Spirited (13 page)

Boom!
Another flash of fire.

The red haze clouding my vision clears. Grandmother appears to be sneaking out of her bedroom. The milky eyes are gone, and she seems normal. Outside her bedroom door she stops and cocks her head as if she hears a noise. She’s nervous. I can feel her fear deep in my belly like a giant cloud of dread. She’s worried about being caught, but after a long pause, she creeps along the hallway to the bathroom. Before easing the door shut, she peeks out. Just before the
eww
-factor of possibly seeing my grandmother use the toilet kicks in, she kneels and reaches for one of the stones on the floor. Tapping it three times, she whispers something. The stone rises as if by magic, and a golden necklace with a fiery red stone slips from her fingers into the space below. She taps the stone again, and it gently slides into place.

Something punches me in the gut. I double over gasping for air. Everything goes black.

~*~*~

“Bryn, baby, wake up. Wake up, honey.” Mom sounds worried.

I try hard to open my eyes, but they won’t budge. Someone has taken a lawnmower to my brain. It’s in shreds. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

“Owww.”

“Oh, thank God. You’re conscious.” Mom squeezes my hand.

“I think I have a migraine.” I crack open one eye and wince at the sliver of light that shines through.

Something pricks my arm. I try to pull away.

“Hold still,” a man’s voice says. “This will help with the pain.”

Wait, that’s—

I force my eyes open. “Uncle Sig?”

He winks at me. “I was in Geneva at a medical conference, and it seems I arrived in the nick of time. I found you passed out on the couch downstairs. When your mom and I couldn’t wake you, I realized something more might be going on.” He opens a container for the hypodermic and drops it in.

I hate shots, but the instant relief of the excruciating pain only makes me grateful. Whatever was in the syringe works.

The fuzziness fades, and I sit up.

“Looks like our little Bryn has been talking to ghosts.”

The look on my mom’s face tells me she knows exactly what he’s talking about. Her brow furrows, and worry shows in her eyes.

I’m just about to spill all when my grandmother pops up behind Uncle Sigs’ shoulder with her milky white eyes and shakes her head violently. She doesn’t want me to tell the truth. A tiny tendril of a memory whips through my brain. She’s shown me something in a dream, but it’s floating around, and I can’t quite grasp it. I have the same problem with algebra equations during tests.

“Ghosts? Now I know you’re messing with me. I think I forgot to eat last night. I was really tired. I woke up hungry and then…” I didn’t like to lie, so I let it go.

“I’ll fix you a late lunch, honey. You’ve been out for several hours.” Mom runs to the kitchen.

“I know about the ghosts, Bryn. You can tell me the truth.”

The Viking appears and points to my uncle. Pulling out his sword, he makes a stabbing motion.

Okaaaay.

They don’t want me talking to Uncle Sig. I can’t imagine why. He’s the nicest guy in the world. My mom and grandma never communicated, but Uncle Sig was around for the December holidays every year. He and my dad were best friends until my dad died.

“Are you sure you’re feeling OK?” I raise an eyebrow. “Ghosts? Really?” I smirk.

There are more lines around his face than I remember from the last time I saw him, and much like my mother, there’s worry in his eyes.

“Fine, if you don’t want to tell me, but I know you’re the next in line.”

I want to talk to someone, but the stares the ghosts are giving me are enough to cause the heebie-jeebies. “I’ll tell Mom to fix you something too. There’s definitely something wrong with your blood sugar.”

~*~*~

That evening, I bundle up in my coat, desperate for some fresh air. Mom has been hovering all day, and I need a break. I also hope to see Riku. I remember something about my grandmother telling me not to trust
him
. But I didn’t think she meant Riku. I mean, why would she tell him everything if she didn’t trust him? No, I think she meant Uncle Sig. They obviously didn’t want me to tell him the truth.

Out on the street, I look left and right, trying to decide which way I should walk. Snow is piled high in all the yards and looks like what I always thought the North Pole would be.

“Do you remember the vision?” Riku comes up behind me.

I jump. “I wish you would stop that. You keep popping up out of nowhere.”

