by E. M. Moore
Travis stood and grabbed me by the shoulders. His green eyes intense. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure that’s what I saw,” I told him, looking deep into his eyes. “That’s all I know.”
“It’s good enough for me to go on,” Randy said, pulling his large body up. His left hand clutched onto something and he pulled it up.
I snatched my leggings out of his hand and put them on. “Come on. We got to go. We have to get there in case this is the real thing.”
We all left the apartment in various stages of undress. Travis was just pulling his shirt on when he opened the door to the Jeep. Gabe was struggling to pull his pants on as he walked down the porch steps. I slid into the backseat with only one shoe on.
“Wait!” Walter yelled from the porch.
“It’s Jennie,” Travis said. “We think we know where she is.”
Walter shouted more things, but we all piled into the Jeep, leaving him looking after us from the porch. Liam had squeezed himself into the driver’s seat before Travis could, which was probably a good idea. Travis driving right now with his mind on a hundred different things probably wouldn’t bode well for us. Randy, too, who was usually the next to speak up and want to drive was still waking up like a bear out of hibernation.
We went outside of Historical Salem and pulled into a baseball field parking lot. I looked around. “We aren’t going up by Headquarters to get there?”
“This way’s quicker,” Liam explained. “There’s a trail just over there.”
Travis was already out of the Jeep and running toward the trail. He disappeared up an embankment. If there was a clearly marked trail, it was hard to tell in the middle of the night with only the moon as guidance.
“Wait up!” Randy yelled to him, but I had a feeling it would all be useless. If we wanted to all get there at the same time, we were going to have to go at Travis speed right now. And Travis speed was ‘hurry the fuck up because my sister is tied to a cross.’
The thought of it made me shiver. So much witch crucifixion symbolism lately since the demon came. Finding the Order bodies at the Salem Witch Museum, now this.
You don’t even know if this is real, I reminded myself. Best-case scenario we got to the clearing and nothing was there. Then, I’d apologize to Travis and go home and back to sleep.
I thought all this while running down the trail, and I used that description loosely. I ducked under branches and felt the grass from the side of the trail whipping at my legs as I ran by. Only Gabe ran behind me and that was because they wanted someone other than me bringing up the rear. I was sure Gabe could’ve been the first if he’d tried. He was the only one of us that was involved in athletics on a regular basis. Still, it was comforting to know he was there. Especially when it seemed only to get darker and darker still the more we worked our way up the trail.
Up ahead, I heard a thrashing and Travis swear. Randy was just behind him, and I heard the same thrashing as Randy emerged into the field with the high grass. “Shit,” Randy said. “She’s there. Hurry up.”
My stomach bottomed out. She was there. Just like I’d seen.
The wind tracked hair across my face, and with it, came the pungent odor of evil.
I choked on it. Sprinting through the woods and having to gobble in air only to have it taste like death was very unpleasant.
Liam burst through next, not even slowing down as Gabe and I came up behind him. When we were in the clearing, I saw Travis already halfway to Jennie with Randy hot on his heels. Who knew such a big guy could be that fast. He worked at a gym, but I just assumed he mostly lifted weights when he was there instead of hopping on the treadmill. From this, though, it looked like I was wrong to assume that. He was quick and agile, making it to Travis as soon as they were in front of the cross.
“Travis,” Jennie screamed, her voice coming out cracked.
“Are you okay?” Travis asked. He observed the area, looking for a way to get her down. Liam scanned the field, and I joined him. The last thing we needed was to be blindsided by the demon right now. But he had to have been here. The smell was too potent.
“I’m so sorry,” Jennie cried. “Please get me down.”
A burst of fire ignited underneath her. She screamed, trying to pull her feet up, but cringing at the pain. Nothing but the ropes around her waist, arms, and legs held her up to the wood.
Randy sent a burst of magic toward the base of the cross. The earth shook, and the cross followed. It leaned, and Jennie hung off it unnaturally to the right. “Catch her,” Randy shouted.
He sent another burst of magic, the air lighting up green around him and the smell of maple mixing with the toxic rotten aroma already plaguing the area.
Travis moved just in time, catching the top of the cross as it came toppling down. Randy had ripped a hole in the earth which shook the cross free. Gabe and Liam ran to the cross, untying the rope holding Jennie in place while Travis kept the cross upright and out of the path of the fire. I moved to her front, taking her hands as soon as they were free and helping to guide her to the grassy floor.
She hissed in pain when I grabbed her wrists but didn’t shy away. “Where is he?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He put me up here and left.” Her body cracked with sobs. “That’s not Jax.”
Liam untied the last rope from around Jennie’s ankle and she fell completely free to the ground. Travis dropped the cross and knelt next to her. “What do you mean?”
Gabe closed his eyes. He surged with blue magic like a halo around him. The smell of a summer rain shower filled the area, and all around us, tiny droplets of water shone in the moonlight as the dew lifted from the grass. He brought his hands together and the droplets all formed one big bubble of water, which he moved over the fire and then dropped it. The fire sizzled and crackled out. I stared in awe of what he’d just done. He hadn’t needed any large bodies of water for that. He’d just used the dew and probably any water from the air. It was genius.
