by Ivy Asher
The words spill easily from my lips, and it isn’t until after they’re out that I realize that they taste a lot like a lie. Truth is, I have no idea how long this will take. Yes, Rogan is here, and he did help save Tad, but that doesn’t exactly make up for what he did to me. I’m nowhere close to thinking I can trust him. If I account for that and add in the scary taste I just got of how dangerous this all might be, I know without a shadow of doubt I’m in way over my head.
Aunt Hillen kisses me on the cheek and wipes at her eyes. “Call us as soon as you can.”
I nod and squeeze her arm before giving Tad one last hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m so sorry you got caught up in all of this,” I offer, shuddering at the image that pops into my mind of him turning blue as his body started to spasm and then relax into impending death. I’m terrified that this will be all I’m able to see every time I close my eyes now.
“You saved me, that’s all that matters. Just be careful though, I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Same,” I confess, and with one more squeeze, Tad steps back and wraps his arm around his mother’s shoulders. They offer a sad wave and then start down the stairs. Rogan scans our surroundings, and I hold my breath until they’re back in Tad’s Prius and driving out of the complex. I quickly open my phone and forward the pictures of Magda and Gwen to them in hopes it will keep them busy and entertained for a bit instead of worrying about me.
A hollow feeling resonates through me as I watch my family go, and without a word, I turn and open my front door, pulling the hide-a-key from the lock and shoving it in my pocket. Hoot brushes past me, but instead of being offended by his lack of respect, I welcome the intrusion. He somehow picked up on the hex on the door, so if there’s anything else going on in here, I have hope that he’ll give me fair warning before it’s me gasping for air on the ground.
Rogan follows closely behind me, not saying a word, and I can feel the tension rolling off of him in waves. My heart is racing, and I can’t help but look at my apartment differently. This has always been my space, my refuge, but now it feels tainted. Someone tampered with my home, I don’t know what they’ve touched or what could suddenly pose a threat. I hate that I feel anxious here instead of calm and peaceful like I always felt before.
Hoot sniffs around, and I move slowly into the apartment behind him. He doesn’t bark or growl at anything, and now that I know to look, I don’t pick up on any anomalies either. There are no threatening shadows or bad vibes coming from anything inside this place.
I hurry through my room and into my closet, grabbing a duffel bag and unzipping it.
“You’ll need short-sleeve shirts and pants. It gets cooler this time of year in the evening, so maybe a light jacket or something too,” Rogan calls from the living room, as though he could suddenly sense my rushed what do I wear dilemma.
I open a drawer and pull out some jeans, grabbing a pair of shorts and a skirt while I’m at it. Then I start pulling things from hangers, rolling them up and stuffing them in my bag.
“Did you take these?” Rogan asks, as though I can see what he’s talking about.
“Take what?” I answer, confused, as I pull my underwear drawer open and pretty much dump its contents into the bag. One can never have too many undergarments on a mystery trip to who knows where to hunt god knows what. It’s also possible that I might be a bit of an over-packer on my best day. If asked, I would deny that emphatically, but as I shove a couple sundresses into the duffel, as well as some shoe and bootie options, there’s no hiding the truth from myself.
“These pictures in your living room, did you take them?” Rogan clarifies.
“Uh, yeah, why?” I answer distractedly as I continue to pack.
“No, reason, just wondering,” he replies dismissively, and I hear his carpet-muffled footsteps as he walks from the living room into my room.
I grab the leather-bound instruction manual that I dug out of my cedar hope chest last night. The manual I forgot I had until I was off hunting for a familiar. I found it buried under movie ticket stubs, old diaries, picture albums, and folded middle school letters that would impress an origami pro. I read through it, and I don’t think there’s anything that I need, but just in case, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I walk out of my closet to find Rogan studying my bedroom. It suddenly feels weird to have him in my space, judging my soft cream bedding and the number of throw pillows I make my bed with. I’m reminded that I don’t know crap about him, and yet the peek he’s now gotten into my life today is a little unsettling.
