Bone Spell

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Winter, I’m…” she looked at Ezra again and stepped closer to me so she could whisper in my ear. “I’m spending way too much time with my mother, and I’m turning into a girl!” Then, she stepped back. It was hard to stifle the laugh. “Just take me with.”

  “If you hate this so much, why haven’t you come to me earlier? Bender said you were going to.” And I had to admit, I’d kind of been expecting her. Once you got used to company, it sucked to be alone.

  “Because after the whole Galladar thing, my parents won’t let me come without Uncle Eli, so now I’m stuck waiting for him to wrap up his coven work and move to Manhattan,” Lynn said, rolling her eyes.

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. You get me Dena Waldorf’s things, and I’ll take you back to Manhattan with me—if you call your parents first. And only to Manhattan. You’ll get to hang out with Ms. Riley while I go look for Julian.”

  “But—” she tried to argue but I cut her off.

  “No buts. It’s the only deal you’re going to get.” The reason I was even willing to take her with me is because I trusted she could smell danger and she could help Ms. Riley in taking care of Ezra while I was off to the fairy realm.

  Without word—but very pissed off—Lynn strode to her closet and disappeared behind the door.

  “You okay?” I asked Ezra. He looked all right but he hadn’t said a single thing yet.

  “Fine,” he mumbled. “I’ll need to use the bathroom before we go.”

  I smiled. “Sure thing. Let’s sit down, shall we?” Thinking he’d be more comfortable, I led him to Lynn’s bed and sat down beside him.

  Lynn didn’t take long, and when she came back, she did so with a small chest made of a million thin strings of silver, beautifully curved so that they formed small flowers all over it.

  “How the hell did you find this thing?” I asked in wonder and walked over to where she put the chest on her bed.

  “I’ve got my ways,” Lynn said with a grin, and for whatever reason, that made me feel proud. She was going to be a kick ass private investigator one day.

  When she opened the chest, I held my breath, almost expecting something to explode. Nothing did.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered as I looked inside. The chest was much bigger than it looked from the outside. The inside was made of thick panels of mahogany, with scratches everywhere.

  “Help yourself,” Lynn said, waving at the things inside.

  I had no idea where to even begin. Nothing looked familiar—not one thing. Fairy books were limited as it was. The text we had over them was all locked up in the ECU archives somewhere, far away from people’s reach, so this wasn’t all that surprising.

  The first thing I noticed was something that looked like an over-decorated pen. Reaching for it with my shaking fingers, I realized, it was not a pen. It had the same size and roughly the same weight, but it seemed to be made entirely out of white gold, and then there was a dragon embroidered on it, its long tail spinning around the gold, its tip sharp enough to cut through anything. I studied it for a few seconds, but nothing was written on it and I had no clue what it was, other than a guess that it might have been a weapon of some sort, though aside from the dragon tip slightly coming out one side, there was nothing dangerous looking about it.

  I left the thing on the bed next to the chest and took out something that looked like a hammer-shaped ax, but its edges were broken and where there was supposed to be a handle, there was just broken metal. I couldn’t guess the material, but the symbols engraved on both sides of it were still beautiful. I guessed it had seen better days.

  The next was some sort of an egg, made of red colored glass. Inside it, there was sand and when I held it up toward the window to see better, the sand only glittered—nothing else.

  “I tried breaking it. Impossible,” Lynn informed me. The glass didn’t feel that strong, but I trusted she’d really tried to break it, and couldn’t.

  “Have you researched everything?” I asked her as I took the next item from the chest. It was like a ring, only much bigger, sort of like an arm ring. The wearer would need to have large muscles, though. I inspected the engravings on the surface, but other than some swords and half a shield on it, I couldn’t make out anything else.

  “Of course,” Lynn said, as if I’d offended her by asking. “I even sneaked into my parents’ library, the one they don’t know I know about. Nothing at all.”

