I can’t watch this any longer. I kneel beside Azzie and try to help him get Parker’s hands off his horns, but I can’t pry even one of his fingers open. I really need to start exercising—being weak sucks. However, that’s not even the worst part. Parker gives me such a look of utter betrayal that I wonder how the earth doesn’t open up and swallow me whole.
“Azzie, stop wriggling!” Jessie says. I haven’t noticed when she started helping me. Azzie stops wriggling at her words, and between the both of us prying Parker’s hands off Azzie’s horns, and between Azzie pulling away from Parker, and Logan pulling Parker away from Azzie, we manage to free the little evil. For how long? That part is uncertain. But for now Logan holds Parker in a tight grip, and Parker, who is either too tired or more likely too shocked from our betrayal, doesn’t try to free himself.
Azzie wheezes heavily as he glares at Parker like he wants to turn him into a pile of ashes just by looking at him.
“Let me go!” Parker says angrily. Finally, something other than curses. He must be calming down.
“Calm down,” Logan says, sounding very calm himself. “Remember where you are. You don’t want to get Emmy into trouble, do you? Just imagine what will happen if her parents hear the noise and decide to check on her.”
I’m pretty sure that no one will be able to hear anything over Chloe’s music, but I decide to keep that thought to myself since Logan’s words seem to have a calming effect on Parker. He struggles for a few more seconds, then slowly calms down. Although his nostrils are still flaring and he is shooting daggers at Azzie with his eyes. Logan lets go of him, but his hands still hover around Parker’s shoulders, ready to grab him if he moves. Azzie whimpers and tries to get back under the bed.
“Shh,” I try to calm him down. “He’s going to behave himself from now on. Aren’t you?” I address the question to Parker.
He looks at me like I just drowned his puppy or did something equally horrible. Does he even like puppies? I squirm under his gaze. Finally, he looks away from my face and gives the slightest hint of a nod.
Everyone gives out a sigh of relief, including Azzie who relaxes a little bit and starts rubbing the skin around his horns.
“Now would you care to explain what the hell is wrong with you and why you tried to kill Azzie?” I ask Parker.
Chapter 17
Parker’s eyes travel between Azzie, Jessie, and me. Jessie is helping Azzie rub the skin around his horns. From the look Parker is giving her, it seems that it’s rubbing him, too, albeit in a completely different way.
“So?” I ask Parker again after a few minutes of extremely uncomfortable silence.
He doesn’t say anything and just stares back at me.
“He’s a demon hunter, that’s why,” Azzie says.
“A demon hunter?” Jessie asks.
“Parker?” I ask.
“Yes,” Azzie answers both of our questions at the same time.
“So all the hunting trips—” I start saying.
“Not all of them,” Logan says.
“You knew about this?” Jessie asks incredulously.
Now everyone starts talking, including Parker, but, amidst all the noise and Chloe’s music, it’s impossible to decipher anything.
“Quiet, everyone!” I shout, my voice barely louder than the din they make, but they listen to me and stop talking. “Thank you,” I say. “Now, Parker, would you care to explain why you tried to murder Azzie?”
“Murder,” Parker huffs. “If I wanted to murder him, he’d be dead by now. We’d be getting rid of his body instead of having this stupid conversation.”
Azzie whimpers at my side.
“Oh please.” Parker rolls his eyes. “You can stop with the innocent act. The last time I saw you, you stole a Grimoire from a witch and reanimated a corpse.”
“You did what?” Jessie’s eyebrows shoot upwards as she stares at Azzie with, um—is that admiration? Oh boy, I can only hope that Azzie doesn’t remember the spell he used to reanimate that corpse, because otherwise we might be in trouble.
“Now, to be fair, she was not a witch. She’d been adopted, so she had no use for that Grimoire herself, and the price she was asking for it was exorbitant,” Azzie says. “It’s not like she didn’t get it back.”
“And the corpse?” I ask. “Please tell me that’s some kind of a metaphor.”
“I wish.” Parker crosses his arms and glares at Azzie. “The thing scared the hell out of an entire town.”
“It’s not my fault,” Azzie says defensively. “I thought that it would be slow, like zombies in The Undead Chronicles. My cousin Attimus used to keep a couple of zombies in the basement. They were drooling logs. How was I supposed to know that a reanimated corpse would be any different? Especially that it would be this crazy fast? I didn’t even have a chance to ask it anything before it ran off. I tried to chase it, but it was too quick for me. I figured I’d wait by the grave until it came back in the morning. According to the spell, it was supposed to return before dawn.”
“Um, according to the spell?” I say. “So the spell did mention that it might run off?”
“Well, not in so many words. I figured it was just a precaution.”
“Just a precaution?” Parker growls. “That thing terrorized the entire town, gave its widow a heart attack, got locked up in jail, and then broke through the jail wall, leaving a huge whole and a pile of rubble behind. My dad chased it to the cemetery, where—guess who—was casting a magic spell.”
“I had a good reason for it.”
“Yeah, to steal something else.”
“It’s not stealing if nobody else had it to begin with.”
“Can you please explain what you both are talking about?” I ask, frustrated. “Azzie?”
