by E. M. Moore
“So, let’s make this clear,” I said, trying to figure him out. “You found Dupre because he wanted to get back at me for selling him a useless voodoo doll. Congratulations by the way, he was a winner. Now since he’s gone, you actually have to come out of hiding yourself to do it.”
“Dupre was always just supposed to bring you to me, and you’re right, he was a dumbass. I needed to find someone with half a brain, so when a little birdie told me the Reid’s had access to a djinn and were also smart and powerful, I didn’t need to look any further. Mission accomplished. And look, Dean did just what I asked him to do and in far less time than Dupre.”
“Only because he had the familiar on him.”
Jax smirked. “And because he had your trust.”
I ground my teeth together. “But that had nothing to do with you, did it? Dean didn’t always have the familiar on him. He approached us when he was just himself. I’d already trusted him by the time you got the familiar on him. Maybe I should’ve been more like Randy.”
“Aww, Randy. I miss him,” he said without feeling. “I think you’ve damn near broke him though. He’s not near as much fun as he was when you weren’t around. I could always count on him to go out and have fun with, but you’ve got him trained now.”
“I didn’t train him,” I snapped. There was nothing I hated more than a woman being thought of as a reason for why a guy changed. We were all individuals. Randy could do what he wanted.
“So, how do you account for his suddenly being so tame?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
He tapped his chin. “I might do that, but we have other, more important things to discuss when they get here. I don’t think I’ll be getting to that discussion point right away. As soon as they figure out where we are that’s when the fun will begin.”
“And how are they going to figure out where we are?”
“Trust me, I’ve left a trail of breadcrumbs. Also, don’t underestimate their feelings for you. It seems like they’ll go through anything to get to you while they didn’t even reach out after what happened to me. They lied to the Order for you. I guess that was just too much to ask for me.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I said slowly. “Maybe it’s because of you they decided to change things up.”
He shook his head. “No, you got it wrong. It’s because you’re more important. I mean, I can’t blame them. I wasn’t banging all of them.”
Great. Another person to give me their commentary on my love life. “Right. You had Jennie.”
He reacted so fast I couldn’t even prep myself. His palm came down hard on my cheek. My head rattled inside, and I tasted blood in my mouth.
He’d slapped me. A big old bitch slap to the face. What a dick.
“Don’t bring her up.”
I turned back to him slowly, my jaw clenched. It seemed I’d hit a sore spot. I’d have to save that information for later when I got out of these restraints somehow. I really didn’t feel like getting the shit kicked out of me when I couldn’t fight back, but when these magical cuffs were off, so were all the bets.
Jax looked down. He pushed a button on his watch and the face glowed. “I wonder how long it will take them to figure it out.”
Not soon enough for me. Jax was unhinged. At some points, I could see the person he was, but not all the time. To be brutally honest with myself, I could understand his anger, his pain. What if the Order came back to us and said I couldn’t be a member of the coven, or worse, that in order for me not to be a part of them, I was getting stripped?
What if the guys did to me what they did to Jax? I didn’t want to be just their memory. With as close as covens were, I understood Jax’s raw feelings, but there was still that conversation I had with Travis that lurked in the back of my head that proved him wrong. The coven had tried to reach out to Jax. He’d just never returned it. Whatever his reason, he was blaming the guys for something they couldn’t have done anything about. I think. I guessed Travis didn’t have to mark him, but Travis would probably mark me. Marking wasn’t the bad part. It was up to what was inside the individual witch that mattered.
Jax’s true disposition stripped him. I knew that much about Akasha magic. Even if he’d done something just a little bad, he may have been punished but not necessarily stripped of his powers. It’s when the witch went all the way bad that their powers were taken away. That wasn’t, and could never be, Travis, Liam, Randy or Gabe’s fault. That was on Jax alone. His true self shined through during the Akasha ceremony, and the rest of his coven wouldn’t have been able to do anything about that.
20
Liam
There were just so many books. I normally wouldn’t complain, but these texts were so old and not as helpfully put together as the Order texts. Most of them comprised of journal-style writings with spells intermixed, which was impossible to check through easily without skimming entire pages of text. It was taking so long. Too long. I kept checking my watch as if that could tell me what was happening to Norah at that exact same time. Unfortunately, the longer we stayed here trying to figure out what to do, the worse it was for her.
I shuddered to think about what happened the last time Norah was taken by Dupre. One of his guards had tried to assault her. And now that Dean had the familiar, he wasn’t going to be himself. I knew that much from personal experience. All his worst thoughts and ideas would be acted on. From what I’d learned from having the familiar on me, we all had potential to do evil or bad things, but most of us didn’t think twice about it. But when there was something on you that heightened all those things inside, you started to become aware of them. When you became aware of them, you wondered what it might be like to act on them. When you did that, you were a goner. I imagined it to be like what Mr. Reid felt by having control of the djinn. When he first gained control, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal as it was now. He asked it for a few things, and he got them. But in my experience, those few things could snow ball until you were doing things that crossed the line before you even knew it.
