by D. N. Hoxa
“We’ll be fine. Julian will make sure the King doesn’t let her use his fairies.” At least I hoped so.
“We’ll be in Long Island right after noon,” he said.
“Good.” Hedge witches were night witches. The last time, we hadn’t known that before going to their hideout, but this time, we could prepare and attack Jane at her weakest.
“Wayne, whatever happens, we get the kids out,” he said after a second.
“We will.” All this anger I felt had to come out somewhere, and I had my eye on Jane Dunham.
“Try to get some shut-eye. You’re going to need all your strength,” Bender said. “Bone witches are right behind us. We’ll know if something goes wrong.”
With a nod, I closed my eyes and rested my head against the window. If Bender thought I was sleeping, he’d leave me alone with my thoughts, and right now, that was all I wanted: to figure out a way to calm myself before the storm.
***
Turns out, the ECU wanted us to back down. They didn’t like the idea of attacking a Hedge witch in the middle of a human neighborhood in Long Island.
Ask me if I care.
“Is everybody already in place?” I asked Bender. We had nine Blood witches and six Greens. Not exactly what I would have preferred, but hopefully, there would be no fairies to fight, and all they’d have to do was make sure that Jane Dunham didn’t escape from the house before I was done with her.
“Did you hear what I just said? The ECU wants us to abort the mission,” Bender said.
“I did hear you.” And the second time didn’t make me care more. “Do you think Julian is back?”
“He better be,” Bender mumbled. We were in the car, two streets away from my mother’s house—the one she died in. I was going to hate to bring that whole place down, but if necessary, I’d still do it.
“What’s taking them so long?” I mumbled. I was on edge, really ready to start fighting, and my beads agreed, too.
“Patience,” Bender said. “We’ll get the call when everybody is in place.”
We did get the call, fifteen minutes later. It was hell having to wait, but once we got out of the car, I felt better immediately. The seven Bone witches, two women and three men, walked behind us as we went to meet with the Bloodies and Greens. And hopefully Julian. They would be waiting right around the corner that led to my mother’s house.
The first thing I noticed were the werewolves. ECU werewolves all around the streets.
“What the hell are they doing here?”
“They have orders to keep peace. Don’t worry, they’re just here to keep humans locked in their houses,” Bender said.
“Good for them.” That sounded a whole lot easier than fighting a Hedge witch.
When we spotted the crowd, the first person I saw was Marva. She had her green mantle on, the hood drawn, and a large bow in her hand. She saw me coming, too, and the look on her face said she liked me no better than last time.
Julian was by her side, a large sword hanging on his lip belt. He smiled when he saw me, but I couldn’t return it.
The group the coven leaders had sent looked pretty good. Most of them looked physically strong, and the ones that didn’t, you had to assume their magic was their forte.
“Good to see you all,” Bender said when we approached. Julian raised a brow as he studied my face, looking for a clue to give away why I hadn’t been able to even smile at him. He wasn’t going to find anything any time soon. Nobody could have guessed what my aunt and my grandparents had done to their own daughter. Nobody at all. “Julian?”
“The King has ordered his men back, but not everyone made it. He suspects they’re either dead, or they’re with Jane,” Julian said.
“If they’re here, they’re as good as dead,” Marva said, raising her chin. As much as I hated to admit it, I’d seen her fight in the fairy realm, and she was good. Very good. She could definitely handle a bunch of fairy soldiers. She knew how they fought better than any witch on Earth did, so maybe Julian had thought through bringing her here better than I had.
“Well then, let’s get going. You all know what to do.”
Julian nodded at Marva, and she turned around and began to run in a heartbeat. The witches made after her. They were going to secure the location and make sure there would be no interruptions when we walked in the house.
“Does your father know she’s here?” I asked Julian as we walked behind our little army, who were already at the house.
“Of course not,” Julian said. I’d thought so. No King would want their commander out of their realm.
