by D. N. Hoxa
“She told me to take her to my home—where she is safe. She’s not safe with you.”
If I’d missed the disgusted look on his face, there it was again. To make matters even worse, Jeb was absolutely right. Nobody was safe with me.
“Winter, come on,” Julian urged, but I couldn’t look away from my aunt’s pale face. Just when I’d started to like her.
“Go. She’ll be all right,” Jeb said and made for the door, Amelia in his arms.
“They’re going to come back,” I said as I followed him, eyes filled with tears. This was exactly what I’d feared. I should have never come to her house. I should have just left her alone.
“They’re not going to find us,” Jeb said.
He was already out the door, running down the yard. I ran right after him.
“You can’t defend her!” I hissed, and I barely kept myself from just grabbing my aunt from his arms.
“Neither can you,” he shouted into the night. “I’m only doing what she asked. Just go, before somebody sees us. She’s better off without you.”
I stopped chasing him. Amelia was better off without me.
My foot slipped when someone pulled me back by the arm, hard. I looked up to see Julian, his face shiny with sweat, running with all he had down the street, dragging me behind. I kept looking back at Jeb and Amelia going the other way, but soon, I couldn’t even make them out.
Something inside me broke while I dragged my feet after Julian. The only remaining member of my family, and I’d almost killed her. Worse yet, I’d ruined her life. The ECU would be after her now, too. There was no hiding from them, as I witnessed firsthand. No matter what protective spells you had, they had something better.
The smell of fire distracted me long enough to look up and see my truck burning. Julian was cursing under his breath just as a black SUV turned the corner. I couldn’t tell you how it happened, but I found myself lying face first on a hard surface, my mouth filled with dirt. I got pulled up to my feet again. Without even looking, I just ran.
A door opened. We were inside somewhere. I blinked a few times until the view in front of me cleared. The first thing I saw was a man standing in a doorway, not five feet away from us.
“What the hell?” he hissed and reached for his pocket. Julian let go of my hand and stepped forward.
Raising his arms towards the man, he began to whisper words I’d never heard before. They were not Latin, and definitely not English. But before I could even wonder, the man in front of us fell to the floor, eyes closed.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at Julian, but he was already on his knees, breathing heavily.
“Just asleep,” he mumbled. “He’s just asleep.”
Sure enough, the man’s chest rose and fell steadily as he breathed. With a sigh of relief, I pulled Julian up by his arm. Everything was coming together for me, and I realized, no matter what had happened, now was not the time to think about it. Now was time to escape the werewolves who were coming for us in their SUVs.
“Come on,” I said to Julian, but when I tried to let go of his arm, he fell against me, almost knocking me down, too. “Julian, what’s wrong?”
“Too much,” he whispered, eyes closed, hands shaking. “Too much magic.”
Goddamn it. “Hold on.” I put his arm around my shoulder. I was still standing, though with difficulty. We could still make it out alive.
Julian was much heavier than he looked. By the time I’d taken the third step with him in my arms, I was exhausted. The door right next to the sleeping man’s feet led us to the laundry room. The one next to it was the kitchen.
“Fuck!” I hissed at myself. There was nowhere we could go like this. I couldn’t hold Julian in my arms anymore. I needed to think.
He had me really worried. When I laid him down on the ground, Julian looked even worse than the day before. His chin shook. He was pale as a ghost, and his whole face was covered in sweat. He would be dead if I didn’t do something, though, so I left him to go look out the window.
The street was quiet. No SUV in sight—or anyone else for that matter. I barely saw the car parked in the driveway on the other side of the house. My heart actually skipped a beat at the sight of it. Finally, some luck.
Checking a sleeping man’s pockets—if he really was sleeping—wasn’t something I ever thought I’d do, but then again, I’d stolen a car before. Not my first. When I didn’t find the keys on his person, I searched the key-holder mounted on the wall by the door. They weren’t there, but the man’s jacket hung on the inside of the door. And in his pockets was a single key. I could have cried from joy if I’d had time.
After turning all the lights of the house off, I slowly opened the door. The street was the same as it had been a minute ago. Not ideal, but I ran to the car without looking back. The door opened, and the key fit perfectly. I turned the ignition on and killed the lights.
Leaving the door open, I ran back to the house for Julian. The man was growing heavier by the second, or so it seemed to me. By some kind of miracle, I managed to drag him all the way to the car, then throw him in the backseat.
Adrenaline helped in disguising the pain all over my body. I’d feel all of it later, but for now, I just put the car in reverse and drove right out of the man’s yard. Looking around for any cars full of werewolves coming to kill us wasn’t going to change that reality. So I didn’t look at all. If they were going to find us, they would. I just focused on what was in front of me and drove down the street with the headlights turned off.
Nobody stopped me.
Eighteen
Dylan had a cabin his father left him after he died. He said it was a gift from the Heavens because he’d never even known his father while alive. He’d almost sold the thing many times, once while he was in the relationship with me, but then changed his mind at the last second. Claimed that cabin was proof that someone somewhere always loved you, even if you had no idea about it.
I did not want to go there. That place had memories I didn’t want to be reminded of. It was far away, too—all the way to Finger Lakes.
