by Kiki Howell
It would have been easier to believe she was back in her bed, however, if she hadn’t been able to feel pebbles dig into her side, or smell the leather of Jacob’s jacket against her cheek, or hear the fire crackling nearby.
For that matter, it wasn’t the only thing she could hear. Three voices spoke nearby in quiet, slow, guttural tones. The repetitive sounds had to be words, but they made no sense to Kirsten. The only reassuring thing through it all was that one of the voices was Jacob’s.
She opened her eyes and sat up, stifling a groan. She’d slept because she was exhausted, but her body was now letting her know it disapproved of her improvised bed.
“Good morning,” Jacob said, offering her a thin smile from where he was sitting by the fire.
She yawned. “What makes it good, exactly?”
His smile faltered, and she wanted to kick herself for her words. It wasn’t his fault if they were here—and it wasn’t up to him to get them home.
“Sorry,” she muttered, picking up his jacket and slipping it on as protection against the cool morning air. “Didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m hungry, sore, and I have this feeling our bathroom situation hasn’t changed overnight.”
“I can’t do much about bathrooms or being sore,” Jacob said, “but at least I’ve got something for your hunger. It should be cooked soon.”
He used a stick to shift another one of those egg things in the embers at the base of the fire. This time, Kirsten managed to hold back her groan. The local cuisine wasn’t exactly to her liking.
As she stood, she caught sight of what she believed were the same two demons from the previous day, sitting together beyond Jacob. No doubt they were to thank—or was it blame?—for providing more of these eggs. The two of them looked at Kirsten as she shook her arm, which had fallen asleep under her and was prickling painfully. Their eyes, narrowed as they observed her while murmuring to each other, did not really inspire confidence.
“So, how do you say good morning in their language?” she asked without taking her eyes off them.
Friendly or not, they were still demons, and while Jacob seemed able to look past that fact, Kirsten had a hard time doing the same.
“Not sure it’s that specific, but lersuhn seems to be a greeting.”
Kirsten said the word as well as she could. She expected the demons to reply in some way, but the fierceness that suddenly filled their mutters to each other took her aback. Neither appeared to address her. It didn’t bother her all that much, but she noticed that Jacob was frowning at his little friends.
“I’ll be back,” she told him, gesturing vaguely toward a curtain of bushes a small distance away.
He nodded, his eyes scanning the bushes and the area around them. “Don’t go too far. And call me if you see anything out of the ordinary.”
As she walked over, his words rang through her head. Out of the ordinary? Wasn’t everything around them out of the ordinary? What exactly was ordinary about being stranded in the demons’ world?
Years earlier, when they were still in high school—still dating—she’d once told Jacob about this trip around the world that had been her dream since she was a little girl. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover other cultures, she’d said then, to meet new people, learn their language and their ways? Jacob had not said no outright, but she’d realized the idea did not excite him anywhere as much as it did her.
Only much later had she understood: he couldn’t imagine himself leaving town, and abandoning the fight he couldn’t wait to join. How ironic that today, they’d traveled much farther than she’d ever expected, and Jacob was the one who seemed to be enjoying the adventure...
When she came back, she stepped over to the edge of the lake rather than going back to the fire. Kneeling on the ground, she tugged her sleeves above her wrists then cupped her hands in the water and splashed her face, gasping at how cold it was. What she wouldn’t have given for a warm shower! She splashed her face twice more, then drank a few mouthfuls before standing again and joining Jacob.
“Do you want your jacket back?” she asked, both hoping he’d say no and feeling slightly guilty that he’d been without it all night long.
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Breakfast?”
With a sigh, she sat next to him and watched him cut the egg he had pulled from the embers in two. A few yards away, the two demons were watching them, although their gazes seemed very different whether they rested on Jacob or Kirsten.
“I don’t think your little friends like me much,” she said quietly—which was silly because it wasn’t like the demons could understand her.
“Hmm? Why do you say that?”
Jacob handed her half of the egg. For a moment, Kirsten did nothing more than hold it in her hands, letting its warmth seep into her fingers, still icy from the water.
“They keep throwing me those dark looks,” she said. “Didn’t you notice?”
Judging from Jacob’s frown, he hadn’t. Then again, that wasn’t all that surprising. Back in high school, he’d always been oblivious to the interested looks of random girls, always laughing it off when Kirsten mentioned them. If there was one thing she never worried about back then, it was that Jacob would respond to one of those flirting looks and cheat on her. It had taken her a long time to realize that there was something else she should have worried about; something much more worrisome.
“It’s just because you haven’t been talking to them,” he said in between two mouthfuls of his egg. He’d broken away part of the shell and was simply biting into it rather than tearing chunks out with his fingers. “Try repeating words with us, I’m sure you’ll become friends.”
She shook her head at him.
“I don’t want to make friends. I want to go home.”
He shrugged. “Well, there isn’t much I can do about that, is there?”
As mild as his words were, she took them as a reproach. He couldn’t get them home, no. She was the one who could—hopefully—do that. And it might be a little easier to do if she didn’t feel drained of energy.