“We’ll be done real fast,” I said, but it was just the hope talking. Jane Dunham knew things she had no business knowing. She came back from the dead—probably many times. She was definitely not someone with whom we could be done real fast.
“Ring first, kids second,” I reminded them. We were going to make sure that witch had nowhere to go, then deal with everything else.
When we made it to the house, my heart almost leaped out of my chest. The old yellowing white of the outside walls was exactly the same as I remembered it. The windows, too. The roof, mixed with green and red tiles seemed to come right out of my memories.
We saw our witches—and Marva—standing there, doing nothing, when there were at least twelve fairies around the house.
“What the hell are they doing?” I hissed. Why weren’t they attacking?
“The soldiers are standing down,” Julian said. “They’re not going to stop us, or attack.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Their position,” Julian said. That’s when I noticed that all the fairies in their golden armors were standing with their legs parted, the tips of their swords to the ground and their hands folded above the handle. They were all looking ahead, not a single muscle moving on their bodies.
Marva turned around, looked at Julian, and nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, and made for the fence gate. I would have asked more questions, but I was already impatient to see Jane, so I clamped my mouth shut and followed.
The front yard of the last house my mother rented, the one we lived in the longest, wasn’t big, but the fairies fit in perfectly. They looked like golden flowers all around the grass. I tried to focus on them rather than the brown front door and the dark green screen in front of it, but it was impossible.
The porch was big enough to fit two chairs. My mother and I spent a lot of evenings just sitting there in silence, watching the humans walk up and down the street without any idea what the hell we even were. Now, there were no chairs on the porch. Instead, blades of withered grass and pieces of paper filled the wooden panels.
Julian opened the screen and looked at me. “Ready?”
As ready as I would ever be. With my heart racing inside my chest, I put my hand on the knob and turned it.
Open, just like I knew it would be. Jane was expecting me. She had ordered her soldiers to stand down. Why would she not spell the place until we suffocated from the smell alone, or bother to lock a door she knew I could shoot down in seconds?
Taking in a deep breath, I stepped inside the long, narrow hallway.
Nothing about the inside was the same, not even the color on the walls—but the smell…oh, the smell of wood and old furniture was exactly the same. Tears in my eyes again. To the right, there was a door with a window that led to the small kitchen. The stairs that led to the second floor were the same, too, a thick layer of dust atop the railing handle. To the left, the first door led to the dining room—or it used to, because my mother had chosen the brightest room in the house to eat in. The second door was the living room. As I looked at it, I felt like she was going to walk out of it any second now. I could wait for an eternity for that to happen. Just once. Just a quick glimpse of her face.
“She’s not down here,” Bender said, nodding at the stairs.
“No. She’ll be in my room.” I already knew how Jane’s head worked. If she brought me there, she was
going to preform her show for us in my old room.
Good thing I wouldn’t need to search the house, see the places where so many of my memories were created, now nothing but empty space and old furniture.
The hallway to the second floor was wider than the fist. Three doors in it—the bathroom, my mother’s room, and my old room.
I nodded at the guys to check out the door in the middle, sure that I’d see Jane’s face smiling at me like a snake. I held my breath when Julian slowly pushed the door open, the large sword in his hand.
And…nothing. The room was empty, save for some cardboard boxes on the floor. The walls, once light blue, were now white. Nothing in it reminded me of my old room. God, what a relief.
Except…it wasn’t. Because if Jane wasn’t there, she would be in my mother’s old room. The one she died in.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I fought the tears with all my being. Of course, she would be in her room. She wanted to destroy my entire world. She said so herself, so why not take me back to the worst moment of my life?
“In there,” I whispered, nodding at the door on the left. It took all of my willpower to grit my teeth and order my legs to move in its direction. There was no doubt in my mind now. Jane would be in there, waiting for me.
But when Julian opened the door, Jane wasn’t there. Nobody was there, and the room looked exactly the way I’d left it the morning after my mother died.
