by E. M. Moore
Travis nodded. Though my heart went out to her for losing Jax, I still thought this was a terrible idea. But Travis ate it all up. He moved from the recliner to the couch. “I know. Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
I clamped down on my jaw. As far as I was concerned, she’d already done something stupid.
10
Travis’s sister hadn’t said more than two words to me since she got here and she’d pretty much taken over the place. This could sound odd, but I really liked it when it was just my coven and me. Outsiders made me nervous, and made me feel like I couldn’t be myself. She already thought it was odd we were all together together, but in reality, she was probably just jealous. I couldn’t think of one woman who wouldn’t think it was a great idea to be with more than one man. Things are literally never dull. But people fear things that are out of the ordinary. Being a witch, you would think Jennie wouldn’t be that way, but she was.
I was moping around in Liam’s room while he slept when Randy walked in. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said, whispering. Liam had fallen asleep with the book over his chest earlier, so I’d moved it to the nightstand.
Randy held up the keys to his bike. “You want to get out of here for a little while.”
“Fuck yes,” I said, feeling relieved already.
He held his hand out to me and then we walked through the living room, telling Travis and Jennie that we were going out. Travis stood immediately, coming up behind me. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my waist.
Randy and I both stopped.
Travis leaned over, whispering into my ear, “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
My hackles were up, but it really wasn’t his fault. It was just the situation. I put my hands on his. “No, I’m okay.” I turned and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Have fun with your sister.”
He turned into me, giving me a kiss on the lips, slow and deliberate that made my heart beat against my ribs. It so wasn’t fair. I was conscious of his sister watching us and the whole thing—besides the kiss—just felt awkward.
I pulled away. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Be safe, guys,” Travis said, pinning Randy with a look that he didn’t see. He was already tugging my hand out the door.
When we stepped outside, Randy breathed in deep. “It feels so much better out here, doesn’t it?”
I laughed, squeezing his hand. “Someone feeling cooped up?”
“Worse than that,” he said. “I just don’t like Travis’s sister being here.”
I smiled to myself, hearing my thoughts being echoed right back to me. At least I knew I wasn’t the only asshole in the house. I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to Travis alone regarding his thoughts about Jax and who knew if I’d be able to now.
Randy led me down the street. “I thought we’d go pick up the bike at the wharf and then go for a ride. You down with that?”
I nodded eagerly. While I was thinking about it though, I took out my phone and sent a quick text to Gabe: Went out with Randy for a bit. Be back soon.
His reply: Wankers.
I showed Randy the screen, and he laughed. “He’s just mad we didn’t invite him to come with us.” He paused for a moment. “But three of us can’t fit on a motorcycle, so…”
Sirens sounded in the distance. I looked in the direction and saw a huge red fire engine screaming down the street toward its destination. For a moment, it was too loud to talk, but once they were further away, I said, “Geez, I hope everyone’s okay.”
Right as I said it, two more trucks went by. These were just regular trucks with a small siren on the top letting everyone know they were emergency vehicles.
When the ruckus passed, I turned to Randy. “Why do you think Travis told Jennie about Jax?”
He shrugged, rolling his eyes. “Part of me thinks it’s as he said, that she deserved to know. But another part of me thinks that he wanted at least one person on his side that knew Jax really well. Maybe they think they’re going to prove to us that Jax can be saved.”
“If he even wants to be saved,” I said.
“I can’t wait until the equinox party tomorrow. We can help spread the word about Jax so that hopefully no one else will get hurt. I hate the idea that there’s a demon roaming around somewhere. I don’t care if that’s Jax with a demon or just a demon in general.”
My insides twisted. I knew the feeling. That demon had already brought a lot of hurt and pain to Salem. Jax could say all he wanted that it was just about getting revenge on his former coven, but then what about the other witches? Why bring them into it?
I shivered, and Randy put his arm around me. “We’ll figure this out. We always do.”
Randy and I turned the corner toward the wharf. A man ran straight at us, his face filled with rage. I froze, but thankfully Randy was right there to pull me out of the way. In the next second, two police officers on foot came around the side of the building, guns drawn. “Get out of the way!” they shouted.
Randy and I plastered ourselves into the wall of the store we were next to as they ran by. Turning, I saw another police officer come from where we just were and lunge toward the angry man. He tackled him at his ankles and he fell onto the road, his hands outstretched to stop his fall.
My heart leaped into my throat, and my magic tingled at my fingertips. Smoke filled my nostrils, and Randy tugged at my hand. “Norah, look.”
I turned his way and saw a billowing cloud of black smoke rise in the distance. Shouts rose up and the fire trucks we’d seen rushing down the road were pulled up outside of a church. I gasped. “Oh no.”
“I didn’t do anything,” someone yelled.
I turned back around to the police officers cuffing the man they chased down. They pulled him up to his feet and shoved him back toward us. Randy positioned himself in front of me, but when the guy walked by, he glared at us. His eyes were dark gray.
Wait.
A black sheen completely covered his entire eye. I blinked. His eyes were gray again.
