Witching There's Another Way: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 4) (5 page)

Chapter 7

“Thomas is going to be so disappointed,” Avery said to Bailey as they descended the path toward the caves.

She took his hand in hers and held it reassuringly. “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe… time moves differently in Faerie. If we can even get there. Aiden’s research is all hypothetical and even with Professor Turner’s notes… it’s possible the Caves simply won’t let us go through.”

“Right, I know all that,” Avery sighed. “But I’m tired of being optimistic and getting disappointed because of it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Bailey said. “Not really, right?”

Avery shrugged. “One thing after another lately.”

“You don’t have to come, you know,” she said. “Earlier, I was trying to tell you to go back with him.”

“Are you serious right now?” Avery asked. He rolled his eyes, and put an arm around her shoulder. “If I had gone, and I found out you did something crazy like went walking into Faerie without me, I would be furious. You know that, right? And if you didn’t…”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Bailey whispered to him. “We don’t even know if we’re going yet.”

They passed the entrance to the Caves. The place they were going wasn’t in the main network.

Frances and Chloe had explained—if they were going to go into Faerie—any of them—there was only one way to do that, and it wasn’t going to be as simple as doing some spell or another. The keepers of the Caves, the crones of the coven, were the only ones who could urge the Genius Loci of the Caves to act against its nature.

The thought of finally seeing the eighth cave was one that made Bailey both excited and nervous. She knew that Anita and Rita Hope were the current leaders of the coven, the Crones who guarded the caves themselves; but she’d only met Rita a few times and had so far never met Anita. Officially, the two women vanished from public records in the seventies, although no one appeared to realize that in town. Rita rarely showed herself, but when she did everyone in town seemed to take it as a given that she was still puttering around, despite being well over a hundred years old.

Likely, it was some aspect of the Caves’ magic. Already Bailey knew that it had a strange effect on people in the vicinity, exerting a subtle influence intended to keep the Caves safe. Tourists that visited took souvenirs home, sometimes, but they rarely remembered the details and specifics of the trip. Geologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists had all come to study the Caves, but none had published papers. Professor Turner had been a strange exception, having visited several such cave networks around the world—and had even discovered that each of them had a particular set of symbols pointing toward Stonehenge in England—but even he had never managed to publish a paper or otherwise popularize his theories.

Given that his theories had to do with creatures of myth and fantasy, that wasn’t entirely surprising.

They descended the rocky slope carefully, picking their way in a line along the narrow path that wrapped around the exposed rock of the cave front and down the cliff side toward the ocean. Eventually, Chloe and Frances stopped.

Bailey gazed at the apparently solid rock wall. This was the place she’d first spied Chloe, Frances, and Aria making a visit to the deepest cave in the network. Then, she’d been certain they had something to do with Martha Tells’ death. That same night, Chloe had told Bailey the truth about herself.

Well, some of it, in any case.

Now she was standing with them in the same spot, and growing more and more curious about what they’d been doing here to begin with.

Frances reached a hand out to the rough, jagged rock wall, and rapped several times on it as though knocking on a door.

Several long moments crept by. Neither Frances nor Chloe seemed concerned by it. Then, from out of nowhere, a voice snapped at them.

“What do you think you’re doing, girl, bringing a maiden and two wizards to our door?”

It was so sudden, and so unexpectedly loud, that Bailey nearly leapt off the ground. Avery did, just a little, and grasped Bailey’s shoulder to steady himself. Aiden merely stiffened, but it was still as startled as she’d ever seen him get. Only the coven ladies seemed unperturbed. They turned toward the hunched, gnarled old woman standing a few feet away, supporting herself on a smooth, knotted cane.

Rita Hope rarely wore any expression other than a scowl. Bailey had never seen her smiling, never heard her speak with anything other than a clipped, sharp tone. That was no different now, except that her tone was a bit harder and her scowl a bit deeper. She stared daggers at Aiden, and then Avery, and for a moment Bailey wondered what Rita’s particular gift was and whether she would use it to send the two wizards away by force—or worse.

She didn’t, though. Instead, she hobbled closer to them, taking the rocky path like a mountain goat with short hops between slow steps until she was near enough that she didn’t have to shout over the dull roar of the ocean.

When she was close enough, Frances begged forgiveness. “There’s a girl missing,” she explained. “We think… well, we tried to find her with the scrying mirror but when it took us toward the cave the spell broke.”

“Did you attempt a dweomer for the interference?” Rita asked, as though Frances had been confused by something obvious, like the setting of the sun.

