Hex, A Witch and Angel Tale

by Ramona Wray

  And there was more.

  Perfect, agonizing clarity exploded in my mind like an atomic bomb, and for the first time, I saw the facts exactly as they were. Lucian and I had never been the only ones enslaved by the hex. Being trapped in this endless circle of madness didn’t just hurt us. Ryder suffered, too. As a halfling, he wanted nothing more than to be part of the human world, but somewhere during the last four centuries, something had changed inside him. At some point during the last four hundred years he had fallen in love. With me. From hunter, he’d become prey, hounded by guilt and forced to hurt what he loved. Forced by the hex to take my life time and time again.

  But Lucian was wrong in thinking that Ryder would never stop. Ryder was tired. Ryder had once told me that when I left him, his heart needed much more than a century to come back from it. He obviously wanted to stop, except the hex’s leash on his neck was too tight for that. Maybe the reason he wanted to stay in our world had to do with trying to find a solution. He was probably looking for a way out. Or … wait a minute. Of course! He wanted to stay because it was the only way he could be around me. With me. Before the time came, before the hex pulled hard on his chain again, we could be together for a while, like we had been now. If I didn’t ground him to the mortal world, we couldn’t even have that, because the hex could only bring him back when it was time to do its bidding. When it was time for me to die.

  But why wouldn’t he tell me about it? Why put J in a coma to get something I would’ve happily given him if he’d only … explained? “Explaining”, that was it! He couldn’t explain. So he’d sent my BFF into a mystical sleep to get what he couldn’t ask me for. Of course!

  As for naming me his heir, I’d been too angry to see clearly. The money wasn’t for me but for my family, and the gesture wasn’t heartless but… desperate. He was doing it because there was nothing else he could do. For my parents. For me. For us. No matter how many times he took that road to hell, despite his hoping, we could never meet up in heaven somehow. He was and forever would be my killer.

  So how could I show him any understanding? What kind of weird head-case did that make me? How could I feel anything at all for the being who would soon leave my parents childless? No way, right?

  Well, I did. God help me, I did care.

  My heart broke for him. For us. It pushed me forward, urging me not to go, but run to him.

  I ran.

  Chapter: Twenty-Eight

  Like some frenzied heroine from a gothic novel tearing through the night in her long, white nightgown, hair spilling around her in tangles, I bolted across the woods like mad. No white gown flapped around me, but the madness was definitely there. Blood pumped in my ears, my chest ached to open up and give my heart enough room to thunder. Branches whipped at my face, roots caught at my feet, cold air lashed at my skin. None of it stopped me; heck, it didn’t even slow me down. I had to see him! Let him know that I understood. Tell him that his pain was mine. That I didn’t hide from him because I was angry, but because I didn’t trust myself to let him go again. That what was coming, no matter how absurd, I would endure gladly because it kept him in the world, where I could find him again, however briefl y, whenever I returned. To him. Always to him.

  The McArthur cabin peeked from behind the trees with its windows brightly lit, looking just like a wooden version of a gingerbread house. It never even occurred to me that there might be a wicked witch inside.

  I didn’t knock; I pounded at the door, both fists clenched so tightly that my nails stabbed my palms and drew blood.

  And then he was there. Golden. Lean-muscled body hugged by the smoothest bronze skin. Features too sharp, too boyish, the kind that you could look at again and again, trying to figure out why. Uneven mouth, with that luscious lower lip always quirking lopsidedly when he smiled. Roman cheekbones growing ever so sharp when he was mad. Soulful eyes endlessly shifting from silver to lavender and gold, as mesmerizing as they were scary.

  See, Ryder wasn’t perfect. But who wants perfect? Perfect is boringly rigid and matchless, and inevitably full of itself. Perfect in a person is often the pinnacle of flawed. What he had, on the other hand, his … Ryderness, was warm and inviting, while still mysterious. Like the Mona Lisa’s smile, it could drive you crazy trying to get to the bottom of it. The more you stared, the more you wanted to stare. The closer you got, the closer still you wanted to get. I could see myself growing old looking at it. At him. Unraveling his enigma thought by thought, caress by caress, atom by atom. Taking my time. Spending multiple life-spans on it. On him.