“Well, I’d heard this guy had the Golden Dragonfly—it’s a powerful amulet, long story—but nobody could find it after he died. So I thought I’d wake him up for a couple of hours, ask him where the amulet was, and then he’d just go back to being dead. Only things didn’t go quite as planned.” Azzie shrugs casually as if none of this was his fault, just a turn of bad luck.
“Did you at least get a chance to ask him about the amulet?” Jessie asks.
“I would’ve, if not for this one and his dad. They showed up right after Bob did—that was the guy I reanimated—and tried to get him to go back to jail, but he attacked the boy and bit him, so the dad shot him. The only problem is, you can’t just kill a reanimated corpse by shooting it. You have to either end the spell or let it play out.”
“No,” Jessie and I both say at the same time.
“Yes,” says Parker. “My dad shot it six times in the head, but it still kept coming.”
“He was just confused,” Azzie says in defense of Bob.
“He almost chewed my head off!”
“You could’ve pushed him away or kicked him off.”
“My dad couldn’t push him off! I was eight and the thing weighed like three hundred pounds.” Parker’s cheeks cover in red splotches.
“So what happened? How did you fight Bob off?” Jessie asks enthusiastically. It looks like she’s enjoying this conversation more than a new episode of The Undead Chronicles.
“I had to break the spell,” Azzie says regretfully. “Such a waste.”
Parker shoots him a glare like no glare I’ve seen before, but Azzie is apparently regaining his composure, because he only sniffles and looks away.
“So you never found the amulet? Never tried to reanimate that guy again?” Jessie asks.
“Nah, that one and his dad burned Bob’s body, so there was no way to do it.” Azzie frowns at Parker as if he is the one who did something bad.
“So what did you do after you broke the spell?” I ask.
“Uh, well, his dad was a demon hunter,” Azzie says defensively.
“So?”
“So the little shit up and left. Forgot his stolen Grimoire, too, along with some of his own writings.” So that’s how Par
ker recognized Azzie’s handwriting.
“Hey, you never told me you got bitten by a zombie.” Logan grins at Parker.
“It wasn’t a zombie,” Parker recrosses his arms in front of his chest in a defiant way. “It was a reanimated corpse.”
“Is there a difference?” I ask stupidly.
“Yes!” Parker and Azzie say at the same time.
“Well, it’s nice to see you two agree on something,” I say.
Parker huffs. “So is someone going to tell me what the little shit is doing here?”
“Hey, I have a name, you know,” Azzie says, offended.
“Maybe you should’ve introduced yourself when we first met.”
“Like that would’ve done much good,” I murmur under my breath. “Parker, this is Azzie. Azzie, this is Parker. So now that you know each other’s names, can you please stop trying to kill each other in my bedroom?”
“What is he doing in your bedroom?” Parker asks suspiciously.
“Uh, well, that’s kind of a funny story.” I giggle nervously. I don’t mind telling him how Azzie got here, but the only way to do it is by revealing the fact that Ciara is a witch. Since he already doesn’t like her that much, I don’t know if it’s such a good idea. Although, it’s not like he will pull her by the horns. She doesn’t have any. She does have pretty blonde hair, and I wouldn’t mind seeing someone pull at it. I feel evil.
“It was Ciara, wasn’t it?” Parker says, putting a stop to my inner conflict.
“Well, not exactly,” I say, then sigh.
I tell him everything that happened Monday night—the spell, Ciara’s aunt, Azzie falling from the sky. Parker listens carefully, giving Azzie dirty looks from time to time. Logan, on the other hand, is reclining lazily against my closet, listening with quite a bit of interest. I gloss over a few details, such as the fact that Logan basically kicked Azzie out of his house. I’m not sure if that kind of detail would get Parker’s approval or piss him off even more. I really don’t need another brawl in my bedroom tonight.
“So as soon as we make a witchlight for Azzie, he’ll be gone and everything will go back to normal. We just need to figure out how to make it,” I finish my story.
“Back to normal,” Parker says with a deadpan expression. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are that you didn’t show up on some demon hunter’s radar after that failure of a spell you performed, and especially with that zombie maker here?
“I thought you said it wasn’t a zombie,” I point out.
“That’s not the point,” Parker says. “The point is that now you want to make a witchlight for him. Do you have any idea how risky this is? What are the chances you get that spell right even if you find it? The next thing you know this town is swarming with demon hunters who find and kill every witch here. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Why would they hunt witches?” Jessie asks. “If they are demon hunters, shouldn’t they hunt demons? Even if they do find us, Azzie will be long gone by then and they will have no one to hunt.”
“If they do get here, they will hunt down every witch they find.”
“But—” Jessie starts saying, but Logan cuts her off.
“What’s that on your wrist?” Logan asks me.
I look down at my wrist and see that my pajama sleeve has rolled up a little, revealing the burn Azzie placed on my skin. It’s already fading but is still visible. I try to pull the sleeve down, but Parker grabs my wrist and stares at the witchmark. The next moment he lurches at Azzie with a murderous look in his eyes, and the next thing I know they are rolling on the floor, shouting insults, and trying to rip each other’s throats out. Jessie and I make a lame attempt at pulling Parker off Azzie, but it’s like trying to stop a moving train. Logan seems to be enjoying the brawl. It takes him awfully long to help us. When he finally deigns to pull his best friend off Azzie, I feel like my arms will fall off any minute from all the effort I’ve put in. Azzie immediately hides behind my back—as if I can protect him from anyone—and is wheezing and whimpering there.
