Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) (4 page)

“Where are you going?” I blinked back the tears that threatened to appear. “Don’t tell me you got a case. You said you weren’t going to do that anymore.”

Mom had brought home the bacon—sometimes literally—for years with her Spirit Consultation business. But after everything that had happened, she’d decided to hang up her heels and find a regular job. No more cases. No more spirits. No more evil shamans trying to attack her. There were safer ways to earn a few bucks.

Except for her training. All this time I’d known there was more to the late night running sessions, the mysterious packages that landed on the front stoop, and the frenzied rush to memorize all her old spells again. Mom hadn’t given it up. She wanted to go after Anthony. I knew it in my gut.

“It’s not a new case, as such,” she said with a sigh before pointing at the rickety kitchen chair. “Sit down. We need to have a talk.”

I plopped into the chair and crossed my arms over my chest, feeling like a kid throwing a hissy fit but not really caring if I was. If something happened to Mom again, I didn’t know if I could handle it. It’s not like I’d done a good job of it the first time. Besides, it had only been a few months since I’d gotten her back. I wasn’t ready to lose her already. It was too soon.

Mom eased into the chair and pushed the cookies closer to me, a sure sign she was going to say something I wouldn’t like. “Holly, I got a call from the Congress this morning. They have a lead on Anthony’s whereabouts.”

A wave of goosebumps swept across my skin. “They’ve found him?”

“They may know where he’s been hiding,” she said with a nod. “He’s probably weak, but we don’t want to take any chances. They need as big a team as possible, so I’m going with them to track him down.”

“Mom. Why does it have to be you?” I asked. “There’s no telling what Anthony will do when you show up and try to arrest him or whatever it is you’re going to do.”

“We’re making sure he gets locked away for a very long time, but not by the human police.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Holly.” My mom’s eyes flashed with something I’d never seen before. “That man trapped me inside of my own mind to the point it almost killed me. I
will
be involved in his takedown. I refuse to have it any other way.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Even though I couldn’t stand the thought of my mother facing the man that had made her life a living hell, I couldn’t fault her as to why she felt she had to do it. But that didn’t mean I was okay with it.

“I thought you didn’t trust anyone in the shaman world,” I said.

“Well.” She fiddled with a ziplock bag, her sharp fingernails pressing hard into the plastic. “I couldn’t be sure how deep Anthony’s involvement was and who exactly he had under his thumb. I was worried more shamans would be sympathetic to his side.”

“And now?”

“And now there’s a team trying to track him down and lock him up. I know not to blindly trust these guys, and I’ll keep my guard up. Just remember, if they sympathized with Anthony, they wouldn’t be hunting him.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you say so.”

“Oh, Holly.” Mom sighed and stood from the table.

“You can’t blame me for being worried.”

“No, I can’t. I just wish life had worked out differently and that you’d never been in the position you were. Thankfully, that’s over now. I look after you, not the other way around.” She left me at the kitchen table to stew in my thoughts and returned a moment later with two musty books covered in a thick layer of dust.

“What’s this?” I wiped my palm across the surface of one of the books to reveal the standard protection rune etched into the leather cover.

“I promised to teach you more about shamanism today.” She tapped a pointy red fingernail at the top book. “This is a poor replacement for what I can share with you first-hand, but it can get you started. Read through these. Learn about our shaman history and the rules of the world. When I get back from my trip, I’ll answer any questions you have.”

Eyes widening, I eagerly flipped open the cover. The crinkly pages fanned out before me, revealing words scrawled in ancient ink. This was more shaman information than I’d ever been given my entire life. There were explanations about my world in between these antique brown covers, and even though I wasn’t learning it the way I wanted to be, it was way better than the nothing I’d had until now.

***

Two hours later, the fridge was packed full of pre-cooked meals and the living room empty of all signs of Mom. She bustled out the front door, teetering in heels she hadn’t worn in months, brushing a soft kiss on my forehead before disappearing in a cloud of sweet perfume.