  “Lily,” was all he could say, before I effectively jumped into his arms.

  My momentum was enough to carry us both over the threshold. He was dressed to lounge, in some battered jeans and another wife beater, and when my nose burrowed into his chest, I found that his scent was unchanged: pine trees, leather, with a whiff of gas or exhaust fumes. Familiar. His body was hard, warm, and his arms gave me shelter. How could I feel so safe here? In his arms? What a big cosmic joke my life was.

  It was hard to let go, and even harder to consider facing the music. I didn’t want to face the stupid music! In fact, I wanted the music to go play itself in some remote part of the Universe where I’d never have to hear it. My eyes burned with tears and fever and I probably looked a lot like a zombie. Dead, and yet walking. His own expression was haunted, the skin stretched tightly over the cheekbones, his lips a little cracked.

  We stared at each other for a heartbeat, hands linked between us, eyes speaking volumes thicker than Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Behind him, I caught sight of Mary Kate, whose irksome existence in my boyfriend’s house didn’t, for once, bring forth visions of clawing her eyes out. Hmm, how very civilized of me.

  In a voice that sounded as if coming from a throat lined in sandpaper, I asked him, “Do you really love me?”

  And then I moved straight to hyperventilating.

  His eyes glistened, moist, almost entirely gold now. Winding ripples of honey. He took my face in his hands.

  “What kind of question is that?” he asked softly, but his jaw flexed in aggravation under the golden skin.

  Gulping, I replied, “So important! Would you just answer it, please?”

  “Love is a poor word for what you are to me.”

  “Say it,” I rasped.

  He did. He said it slowly, as if we had all the time in the world. As if the future belonged to us. As if it stretched on forever.

  “I love you.”

  He made every single sound count.

  Now, there are I love you-s and then there are I love you-s. There’s the one Mom said to Dad every morning before she hung up the phone, which meant, Have a great day, and was very different from the one she whispered to him on Sunday evening as he set off again, meaning, The thought of not seeing you for four and a half days eats me alive; I’ll miss you every second. The words might be the same, but there are nuances. Overtones. Degrees. Aren’t there almost fifty shades of red in the world?

  Ryder’s I love you was the mother of all I love you-s. The original red, from which every last variation flowed. It softened me up and then sank from one end of me to the other like a hot knife through butter. This time, when he pulled me closer, I didn’t stop to question how I could feel safe in his arms. If anything, the obvious question seemed to be, how could I not?

  But there were no questions. Only need.

  “I want to be with you.”

  The whisper, muffled in his chest, rolled out fast, taking even me by surprise. No, I didn’t have a plan, not even a clear understanding of what I was asking. But I was aching, inside and out; it hurt to think or not to think about it, all the same. Only when his arms surrounded me did the pain stop. Only then did it still. He took it away.

  I’d only made the logical leap. Being close to him equaled no more pain, and “no more pain” was exactly what I needed.

  When I was maybe seven years old and still struggling to understand why I couldn’t touch anyo
ne, why there was always so much pain if I did, I remember Dad showing me this painting by Picasso, Guernica. It’s a scene from the Spanish Civil War, with German and Italian planes bombing a little place in the Basque Country. He explained how pain was a natural part of life. How, as we’re all sentient beings, we’re bound to feel. Pain, included. He told me to be brave and patient. In time, he promised, there’d be rewards, because pain isn’t just capable of educating, but can even breed beauty, such as with the painting in question.

