Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (58 page)

“Okay. Can you be nice?”

“I don't
wanna
be nice. But”—she sniffled—“I can be nice.”

I stood and grabbed up KitKit in one hand and helped Angie over the mess of her broken door with the other. In the great room, Angie, with huge tears racing down her cheeks, walked slowly over to the two vampires. They watched her come with strange lights in their eyes, and I realized that human parents didn't allow their children anywhere near vamps. Human children, and especially witch children, were surely rarities in their lives. Angie stopped about six feet away, inspecting them. To Jerel, she said, “You're not wearing a sword. You got one?”

“Yes, little witch child. I have a sword.”

“Can you use it good? Well?” she corrected before I could. “Can you use it well?”

“I can. I am a swords master as well as a master cabinetmaker.”

“You get to protect George and fight off the bad guys.” To Holly, she said. “Here. George is scared. It needs you to hold it close and pet it. Like this.” Angie demonstrated, one hand stroking the pot.

Holly knelt on one knee and extended his hands. Grudgingly Angie placed the teapot in his hands. Holly gathered it close, holding it as Angie had, and petted it. Angie let out a sob and raced to me, burying her face against my capri-clad thighs.

I pointed to the door and the vampires both bowed, so vampy formal, and departed, closing the door quietly. I watched and as soon as they reached the end of the drive, I raised the protective wards and pulled Angie to me on the couch. At the door to the hallway, Little Evan was hugging the jamb, crying in sympathy with his big sister. I held out a hand to him too, and we all four snuggled on the couch, my children, my unfortunate not-familiar, and me.

An hour later, as I was tucking a sleeping Angie back into bed, I heard another ward
ding
. I had a very bad feeling when I looked out and saw the same two forms at the end of the drive, illuminated by the security light. With trepidation, I went to the toy box and looked inside. The teapot was nestled into a corner.

I knew my daughter was strongly gifted with power, and she was probably capable of calling the pot back to her, but I hadn't felt any kind of magical working in the house or on the grounds. Which meant the teapot had come back on its own or under another's working. It might be a danger to us all. As if it were made of dynamite instead of fired clay, I lifted it from the box and carried it out onto the front lawn, to within four feet of the ward and within six feet of the vamps. Who now looked like what they were—dangerous predators; unhappy, dangerous predators.

“Do you taunt us with the return of our master's teapot?” Jerel asked.

“No. It came back on its own.” Both vamps blinked, the twin gestures too human for the bloodsuckers. “It's heavily spelled and seems to have a will of its own. I'd like to try an experiment. I'd like to drop the ward, hand you the teapot, and see what happens.”

“You did not call the teapot back to you?” Jerel asked.

“No. My word is my bond.”

Jerel nodded once, the gesture curt.

I dropped the ward, stepped to the vampires, placed the teapot in Jerel's hands this time, and stepped back. The ward snapped back into place. Within thirty seconds, the teapot disappeared. “Not me. Not my magic. Certainly not my daughter's magic.” I let derision enter my tone, because no witch's gifts came upon them before they reached puberty. Except Angie's. And that was a secret. A dangerous secret, to be protected as much as my children themselves.

The vamps looked from me to each other, and back. “What do we do now?” Holly asked.

“You will break this spell,” Jerel demanded.

“Tell me the tale of the teapot. And how the Master of the City knew it had appeared at my house. I'd be very interested in that one.”

Holly's eyes went wide—human wide, not vamped-out. “That never occurred to me. Where did it come from and how did it get here, and how did our master know of it?”

“Right,” I said. “You go back to the vamp master and ask him those questions, because if he wants his teapot—or whatever it really is—back, I'll need to know everything to break whatever spell is on it.”

“We will be back by midnight,” Holly said, excitement in the words.

“Wrong. I have a family and you two have intruded enough on family time tonight. You go back and chat with your master. I'll see you an hour after dusk at Seven Sassy Sisters' Herb Shop and Café.”

“Your family business,” Jerel said, letting me know that my entire extended family could be in danger because of the blasted teapot.

