She rubbed her temples and sipped her tea and tried to focus on the present. She just wanted to settle down enough to be able to go to bed soon. A good night’s sleep was sure to help her sort through all this information, so to that end she’d brewed the tea and had a long hot bath once she had locked all the doors and windows in the house. Both Kai and Sebastian had assured her that the wights weren’t going to come inside her house, but she wanted to take no chances. Not that she thought a deadbolt would really stop something like that…
No, she thought. Keep it together, no thinking about those things. Let’s see what sorts of treasures are in this box. She folded the flaps back and lifted a photo album off the top. Inside were photos of her father: a few scattered pictures from his childhood, neatly tacked down by those funny decorative paper corners. Some photos of his high school gradation, then a few years later the same sort of pictures obviously taken at his college graduation. The rest of it was of her parents’ wedding. Sarah sniffled and teared up at the joy on everyone’s faces. Her mother looked absolutely radiant with it, and her father slightly stunned.
Sarah remembered her father. He’d been a quiet man, working hard at the law firm that employed him and happy to spend time with his family. She remembered her mother being genuinely happy when he came home from work every day and wondered if she had also been so controlling back then? It had been her normal for so long that she’d never really thought about it until recently. One of Sarah’s friends had decided to quit her job and backpack around South America. Sarah had been shocked at the announcement, and asked the woman,
“What about your career? And your apartment? What about your mother? What did she say about this plan?”
“I can put my travel experiences on my resume, and the apartment is mostly packed up already. All the stuff I want to keep I’m putting in storage for a while.” Her friend had shrugged over the rim of her coffee cup. “And Mom’s not thrilled, but it’s not like she gets to run my life. It’s my life, after all, not hers.”
Sarah was now getting slightly irregular emails at odd times with exciting details about Brazilian street food, or trekking up to Machu Picchu, or seeing penguins on a beach in Chile. Penguins. On a beach. Sarah wouldn’t have believed it if there hadn’t been photos attached of her friend grinning like a loon and dressed like a vagrant, waving at the camera with said penguins in the background.
On the last page of the album was a pair of photos of her parents in a hospital, holding up a baby. Sarah’s father looked proud and terrified and excited and exhausted. She had seen that look on friends and coworkers before and seeing it on her father made her smile. She missed him so much, but almost twenty years had passed, and the ache wasn’t so sharp as it had been. She looked at her mother, lying in the hospital bed.
Elaine’s face held all the same emotions, but there was also an odd wariness there. Like she was worried about something. Sarah frowned at the photo now, her happiness at finding these images of her father evaporating. She closed the album and set it aside. Beneath that were a row of books, clearly journals, held spine-up by a neatly folded lace tablecloth. At the very end was a different book, the spine easily three inches thick. It was bound in cloth and looked a bit like an old-fashioned recipe keeper.
Maybe she could make dinner for the boys next time. It would be a good way to repay them for their help, after all! Sarah pulled the book out and started to flip through it when an envelope fluttered out and landed on the floor by her knee. It lay face up, and across the plain white paper was her own name.
Sarah Rose Richards.
Her hands shook as she opened the envelope and pulled out the letter.
My dearest Sarah,
You have no idea how badly I wish I could say all this to you in person. I wish I didn’t have to say any of it, in fact, because you would already know it. I feel like I’m being shredded from within as I write this, but life doesn’t always go the way we wish it would. If it did, so much would be different right now. I can only hope you will forgive me in the end for not being stronger, not pushing harder.
You know your mother and I had a falling out. I am not angry with her for that, she was grieving and lashed out. I pray every day that you never feel that sort of pain, darling. When your father died it was like her world ended, and all she had left was you, and I understand those feelings far too well. That is what the fight was about, you see. She thought that I would be a danger to you because of what I am.
You see, Sarah, I am a witch. And so are you, if you wish to be. Your power was beginning to stir that summer and I felt it was time to begin to teach you how to use it, but your mother disagreed far more vehemently than I anticipated, and she forbade me from speaking to you about it, then she took you back to New York and refused even my phone calls.
