by Amy Boyles
“To get rid of everyone who summoned her to begin with?” I guessed. “What else could she want?”
Axel nodded slowly. “Right. So the blight was called here by six people; then the blight got trapped here. Does Flower think that by killing off the very people who summoned her, that she’ll be able to leave?”
I shook my head. “Maybe there’s more to it than that. Snow turned her into a possum. Maybe all Flower wants is to be turned back into herself.”
Axel considered that. “It makes sense. Maybe there are clues at Snow’s house.”
I grimaced. “There might be if there’s anything left.”
Axel shot me a dark look. “What do you mean?”
I twisted my fingers. Boy, did I want to disappear. Like really wanted to disappear. “Well, um…”
“Pepper,” Axel growled in warning. “What happened?”
“Cordelia, Amelia and I went to Snow’s this morning. We were in her spell room, and some powders spilled, causing a fire. What stinks is that I found a whole slew of Snow’s journals, but I don’t know what was in them.”
I balled my hands and pressed them into my eyes. “I don’t know what’s left of the house, and I tried to get the journals but the flames were too high.”
Axel wrapped me into a hug. He threaded his fingers through my hair and sprinkled kisses down my cheek. He leaned back and pressed his lips to my right eye and then my left.
I couldn’t help but smile at the feel of his lips on me.
“We might be able to summon the books back,” he said, comforting me. “We’ll go to Snow’s and see.”
I sniffled and knuckled a bit of moisture from the bottom of my eye. “Okay. There may be clues left.”
Axel kissed my forehead. “Come on. Let’s load up in the truck and head over.”
Snow’s house still smoked when we arrived. It looked like a skeleton, all charred bones and steaming chimney. A few firefighters worked magic with water to calm what remained of the smoking embers.
“This looks so bad,” I murmured. “Do you think we’ll be able to find anything?”
Axel winked at me. “I don’t know. Let’s go look.”
I got out, and Axel came around, threading his fingers through mine. “Thanks for not guilting me about this.”
Axel shook his head. “Are you kidding? There are so many crazy things in play here. The first was Snow; then your aunts have caused a ruckus. It’s all going to work out. You just need to have faith.”
I nodded. Faith was harder to come by right now than he could imagine. As much as I wanted to think about how things had spiraled out of control, the best thing I could do for myself and my family was to follow Axel through the rubble and see if there was a way to bring back those journals.
“Where were they?”
I pointed to a far corner of the house. “Over there.”
We picked our way through the wet and sloshy mess. I barely recognized the table my cousins and I had found the Sticky Stuff on. It looked like a heaping mess of charred wood and ash.
I nodded toward where the bookcase had been. “That’s where the journals were.”
Axel dropped my hand and planted himself in front of the smoking wall. The paneling was burned away. Part of the bookcase remained and amazingly enough, a few of the journals were still there, though they were little more than heaps of black paper.
“I don’t know which was the exact journal, but it was one of these.”
“Stand back,” Axel commanded.
I retreated a step and watched as Axel flung out his arms. Magic swirled around his hands, circles and squares appearing out of thin air beside his elongated fingers.
His forearms tensed and Axel chanted low. It was like my fiancé was calling on the powers of the universe to help him with his magic.
A gust of air swooshed past, picking the hair off my neck. A shiver raced down my back, and I hugged my arms around me. Axel’s chanting increased. The air buzzed with electricity. The humidity thickened and the atmosphere seemed to gain weight, pushing down on me.
As the intensity grew, the wind picked up, blowing Axel’s hair something fierce.
He yelled something I couldn’t hear, and then it felt like the air contracted, buoying out.
The next thing I knew the journals had returned. They were still a little charred, but they were back—both shelves of them.
“Oh my gosh.” I moved past Axel and ran a finger down the binding of the one marked 2000. “How did you do that?”
Axel shrugged. “Just a little extra magic I’ve been holding on to.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “Little bit of magic, my rear end. That was almost a tsunami of power.”
Axel nodded to the books. I swear pink dotted his cheeks. “Is the one you need here?”
I dragged my gaze from him and slid a volume from the case. “It is.” A well of happiness sprung up within me. I threw my arms around Axel and kissed his cheek. “You’re a life saver. Seriously. Thank you.”
Axel’s lips grazed mine. “You’re very welcome,” he murmured. Our gazes locked, and heat surged down my body. His blue eyes speared my heart to my spine. Every cell in my body buzzed with the electricity that coiled between us.
“What else are fiancé’s for?” he said coyly.
“This is what you’re for. Oh, that and making me extremely happy, of course.”
He laughed. “Of course. Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I grabbed another volume, just in case we needed it to answer other questions—the one dated 1999.
“Let’s look around a little bit,” Axel said. “See if there are any clues under the house that may help us figure something out about Flower.”
He led the way, and I cracked the spine of one of the journals. I scanned the pages, looking for anything that had to do with the blight.
Finally I found an entry. “Snow wrote that when she tried to send the blight back, it wouldn’t go. The thing was a mass of energy, a huge ball that couldn’t be contained and couldn’t be destroyed.”