  How much of it had made sense to me then is unclear. Mostly what I recalled was crying. I remembered staring at that painting, at the bodies contorted in pain, at the chaos and terrible destruction, and failing to see any of the beauty Dad was talking about. There was no beauty, only pain, and no relation between them. Growing up, of course, I learned to appreciate the painting, as well as Dad’s point of view. But even today, whenever I looked at Guernica, my heart stopped for a moment. And for that one moment, before the tears came, I couldn’t see the beauty. There was no higher meaning to be attached to it. No point. For that one moment, it was all just pain.

  In a way, Ryder’s reaction now was like that. He had his own moment when his heart stopped. A moment when he couldn’t see the point. When he doubted. Everything stood still. I didn’t dare peek from his chest; the rejection

  had to be easier to handle if I didn’t look him in the eye.

  “MK, leave,” he demanded in a tight voice.

  I breathed out. He didn’t care that there was no point.

  Blondie moved past, her expensive perfume eddying around me like a cloud of unpleasant news. I stayed tucked away under his chin.

  “I’ll be at the inn until morning,” she said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  Couldn’t she have gone there in the first place, the shameless floozy? When the door closed softly behind her, I glanced up. There was a strain sharpening his features and his mouth was pressed in a thin line.

  “Come,” he said, moving aside and pulling me with him. “Let’s sit down.”

  Hard to believe, I know, but this was my first time inside the cabin. Between Dave’s Garage, the Hopscotch Café, the movie theater, and my own house, somehow we’d never made it to his. The place was roomier than expected and outfitted with the same understated elegance I’d seen at the beach house. The L-shaped lounge held dark pieces of furniture paired with soft-colored fabrics, hand-stitched carpets, and graceful long-necked lamps for the finishing touches. There was even a small black and stainless steel kitchenette, not really what you’d expect to find inside a hunting cabin. Even more out of place was the northwestern corner, a slightly elevated area I didn’t really know what to make of. Accessible via three polished wooden steps, this alcove was separated from the rest of the living space by two walls made entirely of stained glass, in colors echoing the rest of the décor. It was just as beautiful as it was odd, kind of like Ryder himself. Was that where he slept? His inner sanctum?

  As we sat down on the couch, I saw a pile of neatly folded bedding, set on one of the two chicly mismatched armchairs. Someone had obviously spent the night on the couch, I concluded, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. He caught my gaze.

  “She really is my lawyer,” he told me softly.

  I grimaced without wanting to and then sweetened it with a nod, to say I trusted him. We weren’t holding hands anymore, but sat on the edge of the couch, painfully straight, both too tense to rest against the cushions. Then his hand rose to cup my cheek, gently, and my eyelids fluttered closed in relief. I leaned into his palm, my face downright burning against his cool hand.

  “You look pretty today,” he whispered, and even without opening my eyes I could tell he was smiling. But not really. “As always.”

  His fingertips trembled lightly on my face, which made me want to cry again. When I opened my eyes, I thought he looked different. Not golden any longer, but stonewashed, like the jeans he had on. Like a sun dying.

  He raked through his hair nervously. “Lily …”

  Here it comes, I thought, but couldn’t pull back. If anything, I leaned deeper into his palm.

  “Baby, I’m so sorry!”

  Trembling lips hesitated in front of my eyes. The gold in his eyes disappeared, swallowed by a rush of silver. Angry storm clouds nestled there again. It was hard to look at him. Hard to watch him trying not to fall apart in front of me.

  “I have to ... There’s no way out,” he admitted, so very lost. “And I can’t stand to ... The pain, the wait — it’s killing me!”

  Tears ran down his face, soundlessly. Openly.

  “I die with you every time, but I wake up alone. And the wait … I cannot take the wait anymore, Lily. Without you, the world has nothing in it for me. There’s nothing in it that I want but you! Please, you have to let me —”

  Scary-fast, my palm clamped over his mouth, cutting him off, air supply and all. Anything to shut him up. I couldn’t listen to him asking me to let go. To let him go.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” I whispered, crying with him. “I understand.” My mouth, of its own volition, formed the words. “Know that. And I could never hate you, not in a million years. And I’m ... okay. I’m not afraid,” I lied. “I’ll be back. I’ll come back to you!” I repeated fiercely. “And you’ll still be here, which is all that matters.”