Then, the day you called me out of the blue I cried. I’m sure you heard the tears in my voice, but I was so happy just to speak to you at all. I was overjoyed that your teenage rebellion took the form of keeping in touch with your grandmother, but I had promised your mother not to talk to you about my abilities, and the world they are a part of, which left me with little I could discuss at all since my work and my friends all belong to that world. I hope you can understand that I tried to do what I could, to at least stay close to you without violating the promise I made.
I have left you my journals if you’re not too angry with me to learn more. I started writing them for myself just after your father died, to deal with my own grief and rage at losing my son. But soon, once Elaine cut our contact, I was writing to you, my dear, so I suppose you could consider them a very long letter.
I have also left you a spell book. It’s not like a fairy tale where you find a tome of great wisdom, handed down through the generations or anything like that. I found the book itself, blank, at a flea market where I also found a really lovely china tea cup with yellow roses painted on it. I hope you enjoy the cup as well as the book. In it, I have written out a course of study for you, if you are inclined to learn from me at all after this. I know it’s not enough to make up for the time we never had, but I don’t blame your mother, and I can only feel pity for her and sadness at the lost chances. Please don’t be angry at her yourself, what she did, she did from love for you, and that is something I can respect.
I love you so much, Sarah, and I will continue to love you after I am gone.
Rosemary Richards
It was too much and Sarah curled up on her bed and cried herself to sleep. If she had looked out her window she would have seen a shadow stalk around the edge of her back yard, absorbing the starlight and frosting the grass as it passed.
“Sarah? Are you in there? Are you okay?”
Sarah groaned and rolled over, trying to understand why she felt like she was inside a drum. Oh, the pounding noise, that would explain that. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt swollen and sandy and her head throbbed.
“Sarah! I’m going to come in!” It was a male voice, and familiar, but in her hazy, half-asleep fog she couldn’t place it quite. He sounded slightly hysterical.
“I’m coming!” she called, hoping it would carry to whoever was shouting, and stumbled for the kitchen door. That’s what finally woke her all the way as it registered. The back door? She peeked through the lace curtains over the window next to the kitchen doorway to see Sebastian in the grey dawn light.
“Sebastian, what on Earth are you doing here so early?” she asked. Well, she tried to, but a yawn interrupted her about halfway through. Sebastian let out a relieved sigh.
“It was a crazy night. I was worried. Especially since the last few wights, we found were here on the edge of your yard, even though the lights from your window there were shining out on it a bit. Kai is still chasing the last one down, but I wanted to make sure you were safe.” He sagged against the doorframe, relief and exhaustion showing on his face as he scrubbed a hand over it.
“I was asleep,” she said, glancing around the yard herself and seei
ng nothing. “Um, why don’t you come in and I’ll make some coffee?” She turned inside and didn’t bother waiting. He’d follow, if for no other reason than to find a chair. She bustled around a bit until the machine was gurgling happily away.
“Looks like I really am a witch. Here I am brewing a magic potion first thing in the morning,” she joked. Sebastian didn’t laugh like she expected, and when he looked over at him, he appeared to be dozing off, his head propped up by his hand at the dining table. He looked so wrung out that she let him sleep, and draped a blanket over his shoulders instead while she went to wash her face.
Ten
Sebastian’s head was resting on his arm, sprawled across the table when she came back, and he was snoring very softly. She smiled at him, and tucked the blanket back over his shoulders, and poured herself a cup of coffee. She took the time to pull the curtain back a bit and look out into the yard where the sun was truly up now and pouring into the garden. She really ought to start figuring out what to do about that, she realized. She remembered Gran telling her about planting out her first seeds right after Christmas, so there must be something that needed doing out there. The raised beds looked almost like they were bedding to be planted, now that she was looking at them.
