Page 46 of The Rising Tide
“I don’t have a whopping amount,” Scout intervened, scowling. Depending on his magic could get them all in trouble.
“There are three chrome balls in a low orbit around the planet that would beg to differ,” Kayleigh replied with a sniff. “Anyway, hedge witches were either born with their own and not schooled in it, or not born with any. Either way, they started to tune themselves into the forces of nature—the resonances of crystals, for example, or the power of color to influence mood, or the properties of herbs. So they started putting these forces of nature together and—”
“Spells, incantations, and summoning magic for their own use,” Scout said, delighted. “Kayleigh, you’re so smart! I never would have thought of that!”
Kayleigh rolled her eyes. “He so would have,” she said to Lucky. “Anyway, Marcus has been working on magic summoning for his whole life, and he and Helen lit a single black candle, sprinkled some sage, and had me tie a knot in string before clasping their hands, and whoosh! I could feel the magic pouring through me, just like when I came through your portal, by the way. And there we were, in the spirit trap, and we could see all the things, I think, that you could see. So when we all gathered at the apartment last night, Helen brought some books on local history and spirit traps, and we started reading. Piers called it a study session and said it reminded him of law school, which I guess he dropped out of to protect his cousin. Anyway, so while you were—” She gave them a sideways look. “—sleeping, the lot of us found out some stuff that could help.”
Scout grinned at Lucky excitedly, but Lucky’s expression was a little more controlled.
“Did you find out who Tom is?” Lucky asked bluntly. “Because Scout and I got a little glimpse into something last night that could explain a whole lot about him.”
“Oh, we did,” Kayleigh said triumphantly. “We did indeed find out who Tom Marbury, born on the island in 1851 to Christine and Ambrose Marbury, died in 1873 on the mainland from cholera was. We know what happened to his parents, his sister, and his cousins. And we know he sailed off in 1871 to make his fortune working for Johnson Morgenstern—and yes, that name should sound familiar—and when word came that he was never coming back, his childhood friend, Henry “Spinner” Corey, worked his entire life to erect that bench in his name.”
She paused to take a breath before sipping her coffee, looking very pleased with herself, and Lucky said, “Didja know Henry and Tommy were a thing?”
She spit out her coffee. “Really?” she asked, after grabbing a paper napkin to wipe off her mouth.
“Really, really,” Scout said, grinning at Lucky because his timing had been impeccable.
“So Henry was pining for his lover,” she said thoughtfully. “Oh my God. That’s so sad.” Her forehead wrinkled with compassion, and then her eyes grew thoughtful. “Do you think, maybe, he’s the spirit on the bench?”
Scout nodded, meeting Lucky’s gaze. “I’d put money on it,” he said.
“The look in his eyes,” Lucky murmured, turning to regard his coffee intently. “He… he was just staring out to sea, waiting… and his guy never came home.”
They all shivered, and Kayleigh let out a long breath.
“Tom’s mother must be the one keeping the bench clean.”
Lucky made a wounded sound, and Scout turned to watch him. “That hurts?” he asked before looking worriedly at Kayleigh. “I… we… our mothers weren’t tender,” he said after an unhappy moment. “We were treated well enough, I guess, but we had nannies and teachers and….” He stared at Lucky for a long moment. “Do mothers really love their children enough to pine like that?”
“Don’t ask me,” Lucky said shortly, still studying his coffee. “My mother didn’t care enough to clean herself up, much less keep a big hunk of granite clean, as a ghost.”
Under the table Scout felt for Lucky’s knee and squeezed gently. “Even when you were a baby?” he asked.
Lucky swallowed and shrugged. “We were a happy family when I was a kid,” he admitted. “And then… I don’t remember much, but I guess they started on the drugs, and one day my Auntie Cree showed up, and I hadn’t been bathed and hadn’t started kindergarten, and I hadn’t eaten in two days, and she just… just took me. I remember my mother yelling at Auntie Cree, screaming not to take her baby, but….” Another shrug, this one smaller. “She never went into rehab. She never came back for me. My father neither.”
“So the mother thing,” Scout said, looking at each one of them for confirmation. “That’s a big deal. She loved her boy. She devoted time to his memorial. She’s heartbroken.”
“But she had a daughter!” Kayleigh cried, and Scout and Lucky both looked at her.
“She did. That was the little girl crying in front of the bench. She was just staring out to sea, weeping unconsolably. If mom had the time to scrub the damned bench, why wasn’t she hugging her baby?”
“I don’t know,” Scout said, feeling small. He knew this anger in her. He understood too well where it came from. Kayleigh had been treated as less than the boys in the compound all her life. Her only value had been as a servant or a broodmare. Just as Scout felt the void of a mother deeply, Kayleigh would feel the preference of a mother twice as deep. “I would have comforted her,” he said, giving her a small smile.
“Yeah, but Scout, you would have been the one lost out over the sea.”
He grimaced. “So seriously, that Tom guy should have stayed home, right?”
“Yes!” Kayleigh and Lucky both said in tandem, and Scout gave them both a game smile.
“So Scout doesn’t leave the island. I get it. But….” Scout bit his lip. “That couple in the corner—somebody was coming after them. I think one of them was Tom’s little sister, grown up, but the boy? I don’t know who that was.”
“Well we didn’t say we had itallfigured out,” Kayleigh said, blowing out a breath. “But knowing who Tom was—and that Henry was his lover—that went a long way to help solving the mystery, right?”
“Yes,” Scout said decisively.
“But what does that do?” Lucky demanded, pulling himself into the conversation with an obvious effort. “I mean, so we finally know the people who are stuck in the trap. What happens then?”
