Wickedly Magical (8 page)

As she stood up, Jonathan gazed at her numbly, still clutching at his chest as though he couldn’t quite believe the necklace was no longer there.

“Why?” he asked her. “Why did you do this to me? Everything was perfect until you ruined it. Why?” The last word came out as a wail.

Barbara looked down at him dispassionately, unmoved by his grief. He’d done too much damage to too many lives for her to feel sorry for him.

“Two reasons,” she said. She held up a finger. “One—you had something that didn’t belong to you and you abused its power for your own selfish gains.”

A second finger went up in the air, and then swiveled to point at Elena and Katya, sitting together at the children’s table, looking bewildered. “And two, you stole another man’s children, and then, when he wouldn’t give them up without a fight, you used that same power to destroy his reputation. I might not have gotten involved for the first one, but the second made this my business. You should have left Ivan Dmetriev alone.”

Grace jumped up out of her chair and went around to face Barbara. “Ivan? What on earth does Ivan have to do with this?”

“Ivan called me in to help,” Barbara said, “when you and your boyfriend left him no other choice. You turned the justice system against him, so he came to me for justice instead.”

“What are you, some kind of bounty hunter?” Grace asked, more belligerent than afraid. “You can’t do anything. The law is on my side. I’m their mother.”

“Nothing so mundane as a bounty hunter,” Barbara said with a grim little shadow of a smile. “I am a Baba Yaga. And your Human laws are not my concern.” She dropped just enough of her veil to let her real self show out through her eyes, and Grace turned pale and took an involuntary step backward.

But by the time Barbara walked down to the smaller table, there was nothing to see but a kindly old woman. She held her hands out to the girls. “Hello, Katya. Hello, Elena. Do you remember me? I’m a friend of your father’s. He sent me here to bring you home. Would you like that?”

Katya hesitated, but Elena put her tiny hand into Barbara’s and gazed up at her with trust in her round brown eyes. “Yes please,” she said. “I miss my daddy.” After a moment, Katya took Barbara’s other hand, and they started to walk towards the door.

“Wait a minute!” Grace screeched, running over to block their way. “You can’t just take my children.”

Barbara raised one silvery eyebrow. “No? You took them from their father. I am simply taking them back.”

“But—but, I’m their mother,” Grace stuttered. “They belong with me.”

“Fine,” Barbara said. She looked Grace in the eye. “You have a choice. You can come with us, and take the chance that you can work out some kind of agreement with your husband. Or you can stay with Jonathan. But you can’t have both. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, and believe that you only helped Jonathan smear your husband’s reputation because you were under his influence. But if you choose not to go back and repair the damage you’ve done, and voluntarily stay with the man who did it, I will make sure you never see these children again.” Her expression was hard, her tone unwavering. “It’s your choice. But you have to choose now, because we’re leaving.”

Grace wavered, her gaze moving from the little girls clutching Barbara’s hands to the handsome man sitting crumpled and forlorn, alone at the end of the table.

“Ivan will never be able to convince a judge to let him have those girls back,” she said, finally, glaring fiercely at Barbara. “The damage is done. You might as well leave them here with us.”

Barbara shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Grace. You may have made it impossible for Ivan and the girls to return to their old life, but that doesn’t mean they can’t build another, even better one.”

“I don’t understand,” Grace said.

“That, my dear, is obvious in more ways than one,” Barbara said with a snort. “Ivan comes from the Russian community, and they take care of their own. He and Katya and Elena will disappear into the depths of that community, with new names and new identities, and soon the authorities will forget that Ivan Dmetriev ever existed.”

She waved a hand in Jonathan’s direction. “Unlike this man’s false family, created out of illusions and lies and manipulation, Ivan’s extended family is real and true, and they will never let him down. Not one person will ever tell you where they are. So choose now. There will not be a second chance.”

Grace bit her lip, then slowly backed away from her children until she was standing next to Jonathan, one hand resting on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, girls. But Jonathan needs me. He’s all alone now. I know you’ll understand when you’re older.”

