by E. M. Moore
Sweet relief poured through me. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want you falling behind or anything.”
“I’m not falling behind,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with disdain. “I’m far ahead of most people, and besides, Gabe’s been getting my work for me.”
The guys dispersed at that, Travis looking at me for longer than usual before retreating to the kitchen. “Hey,” I said, tilting Liam’s chin down to look at me.
When we locked gazes, I didn’t know what to say. His normally brown eyes were even darker than usual. Shadows had crept up under his eyes, making him look sick and tired. I knew he’d been spending too much time on his computer and in the Order books trying to figure a solution, but it looked as if he’d barely slept now. When I walked by his room at night, I’d hear him click-clacking away on his laptop keyboard.
As far as I was concerned, there was no problem yet. So, he had a demonic familiar attached to him. So, what? We didn’t know if it was, or would, do anything to him. With Madame Serena, it had only given her powers she never had before. Liam already had powers, so it wasn’t clear if there would be other affects. The only thing it gave him now was a bad attitude, and I didn’t know if that was because of the familiar or because he had a problem he couldn’t figure out.
He looked away, but I pulled his chin to face me again. “Liam, please,” I said, my voice strong, but also desperate at the same time. I hated this change in him. All I wanted to do was help, but he wouldn’t let me in. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself anymore. We don’t know—”
His jaw tightened. “We don’t know anything. That’s the problem, Norah.” He glared down at my arm wound around his. He’d taken to wearing long sleeve shirts because he couldn’t stand the sight of the serpent on him. If he hadn’t been wearing one, I would’ve been touching the “tattoo”. He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Can you please stop touching me? I know it’s not a big deal to you, but it is to me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Liam, you act like it’s going to fly off you and eat one of us.”
“And what if it does?” he asked, his voice rising. “He took a chunk out of Dupre that night and I certainly don’t want him to do it to anyone I care about.”
A few of the guys glanced over, so I lowered my voice. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, trying to stay calm for his sake. “You must be able to control it. If it were going to do that, it would’ve done it by now.”
Liam shook his head, his fingers starting to tremble. He rubbed his hands down his pants and stood. I fell to the side of the couch to allow him room and then just stared after him as he shoved his laptop in his bookbag and yelled out that he’d be at the car when we were ready.
I rubbed my chest as I watched him go, and then leaned forward, my elbows on my knees and my hands in my hair. Randy’s voice was the first I heard. He walked up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, working his thumbs into my taut muscles. “We’ll keep trying.”
I nodded and then stood, heading toward the kitchen to grab the toast and something else to eat before heading over to the shop today. The good news was that we’d opened. The bad news was that with everything else going on, we didn’t have the big opening celebration we’d planned. We also didn’t have regular hours. We didn’t know when the next big thing would happen, so being able to shut the shop down at a moment’s notice came in handy.
“Oh, before I forget.” I stopped mid stride and pulled out the bracelets. Throwing the green one Randy’s way, I smiled. “I made these for us.” I then turned and threw a red one to Travis and a blue one to Gabe. “They’re all-seeing-eye bracelets. They ward off evil spirits.”
Travis caught his in the air and stared down at it. “This is what you said kept you safe when the familiar was looking for a host?”
I nodded once. It was just a working theory, but I was going with it. It was Granny’s special recipe, and I knew she wouldn’t let me down. If they wore those bracelets, nothing evil would come to them. I’d worked extra hard on theirs trying to make them perfect.
I patted my pocket to still feel Liam’s bracelet in there. I had it ready for when the familiar decided to leave, or if Liam figured out a way to get rid of it. I’d miss the tattoo, but I could try to convince Liam to get one of his own. Weirder things had happened. Like, suddenly acquiring a demonic familiar.
“Thanks, Norah,” Gabe said, tugging his on. Somehow, he made it look cool.
Ugh, jocks. I wanted to roll my eyes.
“Will this also help me score some goals in practice?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not that kind of magic.” I strolled over to him in the kitchen and pinched his butt on the way past him to get my toast. “Not that you need any help.”
“Oh, he needs help,” Travis muttered.
No one spoke. They all watched Travis and I interact. Instead of saying anything, I shoved a piece of toast in my mouth and walked out with the other slices. I’d rather take my chances with the demonic familiar than to try to have a decent conversation with Travis.
2
“A Touch of Magic” was still everything and then some. I still got that excited feeling when I walked in at all the possibilities it provided. And plus, it was just so cool looking. It was a shame I hadn’t been properly putting my all into it. It was destined to stay that way though. I was a member of the Order of the Akasha now. Building a business wasn’t my sole goal in life, it was the Order and nothing else. Not that saving others from evil wasn’t a badass goal. It helped me feel closer to Granny that was for sure. I had to do something else though. I certainly wasn’t going to stay around at home all day just waiting to get cramps. That sounded like hell.
I smiled as a family came into the shop. I recognized them from the last several days. They had the cutest daughter, her hair always up in pigtails with pink ribbons. She was in love with one of the bright jade stones my store had, but her parents had successfully been able to circumvent the purchase. I didn’t mind. They seemed like nice people.
