Autumn Thorns (2 page)

T
he road twisted, curving through a series of S turns as my Honda CR-V wound along Highway 101. To my left, the forest breathed softly, looming thick and black even though it was still early afternoon. Brilliant maple and birch leaves—in shades of autumn bronze and yellow—dappled the unending stands of fir and cedar. With each gust of wind, they went whirling off the branches to litter the ground with sodden debris. October in western Washington was a windy, volatile month. The fact that I was making this trip on a Sunday evening worked for me, though. There weren't many cars on the road, especially not where I was going.

To my right, waves frothed across Lake Crescent as the wind whipped against the darkened surface. The rain shower turned into a drenching downpour, and I eased off on the accelerator, lowering my speed to thirty-five miles per hour, and then to thirty. The drops were pelting so hard against the asphalt that all I could see was a blur of silver on black. These winding back roads were dangerous. All it took was one skid toward the guardrail, one wrong turn of the wheel, and the
Lady would claim another victim, dragging them down into her secreted recesses.

It had been fifteen years since I had made this drive . . . fifteen years, a ferry ride, and about 120 miles. I grabbed the ferry in Seattle over to Kingston and then wound through Highway 104 up the interior of the peninsula, till I hit Highway 101, which took me through Port Townsend and past Port Angeles. Now, three hours after I had left the city, I neared the western end of Lake Crescent. The junction that would take me onto Cairn Street was coming up. From there, a twenty-minute drive around the other side of the lake would lead me through the forest, back to Whisper Hollow.

As I neared the exit, I veered off the road, onto the shoulder, and turned off the ignition. This was it. My last chance to drive past, loop around the Olympic Peninsula. My last chance to turn my back on all of the signs. But I knew I was just procrastinating against the inevitable. My life in Seattle had never really been my own, and this past month, when the Crow Man sent me three signs, I realized I was headed home. Then, last week, my grandmother died. Her death sealed the deal because, like it or not, it was my duty to step up and fill her shoes.

I slowly opened the door, making sure I was far enough off the road to avoid being hit, and emerged into the rain-soaked evening. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I stared at the lake through the trees. The wind was whipping up currents on the water, the dark surface promising an icy bath to anything or anybody unlucky enough to go tumbling in. The rising fog caught in my lungs and I coughed, the noise sending a murder of crows into the air from where they'd been resting in a tall fir. They circled over me, cawing, then headed north, toward Whisper Hollow.

Crows.
I pulled my jacket tighter against a sudden gust of wind that caught me from the side. Crows were messengers. In fact, the Crow Man had reached out all the way to Seattle, where he summoned me with three omens. The first sign had been the arrival of his flock in Seattle—they followed me everywhere, and I could feel his shadow walking behind them, looming down through the clouds.

The second sign had been a recurring nightmare, for three nights running. Each night, I found myself walking along a dark and shrouded path through the Whisper Hollow cemetery, as the Blood Moon gleamed full and ripe overhead. As I came to the center of the graveyard, I saw—standing next to a headstone—Grandma Lila. Dripping wet and smelling of lake water and decay, she opened her arms and pulled me in, kissing me on both cheeks. Then she lit into me, tearing me up one side and down the other.

“You've turned your back on your gift—on your heritage. Face it, girl, it's time to accept what you are. Whisper Hollow is waiting. It's time you came home to carry on with my duties. It won't be long now, and you'll be needed. You were born a spirit shaman, and you'll die one—there's no walking away from this. Something big is coming, and the town will need your help. Don't let me down. Don't let Whisper Hollow down.”
Each of those three nights, I woke up crying, afraid to call her in case there was no answer on the other end of the line.

The third sign came last week, a day or two after I had the last dream. Signs always go in threes. Always have. Third time's the charm, true. But bad things happen in threes, as well. I was walking home from a morning gig at work, deep in thought, when I glanced at the store next to me. There, staring from behind the storefront, was the Girl in the Window. A cold sweat broke over me, but when I looked again, she was gone. It
couldn't
have been her, could it? The Girl in the Window belonged to Whisper Hollow and she was never seen outside the borders of the town. Squinting, I craned my neck, moving close to the pane.
Blink
 . . . it was only a mannequin. But mannequin or not, my gut told me that I had been visited by the sloe-eyed Bean Nidhe, dripping wet and beckoning to me.

One of the rules of Whisper Hollow echoed back to haunt me.
If you see the Girl in the Window, set your affairs in order.
This was all the proof I needed. I went home and began to sort through my things. The next day, an express letter from Ellia arrived, informing me that my grandparents had gone
off the road, claimed by the Lady of Crescent Lake. She was a hungry bitch, that one, and neither age nor status mattered in her selection of victims. The car hadn't surfaced, and neither had my grandfather's body—no shock there. But Grandma Lila had been found on the shore, hands placed gently over her chest in a sign of respect. Even the Lady knew better than to get the Morrígan's nose out of joint by disrespecting her emissaries.

And now, a week later, I was on my way home to take Lila's place before the dead started to walk. I sucked in a deep breath, took one last look at the lake, and returned to the car.

“What do you think, guys?” A glance into the backseat showed Agent H, Gabby, and Daphne all glaring at me from their carriers. They weren't at all happy with me, but the ride would be over soon.