We reached the edge of the crawl space, and Axel started sifting through the ash.
“So she put the blight in a possum’s body, or turned the blight into the possum,” Axel said.
“And never told anyone.” I shook my head. “If only Snow had told someone what she had done, maybe this could’ve been avoided.”
Axel raked his fingers through the dirt. “You’re talking about a woman who caught creatures. Snow thought she could do anything. Thought she was capable of it all.”
I nodded. “The possum got the last word. I wonder how long Flower had been planning this?”
“Probably from the moment Snow trapped her.” Axel found a stone and palmed it. “Is there anything else in there? Anything that gives us a clue how to send her back?”
“From what Snow wrote, it appears that the blight simply didn’t want to go.”
“But why wouldn’t Snow tell anyone?” Axel mused. “She told the others she would deal with it. That she could handle it.”
“Pride?” I said.
Axel glanced up from the dirt. “Have you ever been so prideful that if you made a horrible mistake, you wouldn’t tell anyone?”
I cringed. “No, even I don’t have that much pride. If I do something wrong, especially something dangerous, then I let someone know.”
“Exactly,” Axel said. “So that doesn’t sit with me. Just because Snow couldn’t send it back, it doesn’t add up that she wouldn’t tell someone. Just think about it—if you’d released a blight and then couldn’t deal with it, wouldn’t you be afraid that it would return? You’d want to make sure it could be controlled. Otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.”
I stared at the dirt Axel was sifting as his words seeped into my brain. “So if she told someone, then you think that someone else helped her and knew all about Flower.”
Axel continued to search the dirt.
“What are you looki
ng for, exactly?”
“Something that proves I’m right.”
“And you think you’re going to find it in there?”
He clicked his tongue. “Tell you what—you search the book while I do this, and we’ll see who comes up with the answer first.”
“You’re on.”
As much as it would have seemed this was a game, it wasn’t. Axel dragged the dirt while I searched for any clue that someone in the six—someone else knew about the blight and her alter ego Flower.
If we could figure out who else knew about her, then it was likely that other person may have an idea how to catch her. If we caught her, then we could get Flower to call off the magic eater—or at least use our magic to figure out a way to deal with the Erebus as long as we had Flower.
It was worth a shot. I peeled back page after page, sifting through Snow’s writings as Axel sifted the dirt. I’d already uncovered where Snow couldn’t find a way to send the blight back.
“Aha,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Did you question it?” Axel said sarcastically.
I shoved his knee with my toe. “No. Of course not.” My finger slid over the words. “Here Snow mentions reaching out to someone, but she doesn’t mention who.”
“It’s got to be in there,” Axel replied.
I scanned more text. There were hints that there was another person, but nothing about who. Snow explained that she had needed another to offer guidance on what she should do. Snow already knew that she couldn’t banish the blight, but what to do with it?
Snow would need a vessel, something with hard lines and edges to hold the blight. Something concrete—which was when Snow had the idea to put the blight in an animal.
Which meant that Flower wasn’t purely blight. Flower had been a living, breathing possum, only she’d been imbued with the essence of the blight.
Flower had been a living breathing possum…
I gasped. My lungs clutched for air. “Axel.”
“Found something else?”
“I think Flower was a familiar.”
He frowned. “Snow’s?”
I shook my head. “No. Someone else’s. Snow realized she needed a body to put the blight in. Obviously she couldn’t use a human, so she stuck it in a familiar.”
He smirked. “And she wouldn’t use her own.”
I nodded. The slow workings of the realization sank into me. “And if she had to reach out to someone and let them know what had happened and told them she needed a familiar, one of the six would’ve been the easiest to convince.”
Axel closed his eyes. “The easiest witch or wizard to get a familiar out of would also have been the most innocent.”
“CJ Hix,” we said in unison.
I flipped pages, madly searching for the name. “It makes the most sense. Snow would’ve reached out to CJ, knowing he’d never say anything because he was so young. She would’ve asked for his familiar, and CJ would’ve handed her over. Snow would’ve then put the blight in Flower's body and locked her away under the crawl space.”
I frowned. “But why didn’t anyone ever suspect there was something strange about Flower?”
Axel raked his thumb over his jaw. “I think Snow kept her hidden. Maybe as she got older she didn’t mind if Flower was seen by people, but at first it would’ve looked too suspicious.”
I nibbled the inside of my mouth, trying to think. “But what about your idea that Snow would’ve needed guidance?”
Axel shook his head. “She wasn’t getting any from CJ Hix. Not at his age.”
“Do you think he even remembers any of it?” I folded my arms. “He never mentioned that Flower was his familiar.”
Axel chuckled bitterly. “I’m sure he remembers.” Fire lit in Axel’s eyes. “We just need to find out how much.”
EIGHTEEN
CJ Hix was at home, readying for the coming night. When CJ answered his door, the man was decked out in all kinds of talismans and magical objects.
“Wards,” he explained, leading us inside. “I’m not risking the magic eater getting me. I lot of it’s stuff I’ve collected over the years.