As soon as the daughter came in, she ran for the stone. “See, Mommy. It’s still here.” She held it up, the green stone such a contrast to her pale, white skin.
“I see, Honey.” I smiled at the mom and she returned it. “Every day since we got here, she’s been begging to come into this store. She says you have the prettiest stones.”
I came out from around the counter and smiled at the young girl. “I do?” She nodded eagerly. “Well, thank you. Do you know what that stone’s supposed to do?”
She shrugged. “I just think it’s pretty.”
I laughed to myself. “That’s exactly what it does. It just sits there and looks pretty.” She had the stone in her open palm and I wrapped her fingers around it. “Why don’t you take that home with you? It’ll look much prettier in your bedroom at home.”
“We can’t—,” the mother said, already waving her hand.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s on the house.”
The woman looked around, her mouth dropping. “Will the owner get mad?”
I stood, almost laughing to myself. “I don’t think so. I’m the owner, so…”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. That was so rude. I didn’t mean anything by it. You just look so young.”
“I’ve been told that before,” I said, already making my way back to the register to mark down the inventory. If I didn’t do it now, I’d forget, and then when we didn’t have any more jade stones around, I’d wonder why.
“Well, thank you,” the woman called out after me.
I heard the young girl say thanks and then two small hands clutched at my legs. I looked down to see the young girl had wrapped her hands around my legs. “So much! I love it!”
I laughed and patted her head. “You’re welcome. Take good care of it.”
“I will!”
She ran back to her parents, and I gave them a wave as they turned and walked out of the store. The cute little girl should have a jade
stone if she wanted to. Smiling to myself, I took the rock off the inventory and sat back on the stool I’d purchased for the area behind the counter. There were times when the store was crazy busy with customers, but there were also times when no one came in for hours. I could always find something to do around here, but some of the time, I just liked to sit and think. Especially lately with Liam.
The bell above the door rang again, and I glanced up. The perfect specimen of a man walked through. Large shoulders, peeks of tattoos staring out from under the collar of his shirt and a wide grin just for me. I grinned from ear to ear. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to see my girl before I head over to the parlor. How’s business?”
Randy leaned over the counter, and I moved forward, giving him a kiss that ended too short. “Not bad.”
“There was an excited girl out front.”
“Pigtails?” He nodded in answer, and I smiled. “I gave her one of the jade rocks. She really wanted it.”
He smiled at the counter before glancing back up at me. “I know a little about business, and if you want to make a profit, you can’t give away your inventory for free.” I opened my mouth to counter him, but he held up a finger. “And excuses like ‘but she looked so cute’, don’t pay the bills.”
I shrugged, laughing to myself because that was exactly what I’d thought. “It was just one rock and you should’ve seen the look on her face. It was well worth it.”
He shook his head. “You’re so much like Liam it kills me.”
“Me?” I stuttered. I was the least like Liam. Liam was in his own category of goodness. Granny could give him a laundry list of how inept I was at being selfless.
Randy ran a hand through his hair and stared back at me, his lips turning into a thin line. “We’ve got to do something to help him, Norah. I’ve never seen him like this. He doesn’t deserve the torture he’s putting himself through. He acts like he asked for the familiar to attach itself to him, and he won’t let anyone else help him. He’s hurting himself daily.”
His hands curled into fists in front of me. I took a deep breath. I’d been thinking all those things myself lately but hadn’t expressed them. It was getting to the point that something had to be done though. “I want to help,” I told him. “I’ve tried talking to him, but he just won’t open up. I’ve even tried saying that I don’t care about the damn familiar. He’s still Liam, so what’s the difference? It’s like he doesn’t hear me though. He’s so fixated on it.”
“Same,” Randy said. “He doesn’t want to hear whatever we say. He’s so caught up in his own personal torment that he won’t see reason, which is so unlike him. He’s the king of common sense.”
“He’s driving himself crazy,” I agreed, uncertainty overwhelming me. “He has a one-track mind. I didn’t even expect him to go to school this morning.”
“Hopefully he stayed,” Randy said. “It’s not like him to miss school. He loves school.”
“Even if he stayed, he’s probably still thinking about the damn serpent on his skin. It’s not healthy.”
Randy looked up at the ceiling and sighed. When he looked back down, his eyes turned cautious and the air around us changed.
My heart flipped in my chest. Did he know something I didn’t? “What is it?”
“I swore to myself I’d never fucking do this, but it’s Liam we’re talking about and nothing else is working.”
I blinked at him, not having the foggiest idea of what he was suggesting. “Do what, Randy?”
“I know someone who—” He looked away. “Shit. Ugh, Travis is going to go ape shit.”
“What?” I said, grabbing his hand. I wanted to crawl across the counter and shake the information from him.
“I know someone who dabbles in the not-so-good side of magic.” He looked up. “He’s not all out bad. It’s on the border.” He ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. “I’ve been thinking lately that he might be able to tell us a thing or two about the familiar, including how to get the fucking thing off Liam so my best friend will go back to normal. The thing is, Travis can’t know. There’s no way he would let me do it, and I really don’t want to get a fucking lecture about Jax and Jennie and how easy it is to trip over to the dark side.”