“So what’s the plan now?” I ask, reaching over and plucking a picture of me and my dad from Rogan’s hands and setting it back down on my bedside table where it belongs. He gives me a curious look, but I ignore it and go stock up on toiletries in the bathroom.
“We’ll get back to my place a little too late to do much tonight, but tomorrow I’ll take you to Elon’s house and some other places to see if you pick up on anything as an Osteomancer that I can’t. Hopefully, there will be a lead, and we’ll go from there. If you don’t pick up on anything, I have a contact in the Order who’s been working on these cases, so I’ll reach out to him to see if he has anything new to go on.”
“I thought you didn’t trust the Order?” I question as I pack some toys I bought for Hoot.
“I don’t, but I trust Marx, and you know what they say about keeping your enemies close.”
I file away his use of the word enemies but don’t question him about it. I have a feeling that, when it comes to him, I’ll learn more from keen observation than trying to grill him, which could inadvertently clue him in on the little things I’m picking up on.
I turn the bathroom light off and find Rogan running a hand down an oversized scarf I left hanging on the back of my door. He jerks his hand away and shoves it in his pocket just as soon as I enter the room, and it feels like I just caught him rifling through my panty drawer. Why is he touching my stuff?
He reaches for the ever-growing duffel bag when I try to walk by him, and before I can so much as object, the strap is firmly on his shoulder. I wait for him to comment about the weight of it and demand to know what I have in there, but he says nothing.
I shrug and head to the kitchen to grab Hoot’s food. I was going to leave the little stink bomb with Tad, but after seeing his magic seeing-eye-dog skills, I think I’ll be better off keeping him close by. I just hope he doesn’t get us kicked off the plane on our way to deal with the clusterfuck I find myself caught in the middle of.
“All set?” Rogan asks.
“I think so. What airport are we headed for? I have a pet carrier for Hoot, but will they let him on the plane?”
“We’re not flying,” Rogan announces as though I’m crazy for even suggesting it.
“Driving will take forever,” I counter. “And I doubt my car would even survive that trip.”
Rogan snorts derisively, and I instantly grow defensive of my rust bucket. He scoffs, “I doubt we could even make it to the state line in that thing. No, we’ll use a ley line.”
I bark out an incredulous laugh at his announcement. “Good one. Should I just grab my broom, and we can zip on over to one?” I tease, but Rogan’s face is serious.
I study him for a second, waiting for him to crack a smile and say got ya, because ley lines are a thing of the past; they’re too dangerous, unstable, and unreliable. No one uses them. My amused smile starts to falter when he gets that I’m dealing with an idiot look on his face again.
Well, shit. He wasn’t kidding.
9
“Is this going to hurt?” I ask, a little more squawky than I’d like. I stare at the empty park, swings swaying in the cooling evening air, and wonder how I never knew a ley line ran through this place.
Grammy had to have known, but why she never told the rest of us, I don’t know. Frustratedly, I shake my head. Why didn’t she just pull an Aunt Hillen and slap me upside
the head, demanding that I listen? Why didn’t she make it clear that I’d need to know all of this someday? She could have clued me in, told me why I needed to internalize every lesson she wanted to impart about this world and its inner workings, but she never did. She let me decide that it didn’t matter, and I’m not sure how to feel about that.
I know in the grand scheme of things, none of this is her fault, it’s mine for not caring more. But I wonder why she never pushed to help me care more. Gwen being gifted made it seem like the selection was a done deal. I never thought that might not be the case.
Yes, I knew there was magic out there in the world, that bloodlines stretching back as far as the beginning of time could do incredible, unimaginable things. I was aware that witches had a world and society of their own, but I convinced myself that I was a Lesser. I refused to covet their abilities or dive into a world I knew, as a teenager, wasn’t as advertised.
