Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) Read online

  Under Witch Aura

  Maria E. Schneider

  Bear Mountain Books

  ISBN-13: 978-0615533926 (Bear Mountain Books)

  ISBN-10: 0615533922

  Copyright November 2011 © Maria E. Schneider 5.8.2012

  Cover Art: Valentino Sani

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Under Witch Aura Summary

  There’s an ill wind blowing in Santa Fe, and it’s touching every witch Adriel knows, including White Feather, who is far more important to Adriel than just any warlock. In search of answers, she delves into ancient magic, a family secret and dangerous religious rituals. Whoever is manipulating the elements appears to be after the ultimate goal: forbidden power over life and death.

  Adriel will go to the ends of the earth to keep those she loves safe, but if she lures the enemy away, will she be able to save herself? Her only hope is to use earth magic to hide from the very air she breathes as she hunts down an unseen and untenable evil.

  Under Witch Aura

  Chapter 1

  Ghosts don’t usually cause much trouble; they knock things over or rattle the eaves enough to be annoying. I didn’t know Sarah all that well in life, and I had no desire to know her better after death. It took a pretty angry ghost to appear in full form and do damage on the plane of the living.

  Sarah wouldn’t have been able to reach me at all had I been inside my house. I’m no dummy; after my first home burned down due to an evil spirit trapped in Aztec gold, I built the new one with the best protection a witch could spell. No witch, not even a dead one, could get through.

  Of course, the problem was that I wasn't safe inside my little house. I was unloading groceries from my rattletrap Civic, trying to grab all three bags because I was too lazy to make an extra trip.

  The howl split through the air, an angry, fighting growl that rose to a feral scream. In one motion, I dropped my groceries and spun around. Instinctively, I snapped my silver-decorated wrists in front of me. I didn’t carry a silver dagger to the store, although these days, just to get a parking spot, I probably needed a gun.

  Sarah was within inches of touching me, but she stopped as though she hit a wall when I raised silver. She didn’t look much different than the last time we’d met, except for the fact that I could see right through her to the front porch.

  There should have been nothing in my yard between the car and my porch besides moonlight, but not only was there a ghost, there was a cat. The feline had let loose the feral scream, not Sarah.

  I didn’t own a cat. I hadn’t the faintest idea where it came from, but it had saved me. Its warning screech had turned me around in time to keep Sarah from touching me. If she was trying for possession or for violence from the grave, thanks to the cat, she had missed.

  Unfortunately, my raised silver did not cause her to disappear. Her groping arms faded into barely visible stubby fingers even as they reached for me.

  I retreated carefully, keeping my silver exposed.

  In life Sarah hadn’t been my rival, but neither had she been a close friend. Sure, she was a witch, but her witchery involved the spiritual; inner healing and the like. I didn’t mess with that stuff, and we rarely crossed paths—or clients.

  Like me, her appearance didn’t shout “witch” unless you considered her gray frizzy hair. She was my age, twenty-seven, but her hair had been gray since high school. Mine was still black and thankfully pulled into a ponytail, out of the way.

  Sarah wore jeans, tighter than mine, with a flowery, ruffled shirt. There was a huge dark stain below her left collarbone. Rather than sad like I'd expect from a ghost, her eyes were as wild as her hair.

  “Sar..ah?” Collecting my breath, I realized then that her shirt wasn’t ruffled, it was in tatters, flapping away from her body as though floating from some unseen force. When had I seen her last? A month ago?

  How long had she been dead?

  “Sarah?” I repeated pointlessly. With another few sideways and backwards steps, I'd have a clear path to the porch. There wasn't a lot of protection there, but she’d be less real in the porch light, and the small amount of silver lining the deck might keep her at bay.

  Sarah wailed, an eerie, sub-audible sound, leaving me witless and cold with fear.

  I edged away, but she followed, her mouth moving mournfully. Stealing a glance towards the steps, I noticed the cat again. It hunched on the railing, illuminated by a pool of porch light. Mottled browns rippled across its body.

  It was far too small to be my shape-shifter friend and sometime-employee, Lynx. Not that I had ever heard such a hair-raising feral scream from Lynx, either in his human or cat form.

  The cat leaped from the railing, darted off into the shadows, and howled again. I swung around to find Sarah close enough to breathe on me had she still had breath.

  “Stop.” I pushed out with one hand as though I could strong-arm her. Backing up, I flashed silver behind me with my other arm. Watching every direction was impossible.

  She flinched, wailing. Her angst was strong enough that the noise vibrated through me, grating painfully through my bones. The sound was far more ominous than the cat's live screech.

  How long would the silver protect me? So far as I knew, ghosts didn't have a lot of limitations or power. But then again, I had never met one this audible or visible.

  Sarah's mouth moved again, petulantly this time, and she rubbed at her chest. I couldn’t read lips, and her hollow groaning wasn’t discernible as words. With the porch light behind me now, her arms showed almost as much damage as her chest. The wounds were either disease from the grave or she'd been peppered with shrapnel.