“Purp.”
Gabby was the first to speak. She stared at me with golden eyes, her fur a glorious black, plush and thick. The tufts on her ears gave her an odd, feathered look, standard Maine Coon regalia. She let out another squeak and shifted in her carrier. Not to be outdone, Agent H—a huge brown tabby and also a Maine Coon—let out a short, loud yowl. He was always vocal, and right now he was letting me know that he was not amused. Daphne, a tortoiseshell, just snorted and gave me a look that said,
Really, can we just get this over with?
They were littermates, three years old, and I had taken them in from a shelter after they were rescued from an animal hoarder. They had been three tiny balls of fluff when I brought them home. Now they were huge, and—along with Peggin—they were my closest friends.

Frowning, I squinted at them. “You're sure about this? You might not like living in Whisper Hollow, you know. It's a strange town, and the people there are all . . .
like me
.”

I stopped. That was the crux of it. The people in Whisper Hollow—they were
my
people. Even though I hadn't been home in fifteen years I knew that both they, and the town, were waiting for me.

Gabby pawed her face, cleaning her ears, and let out another squeak.

“Okay. Final answer. Head home, it is.” With a deep breath, I pulled back onto the road, turning right as I eased onto Cairn Street. We were on our way back to Whisper Hollow, where the ghosts of the past were waiting to weave me into their world as seamlessly as the forest claimed the land, and the lake claimed her conquests.

*   *   *

I
'm Kerris Fellwater and I'm a spirit shaman by birth, which means I connect with the dead. I can talk to them, see them, and drive them back to their graves if they get out of hand. At least, that's the goal and job description, if you want to think of it as a profession. The gift is my birthright, from the day I was born until the day I die. My training's incomplete, of course, but instinct takes me a long way. And I've always been a rule breaker, so doing things
my
way seems the natural order of things.

As my grandmother was, and her mother before her, I'm a daughter of the Morrígan. Our matriarchal line stretches back into the mists, as do the spirit shamans. I can feel and see energy, and I can manipulate it—to a degree. Some people might call me a witch, but the truth is, most magic I can cast is minor, except when it comes to the world of spirits and the dead. There, my power truly blossoms out.

When I turned eighteen, after a major blowout with my grandfather, I decided to ditch my past, the town, and anything resembling family, so I took my high school diploma and the two hundred dollars I had saved and headed for Seattle. I found a room for rent in the basement of a house and a job at Zigfree's Café Latte. Over the years, I moved into a high-rise, and I worked my way up from barista to managing the store, but it was just something I did to pay the rent on my shiny new apartment.

At night, I slipped out into the rainy streets to take on my second gig—one that made very little money but kept me sane. A few months after I arrived in Seattle, the headaches started. I knew what they were from, and the only way to stop them. If spirit shamans don't use their powers,
the energy can build up and implode—not a pretty future, to say the least. At best, ignoring the power can drive one mad. At worst, it can kill from an energy overload.

So I hunted around till I found a gig for a penny paper that later turned into an online webzine as the Internet grew into something more than an oddity. I investigated haunted houses and paranormal activity. On the side, I evicted a number of ghosts. The job didn't pay much, but that didn't matter to me. The coffee shop kept me in rent and food money, but the ghost hunting? That was what kept the headaches at bay. I spent all my spare time tromping through haunted buildings, looking for the ghosts who were troublemakers—the dead who were too focused on the world of the living to do anybody any good.

When I found them, I'd drop a hint to the owner, and about fifty percent asked me to come in and deal with the spirits. And kicking their astral butts, so to speak, is what kept me from falling over the edge of the cliff into La-La Land. I began to create my own rites and rituals from the training Lila had given me before I left home, and for the most part they worked. There were a few missteps, some of them embarrassing and a few downright dangerous, but overall, I managed.

In my personal life, I kept to myself. I had met a few friends but no one I felt like I could trust, other than keeping in touch with Peggin. Mostly, I read a lot, and I'm a speed reader and I have a photographic memory when it comes to what I read in books.

I have a lot of time to pursue my hobby. See, once people find out that I hang with spirits . . . well . . . it goes one of two ways: Either they're afraid of me, or they glom on to me in hopes of gaining tomorrow's lottery numbers or finding out if old Uncle Joe had actually squirreled away money somewhere and forgot to leave a note about it in his will. Being a spirit shaman doesn't make for easy dates, either. When guys find out that I can chat up their dead sisters or friends and get the lowdown on what they're
really
like, that usually ends the date. At first, their fear—couched as “It's not you, it's me”—bothered me. After all, the boys in Whisper Hollow had
accepted me for who I was, quirks and all. So it seemed like a pale excuse. After a while, though, I learned to ignore the brush-offs and eventually, I stopped dating, for the most part.

But now I was going home, where everybody in Whisper Hollow is eccentric, in one way or another. Everybody's just a little bit mad. And I realized that I was actually looking forward to it. Especially since my grandfather was dead and could never bother me again. At least . . . that was my hope. Because in Whisper Hollow, the dead don't always stay put where you plant them.

*   *   *

I
yawned, blinking. As I struggled to sit up, I wondered where I was, then it hit me over the head.
Home.
I was home. Stretching my neck, I realized that, for the first time in a long while, I had slept soundly. The master bedroom was on the main floor, but when I'd pulled into town it had been past seven. After stopping to grab a burger and fries and a few things at the local convenience store, I reached the house around quarter past eight.

I'd been exhausted, more emotionally than anything else, so I had set up the litter boxes in the utility room and locked the cats in there for the night. After I called Peggin—my best friend from high school and the one person I'd kept actively in touch with while I was in Seattle—to let her know I was back in town, I dropped on the sofa to think over my next step. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, still dressed, and morning was pouring through the partially opened curtains.