Halfway Dead (6 page)

The next morning, I knew something was wrong because I was being watched by a man in a uniform that wasn’t really a uniform. He leaned against the door of his car and examined me with the calculating gaze of a professional. I kept my pace exactly the same, listening to Halfway waking up all around me as the day began in earnest. I’d juggled my schedule to allow an impromptu trip to the library, which would, in turn, determine whether or not I was taking a
second
unplanned trip into the woods. The man watching me was tall, rangy, and in his late middle years. He had a long, severe face, with liquid-brown eyes that captured every detail around him. I got an impression of nervous energy from him. He had an active mind, and a quick glance told me the hint of a smile played at his face. He didn’t appear unfriendly, just . . . interested.

I waited for traffic to thin, then stepped across the walk. The bustle of cars was already reaching a morning crescendo as tourists began their compulsive migration from one lake to the next. Why they didn’t simply settle at one place for a week and let the mountains capture their imagination was beyond me; their harried darting stole so much of the peace that the park could give. The brick walkway was already warming in the sun, and I knew it would be a bright day with little wind. I am trained to keep a weather eye alert at all times; there are forces at play that find storms irresistible. Unfortunately for me, many of these unseen forces find witches to be simply delicious, a fact that’s been drummed into my head since I cast my first spell. Even though my magic is pure, I’m still a target of opportunity for a great many beasties who consider
all
witches to be a threat of the highest order. I lifted my face to the growing sun and reconsidered; not just warm today, but perhaps even hot. That was good with me, I’d be ensconced in the library’s records room, pawing through the detritus of our local history. Air conditioning was a wonder. I don’t care what any crazed camping enthusiast says.

I’d made it three steps onto the other sidewalk when I saw the man’s head jerk sharply toward his car. The crackle of a radio drifted from the open window, an electric summons he could not ignore. He gave me one last look, shook his head slightly, and folded into the black, unadorned sedan without a second’s hesitation. If I had wavered at all on his occupation before, the car clinched it. He was a detective of some sort, which meant that was the second investigator in as many days to contact me. That’s exactly two more investigators than I’d met in my entire life up to this point, and I considered that fact to be a terrible harbinger for some unknown event that was lurking over the horizon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m naturally optimistic, but a practitioner of witchcraft knows that there is no such thing as an accident. Not around a witch.

The library is one of those buildings that might have been a house at one time, but has been pressed into government service out of sheer practicality. It’s a two-story white building, with gleaming black shutters and a real copper cupola. On top, a rooster eternally points his iron beak into the wind. The only sign is small, neatly lettered in black and gold, and the walkway is an absolute riot of flowers during the entire growing season. I was convinced that there were magical beings tending the walkway until I watched the assistant librarian, Mrs. Van Ryswick, spend an entire afternoon weeding, tending, and generally cosseting every plant on the grounds.
Never mind the wee folk, Mrs. Van Ryswick is on the case
, I thought, looking at the spill of color that threatened to cover the steps leading up to the doors.

Brendan Kilmeade saw me enter and waved. He’s around forty, whipcord thin, and relentlessly upbeat. In short, if you’re having a bad day, he can make it worse. His cheer is exhausting, but, as a librarian, he might be the finest example of smiling efficiency in this lifetime or any other. His deep-set green eyes twinkled at me as I made my way to the reference desk. There are only three stations in the humble library and his is constantly covered with odds and ends. He’s a collector of some renown, his specialty being All Things Adirondack. Even sitting, he towered over me, but not in threatening way, unless you consider good customer service to be a menace to your person. I did not, so I smiled.

“I have a research question,” I began without prelude, knowing that if I didn’t launch directly into my query we would be caught in the ten minutes of awkwardness that has existed since he first met me. He is the least direct male I’ve ever met, and his concept of flirtation consisted of a detailed account of salamander migrations in the local mountain area. So, yeah. I pushed onward in hopes that we could get to the good part, despite his being rather sweet and earnest.

His brows shot up. I was singing his song. “Go on. I’m listening.” He cocked his head like a dog, bringing the weight of his intense stare onto me without a hint of tact.