A movement in the bushes caught her attention and as she looked a huge animal stepped out from the leaves and shook itself, settling the fur back over it’s shoulders. It stretched luxuriously for several minutes, then plopped gracelessly down to sit where it was and yawned so hugely she was sure it had unhinged it’s jaw. Sarah had to laugh. She’d never seen a coyote before in real life, but all the photos she’d seen made them look… dignified somehow. This coyote looked more like a goofy puppy than an elegant wild creature.
The sound of her laughter must have carried, even through the window, because the coyote looked over at her once its jaws snapped closed over the yawn. Its bright yellow eyes seemed to glow like neon, and as they met her own they seemed to acknowledge her as if greeting a friend across a room. The creature stood, shook itself all over, and started walking over to her kitchen door.
Sarah startled back, letting the curtain drop from her hand. Could a coyote break down a door? It was pretty solid, but… She jumped, sloshing coffee all over herself at the sound of the knock. It was a very human sound, not at all like an animal scratching on a door to be let in, so she reached a shaking hand out to the knob.
She hesitated for a moment, then, in a rush of courage she yanked it open.
“Morning,” Kai said, “Didn’t mean to startle you, sorry. Did Sebastian come by this…” he trailed off when he saw his brother’s sleeping form slumped over on Sarah’s table. “Oh. Well, that’s ok then.”
“Er, was that you then?” Sarah asked. She knew she sounded like an idiot, but couldn’t stop the question from slipping out. “The giant coyote, I mean?”
“Oh. Yeah. That was me. Miss Rosie talked about you so much that I guess I feel like we’re old friends. I forget that you don’t know everything about us. Sorry.” He looked bashful. The wind blew a few leaves in the door and made Sarah shiver as it felt icy where the coffee had landed.
“I’m such a jerk, come in, please. Please, get yourself some coffee while I clean myself up.” She waved him to the kitchen and he shot her a grateful look.
“Thanks. It’s been a long-ass night. I think I only got a couple of hours of sleep in before all hell broke loose.” He said, rummaging in the cupboards to find the mugs. “I’m just glad I was bored enough to go to bed early last night.”
“What happened?” Sarah asked. “Sebastian seemed a bit stressed out, too, but he zonked out before I could ask about it. He said he was worried about me?” She dried her hands off with a kitchen rag then went back to the entryway to wipe the coffee off the floor.
“Jennifer’s son chased a wight off the playground at the Village last night, then came to let us know. It was only about midnight, so there are still sometimes high school kids out screwing around on a nice weekend night like it was, so we all sort of went out to make sure everything was quiet again.” He sat down next to Sebastian at the table and frowned at him. “It wasn’t quiet at all,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Sarah leaned against the sink, her fresh cup of coffee held carefully in both hands. She shivered again, the cold coming from inside her this time.
“Twelve. Twelve wights in the neighborhood. It was a complete mess out there last night. The Andersons came out with us, all three of them, and we patrolled around the Village, then out into the streets of the neighborhood and fought off twelve freaking wights.” Kai slumped over the table now, too. He didn’t doze off, but Sarah could see the exhaustion written in every line of his body as he stared blankly into his coffee. To see these two men so nervous shook Sarah. They were hands down the most powerful men— creatures?— she’d ever met, the supernatural energy glaringly obvious to her now, and if they were worried, what did that mean for her? Sarah’s brain churned over the implications of what Kai just said and something else popped to the front.
“Wait. I thought you guys could turn into foxes?”
“Yeah, I can. But Seb and I have different fathers. Mine was an American spirit, so I have a few choices.” Kai shrugged and drained his coffee mug. “I seem to have an easier time with the wights in that form.”
The wights, right. Sarah had to put the coffee cup down on the counter, her hands were shaking so badly that she was in danger of spilling this cup all over as well. She leaned on the counter, trying to find some comfort in its immobility and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a hand on her back.
“Hey, hey, it’s ok. We chased them off, and it’s broad daylight now. You’re fine.” Kai tried to soothe her, but she could feel the hysteria starting to simmer in her belly.