Greed was a terrible thing. It was a flaw all of us had inside ourselves that manifested in different ways. We all had the potential to get caught up in it. If someone was given a hundred dollars, wouldn’t they wish for more money because they knew how good that one hundred dollars felt? That was the thing with greed. To be prosperous in whatever way you desired made you feel good. Maybe it was money, maybe it was power, or maybe it was physical things. Those things fired off your brain cells to make you happy, and for some, it made it easy to trip over the line of right into wrong. Even when you thought you were doing something good, you could be doing something wrong.
Randy elbowed me. “You stopped turning pages. Why did you stop turning pages?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t found anything yet. I was just thinking.”
“There’s nothing here,” Gabe spoke up. “It’s time to start thinking of another plan. We’re wasting time.”
The sweet sound of an electronic melody met my ears and they perked up. Mr. Reid’s daughter had stayed upstairs, but we’d been waiting on an update as to where her father was and if he was going to get his ass here to help us. Dean’s life was also at stake and if they needed more reminding of that, I’d do it. My face burned, and I scratched my neck while looking at the steps that led upstairs. I didn’t know Dean all that well. At least, my current self didn’t know Dean well, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested to try to get to know him more. He’d been there when I was younger, at a time when we were just starting to grow. I’d had that life ripped away from me, so yes, I was interested in that piece he played back then. If we’d stayed in touch and just grew apart, there wouldn’t have been a curiosity like there was now. What happened to me when I was young was unnatural. I’d been fighting against it my whole life. Things were just getting into place now, but I was still interested in the past.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs above and Mr. Reid’s daughter called down.
“He’s on his way.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Randy said, slamming the book closed he had in his lap. “He better hurry his ass up. We’ve been down here for at least half an hour already. We need to figure out where Norah is now!”
The smell of maple syrup filtered through the room. Gabe was the first to speak up. “Chill, Big Guy,” he said, taking a page out of Norah’s book and trying to calm him down before he even got started, but there was one problem with that: Gabe wasn’t Norah.
Randy whipped his head toward Gabe and took a deep breath to prepare for what I was sure was going to be a litany when I kicked him in the sneaker. He looked back at me and I shook my head. We were all upset. We were all scared. There was no reason to make it worse. We just had to trust in Norah. She was a good witch. In fact, she was badass. We had to trust that she could get herself through whatever Jay threw at her before we got there. She’d done it before and she could do it again.
Travis stood from his position. He’d had his nose stuck in the book he’d pulled out for a very long time. He shuffled over to me, nearly knocking into one of the posh chairs that was littered around the room before he finally got to me and lifted his eyes from the page. “What do you make of this?”
I pulled the book from his hands and turned it around so I could read. He pointed to the spot on the page and I read the brief paragraph. I doubted it was the original spell to call the djinn, but it was our only shot at this point.
The door slammed above. “Daddy!” the daughter yelled out, a hint of desperation in her voice cracking through.
Gabe rolled his eyes hard. He’d been nice to get her to do what we asked, but she wasn’t our Norah.
“The Order is here. I let them into the basement room.”
Mr. Reid didn’t respond. Feet pounded on the steps until he came to a stop in front of us. We all stood and took in his disheveled appearance. His tie was undone, and part of his shirt was pulled out of his pants. “Where’s Dean?”
“Sit down,” Randy ordered.
Mr. Reid did so. His fingers curled around the arm rests as Owen stood just behind him. Travis delved into the story as soon as he sat. “We need to know where the djinn is.” He took the book he’d just handed me and gave it to Mr. Reid. “Is this the spell your ancestors used to get the djinn the first time?”
Mr. Reid looked up at him with a lost look on his face.
“Dean is with the djinn,” I answered his unspoken question. “He’s in danger. He has a familiar on him. You know what that is, right?”
“A familiar? How is that possible?” Mr. Reid asked.
My fingers brushed up against the bracelet that Norah made me. The guys all had similar bracelets on. She thought these were our best defense against the familiar, and who knew, maybe she was right. They were extremely powerful bracelets. Every time I concentrated on it, I could feel the magic of the voodoo people surrounding me.
“There’s someone out there that’s used Dean to get to Norah. He placed the familiar on your son, thereby gaining control over him. Because Norah knows Dean, he was able to get her. We need to find the djinn so that we can find Norah and Dean.”
Travis shook the book in front of the man’s face again, making him look down after my crude explanation of what was going on. There was far more to it than that, but we didn’t have time to sit down and have a lengthy discussion now. He only needed to know the particulars.
“Trust me, the less time Dean has the familiar on him the better,” I said, trying to encourage a prompt reply. “We already know the spell to get it off, we just need to find him.”
Randy and I exchanged a look. Sure, Dean wasn’t going to be our number one priority, but that didn’t need to be said.
Mr. Reid looked down and scanned the pages. “It was similar.”
“Will this work?” Travis asked.