“The water was ruined,” Chloe said. “It turned so cold it boiled, and then froze solid in the space of a few moments.”

Rita grunted. “What do you want from us? We don’t have any more scrying water.”

“We have a theory,” Aiden said, respectfully enough but still somehow offending Rita, who glared at him. “We believe the girl may have been taken to Faerie.”

Rita tapped her cane on the rock thoughtfully. Then, she waved a hand. “Then she’s lost. Go home.”

Chloe and Frances both sighed, but Bailey charged forward between them to stand before Rita. “That’s it? You just want us to give up? How can you just dismiss it like that?”

She felt Chloe’s hand on her arm, and tugged it away.

Rita turned dark eyes on Bailey, and took a step forward. It forced Bailey back. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” she said, her voice raspy and grave. Rita surveyed them all. “None of you do. So go home. Let this run its course. Let the parents mourn their child and move on with their lives. None of you are going to Faerie on our watch.”

“So, there is a way,” Avery said tentatively. “If we wanted to go… it’s possible.”

Rita ignored him. “Faeries aren’t to be messed with lightly. They aren’t like you or I. They are creatures of wickedness, through and through. To us, they’re hopelessly insane. You can’t talk with them, can’t reason with them, can’t understand what motivates them.”

“What will happen to Isabelle?” Bailey asked coldly. Rita met her eyes, but Bailey didn’t look away, no matter how much Rita terrified her. There was something… otherworldly about the woman. Like she no longer belonged in the world. Maybe that was why she supposedly lived in the cave. Though, no matter how Bailey tried to make that fit with the geography and the structure of the caves, it didn’t make any sense. “If the Faeries took her… what happens to her, then?”

Rita sighed. “You don’t want to know.”

“We do,” Chloe said. “We know the stories but… they go light on the details. Do you know, or not?”

With a heavy sigh, Rita nodded. “Oh… I do know.”

For the first time, she looked haunted instead of angry.

“Tell us,” Bailey urged. “Please.”

The old woman made a disgusted face, and stared at the rock wall. At length, she spat, and then struck the wall with her cane.

There was no shifting of stone, not rush of magic—no indication at all that anything had changed. And yet, Rita took a step forward and there before here was a cave entrance—not a small crack, easily overlooked, but a four or five foot wide archway, easily accommodating Rita’s form, and then Chloe and Frances as well as they passed Bailey and followed the old woman in.

Bailey just stared.

Behind her, Avery whistled. “That’s… some trick. Where’d they just go?”

“A glamour of some sort,” Aiden said. “If I were to guess.”

Chloe said something quietly to Frances, who in turn caught up to Rita and passed along the message. Bailey couldn’t hear them clearly from where she was.

Rita turned, frowned at Bailey—or at the two wizards behind her—and finally rolled her eyes before she pointed, her lips moving. Frances returned, and stepped out of the entrance. She pointed at the nearest wizard, Avery. “Take my hand. You,” she said to Aiden, “take Bailey’s.”

Avery did as he was instructed, and blinked with surprise when Frances led him, inexplicably, into the cave mouth. He was staring around at the cave walls as he was drawn along.

Bailey turned and took Aiden’s hand in hers. He smiled at her, and when Bailey turned back toward the entrance she caught a concerned look in Chloe’s eyes just before her mother turned and made her way after Frances and Avery.

Bailey followed them, and a moment later heard Aiden gasp.

“What?” Bailey asked quietly.

Aiden shook his head slowly in amazement. “It’s just… impressive. I didn’t even notice the transition. And… I don’t think I can remember what the rock face outside looks like. It’s unsettling—I’m quite well shielded against intrusions, but it’s as though the magic here just ignores them.”

“Are you alright?” She asked.

He didn’t look like he was sure either way. “It is unsettling. But I’ll cope. I feel very much like an intruder, though. Like being in someone’s house whom I’ve never met.”

“In a way,” Bailey said, “I suppose you must be. I’m surprised Rita let the two of you in. For that matter, I’m a little surprised she let me in.”

“Perhaps they recognize the gravity of the situation,” Aiden suggested.

“If they do, hopefully that means they’ll help us get into Faerie.”

Aiden hadn’t yet let go of Bailey’s hand, though ahead of them Frances and Avery were no longer in contact with one another. It seemed that all that was needed was to bring the wizards into the cave for them to remain there on their own.

Bailey didn’t bother to let go just yet.