Barbara gritted her teeth so the rude words in her head couldn’t make it out into a room with children in it. She would never understand Humans. Well, never mind. She’d given the woman a choice, and she’d made it. It was time to go.

As she walked out through the open front door, she could see Ivan’s truck parked at the bottom of the driveway, right where she’d told him to be. When he spotted the girls, he came racing towards them, and Barbara let go of their hands so they could run into his arms. He scooped them both up, hugging them as though he would never let them go. All three of them were crying, and Barbara felt a suspicious wetness at the corners of her own eyes, which she wiped away before anyone could see.

By the time she’d walked at a more sedate pace down the shadowy drive, Ivan was fastening his daughters into their car seats. He swung around defensively as she came up to him, and she laughed at the confusion on his face.

“I promised you I would get your children back,” she said in her own voice. “And so I have.”

“Baba Yaga?” Ivan said uncertainly. “Is that you?”

“It is and it isn’t,” Barbara said. “But close enough, at the moment.”

Ivan dropped to one knee, bowing his head. “I owe you more than I can possibly repay, Baba Yaga. You have given me back my heart, my life, my whole world. How can I thank you enough?”

“You can get up off the ground, for one thing,” she said in a dry voice. “Your children probably think you are being very silly.”

Giggles from the truck proved the truth of this statement, and Barbara had to hide a grin behind one still-wrinkled hand. After all, there was a formula of sorts for these things, and this was supposed to be a solemn moment.

“You came to me with a favor that was owed, and I have repaid it in full, do you not agree?” she said.

He nodded earnestly, his plain, sturdy face glowing with joy. “You have given me all I asked for, Baba Yaga. I will be sure to tell my babushka that her token was redeemed. Is there nothing else I can do to thank you?”

“You can take your children and live a good life,” Barbara said. “Love and appreciate them every day. That is all I ask. I’m afraid that, due to your wife’s lies in court, and Mr. Bell’s magical influence, you will probably have to start over under new names. But I am certain you can manage that.” She gave him a sly look. “I suspect your babushka knows someone useful. She seems like the type to know anyone worth knowing.”

Concern temporarily erased the newfound happiness from Ivan’s face. “But what if Grace decides to come looking for us? I don’t want the kids to have to spend their lives on the run. It just wouldn’t be fair to them.”

Barbara shook her head. “That won’t happen. Start your new lives, and I promise you, Grace will never bother you again. And a Baba Yaga never breaks her promise.”

Ivan smiled gratefully and turned back to finish buckling Katya into her seat.

“Wait,” Barbara said. “Perhaps there is
one
thing you can do for me.”

“Oh?” Ivan swiveled around, looking slightly alarmed. “What is it?”

She smiled. “When you tell the children tales of the Baba Yaga on a cold winter’s night, you might remember to mention that whether or not the witch is wicked often depends on who is telling the story.”

With a wave at the girls, she disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, they heard the sound of a motorcycle as it roared off down the road, and then there was silence.

***

A couple of weeks later, Barbara sat around a bonfire by a quiet lake with her two sister Baba Yagas. Now that the class she was giving was over, she was slowly making her way back across the country to her regular (albeit necessarily intermittent) teaching position at Berkeley, and all three Babas had taken advantage of a rare moment of coinciding lulls to gather together for an evening. The other two had taken paths through the Otherworld from the doorways hidden in each of their traveling homes, which was a whole lot quicker and easier than trying to meet up in any conventional way.

Beka lifted her glass of wine in a salute after Barbara finished telling them about her most recent adventures. “I love it when the good guys win,” she said. “Although I have to admit, I feel a little sorry for that Jonathan fellow.”

Barbara jerked her head up, almost spilling her drink. “What? Why?”

The pretty blonde had a pensive look as she gazed around the circle at the others. “We all know what it is like to grow up without families,” she said quietly. “With no parents or siblings, only an old witch far removed from her own humanity to raise us in a world apart from most normal people. I’m just saying that I understand how someone could want a family badly enough to go to some pretty drastic lengths to create one.”