“Or is there something else we can do?” I tacked on. “Dean said something before about being able to trace the djinn. Can you do that?”
“We usually don’t have to,” Mr. Reid explained. “We kept him down in this room for the longest time.”
“The spell,” Randy spat. “Can we use it?”
I closed my eyes. The ferocity of Randy’s words even chilled me. He was losing what little patience he already had. He and I were completely different people, but up until Norah came, I’d never found someone I’d connected with more. That still amazed me sometimes.
“Y-yes,” Mr. Reid stuttered.
“Great,” Travis said. “Do you usually do spells in this room, or another room? We’re going to need your help with this, so we need your spell area.”
“Upstairs,” Mr. Reid said. He stood from the chair, his legs shaky. We followed him up and walked by Mr. Reid’s daughter. She looked at Gabe, but he was on a mission now. We followed him into a room in the back. With one wall all windows, we could see the expansive back lawn from here.
Around us, the place reeked of a fiery smell I couldn’t quite place, kind of woodsy and smoky at the same time. This was where they did their magic. It left its mark on it after years and years of use.
Mr. Reid stood in for Norah. He was a poor substitute, but the spell still worked. After calling on the five points of the pentagram, we did the spell from the book Travis found. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the presence of the djinn.
Travis gasped as the picture in our minds expanded.
He broke the spell. Every one of us turned to look at him. “You know where that is?” I asked.
“I do.”
His face was white. Not even pale but lacking so much color he looked like death.
“I don’t know what it means.”
“We don’t have to know what it means right now,” I reminded him. “We just have to get there and make sure Norah is okay.”
“And Dean,” Mr. Reid said.
Yeah, yeah.
We all filed out of the room and raced toward the front door. For an older gentleman, Mr. Reid was able to keep up. When we got to the Jeep, we all realized he was right there and we weren’t sure what to do. It had always just been us going out on Order cases. Did we really want to get a normal witch involved?
He seemed to understand our hesitation. With his face drawn, he asked, “What kind of father would I be if I didn’t come with you to try to help my son?” He then looked right at me. “Please, Liam. I don’t want to make the same mistake your parents did. I want to help.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Me too,” Owen said.
I looked at the rest of the guys and pretty much every one of them didn’t want to take them with us, but who were we to tell them no? “Travis, give them the place. You can try to keep up, or you can just meet us there.”
Travis gave me a look but did as I said. He rattled off directions of where the barn was and then we all hopped in the Jeep, leaving Mr. Reid and Owen to run toward their own car. We weren’t waiting for them either. They could show up or not that wasn’t our concern. Our only concern now was helping Norah…and yes, helping Dean, too.
As Travis sped away from the house, a thousand thoughts filtered through my brain. “Listen, guys,” I said. “I think we should call the Order.”
“Are you seriously thinking about making sure we do what the Order told us to do at this moment?” Randy asked.
I glared at the back of his head. “Not so we can do what they told us to do, but because we don’t know anything about this Jay. We might need their help. That’s what I was thinking.”
Travis peeked at me from the rearview mirror. “He has a point. We have no idea what we’re walking into here. Jay has Norah and we don’t know a damn thing about him. We also haven’t gotten any pulls, which makes this all the more tricky.”
Gabe gritted his teeth. “I hate the idea of calling them in. What if they turn this around on us somehow?”
Even though Gabe loved being a member of the Order, there had also been a healthy amount of distrust for some time. I wasn�
�t sure what all that was about.
“I say we bring it to a vote,” Travis said. “Who thinks we should call Walter?”
I raised my hand along with Travis and Randy. Gabe kept his down.
Looking over at him, I patted his shoulder. “I’ll do it, okay? I’ll tell them the familiar is back and that somehow, they’ve taken Norah. I won’t make it about the Order at all.”
Not sure if I pacified him or not, he looked out the window while I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I pressed Walter’s name, my stomach twisting into knots. Let’s hope we could trust the Order. That’s all I wanted from them.
21
The sunset was completely gone now. Nothing but the little light the moon offered filtered through the slits in the planks that made up the barn walls. Jax had lit a lantern and put it on a hook. The ring of light filtered through the area just surrounding us, but it was the other spots in the barn that looked like they were straight out of a horror movie. It was so black it was a wall of darkness. From the shades of sun from before, I knew there were other rooms, other crannies in this place, but from what I saw now, I’d never know. It was pitch black beyond where the light touched.
Granny always told me it was stupid to be scared of the dark, but it was another thing all together to be scared of the dark when we were talking about the dark inside people. She said the only things lingering out in the dark were people’s true human nature and that was far scarier than any boogeyman my mind could create. Now that I was sitting here in this place and not a scared child, I could see her point. I almost didn’t want the guys to find me. I could already imagine Travis’s face when he saw Jax and I knew it would break my heart wide open. What Jax had inside of him was more frightening than what lingered just beyond my eye’s reach in this decrepit barn.
“So, which one’s your favorite?” Jax asked.
I tilted my head to the side and stared at him. “My favorite?”