  I scooted away and jumped over two steps straight onto the porch landing. “What do you want from me?”

  “Adriel. Heeeelp. Meeee.” The three words were forced across planes of existence that weren’t meant to be traveled in reverse. The sound was as clear as daylight, something in short supply at ten in the evening.

  I stood directly under the light now, but made the mistake of blinking.

  That fast, she vanished.

  I spun around, ducking, but there was nothing behind me. There was no one on either side of me. I clung to the side of my house like a new layer of paint. My eyes searched the shifting shadows. The Civic was a giant monster at the edge of the darkness. Shadows…

  “Eeep!” My heart missed a beat, but the movement across the yard was just a tree, rustling in the breeze. Although it was early September in Santa Fe, my shivers arose from fear rather than the cool evening breeze.

  Ghosts could easily brush through a person. Sometimes they wanted back on the side of the living badly enough to attempt possession. Sarah had to have some amount of power just to appear at all. From the damage and pain she exhibited, letting Sarah touch me wouldn't be a pleasant experience.

  My fingers gripped the rough adobe. The darkness shifted, but it was only the juniper tree continuing its swish back and forth. The potted cactus on my porch didn't bend, nor was it large enough to hide anything in its shadow.

  I edged carefully to the front door. “Sarah?”

  I thought I heard a “meow,” but it could have been the breeze flapping the plastic grocery bag that lay in the dirt next to the Civic. The night whispered; crickets chirping, the ticking of the car engine, sand shifting. A faint hint of gasoline fumes from the Civic wa
fted through the air.

  I unlocked the front door and dodged inside. As fast as my feet would move, I ran to my workroom and grabbed my silver dagger even though I hadn't the slightest intention of going back out there tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow.

  No, I was calling for backup. From the looks of the sizable hole over her heart, Sarah had met a brutal end, and I didn’t want to run into her again tonight, or worse—encounter whatever she might have led to my front door.

  Chapter 2

  Witchery is far more mundane than you might expect. Mostly I mix and measure chemicals from Mother Earth and add important “firing” mechanisms. Occasionally, casting a spell involves mysterious words, but it's far easier and safer to set off a spell by crushing a membrane containing a chemical catalyst.

  While I generally had a spell or two on my person, they were usually protections that had been concocted in advance. None of my spells worked against ghosts, at least not that I was aware of. I hadn’t even known silver would ward off a ghost because silver was certainly no threat to a living witch.

  There would be time for research and spells later. Sarah had obviously not died a peaceful, easy death, and right now I wanted the comfort and protection of the living more than anything else.

  I snatched up the phone to call White Feather. Although he still called me at least once a day, I had barely seen him the last two weeks. Our relationship had been on the cusp of “getting warm and wonderful” when he retreated, got busy or got cold feet.

  I wasn’t sure why we hadn’t been spending more time together. When we first met, he had posed as an undercover cop investigating problems in the paranormal community. He thought I was an old decrepit witch; one of his best informants.

  It turned out his brother was the cop. White Feather was really a wind energy consultant by trade and a wind warlock covertly helping his brother investigate supernatural crimes now and then.

  Whatever he was working on could wait. Sarah was dead, and the stain on her front hadn’t been from a few sips of spilled coffee. White Feather could involve his cop brother Gordon when…The thought of finding Sarah’s actual remains spooked me more than the thought of her ghostly form. At least the wraith had been animated. A dead body had a different and very definite finality.

  “Hello?” White Feather's warm, mellow voice dispersed the worry, replacing it with a shock of longing. It had been too long since I’d seen him.

  “White Feather, it’s me.”

  “I know.” He sounded exactly as he had the last few times we'd spoken, his deep baritone happy to hear from me.

  I was breathless, something he could do to me without any help from a ghost. Usually, I covered the worst of my reaction so that it wasn't too obvious that he could have me wrapped around his finger, or his body--just about any time he asked.

  My voice stuttered when I said, “I’ve got an issue. A possible issue really. It’s small, I think, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be an issue.”

  “Are you in danger?” Keys jangled and what sounded like a door closing came from the background.

  “No, no, I’m fine.” Sarah couldn’t cross into my home without an invitation, and she wasn’t likely to hover out in the yard waiting for me to come out. Or was she?

  She had faded completely after a scant minute of trying to communicate. But what had summoned her in the first place? She had no reason to seek me out before death, much less after.

  “Adriel?”

  My pause had been too long. “Your brother needs to search for a body,” I squeaked, “to go with the ghost that showed up on my doorstep.”

  He may have dropped his keys. “Call me on my cell if it shows up again. I’m on my way.”

  I hung up, checked the window and paced. There wasn’t time to research ghosts, but there had to be some basic precautions that would help.

  I hurried back to my lab and surveyed the shelves full of bottles, beakers, special stones and piles of notes. The potent cayenne of a rista worked the same way garlic did against vampires. Since creatures that crept about in the dark were the problem, it might come in handy.