The dark blue curtains flowed from the wind coming in through the open window. The queen-sized bed was to the right, the frame painted white by me and my mother. She’d hated the faded color it used to have, so we fixed it. The light grey, round rug was placed on the left side of the bed, between it and the window, for when she woke up and got out of bed—always with the light shining on her face. The small white lamp on the nightstand was the same, too. As was the drawer right next to the window, and the half-broken handle of the third drawer. The closet room was next to it, and the door was half open, just like always. Mother said she wanted her clothes aired during the day.
Yes, everything was the same. So, where was she?
“I was getting really bored with these two. So glad you could join us, Winter.”
The voice grabbed me by the throat and dragged me from my fantasy, kicking and screaming.
A blink, and I was in the real world, the one where my mother’s room wasn’t the same as it had been.
Instead, black curtains in front of the windows sucked the natural light from the room. No rugs, no drawer—even the closet door was gone completely and inside, there was nothing but garbage. And the bed…only the white frame was left, and on it sat Ezra and Lynn, eyes rimmed red, mouths shut with dirty pieces of fabric, hands tied behind them.
My senses came back to me and my eyes found Jane Dunham, still looking like a fairy, standing at the edge of the bed frame, arms crossed in front of her chest.
Anger roared inside me as I conjured my shield around the three of us, and my fingers itched to pull the triggers of my guns. My beads buzzed around my hand, but I held them for just a while longer. I wanted to know what she had to say first. Why she called me there. Then, it was fighting till death do us part.
“Lovely place to die in, this room,” she said, looking around with a frown on her face.
I smiled. “You’re going to love it, I swear.”
Jane raised her brows. “Well, now that you’re here, I guess we should get down to business, but I just have to ask: did you ask your aunt?”
Involuntarily, I flinched. She saw it, clear as day, and her smile grew. “So, you did. Do tell me how it went!”
The blood in my veins boiled and I could no longer keep my arms from raising, or my guns from pointing right at her face. “If you let them go now, I promise to end you quickly.”
“Oh, I’m so scared,” Jane said, pouting. She either didn’t notice Bender and Julian standing by my side, or she didn’t give a shit. “What are you going to do, shoot me dead?”
“For fuck’s sake, they’re just kids. Let them go!” I hissed. I tried to not notice Ezra and Lynn through the corner of my eye but it was impossible. I was painfully aware of how their bodies shook while they cried—and how Bender was moving toward the bed really slowly, as if Jane couldn’t see him.
“Okay, okay, if you insist,” Jane said, waving her hand at me. “I’ll agree to let one of them go, if you give it to me.” Her eyes sparkled.
I raised my brows. “Give you what?”
With a sigh, Jane shook her head. “Now, now, Winter, don’t play dumb with me. We both know why I called you here, and if you give it to me, I promise to let one of the kids go.” With her hand to her heart, she gave me a curt nod, as if she really expected me to believe her.
But…what the hell did she think I had?
“Let them both go, and I’ll give it to you,” I said, though I was dying to ask. What was so important that she would give away her location to me? Why had she brought me here?
“That’s no way to negotiate,” Jane said, but she was no longer smiling. “I don’t have time for games, so if you hand it over, this will be over very fast.” And she reached out her hand for me. In it was the ring with the ravenstone—her only means of escape. I zeroed in on the simple white circle with a black stone on it, and I made it a top priority. Now, I just had to figure out a way to get it off her finger.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Jane. You let them go, I give it to you.” Though, if anybody asked me what it was, my cover would be completely blown.
Holding her hands on her hips, Jane slowly moved around the bed, and to where Lynn was sitting. It took all I had to keep my eyes on her face, instead of looking down.
“I don’t understand, really. Is her life not worth anything at all to you?” She touched Lynn’s hair and every cell in my body screamed for me to shoot her. “What do you even want it for, anyway? You wouldn’t know what to do with the Dust of the Dead if your life depended on it.”