“I need to find anything about a place called Thendara,” I said.

His answering look was blank.

“It seems to have been a sort of place named during an abortive attempt to build a canal through the mountains?”

That
rang a bell. “Okay, now I have something to go on.” His hands were flying over a keyboard at his desk. He hit one last key with a triumphant
clack
and turned back to me. “I’ve never heard of it, but we have a single mention in our database. It isn’t a book, though.” He
hmmmmd
and resumed his punishment of the keyboard. “It’s not a newspaper, either.” His narrative deteriorated into stylized grunts as he searched, eyes locked on his computer screen. “Not that, no. Nor that. Nope, not a painting . . . maybe. . . .” After a long rumination, he snapped his long fingers with a crack loud enough to make me jump. He really had impressive digits, and I found myself looking at his pianists’ hands with something akin to fearful respect. “We have plates.”

“Plates?” I asked dumbly. The idea of scanning dishes from yesteryear to solve a murder was one of the more unorthodox ideas I’ve encountered, but I was game.

He shook his long face with a muffled laugh, inferring my confusion at his answer. “Not dinnerware.
Photographic
plates.”

My knowledge of photography consists of me pointing my phone at something and tapping the screen. It’s not my strong suit. When Brendan saw the blank look on my face, he spread his hands apart in a resigned gesture. “I know a little about them, we actually have quite a few. Okay, they’re glass, not paper. Good so far?”

I arched one brow at him to tell how close he was to either being hexed or kicked. He hurried on when he saw my eyes flash with anger. Librarians can be a little full of themselves. They’re like Alex Trebek that way.

“They’re glass plates that are coated with one of two chemical compositions. Ours here are mostly wet plates; it’s a kind of silver salts that are sensitive to light. They make beautiful negatives, really quite crisp.” His tone was admiring, and I found myself wanting to see these relics.

“Can I see them, or are they too fragile?” I asked. I respect my library and their collections. It’s a habit born of practicing magic. Take care of the things that take care of you.

“Sure. The wet plates are a thicker glass, you can hold them up to light and get a clear image, even if it is reversed.” Brendan rose and we made our way upstairs.

The stairs uttered mellow creaks, and the railing felt smooth and a bit oily under my hand, like the wood was alive. In a way, it was. Many people touching something could imbue a sort of echo in an inanimate object. I trailed my finger along the railing, wishing it could speak of the hands who have lain upon it.

We stopped at a room I’d never been in. Brendan turned on a light that flared to life with a sullen pop. It was a square space, with wooden cabinets that went to the ceiling. Looking up, I glanced meaningfully around for a ladder and found none.

“They’re down here, you don’t need to, ah, reach for anything,” he said, a smile playing at his lips. Short jokes never get old, it seems, but any biting retort died on my tongue when he took an old wooden box from the bottom cabinet. It
hummed
with magic, and I had to stop my hands from reaching for it. I put the blandest smile I could muster on my face and thanked him as he left, telling me to just leave the plates out when I was done.

I let the room settle around me before I opened the box. I cleared my mind, feeling that delicious tingle of something otherworldly that only witches can sense. After a long moment, I slid the thin lid up and out. It was a cleverly designed puzzle box with two steps, no doubt intended to keep the fragile glass in place.

The tops of twenty sections of glass winked up at me in the harsh light of the room. They stood upright, separated by a ridged bottom that kept each plate a quarter inch apart. As I began to lift the first one out, there was the faintest tinkling as some of the glass moved within the wooden tracks. It sounded like chimes made of bird bones; a hollow, off-putting noise that was somewhere between nature and man.

Gently, I held the negative up to the light. It was a disappointment. I stared at the reverse image of a forest and a scene that could have been anywhere in the Adirondacks. There were the requisite trees, a patch of sky, and nothing else. I slipped it back into its berth and selected the next. More sky, less trees, and precious little of interest, although there appeared to be a hillside spring flowing in the upper left of the image, judging by the intense green around the smear of moistened rock. I spent the next hour repeating this process until there were only two plates left. I could feel myself getting bored and a little bit hungry; for me that’s a deadly combination. I’m glad I have strong hands, because if I didn’t I would have certainly dropped plate number nineteen to the floor.