  A gun would do me absolutely no good at all, silver bullets notwithstanding. I added another crucifix to my neck, put a spare in my pocket and kept my silver dagger handy.

  On the way back to the living room, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My golden-hued skin was abnormally pale. The funny green hazel streak in my left eye stood out against the otherwise ordinary brown.

  I smoothed the wrinkles from my t-shirt with my hands, but it was hopeless. With White Feather on his way, I should be wearing something more attractive. My iron hadn't been used on clothing since...probably ever. It was in the lab for heating spell packets.

  If I had bigger boobs maybe the wrinkles would stay stretched out. My figure was average, and like most Hispanics, on the short side, stretching to hit five six. At least I wasn’t fat. Witches got a lot of exercise chasing clients and practicing spells. At least I did.

  Thinking of spells refocused my attention on the problem at hand. If Sarah threw a ghostly spell at me, it wasn’t likely to be an act of kindness. “Arrowheads!” They were an effective tool against evil spirits. Since they tended to interfere with my own spells, they weren't in the lab.

  Scurrying into the living room, I counted three stones up from the fireplace mantle and one over, muttering a release spell. The silver box hiding behind the stones wasn't heavy.

  The arrowheads inside were almost like Mother Earth, calling my essence, but unlike the steady drumbeat of her song, it was a gentle siren, tugging without offering anything back. It was a calming feeling, but at the same time, a smothering one.

  I selected the obsidian arrowhead because obsidian had natural protections against illness. Who knew what diseases Sarah might have picked up from her new, dead friends? Maybe those spots on her arm weren't from anything that occurred while she was alive.

  With the arrowhead in my pocket, I positioned myself next to the window. If any ghosts attacked White Feather, they'd better have an open portal to return to their home base because I'd hit them with enough spells to re-kill them three times over.

  It wasn't long before the headlights of his Prius sedan cut across the yard and merged with the light from the porch. The only things out of place were my unlucky groceries, scattered on the ground, forgotten.

  The car, like the man, was stealthy, coasting to a silent stop. White Feather took his time, shutting the lights off and allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark before easing out of the car.

  Not taking chances, I raced to the front door and yanked it open, ready to go out fighting or usher him in if he had to make a run for it.

  He retrieved the grocery bags without breaking stride. Only the turn of his head and the tautness of his shoulders indicated his wariness.

  I couldn’t sense his magic, even though I knew its caress; the heady perfume of a nighttime breeze, the elements of heat carried on the wind, and the scents of life in the air. While my magic was of the earth, White Feather’s talent was of the wind. He compelled it and controlled it. The way I spoke to Mother Earth, he spoke to Father Sky.

  Tonight, he kept his wind close. His magic barely brushed against me as he reached the porch. It was only the lightest of touches before it was gone.

  He stepped inside. I slammed the door.

  He held out one of the grocery bags. “I didn’t see anyone.” He smiled at me then, but he didn’t touch me.

  My heart stopped anyway. His eyes were the color of trees; a deep green with black lashes that matched his thick, wavy hair.

  “Anything,” I corrected. “You didn’t see anything.”

  I finally accepted the grocery bags. Sadly, I heard a sickening crunch. It only took a minute to confirm my suspicions. “Rats. Only two of the eggs survived.” Gourmet cook I was not. Since dating White Feather, I had been wined and dined--until he had suddenly become preoccupied. For the last two weeks, I had been forced back to my pr
evious diet of omelets and pasta.

  “What happened?” White Feather asked. His eyes flicked around the living room and kitchen. A counter divided the two rooms. An ancient round oak table and chairs sat in the combined dining and living space. My parents' old, brown leather couch hugged one wall and a newer, beige easy chair sat next to it. Unless you counted the fireplace, the only other piece of furniture was a square table where I had kept my television until it stopped working.

  My lab was the largest room in the house and the most frequently used. It contained my computer, which, with the television broken, filled in as a purveyor of news. Apparently it wasn’t sufficient because when I finished telling White Feather about the ghost, he seemed to know more than I did.

  “Was this Sarah person one of those nuts claiming homestead rights on forest land and living in a shack?” he asked.

  She had no address, because it was pretty much as he described. “Yes, she lived near the free range land, but in the hills, toward the ski resort. Her place was an old ranch or mining property she claimed belonged to her grandfather before the forest became forest land.”

  “That’s the one. No one could prove she wasn’t the grandkid because no one could prove who lived there. She’s been squatting out there for five years while the government argues with her. There was a fire at her cabin three days ago. My brother mentioned it because of the explosion, and the fact that he didn’t find anyone. He figured she'd moved on.”

  I gulped. “Not in time.”

  “Apparently not.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and paced away from the kitchen counter. “You checked the rest of the house?”

  “I went in the lab. I don’t think she can cross the threshold into my house. I’m not sure what attracts a ghost in the first place, but she is still a witch, right?”