“Understand, my ass,” Bella said. “I think Barbara was too easy on him. He played with people’s minds and was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. Personally, I would have let Chudo-Yudo eat him and be done with it.”

The others chuckled, used to Bella’s feisty temper, which was as fiery as her tumbled mass of curly red hair.

From his place by Barbara’s side, Chudo-Yudo snorted and said, “You tell ’em, sister.” Then gazed up at his companion with as pitiful a look as a two-hundred-pound pit bull can manage and added, “You know, if someone wanted to make it up to me, she could cook me up another s’more. Just sayin’.”

Barbara rolled her eyes, but put another couple of marshmallows on a stick and scooted close enough to hold them over the fire.

“I see what you mean, Beka,” she said, casting one of her rare smiles at the youngest Baba Yaga. “We miss out on a lot of so-called normal life by becoming Baba Yagas, but it’s not as though any of us would chose another life, now, would we?”

Beka shrugged. “I guess not.”

“Besides,” Bella said, her usual cheerful demeanor reasserting itself. “We
do
have family—we have each other.”

They all raised their glasses in a toast, when suddenly Barbara heard a distant chiming, like church bells on the wind. It grew louder, startling her so much she dropped her stick, marshmallows and all, into the fire, where it went up with a sugary sizzle.

“Hey!” Chudo-Yudo protested indignantly. “My s’more!”

“Did any of you hear that?” Barbara asked. She swiveled her head around slowly, eyes glazing over as she listened for a distant summons.

“Oh-oh,” Bella said, putting her wineglass down with resignation. “The party’s over. I recognize that look.”

“She’s getting The Call, isn’t she?” Beka said. “Barbara, are you okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Barbara answered distractedly.

“Damn,” Chudo-Yudo said. “I guess this means we’re not going back to California. I’ll go get the map.” He heaved himself up with a put-upon sigh and went into the Airstream for a moment, coming back with a large, now slightly damp, map of the United States in his mouth.

Beka and Bella exchanged sympathetic glances. A Baba Yaga’s tasks could come to her in various different ways. Sometimes, like with Ivan, a Baba “just happened” to be in the right place at the right time, or sometimes people were drawn to her once she arrived at wherever she was going. The universe just seemed to work that way, at least when Baba Yagas were involved.

But every once in a while, when there was something big afoot, a Baba would get The Call, a kind of subliminal mental pull towards whatever problem needed her special attention. No one else could hear it besides the Baba it was aimed at, and there was no ignoring it. When you were called, you went. It was as simple as that.

Chudo-Yudo dropped the map on the ground in front of Barbara and the other two women walked around the fire to look over her shoulder as she knelt and held her hand out over it, index finger moving slowly over its surface as a pointer. She closed her eyes to better concentrate on that inner voice, and when she opened them, she peered down to see where her finger had landed.

“Where the hell is
that
?” Chudo-Yudo said plaintively. “It looks like the middle of nowhere.”

“Someplace in upstate New York,” Bella said, peering at that section of the map with interest. “I suspect you’ll have to get closer to the area before you figure out which little Podunk town The Call is actually originating from.”

“Huh,” said Beka. “I haven’t heard of any major natural disasters or anything lately, have you? I mean, like an upsurge in tornado activity or something else that might need a Baba Yaga to get it back under control.”

“I don’t think I have either,” Bella agreed. “Barbara?”

Barbara didn’t answer, caught in the grip of a peculiar shivery sensation she’d never felt before.

“Barbara!” Bella said sharply. “What is it?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Barbara said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded far away and dreamy. “This isn’t like any other Call I’ve ever had. It’s . . . different. Stronger. As if I can hear Fate saying my name out loud, leading me to a path that will change everything.”

“Change it how?” Beka asked.

“I don’t know,” Barbara said in a quiet voice. “I only know that after this, nothing will ever be the same again.”