It was a ring of trees; huge, massive things that soared up and out of the image, each trunk a thick column that spanned ten feet across at the minimum. A natural tumble of stones spilled from the ravine behind the grove, and the canopy was so thick that hardly any light seemed to reach the forest floor. I recognized it instantly, and looked down at the lower right-hand corner of the plate. Someone had scrawled
Thendara
in a looping, feminine script, and there was a small but clear thumbprint underneath the writing. It seemed accidental, and I drew so close to the plate that my breath fogged the glass as I examined every whorl of the mysterious person who, for all I knew, had taken this picture some century and a half before. I placed the negative back with exaggerated care, wishing I had some fresh air.

It was the last plate that brought my mind into a kind of clarity that almost always signifies danger. The scene was the same, albeit from a slightly closer vantage point. The hulking chestnuts stole all the light, leaving a murk that cast sludgy shadows over everything. It was later in the day, but somehow I
knew
it was the same day.

His face was round, and young. A sweet boy, I could tell. He might have been twelve, just on the cusp of those awkward years where girls begin to look good and the world begins to look like a challenge. Blood flowed down the side of his face, staining the plain work shirt that was untucked from his britches as if he’d been in a fight. One finger of his right hand was nearly severed, and he stood at an odd angle as if his legs were injured. I noticed two things quickly: I could see through the boy into the forest beyond, and when I drew close enough to the plate that I might examine this lost soul, he waved one hand at me in a pleading manner as his lips mouthed,
please, come find me.

I love the moon. That’s why I love the fact that a full moon isn’t just one night, it’s more like two. Sure, there is some minor waning by the second dawn, but it was nearly four in the morning and there she was in all her glory. I sat on the kitchen floor, watching the panel of moonlight elongate to a rhombus across my legs. Walking home from the library, I’d felt that tickle at the back of my neck that told me I needed my magic. I wanted the surety of it; to feel the power in my fingers and let my mind be swept inward with that beautifully painful concentration that spells bring.

There was something wrong in the woods. Not the distant, forlorn place that had once been Thendara, but someplace closer. I could feel a gap in the presence of the world around me, as if something was intentionally shielding itself from my awareness. In my experience, not everything that is hidden wants to be found. I reached out and let my power wander like a child on an endless lawn, and eventually, I felt something push back. At the first sense of this presence, I withdrew. I sat for a long moment to let my breathing return to something like a normal state, and my palms were moist. It was fear, plain and simple. My body reacted to that which my mind would not admit. I was afraid.

I am a witch. I am called, not commanded, but I respect my magic as much as I love the woman who gave it to me, and I decided right then to respond to fear with strength. I placed a small stone in the moonlight, watching the beam set fire to the quartz chips that ran through it. In seconds, I could feel my will gathering to a point, traveling through my body, and dancing along the skin of my arms like St. Elmo’s fire. It was exquisite. I rolled my eyes as the tension began to leave me and was replaced by something else. The pebble began to crack, silently, and then fell into a fine powder as the bonds of the earth gave in to my spell.
Now why does it matter that I can master the stones?
My thoughts refocused on the small pile of fine grit, glistening cheerfully in the moonlight. I had bested the most powerful bonds of the physical world, even if on a tiny scale. I was filled with a sense of achievement; an occurrence that was completely alien to me, which was strange and a bit off-putting. Magic satisfies me, but it doesn’t make me smug. Why did I feel such a wash of relief at turning a small rock into dust?

My eyes were pulled beyond the moonlight to the hulking darkness of the mountain and the vast sea of trees. I felt good because I had caused something from the wilds to bend to my touch. I wondered at such feelings, and closed my eyes while dipping one fingertip into the small, tidy pile of dust. I felt good because of where the bad was located. It was out
there
, among the mountains. I had proven that my magic could manipulate the elements and, somewhere deep within me, I knew that was important.

Whatever was happening, it would be far from the floor of my kitchen. I took along look around the comfortable gloom and shuddered, knowing that soon, I would be vulnerable.

And whatever wanted to hurt people was
much
deadlier than a simple rock.