I never sensed in myself what my grandmother so evidently sensed in me, then again I never wanted to. Now I wish I wouldn’t have let my anger blind me. I wish I’d spent more time seeing the truth and less time convincing myself that I’d never be a part of it. I’d categorized myself as a never going to happen, but I was wrong.
Guilt stings the back of my eyes as I close them. With a sigh, I take in the electric buzz of the ley lines running through this park, the magical hum washing over me from where we’re sitting in the car. I played at this place hundreds of times as a kid, but I never felt anything like the charge I feel here now.
I get the distinct impression of one large line with smaller lines branching off of it. It’s a spiderweb of connections all leading to other places just like this one, which is freaky when you think about it, and yet I can’t deny that I’m kind of excited at the same time.
I want to be annoyed with myself, with the eager feeling coursing through me, but how can I when this is just so epic? For one, vacations are going to be so much easier if I can just zap myself to the Bahamas instead of hopping on a plane. And a girl could really use some R & R when all this crap Rogan’s dragging me into is over.
“It doesn’t hurt, it’s more of an adrenaline rush than anything else,” he answers. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to travel them on your own though. You can get lost in them, overwhelmed by them, if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“How do you know what you’re doing?” I press as I stare out at the uninhabited space and try to see the lines that I can only feel.
“Elon and I both learned when we were around twelve,” he supplies.
“Oh, right. I guess that’s on par with the whole old and extra powerful magical line thing you’ve got going on,” I tease flatly.
“Something like that,” he responds just as flatly, and I wonder if that could have been me if I had just let it.
Rogan climbs out of the passenger side of my car, Hoot jumping down after him like the tiny little stalker he is. I don’t miss the fact that he doesn’t seem to like talking about his family much—well, other than his brother, and pretty much all I know about Elon is that he’s an Osteomancer and he’s missing.
My car door creaks as I open it, the sound loud and grating in the quiet of the empty parking lot. I’m surprised there aren’t more people out here, but I suppose the nights are starting to get colder, making it less inviting for late walks and adventures in the park.
Rogan grabs my duffel from the back seat, and I walk around my elderly SUV to meet him on the other side. A crisp breeze shoves my curls in my face, and I struggle to wrangle them back as the sun dips a little further down, and the shadows stretch out across the park like they’re rising from a deep sleep and are readying themselves for some mischief.
It’s a good night for magic.
I pause and warily look around me for a moment. Rogan starts walking to the middle of a sod-covered clearing, but I’m trying to figure out who just planted that thought in my head. I mean, how the hell would I know that it’s a nice night for magic? Or that the moon tonight is going to be a waxing crescent, with a harvest moon only eleven days away?
I give myself the side-eye.
“You’re a Blood Witch, so can you tell if my ancestors got it on with any lycans?” I ask as I hurry to catch up with Rogan. He shoots me a questioning look as I pull up even with him and Hoot.
“Why?” he asks. “You feeling the need to mark your territory or dig a hole and bury something in it?” he deadpans.
“Har har,” I mock laugh with a raised I’m not amused brow. “No, but the urge to drag my ass on carpet is getting stronger and stronger,” I snark, eliciting a quiet rumbling chuckle from Rogan. “I’m asking because I just went all Rain Man in my head about the moon, and that seems weird, or maybe I should say weirder than everything else has been so far. Why would witches care about the moon? Seems like it would be more of a Were trait,” I observe.
Rogan stops walking and looks at me like he’s not sure if I’m serious or not. “Fuck the Crone, you really are clueless,” he declares, scorn radiating out of his gaze. “Ruby should be brought up on charges for letting her line stew in such ignorance,” he states matter-of-factly, and immediately my hackles go up.
“You know, believe it or not, Rogan, Hemamancer of House Kendrick,” I quip, “not everyone gives a shit about the witching world of magic. This life isn’t exactly all that it’s cracked up to be,” I snap defensively.