“Fuck. Did you see that?” Randy asked when they were far enough away from us that they couldn’t hear.
“His eyes?” I asked, replaying his eyes turning color over and over again in my head, trying to see if I had somehow made that part up.
“Yes,” Randy said. He immediately took out his cell phone, pressed on the screen, and then held it to his ear. “Gabe,” he said immediately. “No, just listen. Norah and I just saw someone with black eyes. What the fuck? They turned. One second, they were gray and the next, they were dark as fuck. We didn’t imagine it.” There was another pause. We watched the guy get loaded into the back of a police car as the other officers walked up to talk to a fireman on a walkie talkie. “We think he burnt a church down.”
My gaze moved up, noticing for the first time the steeple and the stained-glass windows. One of them was broken and clouds of gray smoke were wafting out of it and reaching toward the sky. Why would anyone do that?
I stared back at the police car they put the guy into. He stared back at us, his face cocked into a half smile. I swallowed, a sense of dread filling me at once. In my gut, I knew this had something to do with the demon. People’s eyes didn’t just change color and they also just didn’t burn churches to the ground.
“What?” Randy yelled. He turned toward me, eyes big. It was a feat to see Randy scared, but he was just then. He held the phone away from his ear. “Gabe said someone has set fire to all the churches in Salem. Just now. They think it was an orchestrated terrorist event.”
Terror, maybe, but not terrorist. This was the work of that demon. Now we just had to find out if it was Jax controlling the demon or the other way around.
11
Randy pulled me in the opposite direction and we broke into a run toward the wharf. He started the bike, and I got on right after him. It looked as if we weren’t going to get our nice drive around town. Not with what was going on. He drove us back to the apartment and then helped me off
the bike. He pulled me close, kissing me on the lips. “This feels big, Norah. It sounds weird to say, but this feels bigger than just the witch world in Salem.”
I nodded into him. I always loved that when Randy put his huge arms around me, I felt safe. He did so now and even though I felt better, I also knew that Randy’s arms couldn’t save me from this. It was a nice thought but not actually the reality.
We walked up the porch and into the front door. Liam was awake now, leaning toward the TV. Everyone else was there too as the news anchor talked about the church fires all around town. Apparently, all of them had been set at exactly 3:33 pm. She went on to say that it was thought the arsons were a part of a bigger terrorist sect that had stayed hidden.
Liam rolled his eyes. He looked a little better. “It’s not terrorists. It’s Jax.”
“We don’t—” Travis started.
Liam stood. “It’s fucking him, Travis! It’s Jax. We know this. I don’t care that you want to argue about the fact that your friend Jax might still be in there, but the truth is, it’s Jax and the demon. They’re one and the same right now and it’s not fair to anyone out there that you’re having an internal war about it.”
My stomach bottomed out. Liam hardly ever got angry, which probably accounted for why the room got silent very quickly.
“More people died, Travis. You heard her. There were a few members of the clergy in some of those churches, and one had a pre-school. Small children, Travis.”
I inhaled sharply, my hand coming up to cover my mouth. I had no idea about that yet. How terrible.
Travis turned. His eyes were full of sorrow, gleaming in the light. “I’m so sorry, Norah.”
I rubbed my face, then strode up to him. “What are you sorry for? Stop it.”
“This is all my fault.”
I wasn’t even going to dignify that with an answer. Travis was just really confused right now. That was his friend. It may have looked like Jax, but I above any should know that it wasn’t. And it sure as hell wasn’t if he was going around setting fire to churches and killing little children. “We’re working on it,” I told him. I couldn’t think of anything to say but the truth.
Gabe’s phone rang. He peered down at the screen with a confused expression but answered it anyway. “Hello?”
He looked at me when the person started talking. Travis put his arm around me and held me to him. It was comforting to me too, but I was pretty sure he was doing it for himself.
“Yeah?” he said, eventually. Then his face cleared as if he finally understood. “Got it. I’ll pass on the information.”
He hung up the phone.
“What is it?” Jennie asked.
“That was a girl I had a class with last year. She was a nursing student and has a job at the Salem Hospital now. She just called to tell me that there’s been an influx of patients coming to the ER who swear they’re hearing voices.”
Jennie’s face pinched. “What does that mean?”
“She said the voices are telling them all to do bad things. Drown their children. Ram their car into a tree. Set fires to their church.”
I swallowed. This was like an epidemic. How the hell were we going to combat this?
Liam ran a hand down his face. “We need to call Walter.”
“Walter fired us, remember?”
“Technically, we quit,” I said.
Jennie gasped. “You guys aren’t Order members anymore?”
“They didn’t want us involved with Norah,” Gabe said, filling her in on the most recent events.
She looked over at me again, staring me up and down. “Well, that’s bullshit. You guys should be able to do whatever you want to do.”
Okay. Maybe I was beginning to get along with her now because I wholeheartedly agreed.