  The piece of brown leather in the chest looked worn and old. It even smelled really bad when I sniffed at it—don’t even ask me why I did such a thing. I threw it at the bed, disgusted, then made for the last two items in the chest.

  One was a large tooth, as big as my whole hand and yellowing at the ends, and the other, the smallest gun I’d ever seen. I could wrap my fingers all around it easily. It was made of the same material as the chest itself, with strings of silver—minus the flowers. The trigger, too. Obviously just a decoration. Even if the gun did shoot a bullet, it wouldn’t even hurt anyone from three feet away.

  When all the items were on the bed, I took the chest in my hands and turned it over, just in case. When nothing fell out, I tried to remove the mahogany panels. Maybe there was a secret opening somewhere?

  “Tried it,” Lynn said. “This is everything.”

  “And you gave the ravenstone portal opener to Julian.” Squeezing my eyes shut, I cursed under my breath. Even if one of these things could help me get to the fairy realm, I wouldn’t know what to do with them if my life depended on it.

  “The stone was the only thing I found in the books, same as Dena Waldorf,” Lynn said, then walked over to the drawer in her nightstand. She took out a small, pink notebook and brought it to me.

  “She wrote and drew everything in there. There are a few more things in these pages that aren’t in the chest, but she seemed to have known only about the portal opener.”

  “Blake Powell,” I whispered. “He stole from her.” And like a coldhearted bitch, I hadn’t even wanted to hear about it when Dena Waldorf came to my office, asking me to kick his ass. I wondered if she’d still be alive if I’d taken the job. The guilt over it had cost me many a sleepless night, but I was in the process of learning to embrace my mistakes—if such thing was even doable

  “I thought so, too,” Lynn said.

  She was right, the small pink notebook had hand drawings of every item in the chest—and more. Dena Waldorf had been very talented at it, too. She’d also described every item in detail, and at the end, she’d written: Origin, fairy realm. Function, unknown.

  “What…what’s wrong with him?” said Lynn.

  “What?” I looked at her and saw her pointing at Ezra.

  The boy had the egg made of red glass in his hand, and he had completely frozen, staring ahead at the windows.

  Oh, hell. Not again.

  I ran in front of him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Ezra, look at me. I need you to breathe. Just breathe,” I urged him, but it didn’t look like he could even hear me. I began to slap him, gently at first. “Ezra, come on. Just breathe!” and when that didn’t work, I slapped him harder.

  The next second, he began to shake and fell to the floor. White foam came out of his lips. I lay down next to him and took him in my arms, holding him as tightly as I could, but he still shook, and made me shake, too.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I whispered against his hair. “Just breathe, it’s okay.”

  It was not okay, not by a long shot, but I’d seen him do this before, and the seizure hadn’t stopped until…until he’d called my name.

  What had he told me afterward? That the man in the prison had spoken to me through him?

  I don’t think I’ve ever done anything crazier than what I did next, but I was desperate here. Ezra wouldn’t stop shaking, and his eyes turned in their sockets. I sat up on the floor and brought him with me, with a lot of difficulty. Holding him by the shoulders, I tried to keep him from shaking but it was useless.

  “Stop
it!” I shouted. “Whoever you are, get out of his head, now! You’re hurting him!”

  My own mind didn’t approve of the thought that Ezra was practically being possessed, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and a second later, whatever I’d done worked.

  Ezra stopped shaking and his eyes popped open. His eyes were now almost completely colorless. Fear grabbed me by the throat and I held my breath.

  “Ezra?” I whispered, my voice breaking.

  “Find me, Winter,” he said. “Find me.”

  “Get out!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

  Ezra blinked. His eyes turned back to brown.

  Ten

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” I whispered to him as I checked his pulse. He really was fine. No more shaking, no more white foam, no more colorless eyes.

  “What the hell was that?” Lynn cried, and when I looked at her, I almost had a heart attack.

  She had a phone to her ear.

