“Huh.” Jazz played with the tag end of her toast. “Well, I screw up a lot, so I guess I can’t hold that against you.” She shrugged. “And let’s face it, I don’t really have any other place to go. Except back into the forest, and you didn’t want me to do that.”
“I still don’t,” Bella said. “It’s even more dangerous out there than it is here.”
“Maybe I’d better just take my chances and stay here with you,” Jazz said, trying not to obviously hold her breath. “I mean, if that’s still okay.”
Bella stared at her for a minute, as if considering factors that Jazz couldn’t see. “I’ve been told I’m not safe to be around,” she said finally. “You might want to keep that in mind. I can’t promise to keep you safe. Not even from me.”
She got up from the table, grabbed her helmet, and stomped out the door, leaving Jazz sitting there with her mouth open and a crumbled mess of cheese and bread on her plate. She pushed it away; she’d lost her appetite anyway.
“Um, was that a yes?” she asked Koshka, only a little plaintively. “I really couldn’t tell.”
“It was a yes,” the giant cat said. He reached out a claw to snag Bella’s uneaten breakfast. “Just not a very enthusiastic one. Do me a favor, kid. Don’t grow up to be a redhead. Some of them are very moody.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Jazz said in a quiet voice. “I’ve been trying not to be any trouble.”
Koshka put his huge paws up on the tabletop and leaned in to lick her face gently. It felt like someone was rubbing sandpaper over her skin, but she liked it anyway.
“You’ve been just fine,” the dragon-cat said. “It’s not you. It’s her. She’s afraid of hurting you.”
TWENTY-ONE
“I’VE BEEN AROUND plenty of people who hurt me,” Jazz said in a quiet voice. “Most of them tried a lot harder than Bella to pretend they were nice on the surface, when there was a lot of ugly crap lurking underneath. I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out who’s a threat and who isn’t. I know I haven’t known you guys for very long, but somehow I don’t see Bella as the type. Yeah, she might say something that hurts my feelings, but even that she wouldn’t do on purpose.”
Koshka nodded. “You are right about that, although it is the ‘not on purpose’ part she’s worried about.” He patted the floor next to him. “Come down here and sit next to me. I want to tell you a story, and looking up at you is giving me a crick in my neck.”
“I don’t think cats get cricks in their necks,” Jazz said, but she slid out of her seat and onto the floor anyway. The wood was smooth and cool, and a light breeze crept through the open window over her head, smelling like forest and last night’s rain. Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. “What do you mean you want to tell me a story? We’re in the middle of, like, a serious talk.”
“It’s a serious story,” the dragon-cat said. “It’s about something that happened to Bella when she wasn’t much older than you are now. It isn’t really my story to tell, but I think it might help you understand why she is reacting the way she is.” He shook himself, so bits of gray and brown fur floated up into the sunbeams, then stretched his long legs out in front of him as he settled into a comfortable position.
“I don’t know what happened between Bella and Sam,” he started to say.
Jazz stared at her toes. They were pretty dirty. “I have a pretty good idea,” she said, and wrinkled her nose.
Koshka smacked her more or less gently with one oversized paw. “Don’t interrupt me, youngling. I’m telling you a story here.”
“Sorry, Koshka.”
“Hrmph,” the dragon-cat said, then waited a minute to make sure she was paying attention.
“As I was saying,” he said, giving her a mock glare, “I don’t know what happened between Sam and Bella, but whatever it was, it seems to have ripped the scab off a scar that has never really healed.”
“On Sam, you mean?” Jazz asked, confused.
“On Bella,” Koshka corrected. “It isn’t the kind of scar you can see on the surface. Now are you going to let me tell you the story or not?”
Jazz mimed zipping her lips shut and throwing away the key. “As if,” the cat muttered. “We should be so lucky.
“Once upon a time, about thirty years ago, there was a Baba Yaga in training named Bella,” Koshka said.
“Thirty years ago! But Bella can’t be older than her late twenties,” Jazz said.