Keep reading for an excerpt from

WICKEDLY DANGEROUS

Available now from Berkley Sensation

The crackle of the two-way radio barely impinged on Liam McClellan’s consciousness as he scanned the bushes on either side of his squad car for any sign of a missing seven-year-old girl. He’d been down this same narrow country road yesterday at dusk, but like the other searchers, he’d had to give up when darkness fell. Like the rest—volunteers from the nearby community and every cop who could be spared, whether on duty or off—he’d come back at dawn to pick up where he left off. Even though there was little hope of success, after six long days.

His stomach clenched with a combination of too much coffee, too little sleep, and the acid taste of failure. Liam McClellan took his job as sheriff very seriously. Clearwater may be a tiny county in the middle of nowhere, its population scattered between a few small towns and a rural countryside made up mostly of struggling farmers, overgrown wilderness, and white-tailed deer, but it was
his
tiny county, and the people in it were his to protect. Lately, it didn’t seem like he’d been doing a very good job.

Mary Elizabeth Shields had disappeared out of her own backyard. Her mother had turned her back for a moment, drawn by the flutter of a bright-hued bird. When she turned around, the girl had vanished. Such a thing would be alarming enough on its own, but Mary Elizabeth was the third child to go missing in the last four months. To a lawman, that meant only one thing: a human predator was stalking the children of Clearwater County.

There had been no trace of any of the missing children. No tire marks, no unexplained fingerprints, no lurking strangers seen at any of the places from which the children had disappeared. No clues at all for a tired and frustrated sheriff to follow. And this time it was personal; Mary Elizabeth’s mother was one of his deputies. A single mother who adored her only child, Belinda Shields was beside herself with grief and terror, making Liam even more discouraged over his inability to make any headway in the case.

A rabbit bounded out of a tangle of sumac, and Liam slowed to avoid hitting it, his tires sending up a spray of dusty gravel. In his rearview mirror, he thought he caught a glimpse of an old woman walking by the side of the road with a basket of herbs over one gnarled, skinny arm. But when he looked again, no one was there.

The gauzy fog of an early summer morning gave the deserted back road a surreal quality, which only heightened as he came around the bend to his destination to find a totally unexpected sight.

When he was out here last night, the wide curve of road that ended in a patch of meadow overlooking the Clearwater River had been empty. This morning, there was a shiny silver Airstream trailer parked in the middle of the crabgrass and wildflowers of the meadow, along with the large silver Chevy truck that had no doubt hauled it there. Liam blinked in surprise as he eased his squad car to a halt a few yards away. He didn’t know anyone in the area who had such a fancy, expensive rig, and he couldn’t imagine a stranger being able to navigate his way into the back-of-beyond corner on a bumpy tertiary road in the dark.

But clearly, someone had.

Swinging his long legs out of the driver’s side door, Liam thumbed the radio on and checked in with Nina in dispatch, hoping fervently she would tell him the girl had turned up, safe and sound.

No such luck.

“Do you know of anyone around here who owns an Airstream?” he asked her. “Any of the gang down at Bertie’s mention seeing one come through town?” Bertie’s was the local bakery/diner/gossip central. Nina considered it part of her job to swing by there on the way to work every morning and pick up muffins and chitchat to share with the rest of the sheriff’s department.

“A what?” Nina asked. He could hear her typing on her keyboard in the background. The woman was seventy years old and could still multitask with the best of them. The county board kept pressuring him to make her retire, but that was never going to happen. At least, not as long as he still had a job.

“It’s a big fancy silver RV trailer,” he explained. “I found one sitting right smack-dab in the middle of Miller’s Meadow when I got here just now.”

“Really?” She sounded dubious. “In Miller’s Meadow? How the heck did it get there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Liam said, scratching his head. He made a mental note to get his hair cut; it kept flopping into his eyes and annoying him. It seemed like a trim was never enough of a priority to make it to the top of his overburdened to-do list. “Drove here, I guess, although I wouldn’t want to haul a big vehicle down this road if I didn’t have to.”

He told her to hang on for a minute, then walked around and checked the license plate on the truck. Returning to the car, he read off the numbers. “California plates, so someone is a long way from home. Hard for me to imagine anyone driving all that distance to upstate New York in order to park out here at the ass end of nowhere, but I suppose we’ve had tourists do stranger things.”