  I jumped to my feet and tried to knock it out of her hand, but she stepped back, scared shitless. “Hang up the phone, Lynn.”

  “I’m calling my parents. The poor kid needs medical attention! He had a seizure!” she cried.

  “You can’t call your parents, Lynn. Put the phone down.” It might have come off more a threat than I intended, but it didn’t matter now.

  Lynn froze. “Why not?” she whispered.

  Before the words even left her mouth, I moved fast took the phone from her hand, together with a bunch of hair from her head, and hung it up before his father answered. I threw it on the bed.

  Scratching her head where I’d pulled out her hair, Lynn looked at me, eyes wide and full of fear and suspicion. She took a step back and looked at Ezra.

  The boy was still sitting on the floor, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, and I helped him to sit up on the bed. He looked a lot better now, not even that pale. His heartbeat was normal, and so was his breathing. His eyes were alert, too.

  “It’s him, isn’t it,” Lynn whispered from behind me.

  For the second time in three minutes, the blood froze in my veins.

  “Who?” I asked with half a voice, but I already knew the answer.

  “The missing boy.”

  Goddamn it.

  Jumping to my feet, I turned to Lynn and found her exactly as I’d left her, only now she was looking at the back of Ezra’s head.

  “What do you know about a missing boy, Lynn?” And the look on my face told her not to fuck around with me.

  Swallowing hard, Lynn met my eyes. “I heard my father speak on the phone with someone who called him at six in the morning. Before they left the room, he told my mother that the boy was missing and that they had to meet with the others immediately. She…” Lynn shook her head. “She didn’t even put makeup on and she never leaves the house without it.”

  So, Ezra had definitely been right all along. The coven leaders knew about him.

  “What else did they say?” I asked Lynn and began to pace around the room. I was this close to calling Amelia and demanding she tell me who Ezra was.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “That’s all I heard.” Slowly, Lynn walked over to the middle of the room and looked at Ezra like she was seeing him for the first time. “How is he with you? Did you kidnap him?”

  I rolled my eyes. “How can you be sure that’s what they said?” I asked instead. She could have been making all of this up just to get me to take her with. I trusted her, but she was still just a teenager, no matter how she behaved.

  “A spy spell,” she said, without even looking at me. “Been spying on them since I was twelve.”

  My mouth fell open. “Where would you even get a spy spell at twelve years old?” At that age, I wasn’t sure I even knew such a thing existed!

  “School janitor,” Lynn said. “But you can’t tell them about it.”

  No kidding. “I really need you to think hard about this, Lynn. Was there something else?”

  But Lynn flinched. “No, I would have remembered. I thought it was just a missing person case, but…” She met my eyes again. “Who is he?”

  “No idea, but we need to get going.” It looked like I was going to have to go through one of the portals after all. I’d just have to make sure I was armed to the teeth and that I’d make it to the other side alive.

  “The seizure…what did he mean when he said find me? He’s right here,” Lynn said as I grabbed Ezra’s hand and led him to the door.

  “Don’t know,” I lied. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  Lynn took us to the door at the end of the corridor. I went in first just to check that nothing funny was in there, then let Ezra through.

  “I’ll be right here, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said with a nod, and closed the door behind him.

  “You’re not telling me something,” Lynn accused me.

  “I’ve already told you much more than you need to know.” And pretty much everything I knew myself. I had no idea who Ezra was, or the man who apparently really got into his head and spoke through his mouth. And said man knew my name. He actually asked me to go find him.

  What the hell was going on with the world?

  When a phone rang, I thought it was mine, but then Lynn took hers out of her back pocket. I hadn’t even seen her take it from the bed where I threw it myself!

  “Hi, Dad,” she said when she picked up, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “No, I’m fine, I just didn’t want to let it ring too long in case you were busy.” My God, Lynn suddenly sounded like an angel. “I was just calling to ask if I could go spend the day with Jennifer. She’s got some new magazines she wants to show me.”