Jessie pats Azzie on the shoulder to comfort him.
“Can you please stop trying to kill Azzie?” I say to Parker who is scowling at all of us. He shakes Logan’s hands off his shoulders. “Or get out of my room. I don’t see what the big deal is. The witchmark will be gone in no time. It’s already fading.”
“Um, actually,” Azzie says from under my arm, “I didn’t exactly say it will be gone.”
“What?” I pull away from him. “What do you mean you didn’t exactly say it will be gone? You said it will fade in no time.”
“Fade, yes, but not disappear entirely.”
I glower at him.
Azzie ducks under Jessie’s arm for protection now. Huh, like she can protect him. Well, I guess she can protect him from me, but definitely not from Parker.
“Can I see it?” Jessie asks, looking at my wrist. But she’s not the only one who wants to see it, because at that moment someone takes my wrist into his hands—when I look up I see that this someone is Logan—and everyone huddles around me, examining my witchmark. Even Azzie, like he hasn’t seen and done enough already.
“Is there some way to get rid of it?” I ask, feeling like I already know the answer and it’s not what I want to hear. How am I ever going to hide this from my parents? At some point they will see it, and what will I tell them then?
“Why would you want to get rid of it? It’s beautiful,” Jessie says. “Can you give me one, too?” she asks Azzie enthusiastically.
“Oh, come on, are you kidding me?” Parker groans.
“There’s no way in hell I’ll let him brand you, too,” Logan says.
“And you’re going to stop him how?” Jessie raises her eyebrows at Logan.
If Logan wants her not to do something, telling her not to do it is so not the way to go. It is possible to manipulate Jessie and sometimes even reason with her. But telling her there is no way in hell he will let her do something? That’s a guaranteed way to make sure she is going to do whatever it is she wants to do.
“How about I tell Azzie that I’m not going to rip his head off if he agrees not to brand you?” Logan says innocently as if he is talking about his dinner plans rather than ripping someone’s head off.
Azzie gulps. “That works for me,” he says quickly. Poor thing is huddling between Jessie and me, not sure which of us can protect him.
“Or I’ll just get it in some place where you will never see it,” Jessie threatens.
Azzie gulps again. I’m not sure if the gulp is because he might get to see the place that Logan will never see, or because he imagines how Logan will rip his head off just as a preventative measure. From the way Logan is scowling at Azzie right now, I figure it’s the second.
I decide to steer the conversation somewhere else before someone’s head does get ripped off tonight. From the looks Jessie is giving her brother, it might not be Azzie’s.
“I think we should focus on more pressing matters at the moment,” I say. “We can discuss whether Jessie can have a witchmark later. Right now we still need to figure out how to get a witchlight for Azzie so that he can leave.” Parker opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t give him an opportunity. “I really don’t care what you think about this. It’s my fault that his witchmark is broken and, anyway, I have promised to help him make a new one. If either of you are not happy with this, you are welcome to stay away and forget that this conversation ever happened.”
“I say we kick his ass out and let him fend for himself,” Parker says. Logan nods in agreement.
“The only ass that is going to be kicked out of here is yours unless you calm down. Thanks for the food, but I can take it from here.” I look at the guys meaningfully, hoping they will get the hint and leave, but that would be too easy now, wouldn’t it?
“You’re not staying alone with him,” Parker says. “How did you even allow this to happen?” He looks at Logan like it’s all his
fault.
“Hey, how was I supposed to know? He looks pretty harmless to me, especially without his witchlight. What could he possibly do?”
“Um, brand Emmy a witch?” Jessie suggests not-so-helpfully.
“You’re coming with me,” Parker says to Azzie.
Azzie whimpers and hides behind my back.
“Stop scaring him,” I say.
Parker snorts.
“I promise I won’t let him put any more brands on me. If that’s what it takes to make you happy.” Since when do I care what makes him happy? From the look Parker is giving me, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking the same thing. “Never mind. Azzie is not going anywhere with anyone, and especially not with someone who tried to kill him just a few minutes ago.”
Parker looks at me for a long moment, then crosses his arms in front of his chest and says, “Fine. Then I’m not going anywhere, either.”
Everybody in the room makes some kind of noise. Jessie sighs. Azzie whimpers. Logan snorts. Or chortles. It’s hard to tell. I have steam coming out of my ears, with the accompanying sound of a train whistle. “Like hell you aren’t.”
“This is my last offer, Kiddo. Either he’s coming with me and stays at my place until we figure out what to do with him, or I’m staying here. But, either way, you’re not staying with him alone.”
“That’s not up to you to decide.”
His expression turns annoyingly smug. “Really? And what are you going to do about it?”
“Call my parents.” I bluff.
“Go ahead,” he says, calling my bluff.
A Witch and a Secret (Witches of Mystic Hollow Book 1) Page 16