“Well, do you?” He has a knit cap over his shaggy blond hair, and his face is even more handsome in the twilight. Crystal blue eyes stare at me beneath some of the longest lashes I’ve ever seen.

Really? This is not the time to start jonesing after some boy.

“What vision?”

“The one where you passed out. I think she took over your body for a minute. That drains your energy faster than anything else they do to you.”

Do to me? I didn’t think they could do anything but yell and make scary hand gestures.

Great.

“I remember talking to you in the basement, and then it’s all kind of foggy. I do remember the Draugars. And I disagreed with you about being one. Then zip—”

Riku sticks his hands in his pocket. “Do you drink coffee?”

I pull up the hood of my coat to save my ears from frostbite. My parka is warm, but this cold is bone-chilling.

He points down the street. “Come on, there’s a place around the corner. You’re going to freeze if you don’t get inside.”

A few minutes later we have some awesome looking pastries and the strangest coffee I’ve ever had. It tastes more like hot chocolate.

“I want you to be calm.” Riku’s blue eyes are intense.

My breath slows and I relax. “You did this to me last night, and I passed out.”

“No. Well, yes. But it wasn’t because of what I did. You let your defenses down, and your grandmother took things into her own hands. Do you remember anything? Give into my magic. It will help you.”

It’s useless, but I close my eyes and focus. At first all I can hear are the noises in the café. People talking and dishes clanking. The smell of pastries and—

A red haze covers my eyes as I whirl into a vortex. I blink to clear my vision. Grandmother places a necklace into the hole under the stone. Then the magical words she says are “Brynja find me. Brynja find me. Brynja find me.” The vision ends, and I’m back to the sounds of the café. Stomach roiling, I open my eyes.

The pastry that had seemed so delightful before threatens to make me ill. “I don’t understand. If she knew where it was, why didn’t she do that in the first place?”

Riku raises his hands as if he doesn’t know. “My guess is she needed the memory space you gave her—like extra RAM on a computer—to help her remember. That’s never happened to me, so I have no idea how it works.” He pauses. “So does that mean you know where it is?”

Excitement runs through me, giving me more energy than I’ve had in days. “Yes. But she told me not to trust
him
. I don’t know if she meant you or my uncle.”

Riku’s brow furrows. “I see. I’d like to say you could trust me, but so much magic and power lie within this treasure, it’s probably best if you don’t test it.”

Somehow doing this without him is the scariest prospect of all. “Even if I can do the magic to get the safe open, how do I get the necklace back to where it belongs? I don’t know where the graves are, and I wouldn’t have any way to get there. I have magic, right? In theory, if you try to take the fire necklace, my magic will stop you.”

He sits back and eyes me. “How do you know that?”

I stop to think. “I have no idea. But I know it the same way I understand everything you told me last night was true. I have to do this.” A weird electricity spreads through me. I’m on the right track.

“We have to go now. Like now, now” I stand up and don’t wait for him to follow.

In front of the house grandmother appears in the window. She waves as if to signal me to stay away.

“What the— She’s been bugging me to do this and now…”

“It’s a warning.” Riku’s hand is on my arm.

No way can I feel the heat from his touch through my bulky jacket, but I swear I do.

“There’s something— No.” The last word came out as a curse.

“What is it?”

The dark expression on his face scares the hell out of me.

“We have to protect you.” He waves his hand, and a shimmering gold mist covers me. “It’s a protection spell. There’s something in the house that has nothing to do with your grandmother or the king. It’s evil, and it has attached itself to someone. My guess is your uncle. He probably isn’t even aware of it.”

Lovely. “So I go in there with some big, bad evil thing lurking around, snatch the necklace, and then what?”

“I’ll have the car waiting.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I make the crazy sign with my mitten. “I’m not going in there without you.”

“It will be difficult to explain my presence, and we can’t make your uncle suspicious. He may not even be in control of his mind. Whatever is in there is strong. It’s best if you pretend to be clueless.” He pauses for a moment. “Yes. Clear your mind completely. Don’t think about the necklace until you retrieve it. We don’t know the magic this entity carries. If it senses you know something…” He stops again.