  Wow. Color me impressed. She lied better than she spoke the truth.

  “Okay, Dad. Love you,” she said, and hung up the phone with a huge smile on her face. “I’m free to go and even spend the night if I want to.”

  “You’re not spending the night.” Absolutely not.

  The door to the bathroom opened and Ezra walked out, looking a thousand times better. His face was still wet from when he’d washed it. “I’m ready,” he said with a nod.

  “Let’s go.”

  Just like that, I walked out of the house with two kids by my side and with a thousand questions on my mind that I couldn’t answer.

  Eleven

  “I don’t know why you took your backpack. You’re not staying the night,” I repeated to Lynn after we got in the car.

  “It’s the things. I never leave home without them,” she said and held on tightly to her dark green back. The things, meaning Dena Waldorf’s things. Smart move.

  “He did it again,” Ezra mumbled. Goosebumps broke on the skin of my arms.

  “You’re tired, Ezra. Just close your eyes and try to get some sleep,” I said. Since he was sitting in the back, I could only see his face through the rearview mirror. He looked at Lynn for a second and seemed to realize that I didn’t want to talk about this in her presence. Not that I was trying to keep secrets from her…okay, I was, but it was for her own protection. In situations like these—when even I didn’t know what the hell was going on yet—the less you knew, the better. Information could kill you as easily as a bullet.

  Not long after, Ezra fell asleep. When he began to snore lightly, Lynn took the opportunity to ask me about a hundred questions in two minutes. My answer was always the same, though. I had no clue about Ezra yet, and had a very bad idea about finding out—though I didn’t tell her that last part.

  If my aunt insisted on keeping this from me—and Bender, too—my only hope was to get to Jane Dunham, or the fairy version of Jane Dunham. Julian was the only one who could help me reach her. She was in the Seelie Court, and he would know exactly how to get there. How to expose her true face in front of everyone so they’d stop looking at me like I was crazy, and when that happened, I could ask her all about Ezra. She’d have no choice but to tell me. Hopefully.

  Going through one of the portals was going to be tricky.
I had no official permit to cross to the other side, if there even was such a thing, and people were going to try to stop me.

  Unless…

  No.

  But it could work!

  Absolutely not.

  It could definitely work.

  You’re going to get yourself killed.

  Fighting against my own mind did have its perks, believe it or not. It made me think about every stupid idea I had through every angle, and that sure helped in avoiding death. The idea I’d just had while driving out of Bloomsburg was brilliant, never mind what the voice of reason inside my head thought.

  I was going to disguise myself to get through the portal without having to fight. As Amelia Wayne.

  Like I said, brilliant.

  Now, all I had to do was figure it out how to do it. Much easier than fighting off werewolves and witches, and fairies on the other side, too, not to mention safer. The way I figured, if I looked like my aunt, whom everybody knew as a Bone coven leader, I could tell the guards that I was leaving for the fairy realm on business. That the King summoned me or whatever. They wouldn’t doubt a word I said.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” Lynn asked.

  “I’m not,” I mumbled, but I was. I was grinning like a little kid.

  Figuring out how to wear a disguise shouldn’t have been that hard. Julian did it, even when he was hurt and bleeding from his fight with Galladar the last time he was in my office. All I had to do was train.

  “You’re smiling like you just had the most brilliant idea ever,” Lynn said. That girl really got me. “Tell me what it is.”

  “Let’s just get to my office first. I might need your help for my brilliant idea.” Her parents were coven leaders, too. I was pretty sure I could find a way for her to use that to help me by the time we got to Manhattan.

  ***

  But by the time we got to Manhattan, everything changed.

  The first fairy I saw was two blocks away from my office. At first, I thought he was just a fairy minding his own business, but then I remembered, fairies no longer roamed the streets after Galladar’s attack. Most of them were imprisoned, and the ones in the fairy realm had no business on earth—that I knew of.