But where the hell else was I going to go?
To keep myself from voicing all the curse words that ran through my head, I gripped the steering wheel tightly. We were going to have to stop for gas, too. Not enough fuel to get us to Dylan’s cabin. The cabin was small, perfectly hidden from the rest of the rentals. Nobody even knew Dylan had it. They wouldn’t be able to connect me to it. I hoped he wasn’t there himself. I did tell him to disappear, but if he went to Finger Lakes, I’d have to leave right away. It would have been easy to follow him and keep tabs on him. I couldn’t risk it, not right now.
The reverse spell had failed long before it had even begun. There was no way I was ever going back to my aunt, and nobody else would be willing to do something like that for me. Now, Julian and his dragon blood were my only chance.
Julian was still passed out in the backseat. I’d eventually turned the headlights on and began to drive faster. The car was a pretty old and slow Nissan, but it was better than walking.
The road that led to the cabin was narrow and very bumpy. Trees everywhere. I’d only been there twice, and I had no idea if I was going the right way until my headlights caught its camouflage roof.
“Julian,” I said when I parked the car, God only knows how. I shook his shoulders as hard as I could. “Julian, wake up.” But he wouldn’t budge.
Damn it. I’d kept silent the whole way there just to let him sleep, and now he wouldn’t wake up!
“Fine,” I mumbled to myself, and I dragged my ass out of the car.
It was too dark to see anything. Good thing I’d parked really close to the porch. It took three kicks to the door for it to finally break open. I didn’t care about the noise. I was too tired to check and see if someone had followed us. I couldn’t tell you how I got Julian out, but he did fall on his face on the ground three times that I can recall, before finally falling to the hardwood floor of the cabin.
I shut the door with my foot, and it swung right open again. Obviously. I’d broken it to get in.
If I hadn’t been sure we’d freeze to death if I left it open, I wouldn’t have bothered to drag a chair all the way to it, just to keep it close. By that time, I’d forgotten that Julian was right there by the entrance, sprawled on the floor. I tripped on his foot and fell right next to him.
“Ah, hell,” was all I remember saying before I passed out.
***
When I woke up, I was pretty sure a century had passed. Light streamed in from the only window in the room. Julian’s face was right in front of mine. His lips were blue as I was sure mine were. Without any idea what time it was, I managed to get up and walk all the way to the corner of the room and to the only closet in the cabin. There were three thick blankets in there—I’d bought the purple one myself. I had no strength to get Julian up on the couch, so I just covered him with one of the blankets right there on the floor. It was going to have to do.
I sat on the couch, wondering how the hell we were still alive. I hadn’t bothered to check the rearview mirror on the way there, not even once. Anybody could have been following us. The easiest prey in history.
But somehow, we’d escaped. For how long, I had no idea.
I passed out and woke back up a few more times without even realizing it. On the fourth time, I found Julian trying to stand up, the blanket tightly secured around his shoulders.
“You made that man sleep.”
I could have sworn I was going to say something else, but those words came out of me before I realized how much they’d bugged me. The image of that man’s face when he saw us inside his house was right in front of my eyes. The way Julian made him sleep with the spell in that strange language was crystal clear, too.
“I did,” he said, his voice weak and scratchy.
A smile spread on my lips as he walked over to me and sat down on the couch.
“Let me guess: a family spell?” By that, I meant he was full of shit, and he knew it.
“Something like that,” he mumbled, then let out a long breath.
When he touched my shoulder with his, I realized he was still shaking. Maybe I was, too. I had the purple blanket on me, but I was too numb to notice if it was doing anything.
“I’m sorry about your aunt,” he whispered after a while.
My stomach tied up in knots at the reminder. “I should have never taken you there.”
It was a mistake I knew better than to make.
“Where are we?” Julian asked instead.
“Finger Lakes,” I mumbled. “My ex’s cabin.”
He turned his head my way, but I was too tired to return the favor.
“Do you think they’ll find us here?”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
“Let’s stay the night, anyway,” he whispered.
“We’re not going anywhere, even if we wanted to.” We were both too tired to even walk.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered, and that was exactly what I did.
The warmth coming from my right woke me up. This time, it felt like I’d only slept for minutes, but I hadn’t. I knew because bright flames burned in the fireplace, and the smell of overcooked meat hung in the air.
Julian came out of the only door in the cabin—the tiniest bathroom in the world. He looked a lot better than he did the last time I saw him. Come to think of it, I felt a lot better, too.
“How long have I been out?”
“Five hours or so,” he said, then pointed at the fireplace. “I caught a rabbit.”
“How long have you been up?”
“I didn’t sleep at all,” he said, surprising me even more. “No time.”
I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t used the stove. It was perfectly functional. The small kitchen area complete with a dining table for three with three different chairs were right by the entrance. At the end was the living room with a couch, a recliner and the fireplace. The only window in there was behind me. The place was nice and cozy, made almost completely out of wood. I’d fallen in love with it the first time Dylan had brought me there.