“Huh,” was Nina’s only response. Clearwater County didn’t get much in the way of tourism. A few folks staying at the bed and breakfast in West Dunville, which had both a tiny winery and an antiques shop, as well as an old mill that housed a surprisingly good restaurant. Campers during the summer who used the small state park outside of Dunville proper. Other than that, the only strange faces you saw were those of people driving through on their way to someplace more interesting.

More tapping as Nina typed in the information he’d given her. “Huh,” she said again. “There’s nothing there, Sheriff.”

“No wants and warrants, you mean?” He hadn’t really expected any; not with an Airstream. But it would have been nice if the gods of law enforcement suddenly decided to smile on him and just hand over a suspect. Preferably one who still had all the children alive and well and eating cookies inside a conveniently located trailer. He sighed. There was no way he was going to be that lucky.

“No anything,” Nina said slowly. “There’s nothing in the system for that plate number at all. And I can’t find any record of a permit being issued for someone to use the spot. That’s county property, so there should be one if our visitor went through proper channels and didn’t simply park there because he got tired.”

Liam felt his pulse pick up. “Probably a computer error. Why don’t you go ahead and check it again. I’ll get the inspection number off the windshield for you too; that should turn up something.” He grabbed his high-brimmed hat from the passenger seat, setting his face into “official business” lines. “I think it’s time to wake up the owner and get some answers.”

The radio crackled back at him, static cutting off Nina’s reply. Any day now, the county was going to get him updated equipment that worked better. As soon as the economy picked up. Clearwater County had never been prosperous at the best of times, but it had been hit harder than most by the recent fiscal downturn, since most people had already barely been getting by before the economy slid into free fall.

Plopping his hat on over his dark-blond hair, Liam strode up to the door of the Airstream—or at least, where he could have sworn the door was a couple of minutes ago. Now there was just a blank wall. He pushed the hair out of his eyes again and walked around to the other side. Shiny silver metal, but no door. So he walked back around to where he started, and there was the entrance, right where it belonged.

“I need to get more sleep,” he muttered to himself. He would almost have said the Airstream was laughing at him, but that was impossible. “More sleep and more coffee.”

He knocked. Waited a minute, and knocked again, louder. Checked his watch. It was six a.m.; hard to believe that whoever the trailer belonged to was already out and about, but it was always possible. An avid fisherman, maybe, eager to get the first trout of the day. Cautiously, Liam put one hand on the door handle and almost jumped out of his boots when it emitted a loud, ferocious blast of noise.

He snatched his hand away, then laughed at himself as he saw a large, blunt snout pressed against the nearest window. For a second there, he’d almost thought the trailer itself was barking. Man, did he need more coffee.

At the sound of an engine, Liam turned and walked back toward his car. A motorcycle came into view, its rider masked by head-to-toe black leather, a black helmet, and mirrored sunglasses that matched the ones Liam himself wore. The bike itself was a beautiful royal blue classic BMW that made Liam want to drool. And get a better-paying job. The melodic throb of its motor cut through the morning silence until it purred to a stop about a foot away from him. The rider swung a leg over the top of the cycle and dismounted gracefully.

“Nice bike,” Liam said in a conversational tone. “Is that a sixty-eight?”

“Sixty-nine,” the rider replied. Gloved hands reached up and removed the helmet, and a cloud of long black hair came pouring out, tumbling waves of ebony silk. The faint aroma of orange blossom drifted across the meadow, although none grew there.

A tenor voice, sounding slightly amused, said, “Is there a problem, Officer?”

Liam started, aware that he’d been staring rudely. He told himself it was just the surprise of her gender, not the startling Amazonian beauty of the woman herself, all angles and curves and leather.

“Sheriff,” he corrected out of habit. “Sheriff Liam McClellan.” He held out one hand, then dropped it back to his side when the woman ignored it. “And you are?”

“Not looking for trouble,” she said, a slight accent of unidentifiable origin coloring her words. Her eyes were still hidden behind the dark glasses, so he couldn’t quite make out if she was joking or not. “My name is Barbara Yager. People call me Baba.” One corner of her mouth edged up so briefly, he almost missed it.