“What are you saying?” Travis asked, his forehead pinched together. He grabbed her hands away from me.
She shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s not him, Travis. It was him. But it’s not him anymore. He’s just a…shell of who he used to be. What made Jax who he is isn’t in there anymore. It’s just…” She shivered. “Evil. That’s all he is.”
“Jennie…” Travis said, drawing her name out as if he couldn’t believe what she’d just said. Or refused to believe it.
“I know,” she said. “I wanted to believe it too, Travis, but he’s just not there. That thing killed him.”
Randy looked away. One could argue that he’d done this to himself, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
“Trust me,” she said.
She looked so much like Travis at that moment that my heart went out to her. I knew I didn’t understand exactly what it was like to have friends who were that special, but I could relate it to one of them. I could see how I would react if something like this had happened to Travis, Gabe, Randy or Liam. I wouldn’t want to believe it. I’d do anything possible to try to save them. I’d have hope until the very last moment.
Travis tugged Jennie to him. It looked as if that was the very last moment. The moment Travis realized that Jax was truly gone. Maybe he wasn’t dead in the typical sense, but for all intents and purposes, he was. He wasn’t who he had been. He wasn’t Travis’s best friend. He wasn’t Jennie’s boyfriend. He certainly wasn’t a member of the Order anymore. Maybe he could have been pulled back if they’d gotten to him after he got stripped. Maybe he could have been like Jennie and found another avenue to work her powers again. But he’d been hasty and selfish, and now he was dealing with the outcome.
Travis pulled Jennie up, holding her to him as he turned to the rest of us. “Jax can’t suffer anymore,” he said. “If that’s not him, then he needs to be killed. Jax wouldn’t have wanted to be like that. He wouldn’t have wanted his body used like that.�
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I didn’t understand demon possession. I’d be the first to admit that, but the way Travis talked, he thought that maybe Jax was still in there, at least a little part of him, whether that part was evil or not now didn’t matter. He wanted to put his friend out of his misery, and we were going to do that for him.
“Send the firework,” Travis said. “This ends tonight.”
20
It took a moment for all of us to realize he meant right then. We all stared at one another. I wasn’t ready.
But was fighting a demon really something you could prepare for. We had numbers on our side…and strength.
Liam held his hand in the air. It glowed orange until sparks like shooting stars soared into the air, crackling into the night sky. Travis looked up. Cinnamon engulfed us as he controlled the wind to move the fireworks higher and higher. The witches would be able to see that for miles around.
Liam’s phone rang immediately. He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to me to answer while he sent out more magical fireworks.
“Hello,” I said, answering Walter’s call.
“Is it time?”
“Yes,” I said, staring at my coven. Then, I ended the call and handed it back to Liam as we moved toward the Jeep. It was slower going this time since Jennie was sore and tired. It would be smarter to leave her at the apartment, but she insisted on coming.
I climbed on top of Gabe as we got into the Jeep. I needed his reassurance, his comforting nature as we drove back into Historical Salem. We passed the street my shop was on and I thought that somehow in another life, I might have been at the shop already doing inventory or stocking a new item instead of speeding down the streets of Salem to confront a demon.
Would I give this all up though? Hell no. This was mine. Every fucked up hair-raising piece of it.
I cuddled into Gabe with Walter’s words in my head. “Be careful. Don’t use too much magic.” And Granny’s singsong tone as she told me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, but somehow that wasn’t right either. I understood it all. It was the life I’d chosen. Well, the life that had chosen me in the beginning, but every day after that, I’d chosen it. I was walking my path with my head looking forward and not back no matter what.
“Everything will be okay,” Gabe said. I nodded into him and he kissed my cheek. “I finally told my grandfather about you.”
I looked up at him. “You did?”
The barest of smiles claimed his lips. “He says you sound amazing, and that he wouldn’t give you up either.”
“He sounds really smart,” I said.
His lips curved higher. “I must get it from him.”
“Well, obviously.” I pulled him down for a kiss, showing him how thankful I was that he’d told his grandfather about me. I knew how worried he’d been, especially since his grandfather had seemed to know a thing or two about covens with one female. He’d heard the rumors. The fact that he would be behind Gabe still walking his path, made my heart soar.
Liam looked over, wincing. “You’re glowing again, Norah.”
I stared at all of them, a rush of emotion coming to the surface that I couldn’t even stop. It felt like this was the moment in movies where the music started picking up with a dangerous yet triumphant tune. This was the part where the heroes made all the right choices and basked in their glory. This was the part where I looked around and realized how much I would lose if this didn’t go well, and I couldn’t stop the love I had for them all brimming to the surface until my heart felt ten times its normal size. Heat gathered behind my eyes, but at the same time, my will cemented into my body.
I didn’t give a fuck about what Granny said, or Walter. I was supposed to be here. I would do anything to be in this moment right now because that’s where being with them led to.
Randy pulled up to the wharf where people were already starting to gather. I looked up and met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Let’s go kick some demon ass.”