“What about tonight? Night falls every day, you know. It gets dark out there every day, and it’s still winter! Sebastian said there was one in my yard? Near my house, where I was sleeping!” Sarah looked up at Kai. “What do I do then? Hmm? What do I do at night when I’m all alone here and those things are out there surrounding my house?” She heard the shrill edge of panic in her voice and didn’t even try to smooth it out. This was about as appropriate a moment for panic as she could think of. “Terrifying nightmare monsters made out of negative emotions and literal darkness are stalking around outside my home and there is nothing I can do to fight them, and you’re telling me it will be okay? Are you insane?”
“Sarah?” She had been shouting and now glanced over at Sebastian. He sat up, his hair sticking up in the front where his head had rested on his arm and the blanket was sliding down his back to puddle on the chair seat. He looked adorably confused, and that thought slowed her rush into complete, blind panic. Kai put his arm around her shoulders and she let him steer her to a chair, which she dropped heavily into.
“It’s too much,” she said. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heels of her hands over them until she saw a TV static of lights behind her eyelids. Her whole head throbbed with a pain that trickled down her neck. “It’s just too much. I can’t do this. Gran was a witch and apparently that’s why Mom hated her I guess? And there’s people that aren’t people, and there’s monsters outside my house at night— really truly monsters in real life— and I can’t deal with this. Mom’s right. I should just sell the house and go home. I don’t belong here in all this stuff.” She felt the cold on her cheeks and realized that she was crying. She didn’t care. She didn’t see Kai and Sebastian trade glances and frown. Kai shrugged and shook his head, and Sebastian looked almost mutinous.
“We may not be entirely human, but we are still people.” He stood and stalked over to the cupboards to start looking for a mug. She could hear the tension in his voice and looked up. His face was strained and he was scowling. Sarah just blinked after him. Across the table, Kai sighed and scrubbed his hand over his head.
“I know you didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s a lot to take in, that the world doe
sn’t work the way you thought it did.” Kai said quietly. “But we’ve had some… well, some bad experiences when we were kids, especially Seb. We moved away from here when he was pretty young, to a neighborhood in Florida where there wasn’t the support we have here. It took some adjustment.”
At the counter, Sebastian growled and shoved the coffee pot back into its slot.
“Adjustment,” He scoffed, then turned to glare at Sarah. “They threw fucking rocks at us. I was three, and my first really clear memory is of other kids throwing rocks at me. We had to move. Twice.” Kai nodded and she glanced at him. He looked tired and sad, and something in his eyes let Sarah know that Sebastian probably either didn’t know or didn’t remember the worst of it.
“Yeah, well. It would have probably been different if we hadn’t lived here first, honestly.” Kai said. “Or if you’d been a little older when she did move, Sebastian.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked, her own problems subsiding a bit as her curiosity grew.
“Well, here at the Village it doesn’t much matter if we show our less human side sometimes. But in most of the rest of the world, it scares people. So when we’d slip a bit as kids, it didn’t make any difference here. We’d just get warned off, like we’d been cussing or running in the hallways or something. It wasn’t a big deal. But in Florida, well…”
“In Florida it was a big deal.” Sarah finished his sentence. She turned back to Sebastian. “I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that until two days ago I knew for certain that there was fantasy and then there was real life, and now I know that’s not true and… God. Now I’m a horrible person on top of everything else. I really don’t belong here, do I?” It was Sarah’s turn to slump over the table. She heard someone sigh, and wrapped her hands over her head to shut out the sounds of the others in the room. It’s not like she had a lot of friends back in New York City, but at least she hadn’t horribly offended any of them by denying their… their personness. She hoped. And now she’d managed to piss off the two friends she had out here. Last straw, meet camel’s back. Sorry about breaking ya. She thought miserably. Sarah sensed someone moving and suddenly felt the weight of the blanket get draped over her shoulders, and she felt Sebastian crouch beside her chair.
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