“What?”

“It might try to use you. The spell I did will keep it from attaching itself to you, but it doesn’t protect you from any magic it might throw at you.”

Hands trembling, I wrap my arms around myself. “No. I’m not doing this.” I’m creeped out beyond belief. And then it strikes me. That horrible thing has attached itself to my poor uncle. And is in there with my mom.

Mom!

Unwrapping my arms, I steel myself for what I must do. “Give me an hour. If I don’t show up, you’d better come in with all your magic and save me. Got it?”

For the first time since I met him, Riku smiles. “Got it.”

I move past him toward the house.

“Bryn?”

He uses my nickname. He hasn’t done that before. “Yes.”

“I have great faith in you and your power. Your magic will protect you.”

I can’t hide my smile. And I stand just a bit taller as I walk through the door.

~*~*~

My uncle is in his room, and my mom is in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. “Did you have a nice walk?”

“Yep. I went to the little café on the corner. We need to figure out how to get some of those pastries sent home.”

She smiles, a rarity the last week. “That’s one thing they do well here.” She yawns, which makes me yawn.

“You go on to bed. I’ll clean up.” I offer.

“Thank you, honey. See you in the morning.” She kisses the top of my head.

My nerves send my stomach into spasm. “You are calm.” I whisper to myself. Every time I even began to think of the necklace, I sing, “la, la, la, la.” Or a lame version of
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
. I can’t think of anything else to distract me.

In my room I make noises as if I’m going to bed. I pick up a warmer sweater and an extra pair of socks. I don’t have any idea where I’m going or for how long… I stop myself. “La, la, la,” I sing in a whisper as I stuff an extra pair of jeans and money into a bag. When I’m sure Mom is sound asleep, I creep into the bathroom in much the same way my grandmother did in the dream.

The house is eerily quiet. I shiver as I close the door. Sitting on the floor near the clawfoot tub, I try to figure out which floor stone it was. Through a process of elimination and a whole lot of guessing, I narrow it down to two. No one is more surprised than me when the stone lifts the first time I try.

A flash of light almost blinds me. As the brightness dims in the small floor safe, I find a necklace decorated with brilliant, fiery rubies. I remind myself to breathe. An intricate weaving of tiny leaves pressed into gold encircles each stone. Touching it is the only thing I want to do. But I’m genuinely afraid of the magic it possesses. Using one of my socks to pick it up, I wrap it in the sweater I brought with me. I carefully stuff it into the small backpack. After I tap the stone three times, it returns to the floor.

I’m positively smug. I’ve done it. Now all I have to do is get the treasure to the— Oh, no. I haven’t protected my thoughts.

What if the creepy, bad ghost is listening?

Stomach churning with fear, I turn off the light and slip downstairs.

“Hmmm,” something growls.

I accidentally bite my lip, and the coppery taste of blood hits my tongue.

The kitchen light flicks on. Mom stands in the doorway.

Great.

That’s what I get for being smug.

But at least it’s my mom and not the scary thing in Uncle Sig.

“Where are you going?” Her normally sweet tone is dark and gravelly as if she has a sore throat.

Slipping off a mitten, I stick it in my pocket. “I, um, realized I’d left one of my mittens at the coffee shop. They’re the ones Cari gave me before we left. For good luck.” So much for not telling lies. Well, she did give them to me, but she’d said something more like, “You’d better wear these so your hands don’t fall off from frostbite.” She was cheery that way. It went with her whole Goth vibe. In fact she would love all this ghost mess.

“You can go in the morning.” Mom turns so the light hits her face.

Nausea burns my throat, and every muscle in my body tightens. Those are not Mom’s eyes. They’re black. Her head is at a weird angle, which is something right out of the
Devil’s Spawn
movie my friends forced me to see last year.

Cripes. My mom is possessed.

I have no idea what to do.

Okay, magical powers time to kick in.

I don’t feel any different.

Come on magic
.

Nothing.

Where the heck is Riku? He probably could zap her and be done with it.

“I really, really don’t want to lose it.” I mention the mitten again.