Dance By Midnight (20 page)

He nodded. "Yes. I did."

Sam and he looked away from each other. I frowned. "What happened? Did you try to use it and it didn't work since the mantle was fake?"

"No," Mike said and pushed his plate away. He'd eaten every bite of it. The orchestral accompaniment of that many beans would commence soon as we got back to his place. "I used it."

I wasn't sure about the looks they were giving each other. I also felt a pang of worry because Thomas and Hob had been adamant about me making the wish, but I'd never shared that with Sam or Mike. And then I had a terrible realization. "Shit…you used it to save me? Guys…it wasn't that bad of an infection—"

"No." Mike shook his head. "That's not what I used it on." He licked his lips.

"Now you're scaring me… did you use it to make Brendi whole again? Is she human and here now?" I looked around, half expecting her to come out and serve us now. Surprise!

"Darren," Sam said and leaned forward. She sat across from me at the table, her expression sincere. "He didn't use it on Brendi. That wasn't possible." She grabbed the check and waved to the waiter. "Let's go."

We walked in silence down the sidewalk to her car. She'd parked it in the lot beside Kevin Barry's pub. She drove a Prius, silver, with a sleeping wolf resting in the back seat. When Sam opened the back door, Grey bounded out and put her two front paws on my shoulders.

I am very happy to see you, Darren McConnell.

I gave her a hug and she jumped down.

The head is safe in the trunk. It mumbles sometimes but I'm happy to know my jailer is now jailed.

I knelt down beside her.
What about your form?

I have it back. But I still do not want Sam knowing I am her mother. Will you keep this secret?

"Always," I said aloud.

"Sorry about that—" Sam said before she reached inside the back of the car and pulled a large tan envelope out of the pouch behind the front passenger's seat. "But she seems to adore you." She straightened and handed me the envelope. "I kept it in the car because it's been protected."

I stood and looked at each of them, not sure what wish could possibly be inside of an envelope. When I took it, a sharp pinprick of a shock ran through my body and I pulled my hand away. "What the…"

Mike took the envelope, took my hand, and put the envelope in it. The shock happened again, and then disappeared. "This was my wish to make, so I asked for a way to return your memories to you."

The sounds of the seagulls, the murmur of people, the water, everything disappeared as I stared into Mike's face. I opened my mouth and then closed it. With trembling hands I carefully tore open the top of the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of parchment paper. To the untrained eye it was blank on both sides, but to my eye, it was filled with an ancient Babylonian text.

"The spell is older than the book," Sam said. "If you place it into the
Grimoire
, you'll remember everything."

I looked into her face. Though she was smiling at me, I thought I saw a hint of sadness. "What's wrong?"

She looked away from me at the river. One of the large cargo boats was making its way slowly through the water. "When I first touched it, the Mother let me see things. They were some of your memories. And I think I was allowed to see them because you need a warning," Sam looked back at me. "This wish doesn't just give you back the year you lost, Darren. It gives you back everything you've ever forgotten."

Everything I've ever forgotten…

It took a few seconds before I understood what she meant.

My mom.

My grandmother and dad told me I was there when the house burned, that I'd run into the woods and then something happened in those woods outside our home. They didn't find me for a week, and when they did, I'd shown no sign of dehydration, no exposure to the elements. Dad said they found me inside of a tree, unconscious. I didn't wake up for weeks after that.

And when I did, I had no memory of what happened.

Only nightmares.

Sam put her hand on my forearm. "I see you understand the warning. Mike thought it best to give you the ability and not just make it happen. This way you have a choice. When you're ready."

When I'm ready?

I looked at the page for a few more seconds before I slipped it back into the envelope. When I tilted the envelope I saw transparent images drawn on the surface, much like watermarks on expensive paper. I wiped at my eyes.

Mike put a hand on my shoulder. He stood behind me. Sam pulled me into her arms and I wrapped my arms around her. Mike wrapped his arms around the both of us. He'd given this to me.

He could have wished for so many things, but he'd given it to me.

But Thomas's warning that I should make the wish still rang in my ears. I didn't know why, but holding the page in my hand filled me with a sense of dread.

* * *

After Sam left with promises to keep in touch, Mike and I walked back to his townhouse, cracking jokes about what we'd been through, what we'd seen, and what we hoped to never see again. Once in the kitchen, I put the envelope on the table and he grabbed us a couple of beers.

"You want to do something?" he asked after taking a long swig. "See a movie?"

"No…" I walked to the window and looked out at the garden. "You think Hob's still there?"

"You want to go see?"

"No," I said it almost immediately. "Sorry…I just hope he survived."

We didn't say anything for a while.

"Well," Mike said as he headed to the stairs. "I'm going to give a friend a call, see if he's got any work. You still bartend?"

"Yeah." I called out to him as he climbed the stairs. I drank my beer and stared outside for a very long time.

That night Mike went out with his friend Darius. I begged off, saying I was still tired and needed sleep. But long after they were gone I searched the kitchen for the largest plastic bag I could find. One that sealed was perfect.

