the rumble of a car engine floated down.

Now what?