“Welcome to Clearwater County,” Liam said. “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing parked out here?” He waved one hand at the Airstream. “I assume this belongs to you?”

She nodded, expressionless. “It does. Or I belong to it. Hard to tell which, sometimes.”

Liam smiled gamely, wondering if his caffeine deficit was making her sound odder than she really was. “Sure. I feel that way about my mortgage sometimes. So, you were going to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Was I? Somehow I doubt it.” Again, that tiny smile, barely more than a twitch of the lips. “I’m a botanist with a specialty in herbalism; I’m on sabbatical from UC Davis. You have some unusual botanical varieties growing in this area, so I’m here to collect samples for my research.”

Liam’s cop instincts told him that her answer sounded too pat, almost rehearsed. Something about her story was a lie, he was sure of it. But why bother to lie about something he could so easily check?

“Do you have some kind of ID?” he asked. “Your vehicle didn’t turn up in the database, and my dispatcher couldn’t find any record of a permit for you to be here. This is county property, you know.” He put on his best “stern cop” expression. The woman with the cloud of hair didn’t seem at all fazed.

“Perhaps you should check again,” she said, handing over a California driver’s license with a ridiculously good picture. “I’m sure you’ll find that everything is in order.”

The radio in his car suddenly squawked back to life again, and Nina’s gravelly voice said, “Sheriff? You there?”

“Excuse me,” Liam said, and walked over to pick up the handset, one wary eye still on the stranger. “I’m here, Nina. What do you have for me?”

“That license plate you gave me? It just came back. Belongs to a Barbara Yager, out of Davis, California. And the county office found an application and approval for her to camp in the meadow. Apparently the clerk had misfiled it, which is why they didn’t have it when we asked the first time.” Her indignant snort echoed across the static. “Misfiled. Nice way to say those gals down there don’t know the alphabet. So, anything else you need, Sheriff?”

He thumbed the mike. “Nope, that will do it for now,” he said. “Thanks, Nina.” Liam put the radio back in its cradle and walked back over to where his not-so-mystery woman waited patiently by her motorcycle, its engine pinging as it cooled.

“Looks like you were right,” he said, handing her license back. “Everything seems to be in order.”

“That’s the way I like it,” she said.

“Me too,” Liam agreed, “Of course, it kind of comes with the job description. One half of ‘law and order,’ as it were.” He tipped the brim of his hat at her. “Sorry for disturbing you, ma’am.”

She blinked a little at the polite title and turned to go.

“I’m going to leave my squad car here for a bit,” Liam said. “I’m continuing a search down the riverside. Unless you were planning on pulling the Airstream out in the next couple of hours, the car shouldn’t be in your way.”

Stillness seemed to settle onto her leather-clad shoulders, and she paused for a second before swiveling around on the heel of one clunky motorcycle boot. “I wasn’t expecting to leave anytime soon.” Another pause, and she added in a casual tone, that mysterious hint of an accent making her words musical, “What are you searching for, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The wind lifted her hair off her neck, revealing a glimpse of color peeking out from underneath the edge of her black tee shirt.

Liam wondered what kind of a tattoo a BMW-riding herb researcher might have. A tiny rose, maybe? Although in Barbara Yager’s case, the rose would probably have thorns. Well, not likely he’d ever find out.

“I’m looking for a little girl,” he answered her, dragging his mind back to the task at hand. “A seven-year-old named Mary Elizabeth who disappeared six days ago. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”

Barbara shook her head, a small groove appearing between the dark arches of her brows. “Six days. That’s not good, is it?”

She pulled off her sunglasses to reveal startling clear amber eyes surrounded by long, dusky lashes. For a moment, staring into them, Liam felt like he was falling. Up into the sky, or down into a bottomless pool of water, he couldn’t tell which. Then she blinked, and was just another woman with beautiful eyes in an oval face with sharp cheekbones and a slightly hawkish nose.

Liam shook himself and thought longingly of coffee again. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him this morning. Stress, he figured. And too little sleep.