“Rita does make a valid point, however,” Aiden said, almost a whisper, as though he might offend the Caves. “The beings that I saw before… they were not beings I’d wish to encounter again, Bailey. I can’t quite convey the sense of dread they filled me with. Listen; wait a moment.”

He tugged her hand, and she stopped, turning to look at him.

Aiden seemed troubled, and a moment later he confirmed as much. “Even if we can go… even if Isabelle has been taken… perhaps Rita is right. Perhaps—”

“Don’t,” Bailey said. She let go of Aiden’s hand.

“I’m only thinking of you,” Aiden said quickly, and then closed his mouth. It was out now, though, and so he passed a hand over his eyes, looked everywhere but Bailey for a second, and then sighed. “What’s said is said, then. I care for you, Bailey. I have for some time. There are things you still don’t know, and I want to tell you; all of it. But if we go to Faerie, we could be in a great deal of serious danger. You and I have magic, and I suspect that in Faerie that magic will be much stronger—but Faeries are creatures of magic. They live and breathe it as naturally as you and I breathe the air and walk on the ground. We aren’t equipped, and I’m not sure any mortal is.”

Bailey’s heart fluttered a bit, and then clenched tightly in her chest. She searched Aiden’s eyes a moment, and found only sincerity there; she had no need to search his mind with hers, even if she could; even if he let her. So she took his hand again. “We’ll talk about all of it when we get back. We have to convince Rita and her sister to help us, Aiden. We have to try. If we know what needs to be done and don’t do it… I’m not sure I could live with myself. I’m not sure that I should be able to live with myself if that’s the case. I just have to try. With or without you, or anyone else. You understand that, right?”

Aiden smiled down at her, a mix of admiration and sadness. He nodded once, and then bent to kiss her cheek. “I do. If the women will help us, you won’t go alone. I promise.”

“Good,” Bailey said. “Because it terrifies me. So come on; stay close, let’s catch up.”

Chapter 8

The eighth cave was an impossible place.

The tunnel opened up into a great cavern that appeared to have no ceiling—the night sky above them, momentarily clear, showed stars shining down onto a broad, green pasture large enough to hold a simple cottage with a yard dotted with planter boxes and lawn gnomes. The gnomes in particular seemed somehow out of place—an incongruously normal element.

Except, some of the gnomes weren’t there the second time Bailey looked at them.

“This is… impressive magic,” Aiden said from behind her shoulder. “I’ve met some remarkably gifted and powerful wizards who couldn’t accomplish something like this. I wonder how they did it…”

“A great deal of time and energy over many generations,” Frances said pointedly over her own shoulder. “Don’t go poking around where you don’t belong; you’re a guest here.”

Rita waved her cane vaguely in Frances’ direction as agreement.

The cottage itself looked similar in style to the building that Grovey Goodies was in; that same dutch style of stucco and clay walls crisscrossed with dark wooden beams and a pointed, A-shaped roof. Except here, vines crawled up every wall. Honeysuckle, grapes, roses, and other more exotic flowering vines covered nearly every square inch of the structure, while still somehow appearing organized, as though they’d been grown intentionally where they were.

On the porch were a number of rocking chairs, and in one of those chairs sat another old woman, knitting furiously as she watched the party approach. If it were possible, she looked somehow older than Rita. Anita Hope looked a great deal like her sister, but where Rita’s long, white hair was usually kept wrapped into a bun, it seemed that Anita preferred a classical blue-washed perm. She wore wire glasses with thick, coke-bottle lenses that made her eyes seem larger than they should have been as she watched the guests’ journey. A bright blue shawl covered her shoulders, and a heavy checkered blanket covered her legs.

The tick tick tick of her knitting echoed through the cavern.

“I suppose we’ll be having tea with warlocks soon, will we Rita?” Anita muttered when Rita ascended the steps of the porch and angled toward her own rocking chair. There were five others on the porch arrayed between the two women.

Bailey wondered at that. Did they always keep seven chairs on their porch, or had Anita foreseen this moment?

“Stuff it, Nita,” Rita grumbled as she sank into her own chair with a sigh of relief.

“Well?” Anita asked drawing the eyes of witches and wizards alike. She jerked a jowly chin at the empty chairs. “We’re civilized here. Have a seat. I’ll have tea brought out.”

Bailey took the instruction, and looked between the two ancients. “Is there… someone else that lives here with you?”

Rita only chuckled ruefully. Anita, however smiled with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes—which, Bailey now realized, were the milky blue of eyes long blinded by cataracts. Why the glasses, then?