  “Lily —” He wanted to protest. His eyes seethed like seas in tempest. Seas of molten silver.

  Again, I didn’t let him finish. “I need to know that I can find you again. I love you!”

  It was as if my lips didn’t want to form the words. They came out strangled, faint, and got lost in the kiss. A kiss not teasing, not sweet, not like any other we’d shared. A kiss that could’ve had a name. Despair-in-a-bite. The relief that could never be found, we searched for it blindly within the other one’s lips.

  We fell into each other’s arms in a delirium. No matter how fast things moved — and it was fast, no-sanity-left fast — neither of us seemed satisfied with the pace. Clothes flew around like a hailstorm. An unfocused sense of wrongness, of I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this was all that remained of my mind, and even that was hushed. It didn’t feel important. His body was my sanctuary; nothing bad could ever touch me there. I wanted to take cover inside him. I wanted to wear him like body armor!

  “We shouldn’t,” he may have argued, but between his own shortness of breath and my lips, it was soon forgotten.

  How could anything survive what was happening? How would I? It was all crash and burn.

  The skin of his chest glowed softly, as if layered in a sheet of gold flakes. The sight of it, the feel of it, emptied my head of thoughts and filled it with straw. I was the Scarecrow! And all that sinew covered in gold was my Land of Oz. If I kept feeling for it, I’d find the wizard eventually. He’d make it all better, for sure.

  Kissing, tangled in each other’s arms, he carried me across the room. With a whooshing sound, the stained-glass walls opened somehow; I couldn’t bear tearing myself away to look. Every second counted. Every second was precious and lasted too short. At least that’s how my brainless straw-head saw it.

  Ryder’s brain, by contrast, seemed to be in working order because, after setting me down on a soft bed, he took a step back. Flushed, with eyes like pools of smoldering honey, he pushed the hair away from his face with shaky hands. Well, maybe he wasn’t all in working order, either.

  I noticed the walls first. He must have had this corner of the cabin added to and redone completely. It was very spacious, with one side made entirely of glass and overlooking the forest. The double stained-glass entranceway had mysteriously closed behind us, and that shifted my attention to the fourth wall. This one was a mural. Large and beautiful but dark, done mostly in black, gray, and fern-green. Vines, tribal patterns, strange symbols, and Latin phrases were woven in between the images and framed the whole thing.

  Dum vita est spes est … Dulcius ex asperis … Bis vincit se vincit in victoria ... Meme
nto ut mementatus eris … Mea culpa … Mea maxima culpa.

  Every word in his elegant handwriting. Mom and Dad both dabbled in Latin, which made me no expert, but enough so that I recognized some words. “Bis vincit qui se vincit in victoria” was a maxim by Syrus, one of Dad’s favorites: “He conquers twice who in the hour of conquest, conquers himself.” “Dum vita est spes est” could have been “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” As for “mea culpa,” anyone with a pulse knew it meant “my fault.”

  But forget the calligraphic Latin script, since it was only a mounting for the real artwork. A small, pointy-roofed building that seemed to be a church. Horses. A park bench. Gravestones. And me, four different versions of me, in fact. Katherine. The Marie Antoinette wannabe. A third one I hadn’t seen before, but could easily recognize. The skirts were less bombé, the décolleté gone under a sweep of high-necked lace, but otherwise, she was just another variation of me. The fourth one was a portrait of the twenty-first-century Lily Crane. Eyes like huge pits of dark moss, body hidden away under boy’s clothing; beautiful, if you were into Greek tragedy. The picture showed me wearing my loneliness like a heavy cloak. I looked smothered in it.

  I felt my hands clutching at the snowy-white sheets beneath me with convulsive movements.

  “Don’t cry,” he begged, kneeling before me.