Faith Hunter: Have Stakes Will Travel

I had kept out of the picture while all phone conversations took place, but I needed to be present during this one, as I would be speaking as the “witch expert,” to keep Evan hidden in the witch-closet. Jane wanted to be present too, as an outside witness, but I privately thought it might be more along the lines of wanting to watch Evan play with a lawyer the way a big-cat often plays with its dinner before killing and eating it.

By prearrangement, Jane was the first to arrive at the haunted house, watching for the lawyer, her cell phone ready. The moment the lawyer’s car got there, she hit SEND and Evan started our car. We were ten minutes out, making Chauncey wait. As Jane had said, “Witches one, Chauncey zip.”

When we got to the house, the front door was hanging open and neither Jane nor Chauncey was to be seen. We both were out of the car while it was still rocking on its suspension, Evan saying, “Good Golly, Miss Molly. You don’t think she mistook him for a bloodsucker of a different sort and staked him, do you?”

I sputtered with laughter and was still laughing when we reached the front porch, which I am certain Evan had intended. Inside, Jane was leaning against the stairs, her arms crossed in her own particular stance, and a grin on her face. It was, by far, the ugliest grin I’d ever seen her wear, and she was making little huffing sounds of laughter under her breath, like a cat. The lawyer was six inches inside the parlor, standing as if frozen. His face was white, his eyes were at half-mast, and his skin stood up all over in goose bumps. Jane looked at us in the doorway. “The spell made you afraid that you or your family was going to die. I wonder what fears Li’l Chucky is experiencing.”

“If we sit and watch until he dies, we don’t make any money,” Big Evan said, sounding totally rational, if unconcerned.

“Spoil sport,” Jane said. But she leaned in and grabbed Chauncey by his collar and yanked him back into the foyer. He took a breath and started gasping; his lips were blue. I had a bad feeling that he had not taken a single breath while he stood, frozen, inside the parlor. His knees gave out and Jane pivoted him to her, holding him off the floor by collar and belt. She gave him a little shake. “That’s the first part of the spell, Li’l Chucky. You wanna work in this room?” she asked him. “You wanna maybe make clients wait in this room for their appointments?”

“No,” he wheezed. “No, I… Jesus—”

Jane dropped his belt, slapped his face, and had his pants again, the motion so fast I wasn’t sure what I had seen. “No blasphemy, no swearing, no dirty language. Got it?”

Chauncey nodded. His color was looking better and Jane sat him on the steps to the upstairs. “So it’s a haint, not a demon?” He asked when he’d caught his breath. Jane nodded. “What’s part two of the spell?” he asked her.

Jane. Not me.

I stifled a small smile, watching my friend at work. I had never seen this part of her.

“You spend too much time in the room, Li’l Chucky,” she said, “and things start flying around. Hammers, ladders, broken furniture from upstairs. And I’d say the flying debris is aimed at anything human, and with fatal intent. Now.” She pointed to me. “This nice woman put her life in danger yesterday to figure out what was wrong with the house. She thinks she can undo the spell and free the property for development, but it’s dangerous. So here’s the deal. You pay her a flat fee for her efforts. And you pay her another fee, plus expenses, when she’s successful. You draw up the contract today, and as soon as her husband and I are satisfied, she goes to work. You get left with a usable building with a great history and a haunted house tale to delight your clients. Maybe hang a plaque on the wall to tell about it.”

“How much?” he asked.

Evan named a price that made me wince.

“I spoke to the contractor,” Chauncey said. “He had a deal with the Hainbridge coven for a lot less.”

“They can’t do the work. It’s a complicated spell,” Evan said. “They called in my wife and she can. So you work with her or you can think about it for a few days, while the contractor starts another job somewhere and you get left with an unfinished building.”

“I have a contract with Hainbridge General Construction,” Chauncey said.

“With an ‘act of God’ clause in it. Haints fall under that category.”

“And you can’t negotiate with a haint,” Jane said, amused.

“Will she do the job for what I was paying the coven?” he hedged.

“No. And it isn’t extortion,” Evan said, eyes narrowing. “Haints are dangerous. What my wife will give you is a solution to a bigger problem than you knew you had. Let us know when you make a decision.” With that, Evan hustled me out of the house and Jane followed, her boots pattering down the front steps.

Before we reached the bottom step, Chauncey raced from the house, squealing like a child. A metal bucket barely missed his head. Jane must have been expecting it, because she caught it out of the air and handed it to him, shaking her head. “Bet you had to touch the stove to see if it was hot when you were a kid. Idiot.” But it sounded like good-natured ribbing more than insult. To me she said, “Later, Molly.”

Big Evan said, “See you around Jane,” and opened my car door for me. I got in. Evan came around to his side and got in, his bulk making the old rattletrap rock. Jane keyed on her used Yamaha motorcycle. And Chauncey caved. “Wait,” he yelled. Jane turned off her bike. We got out of the car. To Evan, he said, “I can’t afford the fee you named. I can go, maybe half that.”

Evan and he dickered for a few minutes over price and I had to turn away. My services were going to cost a lot more money than I thought they were worth, but they finally settled on a four-figure sum that meant I could get a new refrigerator and put something toward that new car we’ve been saving for.

“I’ll draw up the contract,” Chauncey said. “I can fax or e-mail it over in two hours.” He looked at me and said, “Can you get rid of the haint today?”

I almost said yes, but Jane shook her head, very slightly. Right. Negotiation . “By Wednesday,” I said. “Sooner, if possible, but I can make no promises.”

“Okay.” He stuck his hand out at Jane. “Deal.”

Jane pointed at me. “Your deal is with the lady and her oversized galumph.”

We spent the rest of the morning flying spells. I write incantations, conjures, spells—which are pretty much, but not always, the same thing—out in longhand on legal pads. When I reach a point where the spell stops working, I fold it into a paper airplane and fly it across the room. Big Evan balls his up and plays trash-can basketball. What we wanted was a spell that would keep us safe in the house, and a totally separate, but overlapping conjure that would allow us to see the moment in time when the warding/keep-away spell transferred to the stethoscope. That transference had caused all the house’s problems. A spell that should have died had instead mutated and found a way to persist long after its creator was gone. It was going to be tricky, and that was even before we tried to dismantle the spell and free the house.

We spent lunchtime in the Hainbridge Historical Society looking at photos of the people who had lived in the house, and photos of the townspeople, so if we happened to see one or two of them when we went searching for the pivotal, instigating event, we could call them by name. Then Evan and I went home for dinner and explained to Angelina that we’d be going out. She wasn’t happy at being left behind, but when Regan and Amelia showed up carrying an armload of old movies on CDs, a bag of popcorn big enough to feed an entire family for a month, hair color to add blond streaks to their reddish hair, a dozen shades of nail polish, and a bottle of wine, she perked right up. I was jealous of the girls’ night I’d miss, but I was smart enough not to say so. We left the three watching the opening credits of an old black and white version of Cinderella , the scent of popcorn filling the house and the volume on the TV turned up high enough to rattle the walls.