“Tomorrow,” I said, and turned my back on the vamps. Secure behind the strongest wards that Big Evan and I could create, I walked slowly back to my house and shut the door on the bloodsuckers. And leaned against it, trembling. I was in so much trouble. I had less than twenty-four hours to break a spell on a weird teapot that was clearly far more than a teapot. No wonder Lincoln Shaddock wanted it, whatever it really was.

•   •   •

I got the children off to school in the morning, without letting Angie discover that the teapot had returned to her toy box, and texted my sisters:
911 my house. Hurry soonest after breakfast crowd.
They'd all get here as fast as possible. The 911 call was used only for extreme emergencies. Meanwhile I set four loaves to rise and made salad enough for all of us, all my sisters. There were seven of us, or had been until our eldest had died after turning to the black arts. We were still grieving over that one. Four of us were witches, and the remaining two were human. Four of the youngest were taking classes at various universities and colleges in the area, but they'd get here any way they could after the 911 text. Family always came first.

•   •   •

Carmen Miranda Everhart Newton, my air witch sister, set her toddler Iseabeal Roisin—pronounced
Ish-bale Rosh-een
—down at the door. Ishy ran, shouting for the cat—“Kekekeke”—her arms raised. The witch twins, Boadacia and Elizabeth, had called in sick for their morning classes and closed the herb shop. Our wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, were the last to arrive, having cleaned up the café after the last of the breakfast crowd.

When we were all sitting in my kitchen, the toddlers happily talking to each other in incomprehensible kid language, I realized how long it had
been since we'd sat like this, working on a magical problem. Since our eldest, Evangelina, had died as a result of consorting with demons. Well, at the hand of my BFF, but that was another story. We were all red-haired, some more blond, some more brown, some of us flaming scarlet. All of us with pale skin that simply couldn't tan. All of us rowdy and chattering and happy to be together again. We had to do this more often. Not the teapot part, just the playing-hooky-and-visiting part.

To capture their attention, I centered the teapot atop the old farmhouse table, then caught them up on the teapot problem, the vamp problem, and the time limit problem. I had been studying the teapot for hours, so I already had some new things to share. “It isn't, strictly speaking, just a teapot. It's both a teapot and not a teapot, the result of a spell, and is magical, in some way, on its own. I can't tell why it keeps coming back here and I can't make it stay away.”

“Yeah,” the human Regan said. “That whole not having a magic wand really sucks.”

“Ha-ha,” Liz said, sounding bored with the oft-used banter.

“What I want to do is to raise the wards on the house, make a magic circle, and study it together.” I looked at the human sisters. “You two will have to babysit and keep watch. Pull us out if anything strange happens.”

“We always get stuck with babysitting duty,” Regan complained.

“Word,” Amelia said, sighing her agreement. “Fine. I'll go play with the kiddies.” To her sister she said, “If you need help hitting them with a broomstick to break a circle, lemme know. I want in on some of that.”

I raised the house wards and my witch sisters made a protective circle around my kitchen table by joining hands. It wasn't as formal as the circle in my herb garden, but it was enough to study the current situation. The combined magical power of the Everhart sisters is weighty, intense, and deep. It tingles on the skin, it whispers in the air, and in this case, it made a teapot spill its secrets.

Half an hour after staring, we broke for tea and slices of fresh bread with my homemade peach hot, untraditional peach preserves with chili peppers. While I put the snack together, Liz said, “His name is George.”

“Not
he
, as in a human
he
,” Cia said, “but a male something.”

“He stinks,” Carmen said. “A bit like muskrat. Or squirrel. Something rodent-ish.”

“I got wet dog out of the scent,” I said.

“Whatever he is, he's alive,” Liz said.

“And not evil,” Cia added. “Trapped. The result of a hex.”

“Only a witch could have done a spell that captured a soul with a hex, and a blood witch at that,” Liz said, exasperated. Blood witches spilled blood to power spells. The bigger the spell, the more blood needed. Human sacrifice had been known to be involved in black-magic ceremonies.