How dare he come for my grandmother. She would have dropped everything to help him. I’ve seen and been on the receiving end of it enough to know how seriously she took it all. She doesn’t deserve his ridicule. I might, but not her.
“And what would you really know about this life? From everything I’ve seen, the answer to that is nothing,” he retorts dismissively.
“Please,” I snap. “I didn’t need to have magic to see what it does to the people around you who don’t. All the stories my aunts and uncles tell about their mother just up and leaving all the time because someone required her help. The stress and pressure it put on their father to never be able to count on her, to have to raise five children on his own until he keeled over from a heart attack. And don’t get me started on the fighting and backbiting this world causes. The way it taints people, makes them desperate to be powerful, to feel special, to want it so badly that they end up divided over it and lost. There’s so much collateral damage, look at what just happened to my cousin!”
I stop myself there. I don’t reveal any more, I don’t spill the other reasons I have that made me stop believing in the magic of magic. Rogan and I may be tethered, but it doesn’t give him an all-access pass into who I am and what’s made me that way.
“Grow up, Lennox,” he grumbles, throwing his hands up in exasperation.
I’m completely taken aback by the admonishment.
“This is life that you’re dealing with, not some fairy tale or wizarding story conjured up in the imagination of a starving artist. Life isn’t easy. There’s good and bad, just like there is in all things. You want to cherry-pick the bad in order to justify your ignorance, go for it, but you’re not doing yourself any favors. Like it or not, this world is yours now, and resenting that doesn’t change anything.”
An incredulous snort escapes me. “Thank you, oh wise and benevolent one, for your gracious counsel. You think I don’t know that? But I didn’t grow up the way you did in some revered special house of magic, so cut me a little slack. I fucked up, I get it. I shouldn’t have pushed my grandmother away when she tried to teach me, but I did. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s gone now, and I can’t take that back. I’m doing the best I can. Had I known the bones would choose me and then some self-righteous asshole would show up and take over my life, I might have done things differently.”
Hoot rips a fart so loud and rumbling it would make a Harley Davidson motor jealous. I scrunch up my face and immediately throw my arm over my nose to protect it from the assault I know is coming. Rogan gets hit by the noxious fumes first, and h
e scrambles away, a dry heave working its way up his throat. I move as upwind as I possibly can, never more afraid to breathe than I am right now. Hoot looks at me and then Rogan, and with a snort that I’m pretty sure means my job here is done, he proceeds to roll around in the grass and dirt, reveling in his own stench.
“I call not it on giving the fucker a bath,” I announce, my voice more Steve Urkel sounding than normal due to my plugged nose.
“That’s just wrong,” Rogan states, fanning the air around his face aggressively.
I raise my eyebrows and nod slowly in agreement. And then we just stare at each other for a moment, the rising tension that was building between us stopped by Hoot’s ass torpedo, but there’s a distinct discomfiture now.
Rogan moves toward me, giving Hoot and his evening roll-about a wide berth. He slings the duffel bag around his chest, moving it to sit behind his back. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but as he invades my personal space, I step back instinctively. He reaches out and stops me from retreating, stepping into me until my thoughts go somewhere tantalizing.
This is some first kiss kind of shit, and we are so not there. I don’t care if my lady bits just fired up like some NASA rocket that’s ready to launch, I don’t like Rogan Kendrick. I don’t care how kissable his lips might be or why he’s staring at me with such intensity. A girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere, and I draw it at magical enslavement.
“Wha...what are you doing?” I ask, the question airy and giving away just how flustered I feel right now. He holds me against him, and I’m forced to look up to meet his penetrating gaze.
Do not look at his lips. There will be no accidental leaning in. Get your shit together, Lennox!
Rogan’s moss-green eyes flit back and forth between my unsettled toffee-toned stare, and his hands drop from my upper arms, skimming down to my elbows before his touch falls away. “I’m teaching you,” he says evenly, quietly, and my mind conjures several meanings, all of which send butterflies fluttering through my abdomen.