“Most Baba Yagas are older than they look. It has to do with drinking the Water of Life and Death,” he said. “Now, about that shutting up?”
Jazz subsided, digesting the fact that Bella was truly magical. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t known that, but most of the time when Bella wasn’t doing some kind of spell, she seemed so normal, Jazz kind of forgot.
“She was still learning under the guidance of her mentor,” Koshka went on. “But like most teenagers, she thought she knew more than she did.”
Jazz opened her mouth to protest, thought about it, then closed her mouth again. The cat gave a small, satisfied nod.
“Bella’s mentor, Berta, had told her many times that it was risky for witches to mix too much with Humans, especially witches who hadn’t finished all their training yet. Bella was, in fact, quite advanced in the practice of magic, but she still had problems sometimes controlling her temper. Magic is best practiced with a cool head, or not at all.”
Jazz nodded. She’d figured that out already after only a few days.
“Of course, sixteen-year-olds are generally not known for their good sense, or for listening to their elders, and Bella managed to make friends with a Human girl of her own age who lived near where she and Berta had been staying for the bulk of her teen years. Bella and the Human girl spent every spare minute together, although for a Baba Yaga in training, that wasn’t much time, and talked about everything.”
“They were BFFs,” Jazz said, understanding. “It’s kind of hard to imagine a young Bella with a BFF.”
“A beefy-what?” Koshka twitched his whiskers forward and looked irritated.
“A BFF. Best friends forever.”
“Oh. Yes. I suppose they thought they were,” Koshka said. “For a time.”
“So what happened?” Jazz asked.
“There was a boy,” Koshka said.
“Ah. It figures.”
“Indeed. Bella and her friend both took a liking to a local boy, who flirted equally with both of them. I suppose you could say he led them on, but they were all young, and I don’t suppose he knew any better.”
Koshka yawned, showing sharp teeth and clearly expressing his low opinion of Humans in their youth. Jazz supposed that teenage dragons didn’t have the same issues. She made a mental note to ask, later. Maybe.
“And then he picked Bella,” Jazz said with certainty. After all, she was Bella. Even as a teen she must have been seriously freaking cool.
“No,” Koshka said. “He picked her friend, Lily. Lily was pretty and blond and cheerful. Bella was, well, Bella. Complicated. And, of course, she lived in the woods and had many secrets, and a mysterious guardian who didn’t approve of visitors. Teenage boy visitors especially. But mostly Lily was normal, and of course, Bella wasn’t. How could she have been? She was a Baba Yaga in training.”
“Oh,” Jazz said, disappointed on the younger Bella’s behalf. “That must have made her really sad.”
Koshka cocked one furry eyebrow. “Sad would have been okay. But Bella came across the boy and her friend kissing one day in a meadow, and she lost her temper. All Baba Yagas have an affinity to a particular element, and Bella’s is fire. Then, as now, she occasionally had problems controlling that affinity when she was nervous or upset. And that day, she was very, very upset.”
Jazz got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, like the time she ate bad clams as a kid. “What did sh
e do?” she whispered, pretty sure she didn’t want to know. Koshka’s story was clearly a fairy tale, and they rarely ended well for everyone. Not the old traditional ones.
“The boy was mostly just frightened out of his wits,” Koshka said. “But Lily was burned very badly. Badly enough to scar her for life, maybe even to have killed her.”
“Oh no,” Jazz said, tears welling up in her eyes. Poor Lily. Poor Bella. “But she didn’t mean to harm Lily, did she?”
“No, of course she didn’t. Bella was just surprised and hurt and upset, and she lost control for a moment. But a moment was all it took, and the damage was done. Bella was completely distraught at what she’d done, and the boy ran away, maybe to get help, maybe just to get as far away from her as possible, she didn’t know.
“So she did the only thing she could do, and went to her mentor for help. Luckily, the meadow where it happened wasn’t far from where they lived in their caravan—”
“This caravan?” Jazz gazed around at the small space in wonder.