I opened the glass doors, grabbed Mike's box of garden tools, and headed down into the yard. Behind the small fountain were a few large boulders. I picked the largest one and with a quick, "
Elu
," the word for raise up, the boulder levitated a few feet off the ground, high enough for me to dig a deep hole. I dropped the bagged envelope inside and recovered it with dirt.

"
Saplu
." The boulder lowered to the ground. I spent a few more minutes making sure it looked as trim as it had before, then moved to the other boulder to make it look like the one I'd disturbed.

I stood looking at the stone for a long time before I realized I wasn't alone.

To my right sat a wolf. A magnificent white wolf. I took a step back and it whined. A soft, unhappy noise. So I swallowed my nervousness and took the step back and added another one closer. "Hey...are you a friend of Brendi's? I didn't mean to make you sad."

She—I sensed at that moment it was a female wolf—tilted her head as she watched me. I wiped the dirt off my hand and offered it to her, hoping maybe she would let me touch her. I had no idea how she got into Mike's garden.

The wolf stood on all fours and put her paws on my shoulders. I caught the glint of something in her mouth just before she dropped it into my hand. She sent back on all fours and then sat looking up at me.

I stared at the necklace and locket of a gnarled tree, a flame, and a howling wolf. It was the same one I'd seen around the neck of the Faerie that warned us to leave in Maab's garden.

When I looked at the wolf I knew it was her. She pushed my hand with her nose. I could just see details of the locket under the light of the porch. It opened—

Emotion overwhelmed me as I looked down at the picture of me...and my mother.

This time when I looked at the wolf she was no longer a wolf, but the woman in the Queen's garden looking at me face to face. I opened my mouth to say something, but she put a finger over my lips. I felt flesh instead of a wolf's paw.

"I am so very....very proud of you."

And then she was gone. My eyes burned as I called out to her. I almost tore the garden apart looking for her. I ran through the back gate to the sidewalk, turning to the left and then the right to find any sign of her.

After a while I put the locket around my neck, cleaned the tools, replaced them, locked the door and took a long, hot shower.

about the author

Phaedra Weldon is a writer and mother of one. Born in Pensacola, Florida, Phaedra was raised in the lush, green southern tropic of Georgia. She grew up on southern ghost stories told while eating marshmallows around campfires, or on the back of pick-up trucks in the middle of cornfields on chilly October nights. She worked as a Graphic Artist for over twenty years in the publishing and sign industries until she became a full time writer in 2009. Phaedra currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and daughter.

This work and everything in it is the sole property of Phaedra Weldon. Any copying or reprinting will be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law.

Book Two of the

Grimoire Chronicles:

Minutes to Midnight

Chapter One

ZOMBIES!!!

I think weird shit lives somewhere between the movies and Channel 10 on my TV. I never thought or even considered in the slightest that some of that shit on there was real. Take zombies, for instance. I mean, seriously? The walking dead? Vampires had more of a chance of fitting into the waking, sane world of the mortal, especially if you explained them as demon-possessed humans.

Totally makes sense, right?

But an animated, walking corpse that feeds off of brains? How is it supposed to eat the brains if it's dead and the stomach's not working? And if it's dead, that means the heart isn't working, which also means there's no blood pumping into the brain, and it's not getting oxygen because the lungs aren't working. So it's just not feasible for such a thing to exist.

Right?

"Dags! Stop daydreaming and whammy this thing!"

Whammy?
Really?

My name's Darren McConnell, though most people just call me Dags. I can't remember where that nickname came from. Before all of this happened to me, I was just your average run-of-the-mill ghost-sensing human during those awkward, adolescent years when trying to fit in was harder than passing the eighth grade. Either way, I was small, weird, and a bit of a geek, so I spent an inordinate amount of time inside my own locker or the trashcan just outside the gym door.

I grew to about five-seven—missing the magical height of six feet by three inches. That's when I learned height didn't matter when it came to perception. Wouldn't have mattered if I'd grown to be six-seven because my face seemed to be a problem. I looked more like my mom than my dad, and my choice in hairstyle wasn't popular. I told a kid his dad had died and the kid didn't know it yet, so several of his classmates tied me to a tree and gave me a raw razor buzz cut. After that, I never told anyone else what I could see and vowed never to cut my hair again. So I sported a ponytail until recently. I don't know why I cut it all off.

So by the time I got involved with a ceremonial cult at the age of twenty-four, I was well established as a long-haired hippy freak.

Weird things happened with that cult. Weird things that lead me to having a witch shove a
Grimoire
into my soul to save my life.

Yes. I have a book in my soul. And not just
any
book. A book of magic spells. Got that? Good. Because I need to duck now.

The zombie swung the top half of a concrete tombstone at my head. I crouched down and ducked to avoid having my brains spattered all over a nearby set of ancient headstones. I was sure my blood would add a certain sense of ambience to the graveyard, but I liked having my brain matter
in
my skull.

As I hoped, the force of spinning that hunk of rock around took the creature into a second rotation. I stood up as it moved the stone away from me. There wasn't going to be a lot of time between passes before the thing swung back around at me so trying to pull a spell from the
Grimoire
wasn't feasible. A sword against the zombie or the headstone—again, not gonna work.