The stove was busy, I saw. An ordinary pan was on top of it, something in it boiling. I stood up, keeping the blanket around my shoulders though it wasn’t cold in there anymore, and I found a notebook on the table, something that looked like a necklace with a leather tie on, and three cylinders attached to it. The smell coming from whatever was boiling was really heavy.
“What’s this?” I asked Julian, who was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. He’d found himself a plate and was cutting the overcooked meat to pieces. I was probably going to hate the taste of it, but it was better than nothing.
“The next test,” he said. “I’m almost there. I just need a bit more time.”
“Time is exactly what we don’t have,” I said reluctantly and went to sit across from him.
He put the plate full of disgusting looking meat in between us.
“Eat. You’re going to need it.”
As if I didn’t know that. My stomach growled as I reached out for a piece. Looking at it wasn’t going to do me any favors, so I looked up at the ceiling and put it in my mouth. Ugh. Terrible. I grabbed another one.
“Tell me about fairies,” I said in a whisper, pretending to be interested in the meat, so I could avoid looking right at him. I wasn’t sure if he’d be surprised by my question. I was shocked that I’d asked it.
On the way to Finger Lakes, some things just wouldn’t leave me alone. They demanded to be thought, and I was too tired to argue for long. Blocking something required energy, so in the end, I gave up. I kept thinking about my ears. My eyes. About my magic.
Call it whatever you want, but what I had was not just Bone magic. It was more. It was fairy magic, and if Julian was right that the witch part of me was enabling it to exist, it was alive inside of me. It enabled me to do things I could never have done otherwise. Spells I’d only dreamed about conjuring. I’d put a fucking Jordan’s Curse into a spell stone on the first try!
I’d denied it to myself for long enough. My ears and eyes weren’t the only thing that had changed about me when I did the ritual. My magic changed, too.
At first, I hated it—so much it made me want to grit my teeth until they broke. But then…wasn’t it that same fairy magic that made sure I was alive so far? I’d defeated Ralph Martinez with it. I’d defeated Johnny Darling with it. I’d defeated many, many werewolves at once with it. Without it, I’d have been dead a long time ago.
So why did I hate it so much?
“Why the sudden interest?” Julian asked.
“It isn’t sudden.”
That was all I was willing to give him. Telling him that I had been about to lose myself by focusing only on what I hated about this new part of me wasn’t going to be easy. It was hard for me to come to terms with it, too. I wasn’t sure if I still had. Not completely. For the first time in my life, while I drove, I asked myself: why do I hate fairies?
They’d never done anything to me. All I’d heard about them were stories. All the books I’d read taught me to hate them. Every conversation I’d ever had with a paranormal encouraged that hate, too. But I’d never witnessed with my own eyes any evildoing from a fairy. I’d just gone along with everyone else.
But now that I was wearing my brand new fairy shoes, I had to admit, it wasn’t so bad. Not if you stopped to think of it. I’d always been a proud Bone witch, even without my magic, because Bone was a part of me. It was who I was. As much as I didn’t like it, fairy was a part of me now, too. The ears and eyes made me look different, sure, but I was still me.
Those thoughts had brought some peace and quiet into my mind. They’d opened my eyes wider and made me want to ask questions. Made me want to know more before jumping to conclusions.
Maybe tomorrow, I’d wake up and laugh at myself for thinking this, but for now, I owed the magic that had saved my life countless times the benefit of the doubt.
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br /> “From what I know, fairies are simple creatures. They’re immortal, but I’m sure you already knew that much. They’re tightly connected to their realm. It’s why they lost their powers when the portals were destroyed,” Julian said.
“How are they connected to their realm?” I didn’t exactly feel connected to anything.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Julian sat a bit straighter but still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Through their magic,” he said. “A witch’s magic comes from a single source. Blood for me, Bone for you. That magic is solely focused on that source. It is what it is, and it can’t be more or less. Some blood connects with the magic better, some bone doesn’t. The abilities of a witch depend only on that—luck.”
The flames that danced in the fireplace at our side moved the liquid in his eyes. Though he wouldn’t look at me, I couldn’t get enough of him. I’d never met a more…interesting person. I longed for him, was suspicious of him, and a bit afraid of him at the same time.
“But fairy magic is different,” he continued. “It’s like a network that flows through the entire fairy realm and through every fairy that exists in it. It ties land to fairy and fairy to land. Their magic doesn’t come from a single source. It comes from everywhere—everyone. It can be trained, just like it can grow or lessen. It’s tied to emotions as well, and to blood. I guess you could say that it isn’t exactly magic in the traditional sense. It’s more of a skill to use that connection to create everything from nothing, or nothing from everything.”
Both the words he said and the way he said them were really amazing. “How would you know?”
Julian finally met my eyes. It seemed my question had caught him by surprise.
“I told you, I had access to some data that aren’t exactly public.”
“I think I’m ready to hear it. Don’t you?” He’d told me before that I wasn’t ready for whatever it was that he wanted to tell me. We were way past that now.
Julian smiled half a smile. “You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind. Again.”
“If I’m willing to believe all that crap about dragon blood, trust me, I’m willing to believe in everything else you can tell me.” When he pressed his lips together, I pushed a little harder. “Don’t you think I have the right to know? I am part fairy, after all.”
