Witching Time (The Wild Hunt #14) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,30

changed?” We reached the actual maze and I pointed to it. “Which way do we go? You should know this maze.”

“You don’t want to figure it out?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I have time. I need to be back at the booth soon.”

“Take a right, then a left. Come on, I’ll lead.” Evie took the front.

The maze sprawled out. Whoever had made it, had done a good job. The pathway was wide enough to walk two abreast, though I noticed the orb weaver garden spiders had been busy and there were webs everywhere. Evie held up a stick.

“We can use this to bring down the spiders. I grabbed one before we entered. We keep a bucket of them at the entrance for people to use.” She swept away a large web, and an even larger garden spider who had apparently had high hopes for a big payoff.

“So, how has your mother changed?” I asked, listening as the breeze ruffled the corn husks. The rain had stopped for the moment and I could see the faint hints of sun as the clouds began to dissipate.

“She’s become snappish…she gets irritated really easy, and it’s getting harder to make it through a meal without somebody getting yelled at. She also doesn’t sleep well. I hear her pacing in her room night after night. She’s slept on the sofa more than once, after I heard her and Rain arguing.”

“Anything else?”

“She slapped Dray a few weeks ago, and Mom never slaps us. She doesn’t believe in corporal punishment. But I was passing through the living room, and she was grilling him on why he didn’t make it home early enough to help out with the chores. He said he had stopped to talk to some friends, and she hauled off and smacked him. She told him his first duty was to the farm and if his afterschool activities interfered, she could easily remedy that.” Evie bit her lip. “To be honest, Raven, I’m worried sick about her. And…she scares me a little. I’ve never been scared of my mother—ever.”

“So, definite changes in her behavior. How long as this been going on?” I had dealt with a number of hauntings where the living had been affected by the dead. Not many people realized just how much damage spirits could do to the living just by their presence. Oh, sure, there were lots of friendly spirits, but quite often, the ghosts who were trapped in our world were angry or frightened, and their energy could easily affect the living.

“It started…oh…a few months after we moved here, but it was gradual. It wasn’t like she just flipped on a dime. I don’t think I even noticed what was going on for the first six months. We were so busy trying to get the farm back into shape. The land was littered with debris—layers of dead leaves, tangles of weeds, a lot of branches that had been blown down and so forth from being abandoned for years. We also had to fix up the house to make it livable. It had stood abandoned for quite a while—it’s changed hands a lot over the years.”

“So, you said you didn’t buy it from the original owners?” I asked.

Evie shook her head. “Right. The family that first farmed this land was named Lanchester. Jericho Lanchester was the father. They bought it from some big timber company that was going out of business. When Jericho disappeared, the mother gathered up her brood and sold the house, then moved to the East Coast. It sold several times after that, but I don’t know how many. The last owners abandoned the place and it went into foreclosure. That’s the only way we were able to afford it.”

I paused, pulled out my phone, and—switching on the digital recorder—quickly detailed what Evie had told me. Then I turned back to the maze.

“Which way should we go?” I asked as we came to a T-junction.

Evie glanced around, looking puzzled. “I… I’m not sure. I built this maze and I know it inside out but I don’t remember this part of it. How odd.”

“It’s not like it’s dark,” I said, glancing around. I turned back the way we had come. “Maybe we should just retrace our steps?”

“I think that might be a good idea.” Evie sounded wary. “I have an uneasy feeling.”

I nodded, thinking that she wasn’t the only one. My alarm bells were clanging loud and clear. But I didn’t want to scare her. “Lead the