Enter Three Witches by Kate Gilmore

Author:Kate Gilmore [Gilmore, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KJG Publications
Published: 2013-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Alone in the big house, Miranda wandered restlessly from room to room. Her mother seemed to have gone out. Shadow, curled in a corner near the hearth, slept the patient sleep of a dog whose expectations have been disappointed. Only the presence of Luna, who trailed behind her, and the spectral voice of Madame Lavatky gave evidence of life in the still center of the day.

Though sunlight slanted through the windows of every room, Miranda felt the afternoon to be darkening around her. She was uneasy and she felt unwell. Her night had been troubled by vaguely menacing dreams, but she had thrown them off in the interest of motherhood and pancakes. Now the object of these good impulses was gone, and the feeling of fear evoked by her dreams came back in force. “Someone is trying to do me harm,” she muttered to the cat, and Luna growled deep in her throat. Miranda put her hand to her head. A sharp pain had just shot through it from temple to temple. Now it was gone, but it left a dull ache behind. Her stomach also hurt, as if something inside was trying to gnaw its way out. “Mustn’t be paranoid,” Miranda said in a loud, bright voice. “The bacon was probably over the hill, or the pancake batter. They tasted all right, but you can’t be too careful.” This, she knew, was whistling in the dark. You couldn’t miss the taste of bad bacon, and she had never heard of anyone being poisoned by a pancake.

The house, Miranda had always thought, was well protected. There was a pentacle painted on the doorstep under the mat and a witch bottle of bent pins and nails buried under the rhododendron. Inside, over the door hung a horseshoe pointing up and a pair of antelope horns. Three iron nails, which Miranda had obtained from a coffin maker, if not from an actual coffin, were embedded in the door. Such measures were guaranteed to keep the inhabitants of the house safe from all ordinary manifestations of evil.

This, then, was something out of the ordinary, and Miranda felt her pains increase and her panic rise. The fact that she had no idea who could be after her did nothing to calm her nerves. A known enemy was vulnerable to counterattack by well-known methods. But this miasma of ill will was something else. Pausing on the second-floor landing, Miranda heard the front door open stealthily and then the sound of a rattling chain. The hair rose on the back of her neck, and her heart pounded. Then she heard the brief, joyous gallop of Shadow’s feet, and the door closed again. Bren had come for his dog and left again without a word—without a report on his father and on the other person Miranda felt sure had been present at the brunch. And Bren would have been a comfort, though he was useless when it came to defense against the supernatural. I’ll get Louise, she thought, turning back down the stairs.

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