“Yes, this caravan. It was bigger then.” Koshka shrugged, used to enchanted huts that became caravans of whatever size was needed at the time. “Anyway, Berta was able to heal the girl, using her magic and a tiny bit of the Water of Life and Death.”
He stared at her intently. “Which she wasn’t supposed to do, by the way, and for which she was later punished by the Queen of the Otherworld, so don’t expect Bella to use it on you if you do something stupid and break a leg.”
Jazz swallowed hard at the thought of the powerful Queen. Bella had told her a few stories about the Otherworld. Now those were real fairy tales. “I’ll try not to break a leg,” she said. “So everything worked out okay. I mean, Lily was healed, and Bella learned her lesson, so it was, like, a happy ending after all.”
“Far from happy,” Koshka said with a sigh that rattled the windows. “Far, far from it. Lily might have been healed, but she remembered what it felt like to nearly burn to death, and she was completely traumatized. She never spoke to Bella again, wouldn’t even see her when she came to try and apologize. Not that it mattered, because once Bella put on such a spectacular display of magic, she and her mentor had to move away.”
“Oh.”
“As for Bella learning her lesson, well, she learned one, all right, but I’m not sure it was the right one. Berta reminded her—repeatedly and forcefully, since she was still stinging from the Queen’s ire—that it wasn’t safe for Baba Yagas and Humans to mix. At least, not for any longer than it took to get the job done, if there was one, and never as anything closer than passing acquaintances. And especially not in Bella’s case, because she couldn’t be trusted not to lose control.”
“Oh,” Jazz said again, feeling like she should come up with something more profound but failing. She knew all too well what it felt like to be alone, too different to really fit in, or too temporary to make friends. She’d had some, over the years, but sooner or later she’d get shuffled off to some new family and have to leave them behind. “At least she had her mentor. And you.”
“She did,” Koshka agreed quietly. “And she would tell you she has a very satisfactory life, and indeed she does.”
“But now she has Sam,” Jazz said. “Isn’t that going to get complicated?”
“I suspect it already has,” the dragon-cat said. “Plus, of course, there is you.”
“Me?” Jazz was confused for a minute, then remembered the reason Koshka had decided to tell her this story in the first place. “You mean, that’s what she was talking about when she said it might not be safe to be around her? She thinks she might lose control and set me on fire like she did her friend?” She could hear her voice go up in indignation, but she didn’t care. “She would never do that to me. I know she wouldn’t. I mean, yes, every once in a while she gets kind of twitchy, usually when Sam’s around, and maybe lets loose with a couple of sparks or something, but I can’t imagine her actually hurting someone on purpose.”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” Koshka said sadly. “But try convincing her of that.”
* * *
ALEXEI COULD HEAR the witch muttering to herself as she walked in circles around the interior of the cave, occasionally stopping to glare at him or the other Riders, but not actually bothering to interact with them. He should have been relieved by that, but instead, it made him even more worried. Alexei wasn’t used to worrying; he was a man of action, and liked to leave the worrying to Gregori, the deep thinker. But this morning, it seemed like there was enough worry to go around.
“Pah,” Brenna said as she passed by him on her current circuit. “Interfering brat.”
Brat? What brat? Was she talking about him? Alexei had been called a lot of things in his long life, but that was a new one.
Brenna had been out of sorts—even for her—ever since last night. She’d been riding high initially, her skin practically crackling with energy from the magic she’d generated with her torture of the three of them. The storm she’d created had roared and growled like a lion, raging so strong they could feel it even in their cavern underneath the mountain, and a miniature aurora borealis roiled above the cauldron as the spell Brenna cast grew stronger and stronger. Rivulets of water had cascaded down the incline from the cave entrance, adding “wet” to their catalog of misery.
Alexei could hear Mikhail off to his left, still coughing raggedly from the dampness and clutching his side when he thought no one was looking. Alexei himself didn’t much care if he was wet or dry; he was like a bear that way, Barbara once said. What he cared about was that at the height of the storm, when Brenna was at her most twisted and triumphant glory, the storm suddenly abated. The winds stopped howling down the small chimneys in the rock, the water had slowed to a trickle, and they no longer heard the crash and rumble of thunder overhead.