I remembered my own lecture I got from Travis when I wanted to blast the pants off Madame Serena. I couldn’t actually disagree with him though. We all had to be careful. “How do you know this guy, Randy?”
His eyes practically closed over. It was as if they were open doors and they just slammed shut with bolts being shoved into place. He shifted from foot to foot. “I know someone who went bad. So, I know of this person because of that.”
“Jax?” I asked. That was the only one I’d ever heard them talk about.
“No,” Randy said. “My father.”
I sucked in a breath. Holy shit. “Your dad? He’s a bad witch?”
Randy’s throat worked as he got up the courage to look me in the eye again. I wanted to grab his hand and throw my arms around him. How had I not put two and two together before? He beat the shit out of Randy when he was younger. That much had all come out, but not this other part of him. “He went bad. That’s why I don’t know where the hell he is, and my mom doesn’t either. We’re both actively trying to avoid him. He doesn’t live in Salem anymore. No one knows where the hell he is, and I’d like to keep it that way. But, I know someone I could ask about this. He lives a few towns over.”
My throat felt thick, and I swallowed hard, unsure of what I felt about this. I wanted to help Liam, but something like this? I didn’t know if it was the best idea. “You think he’d help us?”
“I’m not going to give him the option, Norah,” he said, his voice hardening by the second.
I took a step back. “Okay, okay.” I came around the counter and stood in front of him. “Your dad’s evil. You want to talk to an old friend of his to help Liam. I’m getting all this correct, right?”
“Yes.”
A bundle of wrong formed in my stomach, but I pushed it down. Travis wasn’t my mother, and he definitely wasn’t Granny. That would be some scary shit. The truth was, I’d do whatever it took to help Liam out with this. He didn’t deserve it.
“They can’t know, Norah.”
Oh fuck. Here we were again. Keeping secrets. I hadn’t even come out with the one Gabe and I kept and now I had to secret another one away too? That didn’t change the fact Liam needed our help though. “I understand. I’m down.”
Randy peeked behind him as if Travis stood just behind us, frowning. “We can go there tonight. We’ll just tell everyone you want to take a ride on the bike again. We’ll have to cleanse ourselves before and after and your bracelet will help.” He touched the green beads at his wrist. Thank God I’d made those.
“We won’t be in danger, will we?”
“None that I know of, but when you go into the lion’s den, you have to be prepared. I’m not taking any chances, especially since you’re coming with me.”
I nodded, then stood there staring at the floor. It was still sparkling clean. Brand new, basically.
“If you don’t want to come…” Randy started.
I stared up at him. “I’m coming. I just can’t help but think that Liam wouldn’t like this idea either.”
“He’d fucking hate it. But he hasn’t found anything in any of our texts, so we have to take a different route. I just want Liam back to himself again. He won’t say how much that familiar is bothering him, but I know it is. I don’t want it to change him.”
“Is that possible?” I asked, afraid to even voice the question. What if the answer was yes?
“I have no clue,” Randy confessed. “But the sooner it comes off, the better.”
“Okay, we’ll head out tonight. Agreed. We won’t say anything; just act like we’re going for a ride.”
“Don’t act weird around them.”
“Me?” I asked, pointing at myself.
“You,�
�� he clarified. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I don’t think that’s actually true.” It wasn’t. I’d known something for weeks only Gabe and I knew, and I hadn’t come out with it yet. It was amazing the things you would do to the ones you loved out of love, or in the name of protecting them. Sometimes it just felt wrong and icky.
Randy told me he’d see me tonight and then left. I took a deep breath. I was willing to do this to help Liam. It wasn’t even an option not to in my head. I just wished I didn’t have to. If I hadn’t worn the bracelet that night, the familiar would’ve attached itself to me, and we wouldn’t even be going through this mess.
If only.
3
As promised, Randy picked me up on his bike at six that evening. We’d texted on and off throughout the day and he told me how he’d called Gabe and informed him we were going out that night. Just for a bike ride and nothing special. That part felt like a little white lie. We were going for a bike ride. It was just what we were doing at the end of that bike ride that we were keeping a secret from the rest of them.
I locked up the shop and Randy and I walked together down the cobblestone street. The evening hours in Salem was full of tourists and residents leaving work or walking around trying to figure out where to eat. Most of the stores were still open, and one of these days, I’d have to commit to staying later, or possibly even hiring someone else to run the shop while I wasn’t there. Order business took priority, especially when it involved Liam and magic of the evil variety. The tourists who wanted their little trinket bags and magic candles could wait.
We got on the bike and drove South out of town. The wind whipped against my face and I held onto Randy tight. Usually his big muscles relaxed me and made me feel safe, but he’d been on edge ever since he’d picked me up, which only made me more nervous. The city of Salem turned into country roads. The further we traveled, more houses started to pop up here and there. Old, broken down farm houses that would’ve been beautiful in their day were dotted across the countryside. We stopped at a four-way intersection and Randy dropped his feet to the road to steady us. He turned toward me. “We’re almost there.”