“Laura,” I mumbled into the landline, wrapping the cord around my finger. “What are you up to today?”

“Sleeping?” Sheets rustled on the other end of the line. Laura still hadn’t gotten up yet. Typical.

“Mom’s gone.” The words tasted alien as if they were from another time and another life. Even though Mom used to go on trips all the time, it had been so long I forgot what it had felt like.

“What do you mean, gone?” Laura’s voice lost its sleepy quality, replaced by an alertness I could only get by downing a gallon of coffee in one big gulp.

“She took off.” I wrapped the cord all the way around my body and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes. “Off to hunt down Anthony Lombardi with some shamans she’s decided to randomly team up with.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess I should have known this was coming. You know how Mom is.” My eyes drank in the photos plastered to the walls, snapshots of Mom from all around the world. Evidence of her adventurous life. “She never could sit still long enough to do more than make me my next batch of prepped food.”

“Alright, I’m coming over,” Laura said. “We’ll have a movie day. Eat lots of popcorn. And cookies. She left some cookies, right?”

“She left approximately a billion cookies. Plus, two books on shamanism.” My shoulders relaxed at the reminder of everything we could learn now. “That’s the plus of all this. We’ll finally get some info on our background.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?” My spine morphed into a popsicle stick, and my heartbeat ramped up a notch. “What’s wrong now?”

“Calm down. Nothing major. I just told that George girl I’d show her around Seaport today.” Laura cleared her throat. “She just seemed like she needed some friends around here, you know.”

“Invite George. She seems cool. We’ll have pizza and cookies, and we’ll tackle the shaman history stuff tomorrow or something. Besides, didn’t she say she wanted a normal Seaport? What’s more normal than a daytime sleepover?”

***

Laura showed up on my front stoop at noon wearing a fuzzy onesie dotted with tiny black cartoon skulls. Her nails were a new shimmery shade of gray, striped with red to match the strands in her hair. George stood just behind her in a much more normal ensemble of jeans and a tank top, a six-pack of beer tucked under one arm.

“What in the name of sanity are you wearing?” I propped a hand on my hip and shook my head at my best friend. You could never be sure what kind of nonsense Laura would show up sporting.

“We’re having a pizza movie marathon. I’m wearing a onesie.” Laura waltzed through the front door, kicking off her boots before disappearing into the living room. George popped her head inside and took a long gaze around the entryway.

“Man, Seaport
really
isn’t all that different from Salem.”

Sometimes I forgot how Mom’s decorations might look to an outsider with no knowledge of shamanism. Nathan had been pretty awed by it all at first, but he’d also known about spirits and magic by the time he’d stepped foot inside the house. The shaman drum was his favorite trinket, but what drew me the most was the wall of Chilean beads that whispered the sounds of the Andes Mountains.

“You keep saying that.” I shut the door behind her and shrugged at the ceremonial masks lining the wall. “My mom likes quirky decorations.”

“Trust me, no judgement here.” She fingered the cross necklace dangling to her chest. “When you grow up in the witch tourism capitol of the world, you get used to seeing weird shit everywhere you go.”

Astral pranced into the hallway with his tail in the air. He took one look at George, sniffed, and turned up his nose. Meowing, he bounded down the hallway and into my room.

“That’s Astral.” I frowned after him. “He can be a little funny sometimes.”

“Astral? As in astral projection?” George asked. “Cool name for a cat.”

For a moment, the world slowed. My eyes searched George’s face for a sign she knew exactly what she’d said. Most humans are aware of what astral projection is in theory, though they usually believe it’s just as real as blood-sucking vampires. George gave me an innocent smile, and my shoulders relaxed. I needed to stop with the overblown paranoia.

We made our way into the living room where Laura had already dug out a pile of DVDs we hadn’t watched in years. I was in the mood for a familiar story-line, one I could recite by heart, one I knew the ending to. Nothing that would leave me guessing, muscles tense, body on the edge of my seat. Today, I craved the familiar and the known.