“We’ll get the Order involved,” Liam said. “We’ll tell them our plan for the equinox but maybe they can make it bigger. Maybe we can put some sort of safety spell over Salem. I don’t know. I just know that it’s going to take a lot more than us right now. This is far-reaching. This isn’t just one person going around doing stuff that we can track and follow. This is that demon taking control of several people. How would we ever be able to watch the entire town by ourselves?”
We all looked at Travis. He ran a hand through his black hair and the faint smell of cinnamon filled the room. “You’re right. There’s no way we would be able to handle this on our own.”
I rubbed his back, and Liam ran to the bedroom to get his laptop. He walked back into the room with it already open in his palm. “I’m going to try to video chat them right now. They may not answer.”
Liam tried several times, but they didn’t pick up. They either didn’t want to talk to us, or they weren’t around.
Reluctantly, Travis fished his cell phone out of his pocket and went through his contacts list, choosing Walter’s name out of the many. “I’m calling Walter. Call every witch you know and tell them to try to help as many people as they can. People won’t understand this, and even if they can put a protection spell on one person, it will help.”
Everyone got on their phones. Since I didn’t know anyone the guys didn’t know, I hung around Travis. Even Jennie got on the phone to her old friends. I could hear her talking softly into her cell phone telling others that what they were seeing on TV wasn’t terrorists at all, it was the work of a demon.
But what I was most interested in, was Travis. He walked to his room, and I followed him. He sat on the bed and I took his hand in mine, giving it a quick squeeze as soon as Walter answered. “Hello, Travis.”
“Walter,” he started. He swallowed, and I rubbed my hand down his arm, trying to give him the courage to talk. “It’s getting bad here. Salem needs something big.”
I listened as Travis filled Walter in on what was going on. The fires, the hospital. He must’ve asked Travis if we’d gotten the pull and Travis told him no, but that Liam had been very sick all morning.
As soon as he told him we hadn’t gotten the pull, I sat up straighter. With everything going on, I hadn’t noticed that we hadn’t gotten the call like we should have. Since Jax was going around doing all this stuff, we should’ve been alerted to it. I’d felt fine. Stressed, of course, but no tug in my stomach. Had the Order really taken that from us right away? And how could they have without us even noticing?
I tugged on Travis’s sleeve. “Did they take it from us?”
Travis repeated the question to Walter who told him they did. My jaw tightened as soon as I heard his response. Assholes. Take away our only warning system for what was going on. We may have been able to prevent one of the things from happening.
“Listen, Travis,” I heard Walter say. His voice sounded dejected. “I want you to know I argued for your coven. You’ve always been very good Enforcers, but the others felt the risk was too much to take. There’s another Order coming in.”
Travis sighed, his eyes closing. “I think you’re going to need to send more than one.”
I looked at Travis, shocked. He just lifted his shoulders at me. They got off the phone soon after that. “You’re not mad?” I asked right away.
“I assumed they would do something like that. We told them we weren’t going to abide by their rules and I knew they weren’t going to let Salem go unguarded.”
I supposed I should’ve thought about that as well. But, I didn’t because I thought the whole thing was stupid. We were being ostracized because of the way we wanted to love, but it wasn’t as if the Order had a union we could go to and complain. The superiors could pretty much do whatever they wanted, and there was nothing we could do about it.
“Do you believe Walter?”
“That he tried to help us? Yes. Walter has always been good to us. I don’t think he’s as stuck in the old ways as some of his coven members and other Orders that have been around for a long time. The truth is, things are changing. We aren’t just policing witches here and there that might do a little something wrong. This is so
much bigger and requires different tactics that we aren’t equipped for.”
“Like when we used the spell to get the familiar off of Liam?”
“Exactly,” Travis said. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that would happen. A witch going that bad is unthinkable.”
I watched as Travis’s face morphed. It was unthinkable, and yet, it was his friend who had done it. “I know you’re taking a lot of this on yourself, Travis, but I just want you to know that I think this doesn’t have anything to do with you at all. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m going to tell you anyway. All these decisions were Jax’s. He decided to start doing the wrong thing. He decided to call the demon to him to get his powers back. I don’t care if you did strip his powers, you were doing what you had to do, so things like this don’t happen. If I went bad, and you did something to keep me from hurting others, I would be thankful. Now, I might not be in the right frame of mind to tell you that if it ever happened, just as Jax isn’t now. But, if you love Jax like I know you do, and you know what a good person he is, don’t you think the last thing he would want to do is hurt all these people? Because of that, we need to stop him. Can you imagine the guilt?”
Travis lifted his gaze to mine. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
I cupped his chin. “You need to save him from himself, Travis. And we can do that.”
He dropped his forehead to mine, then moved forward to kiss my lips. “Thank you.”
He kissed me again, this time lingering. His soft lips pressed into mine with more urgency before he broke away. “I feel like I’ve really made a mess of things, Norah. I can’t even keep my head straight.”
“It’s because you really care, Travis. It’s just confusing because of who we are. That’s all.”
He tucked my hair around my ear. He was still close enough for me to feel the air from his even breaths. “You know what’s not confusing? How much I love you.”