He smiled at me and each of us took a second to look at one another. Who would have thought that all those weeks ago when I just showed up at Randy’s birthday party that we’d be here right now? It wasn’t what I would call full circle. Nothing should end in a demon showdown, but I guessed that this could be the beginning. Nothing was going to end here. Nothing.
We got out of the Jeep and were met first with Murphy and Anna, then Ren, then others I recognized who’d helped at the store earlier. All around, I noticed all of them were wearing their bracelets. One woman with red curly hair had a bag of them hanging off her wrist. She gestured down to it. “In case someone shows up who doesn’t have one.”
“Good,” I said. “I know for a fact that this wards off the demon’s familiar.”
Her eyes rounded, and maybe it could’ve been better to ease people into the idea, but we didn’t have time for that. “I’ll make sure everyone gets one,” she said. I smiled at her. She started to walk away and then turned back around. “No more fires in the area. The news is dying down. I’d like to think we had something to do with that.”
I swallowed the emotion gathering in my throat. “We did. We all did.”
She nodded once, then turned back around, shouting about having all-seeing-eye bracelets that would help us as people started to gather near the wharf.
We walked toward the center of the grassy area. To the right out on the dock was the ship called Friendship. Yet another tourist thing I hadn’t had the time to go through, but who knew? Maybe tomorrow?
Down the street to the left where even more people were coming, there was the Nathaniel Hawthorn house and a customer once told me about a nice chocolate shop down that way too. To think that we were here to help with a demon problem when there was so much positivity around.
Actually, that could only help.
Travis rubbed his forehead.
“He’ll come,” Jennie said.
We’d given her a brief update on the way here and she agreed with the plan. The demon wanted to make a spectacle out of all this. The bigger the crowd the better.
It looked like he was going to get that.
Beyond the wharf, the ocean rippled with small waves. I could hear them breaking against the shore and even that soothed me.
Randy came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I love you, Baby Girl.”
I dropped my head back and kissed him on the lips upside down. He soothed his hands up and down my arms as we waited.
In front of us, I saw Jennie lean over to Travis. She stared back at us, then ahead. It was pretty loud all around us, but for some reason, I could pick out exactly what she said. “Doesn’t it bother you when the others touch her?”
Travis stiffened. “No. They love her as much as I do.”
“But you must get jealous, right? I mean, what if she spends more time with someone else than you?”
He raised one shoulder. “It’s happened, but I feel like we all think that about the others too.”
She tsked into his ear, her lips curving into a smile. “I don’t know. If you ask me, I think she has a thing more for Liam. You heard them in the bathroom that one morning.”
Travis turned to her. His jaw tightened. “Just stop, Jennie.”
I glared at her, and she caught my gaze for a second before shifting away. “Suit yourself. Did you tell her about Sarah?”
“What the fuck Jennie?” Travis said, his voice rising, gathering looks from those around us.
My stomach curdled. I knew there’d been someone before me, but I hadn’t known her name.
“Sorry?” she said, posing a question but in a way that meant she didn’t mean it to be a question either. “I saw you with Sarah, so I know, Travis. I know you don’t love Norah as much as you say you do.”
My hands turned to fists. That little bitch.
Just as I thought it, I saw the peek of a snake tail vibrating just under the cuff of her sleeve.
I gasped in a breath, and Travis immediately turned to me.
He took in my expression, his face worried. “Don’t believe what she says.”
Jennie turned. “She should believe it. It doesn’t matter because she doesn’t love you as much as the rest of them, anyway. It’s plain to see when you’re an outsider. I’m sorry to have to break it to you, brother.” She turned to me. “And don’t worry, Norah. Randy’s so fucked up in the head that he won’t ever be able to love anyone enough. So, you don’t have to worry about liking Liam best.”
Randy’s hands fell off my arm.
“Though, I don’t know,” she said, her voice hypnotizing. “Gabe might give Liam a run for his money. It’s the accent. But just remember that accent has gotten him plenty of ass in the past, Norah. I doubt he thinks you’re the best piece he’s ever had. Top thirty, maybe.”
“Jennie!” Travis shouted.
But he didn’t understand. None of them did.
I lunged at her. I pounced on her with a roar, thanking my lucky stars that I now had an all-seeing-eye bracelet around my wrist, and I knew that everyone around me also had one. The demonic familiar was on Jennie. Jax, aka the demon knew that we’d go looking for her and knew that we’d be bringing her back to us with a piece of him on her. He knew all about the plan. Everything.
We struggled on the ground. Jennie was strong, most likely getting most of her strength from the familiar, but that didn’t help me when she kept flipping me onto my back and sliding her hands around my throat. I captured her leg and bucked, taking the upper hand again only to have Travis yelling in my ear to stop. That Jennie was hurt. No fucking shit. She had the fucking familiar on her.
He tried to pull me off, but I resisted, slapping at his hands until he let me go. When I turned back around, Jennie punched me in the jaw and pain radiated.
Randy came up behind me then, grabbing me up by the shoulders and picking me up off her in one swoop. I kicked out, but he resisted. Jennie got up and ran, breaking through the crowd. “Stop her!” I yelled.
Travis moved into my line of sight. “What are you doing, Norah?”
“It’s not her,” I said, finally getting Randy to put me down. “She has the familiar on her.”