Initially, the Riders had all been relieved. Even Mikhail, barely conscious and bleeding pinkly into the puddle he lay sprawled in, managed to muster up a tiny smile. They’d assumed the spell had failed, or that the storm had merely run its course.
Until Brenna let out a shriek louder than any crack of thunder and started hurling things around the cave. She’d kept it up for ages, ranting unintelligibly and cursing in more languages than Alexei had been aware she knew. Her rage had sparked small fires, igniting unlit candles and blowing one lantern right off the wall in a splinter of glass and molten wax and flying shards of copper. Moss shriveled and turned first brown and then gray before crumbling into dust, and the air was filled with dust devils and bits of debris.
The Riders had hunkered down the best they could, with no way to hide or run from the chaos. Alexei had simply put his arms over his head to try and protect it and stayed crouched like that until eventually silence fell like a shroud, broken only by the sound of water dripping and the clank of something falling off the table as it settled back down on all four legs.
When he’d looked back up, Brenna had fallen into an uneasy doze, slumped on the pile of rags she’d piled on a high corner shelf of rock she used as a bed. Even in her sleep she’d muttered and groaned, and now, awake again in the dim light of the dawn, she was doing it still, pacing in circles that she periodically interrupted to pick up something she’d thrown in her fury and place it back where it belonged.
Only the gigantic cauldron still steamed unperturbed on the top of the worktable, the occasional bubble working its way to the surface and letting out a noxious odor as it popped.
“That’s it,” Brenna suddenly said. “I’ve had enough of her foolish interference. No one has any respect for their elders anymore.” She turned and glared at Alexei, who glared right back.
“Don’t look at me, you old hag; you’re not my elder. Not by a couple of thousand years. And I wouldn’t call this”—Alexei waved his arm around to indicate the dank cave and his captured brothers—“respecting your elders.”
“I’m not talkin
g about you, you stupid oaf. You’re a walking, talking mountain; I don’t expect respect from you, or intelligence either, for that matter. I’m talking about her. That damned Baba Yaga. She did this. Interfering with my spell. Meddling with things she has no business meddling with. Thwarting me.” She hissed that last bit through clenched teeth, hair frizzing even worse than usual in the damp air.
Alexei thought she looked every bit the wicked witch who was used to scare small children, even without the iron teeth of the old Russian tales.
As usual, it was Gregori who picked the important element out of Brenna’s rambling speech. “There is a Baba Yaga here?”
They exchanged glances, and Alexei could feel his heartbeat echo in his ears. A Baba Yaga had come. Perhaps they were saved after all. The relief was almost painful.
“There is,” Brenna said, spittle flying from her lips to sizzle in the fire as she spat out the words. “That damned redhead, Bella. I don’t know how long she has been here, or what brought her in the first place. Maybe the locals called her in to deal with the fires, idiots that they are.”
Alexei’s heart sank. Perhaps the Baba Yaga hadn’t gotten their note after all. If she came in answer to a summons for help, she could be a few miles away and not even realize they were there. After all, the last time they’d seen Bella, he and Gregori had been racing through Montana on their motorcycles, hell-bent on finding Mikhail. Alexei wasn’t even sure Bella had seen them wave as they sped past her, too intent on their mission to stop and chat.
“If Bella is here,” Gregori said calmly, with the assurance Alexei lacked, “it is only a matter of time before she finds us and sees what you have done. She will tell the Queen, and this time you will not merely be banished from the Otherworld. You know Her Majesty will have you put to death for this travesty. Best you start running now, before it is too late.”
“Pah,” Brenna said with a sneer. “Bella may be a Baba Yaga, but I have been one for a lot longer. I have more experience, and even with her pesky interruption, last night’s storm did enough damage to the forest to boost my power considerably. I am this close to perfecting the spell—there is no way I am letting some snip of a girl stand in my way.”
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