We picked out a movie, slid it into the DVD player, and ordered a massive pizza buffet. A couple of hours into the feast, the half-assed movie watching, and the lighthearted chatter, I started to relax. George and Laura got started on the beer when the first movie’s credits filled the screen, but I opted for water after last night’s mess.

“So, you keep saying Seaport’s like Salem.” I tossed
Pulp Fiction
onto the maybe pile for our next film choice.

“Yep.” George grabbed another slice of pepperoni. “In the time since I’ve been here, a girl’s been attacked by a ghost, and I’ve been invited to a house full of ancient artefacts. Not normal. Neither is Salem.”

“Give it a chance,” Laura said around a mouthful of pizza. “Seaport’s not so bad most of the time. Today is a perfect example of its awesome normalcy.”

My fist pounded my chest when I coughed out a nervous laugh. I decided not to mention that I wasn’t so sure Laura was right about that, not anymore. The weirdness in Seaport had lain dormant for a long time, but I was pretty sure it had only been on intermission. Weird was quickly becoming Seaport’s new normal.

“Even though things have definitely started off on a crazy foot for you here, I don’t think Seaport and Salem are that similar,” I finally said. “Mom and I visited Salem a few years ago, and it just seemed like a big tourist trap.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem.” George’s smile turned knowing, like she held some deep dark secret inside her chest about Salem, Massachusetts. One I actually kind of wanted to know. It seemed Laura felt the same as she gave me a quick glance before cocking her head toward George.

“So, why you’d leave?” Laura leaned forward and snatched the last slice of pizza from the now-empty cardboard box.

George sighed and leaned back into the couch. “To get away from all that. I hated the drama. I’m telling you, Salem was just like Seaport. Exactly.”

George’s words hung heavy in the air, and I wondered if she really meant them. If Seaport was just like Salem, then it sounded as if she believed in witches and magic and all the other stuff people laughed out of town.

It also made me wonder if she was right about the similarities. Salem wasn’t that far from Seaport after all. Maybe magic used to exist there, too, and it had seeped into the stones and spread across the foundation over the years. Maybe being so close to Salem was what brought magic to Seaport in the first place. Mom had always said this town was a special places for shamans. This could be the reason why.

“So, you’re killing me here. What exactly happened?” I asked, unable to control my curiosity.

“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time I’ve been in the same vicinity as a ghost.”

I bit the insides of my cheek to keep from smiling. Despite all her talk, George didn’t actually know anything about the spirit world. Not if she thought those soul suckers were ghosts. She probably hadn’t even had a run-in with anything supernatural at all. It was a little disappointing to find out that George was just another human with an overactive imagination, but ghosts didn’t exist. Period.

“We need way more details than that,” Laura said, twirling her nose ring.

A wicked grin split George’s lips as she met Laura’s intense gaze. “Over my dead body.”

Laura’s cheeks flushed with color as she glanced away, her usual snarky retorts absent for once.

An idea sparked in my mind. “You know, George. If I remember correctly, you were the last one in the water last night.”

Slowly, a smile crept into Laura’s eyes. “You’re so right, my friend. George finished last, and therefore…”

“She has to subject herself to Wanda’s infamous tarot card reading.”

“You can’t be serious,” George said. “I didn’t escape Salem to spend my Saturday afternoon doing tarot cards with a hack.”

“Hey, when you take on a dare, you have to be aware of the consequences.” Laura rubbed her hands together and leapt up from the floor. “Besides, what kind of daytime slumber party doesn’t have dares?”

“Fine, fine.” George glanced longingly toward the stack of DVDs and let out a belabored sigh. “This lady is definitely not a real one, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be a dare.”

Wanda was definitely something, but I wasn’t sure
real
was the right word for whatever it was.

CHAPTER 4