Last night, in the gloom of darkness, the likelihood of her magic bringing them home had seemed poor. In the full light of day, she wanted to believe in her skills more than she ever had before. Something had happened when her ingredients had combined; something she had not intended. She’d rebuffed Jacob when he suggested doing the same spell to go back, but maybe he was right. At the very least, it could be a starting point.
As much as she wished otherwise, she did not know everything there was to know about magic. Maybe the moon stone, being from a place other than Earth, had helped open the door. She would try the spell—only, she’d use half the moon stone. It shouldn’t matter how much of it was in the mix as long as she focused her magic well enough.
And she’d only be able to do that if her stomach wasn’t growling with hunger.
With some reluctance, she peeled away a bit of the egg shell and imitated Jacob, biting into the off-white flesh of the egg. She half-closed her eyes as she did, pretending to herself that she was eating something she actually enjoyed. The images she summoned to her mind, however, changed neither the texture nor the taste of what she was eating. She forced herself to eat as much as she could, but in the end she couldn’t finish her meal.
It wouldn’t matter, she told herself as strongly as she could. They’d soon be home, and she’d make Jacob take her to a nice diner a few blocks away from his house that made delicious omelets and scrumptious French toast.
After washing her hands again, she sat by her magic bag and carefully pulled out the ingredients for her spell.
“Are you going to do magic, then?” Jacob asked, observing her.
“Well, you do want to go home, don’t you?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked up and met his eyes. His smile was strained.
“Of course. But last night you said...”
“Yeah, but I figure if I don’t even try we’re not likely to get anywhere
fast.”
She would do the spell now, and get them home—and she refused to think about the alternative.
As she worked at adding ingredients in the shaker, she was aware that Jacob was standing close by, with the demons a mere step or two behind him. She did her best to ignore them. If she’d ever needed her full concentration for a spell, it was now.
She murmured to herself as she set each ingredient back into her bag, thinking of what each was supposed to do. She still didn’t understand how the mix had created this trip into another world, but her best guess was to do exactly the same spell, with the same incantation, and see what happened.
Before she added the last ingredient to the shaker—half of the moon stones she had so carefully separated and cleaned last night—she gestured for Jacob to come closer.
“Stand right next to me,” she said. “If it works, I don’t want to leave you stranded here all alone.”
She regretted saying ‘if’ as soon as the word left her mouth, but it was too late to take it back.
“All right, here we go.”
Setting the shaker down for a second, she pulled the strap of her bag over her head then stood. She did exactly what she had in the woods, the same gestures and the same whispered words, then held her breath.
Light erupted from the shaker in a thick beam that widened over her and Jacob—the same beam of light she had wanted to create, back in the woods. Their surroundings, however, did not change one bit.
Before Kirsten could react, Jacob’s hand settled on her shoulder, already comforting. What was much less of a comfort, however, was the shrill yell coming from the small demon. She turned on her heel and started running away. For a couple more seconds, the other demon stared at Kirsten and the lit shaker with wide, bulging eyes. Then she raised her hand, pointing two fingers tipped by claw-like nails at Kirsten and shouting a few fast grunts. Turning away, she ran in the same direction as the other demon.
“Why do I have this feeling I’ve just been called a witch?” Kirsten said, trying to make her words sound like a joke, but her worry still pierced through them just the same.
What now?
ANDREW WAS DRIVING fast, too fast. Nicholas wished he’d driven faster still.
His thumb tapped on the back of his phone. He’d heard every word Julie had said and knew what Andrew was up to, but he still wasn’t sure he understood.
“I never knew you could do magic,” he said.
Andrew shrugged. “I’m not good at it.”
“But you can do some stuff,” Nicholas insisted, turning sideways with his back to the passenger door to look at him.
“Yeah,” Andrew muttered. “Easy stuff.”
Why was it so hard to get him to talk? He was scared for Jacob, all right, Nicholas could understand that; so was he. But that had nothing to do with magic.
“And you never said anything?” he pressed on. “I’ve known you for how many years and you never mentioned it?”
Andrew’s hands flexed on the wheel. He threw a glance at Nicholas and sighed.
“I didn’t know when we first met,” he finally said. “Cara... She’s the one who told me I could do some magic. She taught me a couple of spells.”
The topic of Cara was always a sensitive one. Nicholas had forced Andrew to talk about her over the years as Jacob was growing up, just so their son would hear about his mother. But it had been a while since he’d done it. Jacob was old enough to ask his own questions, and Nicholas didn’t care to reopen Andrew’s wounds over and over again. At that moment, however, it was more about magic than it was about who had taught Andrew to use it.
“What kind of spells?”
“I don’t remember,” Andrew snapped. “I haven’t done any magic in years.”
If Nicholas had needed to venture a guess, he’d have said ‘years’ in this case meant ‘since Cara died.’
“And you think you can still...”
Nicholas’ voice trailed off, the question wiped from his mind. Andrew had just turned into the driveway. Ahead of them, lights were on inside the house.
“Do you think—”
“It’s them?” Andrew finished for him. “I don’t know.”