I raised my brows. “The Dust of the Dead?” Fuck, what the hell was that? “So, that’s what it’s called.” It was the only way I knew of how to get her to speak.
“See what I mean?” Jane said with a roll of her eyes. “You have no clue what to do with it! It’s only fair that you give it to me in exchange for the girl.”
I smiled. “Is that why you took her?” She had no business with Lynn—that I knew of.
“I took her because I thought she had it!” Jane laughed, the sound making me cringe. “But then…” she kicked something on the other side of the bed, something we couldn’t see, until she brought it all the way to the middle of the room.
It was the chest. Dena Waldorf’s silver chest.
“It was supposed to be here.” Jane opened the lid and emptied the chest on the floor. The ax hammer, the piece of leather, the large tooth and the pretty little gun sprawled on the floor. “So obviously, you took it. Now, all you need to do is hand it over to me, and you can get your little friend here and leave—unharmed.”
I risked a glance at Julian. Had he taken something from the chest? I remembered the over-decorated pen that turned out to be a shield, but that couldn’t possibly be the Dust of the D—
Holy fucking hell.
It was the egg! The egg made of red glass with the white sparkly dust in it!
But the thing had been in the chest, hadn’t it? The last time I’d see it, it was in Lynn’s room, in…in Ezra’s hand.
A smile stretched my lips. I remembered it perfectly, when Ezra had had the seizure. He’d had the red egg in his hands, and if it wasn’t in the chest, I was willing to bet my life that he either took it with, or it fell somewhere in Lynn’s room, and she didn’t see it.
Either way, it was luck, and I was going to take it.
“Indulge me, Jane. What do you need that little egg for, anyway?” I said, just to subtly hint that I knew exactly what she was talking about, so that she’d continue to believe I had it.
Jane’s violet eyes l
it up as she grinned. “Why, to talk to the dead, of course. It’s been too long. I’m ready for my siblings to come back now,” she said, looking at her nails as if her manicure was more important than the two kids tied up to a bed frame.
Fuck, this witch was completely insane.
“You’re kidding, right?” I had to ask.
“On the contrary, and I’ll remind you that I’m running out of patience fast. Just give it to me so I can leave.”
“Sure thing! That’s if you leave Ezra behind, too.”
Jane pressed her lips together. “And here I thought she was bright,” she mumbled. “I’m going to need a spell to bring them back, Winter. And he is going to make one for me, just as soon as I talk to my siblings. It’s going to be super easy. I’d invite you to watch the show, but I don’t think you’re into that sort of stuff.”
She was definitely right about that.
“I’m not going to give you the egg, Jane. But I will fight you to death.” My beads buzzed as they floated slowly towards her face, just so that she could see them coming.
Then, she raised a brow and looked me over, as if she could see right through me. “You don’t have it, do you?”
I grinned. “Nope.”
Red filled her face in a second, and her eyes lit up once again.
“Well then, why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”
The charge of magic she threw at me, even before she’d finished speaking, broke my shield to pieces, and sent me flying back to the hallway. My bones cracked, the pain making it impossible to breathe for a long second.
It looked like the time for talk was over. Now, we would fight.
As soon as I jumped back to my feet, Julian flew out the door, and had I not moved to the side, he would have crashed right into me. There was no time to check on him, so I reluctantly left him to get back on his feet on his own and ran back to the room.
Jane had Bender by the throat. She was much smaller than him, but she was obviously using a spell to immobilize him, and though Bender’s lips moved as he chanted his spell, it didn’t look like it was working. Since my shield was already down, my beads were on her face and she tried to swat them away like they were flies, but her spells couldn’t work against them. Then I raised my gun and shot as fast as my finger would move. I jumped on air when I was a foot away from her. Using the handle of the gun, I aimed for the top of her head, but when she saw me coming down on her, she let go of Bender and moved to the side, so I hit her shoulder instead.