As we talked, I passed out plates, butter, and the peach hot, and topped up our mugs. “It feels like wild magic. Something not planned, but the result of something else. As if the incantation is sparking off all over the place.”

“Why did it come here?” Cia asked.

“Opposites attract?” Carmen asked. “Your house is free and happy and he isn't?”

“Maybe he thought you could free him?” Liz asked.

“Or the death magics pulled him in against his will,” the human twins said, nearly synchronous, walking into the kitchen together.

“Somebody didn't call us for the eats. Bad sisters,” Regan said.

Amelia added, “Right. Evil sisters. And anyway, you left out the death-magic possibility. Maybe it's here to get Molly to do something deadly to it.” No one replied, and I sat frozen in my chair, my hands cupped around my heated mug.

“What?” Amelia asked, her tone belligerent. “Sis, the witches among us were there when your magic turned on the earth.”

“The rest of us saw the garden of death afterward,” Regan added.

“And we all know it's still dead,” Amelia said. “Doesn't take a witch to know that nothing will ever grow in that soil again.”

“And then there's the whole thing about your familiar keeping you in control,” Regan said, the conversation ping-ponging as my world skidded around me.

“And about the music spell Big Evan made to keep your magics under control,” Amelia said. “Not talking about this is stupid. Gives it power.”

Regan said, “My twin is taking her second year of psychology. Pass the cream. Thanks. She's teacher's pet because she can add the witch perspective to the psycho stuff.”

Amelia huffed with disgust. “Not
psycho stuff
. That's rude to people
with emotional or mental disorders or illness.” Regan rolled her eyes and buttered her bread, taking a big bite.

The time my human sisters argued allowed me to settle. “Okay.” The Everharts went still as vamps themselves. Because Amelia was right. It wasn't something we talked about. Ever. And secrets, things hidden, buried, and left to molder in the dark of one's soul, did give evil the power to rule. “So,” I said, taking a fortifying gulp of tea. “What do you think about the death magics? Did the teapot come to me to die?”

My sisters all broke into talking at once, suggesting things like meditation and prayer, singing chants, spells to disrupt my death magic, and hinting that we simply bust the teapot and see if that would work to free the trapped soul. At that one, the teapot vanished, and appeared instantly back in hiding in my daughter's toy box. Liz dubbed it the teleporting teapot. Then the human sisters cleared the table and started research into Lincoln Shaddock's history, trying to find out about his relationship to witches and the teapot. There was nothing in the standard online databases, but I had an ace in the hole with Jane Yellowrock. She had tons of data on vamps, including Lincoln Shaddock, and she sent it to us, no questions asked. The information she offered confirmed the vamps' story.

Shaddock had been turned after a battle in the Civil War. When he came through the devoveo, he traveled to find his family. His wife had remarried and moved south. She rejected him. According to the data, there was evidence that she was an untrained, unacknowledged witch, not uncommon in those witch-hating times. There was nothing about a teapot, not that it mattered.

By lunchtime, we had a plan. Of sorts.

•   •   •

We closed the café and the herb shop at dusk, and rearranged the tables so there was an open place in the middle of the café. All of us, children, witches, and humans, stood in the middle, circled around the toy box with its magical teleporting teapot, held hands, warded the space where we would work, and blessed our family line with the simple words, “Good health and happiness. Protection and safety. Wisdom and knowledge used well and for good. Everharts, ever hearts, together, always.” Then we broke the circle and the human twins piled our children into my car and headed back to my house. We witches? We waited.

Seven Sassy Sisters' was decorated in mountain country chic, with scuffed hardwood floors, bundles of herbs hanging against the back brick wall, tables, and several tall-backed booths, seats upholstered with burgundy faux leather and the tables covered with burgundy and navy blue check cloths. The kitchen was visible through a serving window. It was comfortable, a place where families and friends could come and get good wholesome food, herbal teas, fresh bread, rolls, and a healing touch if they wanted it. We also served the best coffee and tea in the area. But it wasn't the sort of place that vampires, with their fancy-schmancy, hoity-toity attitudes, would ever come. Until they knocked on the door just after dusk.