There was a scurrying sound at her feet, and Bailey reacted automatically by jerking her feet up from the ground only to find that there was nothing there—then she nearly toppled a cup of steaming tea on the table that was, mysteriously, beside her chair when she turned back to Anita.

Chloe and Frances seemed, again, entirely unsurprised by this. They also had been served tea.

Aiden narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his cup, while Avery appeared excited and entertained.

“Is it temporal suspension?” Aiden asked as he lifted the cup gingerly from the little saucer it was served on.

“Temporal whosit?” Anita asked, and then snorted rudely. “Wizards.”

“It’s the gnomes,” Rita told him. “They take care of us wizened old ladies. And they do more than just serve tea, so you take care, hear me?”

“Certainly, Madam,” Aiden said. He nudged Avery as well.

Avery glanced around, still delighted by the ‘trick.’ “I wouldn’t dream of making any kind of trouble. It’s a pleasure to see you, Rita. You know, Thomas is in town—”

“Of course I know,” Rita said, exasperated. “We know everything that happens in this town. Plus, Thomas emailed me months ago.”

“Everything?” Bailey asked. “Did you know about my father being arrested?”

“Ryan?” Anita clarified.

Bailey didn’t know if the woman could see or not—the glasses really did confuse things on that point—but she shot the old woman a not entirely polite look. “Yes. You know everything that goes on—did you know about Gloria killing Professor Turner?”

“That sort of thing is none of our business anymore,” Rita said. “We don’t get involved with those sorts of things.”

“We guard the Caves,” Anita said. She was still knitting, though what it would become when she was done wasn’t clear yet. “That’s our duty, and that’s the extent of it.”

“You didn’t need our help anyway,” Rita said. “It all worked out in the end.”

“But it might not have.” Bailey’s neck was beginning to ache, and she wondered if the crones did this on purpose, going back and forth, and sitting at opposite ends of the row.

“But it did,” Anita insisted. “You did a fine job. You’ll continue to do a fine job. Probably.”

“Did you come all this way to complain about your lot in life?” Rita asked. “You know what they said they came for, Nita?”

Anita sighed, and missed a beat in her knitting. She had to carefully feel for the skipped loop and carefully reset the stitch. “They want to get into Faerie, I’d wager.”

“They want to get into Faerie,” Rita said.

“It’s possible they have a mental illness,” Anita said pointedly.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Rita admitted. She surveyed the five interlopers. “Do any of you suffer from mental illnesses?”

Avery was the only one who answered, and that quietly. “Not that I know of…”

There was a momentary pause in the back and forth between the two women, and then both burst out laughing, their high pitched cackling echoing off the cave walls around them.

Bailey smiled at Avery, who looked nervously proud of himself. Who knew either of the women had a sense of humor?

When the laughter petered out, Frances spoke with greater confidence. “Can you or can you not assist us in getting into Faerie?”

Rita waved a hand. “Bah. We can. But who says you’re going anywhere?”

“Frances and I can’t let Bailey go into Faerie alone,” Chloe said. “If at all.”

Bailey opened her mouth to protest that, but Chloe shut her down with a warning look.

“Neither of you will be going,” Anita said. “There are other maidens. Aria can barely magic her way out of a paper bag. No, Bailey will go.”

“Alone?” Chloe asked, alarmed. “That’s insane, she can’t—”

“Of course not alone,” Rita sighed. She pointed her cane at Aiden. “He’ll go. Won’t you, wizard?”

“I will,” Aiden said. “You couldn’t possibly keep me from going with her.”

“Don’t test me child,” Rita said softly. But she smiled nonetheless. Almost as if in approval.

Bailey marked it, and pocketed that for another day.

“I’ll go as well,” Avery announced.

At this, Rita’s smile melted to a frown. “Absolutely not.”

“But, I’m Aiden’s—”

“We know who you are, boy,” Anita laughed. “And now we know you don’t listen so well.”

“Wizards rarely do,” Rita said. “But the reason you’ll stay here has nothing to do with being a wizard.” She leaned in a bit, and leveled hard eyes at him. “It’s to do with my nephew. You didn’t even tell him you were coming here, did you?”

“No,” Avery said insistently, “I haven’t told him anything about any of this. Magic, or Faeries or anything. I swear.”

“We know,” the crones said as one. They rolled their eyes—even Anita.

“You aren’t to tell him anything,” Rita went on. “He’s not part of this world. But you’re not to break his heart so casually, either.”

Avery’s face reddened, and he dropped his eyes to the porch before he sipped his tea.