CJ raised a big golden disk that hung around his neck. “Can I interest you in something, Miss Dunn?”
I shook my head. “No thanks. Axel and I are here because we discovered something very interesting.”
CJ yanked a silver chain. “Good and tight,” he said, satisfied. “Now.” The realtor shot us a lopsided grin. “What did y’all find that was so interesting?”
“Did you ever give your familiar to Snow?” Axel asked.
CJ jutted out his chin in thought. “Well, let me think about that.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “As a matter of fact, I sure did. A possum.”
I closed my eyes. “That possum became Flower. Snow used her to hold the blight.”
CJ’s eyes widened. “You don’t say?”
Axel’s jaw clenched. “We do say. CJ, we need your help.”
“Anything.”
“What can you remember about what Snow needed?”
CJ scratched his chin. “She said she needed my familiar, so I let her have it. I didn’t know for what, and to be honest, it was so long ago I forgot all about it. But you say Flower was my familiar? Golly gee, I just never would’ve guessed that. But her name wasn’t Flower back then. When she was my familiar her name was Cutie.”
CJ frowned. “But did she recognize me? Does she know who I am?”
Axel scratched his cheek. “It’s possible the blight has more control than Cutie. Whatever her name, we need to find her,” Axel said. “She’s missing. If we don’t catch Flower, we won’t be able to put this whole magic eater issue to rest. If we can catch her, we can stop this—stop everything.”
CJ’s lips formed a thin line. “When she was my familiar, we would often go into the Cobweb Forest.”
“Of course,” I murmured sarcastically. “You couldn’t go somewhere easy like the beach.”
“Oh no, Miss Dunn,” CJ said good-naturedly. “You know there are no beaches around here. But there are good hiding spots in the Cobweb Forest—if you don’t want to be found.”
“And I take it you didn’t,” Axel said.
CJ nodded. “It wasn’t always easy growing up. There was lots of yelling in my house. Lots of anger, but there were places I could go and feel safe.”
“In the forest of all places,” I murmured.
“Right.”
Axel’s blue eyes turned steely with determination. “Assuming the blight holds on to any of the memories from when Flower was Flower, where were the places you used to haunt?”
CJ stroked his chin. “Let me think. There were three main places we used to go. The first was under the Blustery Bluffs. The second was down by the big tree—the big oak.”
“I know it,” I said.
Axel nodded. “Me too.”
“And the third,” CJ continued, “was at Crossing Creek.”
“I get why Blustery Bluffs are called that—they’re windy, right?” I said. “But I don’t understand the Crossing Creek.”
Axel frowned. “It’s said with the right magic and at the right time of year you can cross into a different time.”
I frowned in appreciation. “Is that true?”
CJ shrugged. “Never happened when I was there, but I never knew the magic that would do such a thing.”
My gaze locked with Axel’s. “So those are our options?”
“It’s the best plan we’ve got. Find Flower and make the blight stop the magic eater.”
“How long until sunset?” I said.
CJ glanced out the window. “Another two or three hours.”
Axel pressed his hand to the small of my back. The gesture gave me some comfort because the night ahead might be our most trying.
Axel’s words nearly came out a growl. “Then let’s get a game plan.”
The game plan turned out to be simple. We would split up to search for Flower. Some folks would st
ay around places where we knew Flower had shown up before—Snow’s and even our house.
We knew for a fact that the blight would want to make sure that Erebus did his job. To see that to the finish, that meant Flower might stay near other homes, including Forbes’s and Sylvia’s, so folks also remained camped out there—but not Forbes or Sylvia because there was no reason to make them sitting ducks.
Which meant many of us were heading into the Cobweb Forest to hopefully find a possum in a haystack.
“If anyone finds Flower,” Betty said later, “then you contact Sylvia, CJ, Forbes and me immediately. The four of us will be together, waiting.”
A dozen people stood crammed inside Betty’s living room including Axel, what was left of the six, my cousins, aunts, and several police officers.
“I’ll be with them,” Axel said.
“So will I,” Garrick added. “They’ll be protected, but we have to find the possum.”
“What about a plan for Erebus,” I said. “It seems risky to keep everyone together.”
Betty shot Forbes a knowing look. “We have a plan.”
“One the rest of us can’t know,” I said.
She nodded. “For our safety. We don’t know what sort of connection Flower may have with Erebus. If they can communicate and someone mentions details to Flower, the magic eater may well discover things we don’t want him to.”
“We don’t have much light left,” I said. “We’d better leave.”
Betty nodded; her lips were tight in a line of worry. “Here are your assignments.”
Amelia, Cordelia and I were sent to Blustery Bluffs. Of course we were. It figured I’d be sent to the one place I wasn’t particularly crazy about—the Cobweb Forest.
“Anyone got a map?” I said.
“I do.” Cordelia pulled a well-worn paper map from her backpack. “The Blustery Bluffs shouldn’t be too far away. I don’t think it’ll take us any longer than ten minutes from this trail.”
We stood at the mouth of the forest. A trail lay like a tongue in front of us, the mouth formed by bent willows. The light receded as the trail forked.