He didn’t say “I hope so,” but it was in every syllable. Nicholas opened the door before Andrew had stopped the car completely, but even so Andrew managed to be at the front door a step ahead of him. They called out Jacob’s name together.
Chapter Sixteen
AS JACOB WATCHED Kirsten kneel on the ground and, like she had the previous evening, attempt to sort through her ingredients, he didn’t know what to say or do. It didn’t help that his head was pounding.
He could tell she was upset. He didn’t need the acridness of her scent to tell him as much: all he had to do was watch the vertical crease between her eyebrows as she continued to frown, or hear her mutters, snatches of sentences that sounded angry and self-recriminatory.
But what could he do to help her feel better? He’d tried to say he believed in her and knew she’d get them home, but the flat look she had given him in reply made it clear that his pep-talk wasn’t helpful.
He knew what he’d have liked to do: take her in his arms, tell her that as long as they were together everything would turn out all right. Promise her that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Kiss her.
But he couldn’t do any of it, could he? He shouldn’t even be thinking about any of it. It was this stupid headache, muddling his thoughts, allowing what he had learned to suppress to come rushing back to the surface.
Still, he had to say something. Anything. Make her feel better and bring a smile back to her face.
“If this had to happen—”
He fell silent, startled, when her head snapped toward him; her frown was deeper than ever as she glared at him.
“If it had to happen?” she repeated. “What is that supposed to mean? You were that sure I’d mess up? Jeez, thanks for the vote of confidence. Why didn’t you send Vinnie out with me if you thought I’d mess up? That way you could have stayed with that girl.”
Jacob reeled back, lightheaded, feeling as though he’d been slapped. What had just happened? Where had this come from? He couldn’t remember ever hearing that vitriol in her voice. Even when she’d broken up with him, she hadn’t sounded like that. Back in her office, he’d known she was angry, but to hear her say this now...
“Oh, wow, slow down for a second.”
She continued to glare at him, and Jacob’s surprise gave way to annoyance. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Not one thing. Even if they’d still been together, there still wouldn’t have been a damn thing she could have reproached him. He’d been tiptoeing around her since her return, but enough was enough already.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I didn’t do anything with ‘that girl.’ And her name is Rachel. I thought you knew that since you’ve been pretending to be her friend.”
Her mouth twisted, no doubt for more unpleasant words, but Jacob didn’t let her voice them.
“As for thinking you’d mess up... My father may be the boss, but if I’d thought this whole thing was doomed from the start, I’d have convinced him to put an end to it. I believed in you. I always did. And what I was trying to say before you jumped to my throat was, if this had to happen, there’s no other mage I’d rather be stuck with in this place than you.”
The way her jaw dropped and the hint of a blush in her cheeks was nice. Very nice. So why was Jacob feeling so bad for snapping at her? Why did he feel like he should apologize?
Frustrated with himself as much as he was with her, he stepped away and approached the lake. He tried to put Kirsten out of his mind. He liked to think he was level-headed. In a line of work such as his, having a temper and acting impulsively could lead to disaster, not just for the person who acted but for those around him, too. Still, when it came to Kirsten, his mind was all too prompt to forget he was a grown-up.
He took a few deep breaths, seeking calm as he le
t his gaze flit over the lake. The water was so clear that he could see flashes of movement in it. Fish maybe? Should he try to catch one? It’d make a nice change from the eggs the demons had brought him. Besides, he didn’t know if they’d be back. Kirsten’s spell seemed to have spooked them.
On the other hand, what if the fish was poisonous? He’d heard of a fish on Earth that could kill a would-be eater in moments. Was it worth the risk? Maybe later. He’d try asking the demons if they came back. If they didn’t... he’d think about it then. And anyway, for all he knew Kirsten might manage to get them home soon.
And when she did, they’d have to talk about whether they could work together or not. Jacob had thought it would be no problem, but he hadn’t expected Kirsten to act like this. Like she had the right to say anything about whom he spent time with. Like she hadn’t broken his heart and stomped on it and—
Another deep breath, and Jacob closed his eyes along with that train of thought. It wouldn’t help anything now. When he opened his eyes again a few seconds later, he didn’t feel particularly calmer, but he pretended to himself that he was.
Kneeling on the edge of the lake, he shrugged out of his shirt. They’d never got around to cleaning and bandaging his wound the previous night, and he winced when the cloth, fused to his skin by his dried blood, tugged at the cut. Ripping it off fast like he would have a bandage, he angled his arm the best he could to get a good look.
Tugging his shirt off had reopened the wound, and blood was trickling from it, filling the air with its familiar metallic scent. Except... it smelled off, somehow, like milk that had turned sour. Jacob winced as he took in the state of the cut. The edges looked straight, but the flesh around them was covered in dried and fresh blood.
He leaned forward to the lake and, cupping water in his hand, gently bathed the cut. He washed away the fresh blood, then what was left of the dried flakes that hadn’t come away along with his shirt. Another close look had him gritting his teeth. His skin, all around the wound, was a deep red and a little swollen. He pressed his fingers, cool from the water, on either side of the cut: it felt hot to the touch, burning. Of all the possible times for him to get an infected cut...