“Bailey and Aiden will go,” Rita said with finality. “That’s the final word on the matter, or you can take my earlier advice and let the matter rest.”

“This… passage into Faerie,” Aiden said carefully, “is it… here? In this cave? Have you always known how to open it?”

“So many questions,” Anita said, shaking her head.

“And none of them any of his business to be asking,” Rita added.

Aiden closed his mouth, and the muscles of his jaw bulged momentarily. He didn’t speak further.

Bailey had questions. Questions that she felt were her business. Like why the crones lived here in the cave in the first place. Was it the cave that made them so long lived, or was that just a perk of being a witch?

“Aren’t gnomes Faerie creatures?” Avery asked, staring at a cheerful little statue of one at the base of the stairs leading up to the porch.

“No,” Anita said, “they’re elemental spirits. Different thing altogether.”

“Nothing a wizard needs to worry about,” Rita told him.

Avery stilled his expression in the way that Bailey recognized as his fervent attempt to hold his tongue. In any other circumstances she’d have stuck up for him—but somehow, this didn’t seem to be the time or place for that, and there was still every chance that the Crones would still refuse them. If they did, she wasn’t sure that even working together with Aiden they could open the door safely themselves.

“In answer to one of your questions,” Rita said, “no. We haven’t always been able to open the door to Faerie. It’s recent. The whole system’s been weakening gradually for the past century or so. Only within the last few years has it been possible.”

Aiden straightened. “Possible? Can they open the door from their end yet?”

“If they could,” Rita sighed, “they would have. For someone who’s seen Mab herself, you show an awful lot of ignorance, child.”

“How could you know that?” Aiden wondered.

Rita only winked at him.

“So,” Chloe said, “do you have any idea what they can expect? Can we prepare them in some way?”

Both crones were quiet for a time, except for the creaking of Rita’s rocking chair, and the ticking of Anita’s rapid, rhythmic knitting.

“There’s no way to know,” Anita said finally. “Faerie isn’t a world like ours, with hard lines and rules. Here, a rock is a rock, a tree is a tree, a house is a house. There, anything can be anything at any time, for any reason. The Faeries themselves make the rules, and they change them at a whim. You might see anything. You might see nothing. You might fall into an endless void and never return.”

“There are some rules,” Rita said, “which are inviolable. Faeries are creatures of magic, bound by laws more ancient than even they.”

“They cannot lie,” Anita said, “but they may tell half a truth, and use the truth to mislead.”

“They cannot stand the touch of iron,” Rita said, “nor cross a threshold made of it.”

“They may not refuse an offer to dance, but once accepted you may not end the dance until the music is finished—and it may never finish.”

“Faeries may punish rudeness with impunity; but they must return good manners with politeness themselves. What they consider polite, though—be wary even of polite Faeries.”

Bailey and Aiden both looked back and forth between the crones until Bailey’s head was dizzy. She felt as though she should write all of this down. “Wait… if they can’t cross a threshold of iron, or refuse a dance, or lie, or even be rude if you’re being polite… I’m not sure I fully understand what danger they pose us.”

Rita and Anita both sighed heavily, and shook their heads.

“That’s precisely why we recommend you not go,” Rita said.

Anita laid her knitting down. “To prepare you for a journey into Faerie would take decades. They are clever creatures, all but immortal, and they entertain themselves with intrigues and games of wit. They are spiteful creatures who know precisely the rules of their own nature and how to turn those rules against their foes. Or their allies. They are fickle, and prone to turn violent at the slightest provocation and with no warning—they take gleeful enjoyment in all they do, good or evil.”

“Do you still wish to go?” Rita asked.

Bailey and Aiden looked at one another. She looked for doubt in his eyes, but found only confidence and strength. It was her decision, she knew. But if she decided to go, he would go with her without question.

“What will happen to Isabelle in Faerie?” She asked quietly.

Anita picked up her knitting again, and went back to it.

Rita rocked thoughtfully for some time before she spoke, and when she did it was with great sadness. “We were once three of us, long ago, when we were young, and pretty, and naive. Our sister—our coven sister—Esme, was very curious about Faerie. She learned of it from our elders back then, when she wouldn’t stop digging for it.”

“A terrible shame,” Anita sighed.

“Yes,” Rita said regretfully. “Yes, it was. She wanted to go into Faerie and see it for herself. She found a ring of stones, some ways up north, and used old magic she had no business messing around with to attract their attention. She wanted an invitation, you see.”