shoulders and fell to the bottom of her skirts. Strings of glass beads hung around her neck, and a large leather bag was attached to a belt at her waist. She wore ermine gloves and carried a distaff set with a brass and stone top. She was old and very powerful, and across the ages, I sensed that she was looking at me, taking my measure.
In my vision, Bo was at my side, a large and powerful guardian presence. He gave a wag of his tail and sat down, letting me know that the woman was not a threat.
I felt my psychometric gift connect with the power of the whorl, and the vision of another place and time overwhelmed me. I saw rough-looking men clad in tunics and furs. They were tall, broad shouldered with red or blond hair. I saw them loading longboats with dragon figures on the prow, and I knew that I saw a Viking war party.
I did not understand their language. I didn’t need to. I saw the raiders’ preparations through the eyes of a woman who moved among these men as an equal and was accorded the respect due a queen. She spoke and the men hastened to do her bidding. They brought her swords to bless and she spoke words of anointing over them. The tallest and strongest of the raiders, the man to whom all the fighters deferred, sought her counsel and listened gravely to her words.
Wives and mistresses watched the boats sail from the shore, but Secona accompanied the warriors. I could feel the magic in her whorl, feel it channel power between the heavens and the sea, sense the energy that it drew from the world itself and fed back to her gift. Secona had made the whorl that I held in my hands, and it preserved a piece of her memories and her power, maybe even her consciousness.
Centuries flickered and passed in a blur. Power grew stronger, deeper. Secona endured. Among the unfamiliar images, I glimpsed a face I knew. Sorren looked unchanged, but the world around him was that of centuries past. I felt a bond, sensed her fierce protection, and once again, power surged through the amber, cleansing and restoring as it passed.
My eyelids fluttered open, and I felt unsteady, though I had not moved from my seat. Lucinda put a hand on my shoulder as Sorren carefully removed the whorl from my hands.
“I saw… centuries,” I murmured.
Sorren and Lucinda exchanged a telling glance. “I’d say the whorl will accept her,” Lucinda said.
Sorren slipped the whorl into a small velvet bag and handed it to me. “Please keep this with you Cassidy from now on until we find an object better suited to you. Your gift makes you valuable – and vulnerable.”
I saw an old sadness in Sorren’s eyes. Over the centuries, he had worked with many human allies to do the Alliance’s work. I knew for a fact that he had worked with at least ten generations of my own family.
How many mortals had become his comrades? I wondered. Maybe even his friends, and what did it cost him to lose them to the dangers that went with the business?
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. It was difficult to shake off the impressions I had read from the whorl, and the power I had touched still tingled in my fingertips. “I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”
“And you won’t, until you’re in the moment,” Lucinda said. “Magic is like that.”
That was a little more seat-of-the-pants than I liked, but I had to admit it was probably true. I took a deep breath and laid a hand over Bo’s collar to calm myself, and I picked up Baxter when he danced around my knees for attention.
“Cassidy and I did some snooping,” Teag said.
Sorren looked like he was about to launch into a reprimand, but I raised a hand to forestall his comments. Sorren and Lucinda listened as we recounted our visit to Flora, our calls to the former renters, and the stranger Flora had nicknamed Clockman.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the storage unit is where we’ll find Moran and his demon,” I summarized. “What I want to know is how we’re going to deal with them when we find them.” I met Sorren’s gaze. Even now, I think my willingness to stare him down still surprised him. “Do you think we can stop them, and end the killings? And will getting rid of Moran and the demon put the haunted objects right again?”
“Yes, I think they can be stopped, and yes, I think that will end the killings and most likely stop the hauntings,” Sorren replied, but I sensed a cautionary note in his voice. “The difficulty comes in the number of attempts it takes to find the right approach, and the price to be paid.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all and I was guessing Teag didn’t either from the way he tightly folded his arms.
If this had been a movie, I imagine that right then, there would have been a loud clap of thunder or the lights would have suddenly gone out, or the wind would have blown a shutter loose. When the moment passed and absolutely nothing startling happened, it seemed anticlimactic, as if the director had missed his cue.
“We can even the odds as much as possible by bringing in help,” Lucinda said. “That’s one reason Sorren asked me to join you. As you saw at the Archive, I have skills,” she said with a hint of a grin. “In Voudon, you’re never alone, and I’ll bring my family ghosts and ask the Loas to lend us a hand.”
She leveled a conspiratorial look that seemed designed to lift my spirits. “And I have asked my sister seers to send me their power. You’ll see. We’ll give Moran and his demon a run for their money.”
I suspected that both Lucinda and Sorren were far too experienced at these kinds of things to be cocky about the odds for success. Still, Lucinda’s confidence and the revelation that we had more back-up than I expected did cheer me up a little. I looked to Sorren.
“What are you bringing to the party? Legions of the undead? An Alliance hit squad?”
Sorren looked askance at me. “The undead would not be of help, even if I could summon them.” “Alliance hit squad… I like that.” Teag volunteered.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it literally. I meant, what tricks do you have up your sleeve to increase the odds that we all make it back in one piece?”
“I’ve heard from the demon hunter. That’s as close to a ‘hit squad’ as I can come. He’ll come to my house tonight,” Sorren said. “I’d like all of you to meet him. It would be good to do our planning on safe ground.”
He gave a wan smile. “As for ‘tricks up my sleeve,’ my only magic is the Dark Gift,” Sorren added. “My maker left me a few magical relics. You held one of them in your hands. I apologize for the oversight in not having collected it sooner.” He paused. “The whorl did not accept Evan. Perhaps Secona favors you.”
“You said that your… maker… received the whorl from a Viking witch,” I said. “Is she a vampire too? If she’s immortal, can you get her to help us out?”
Sorren looked away, and his expression was unreadable. I saw sadness, regret, and other emotions I could not place. “Secona has slipped farther and farther from the mortal realm with every passing century – more so than the rest of us. She was not a vampire. She is… other. I have not seen her in several lifetimes. The last time I asked for her intervention, she did not heed my call.”
He didn’t need to add that Secona’s lack of help had caused a tragedy. I could see that in his gaze. It was also apparent that, however long ago the betrayal had occurred, the memory still hurt him deeply.