by Teresa Roman
Chapter 21
When I woke up, the covers were pulled over me and I lay in Devin’s arms. I turned over, smiling, happy, but then reality hit. We weren’t sharing a hotel room in San Diego because the two of us had managed to take a vacation. Less than forty-eight hours ago I’d watched a demon transform into a pile ash after Devin stabbed him through the chest.
Devin’s eyes flicked open. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Who said I was thinking anything?”
“I can always tell when something is on your mind.”
“Don’t tell me you have psychic powers, too?”
“I don’t need them when it comes to you.” Devin brushed my hair back with his hand. “You wear your feelings all over your face.”
“Well . . . I guess I’m just wondering what our plan is now,” I confessed.
“The plan is to get rid of Zoran. I’m not exactly sure how, but I’ll figure it out.”
“By ‘get rid of’ do you mean kill?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
I sat up and shook my head, not believing that my life had come to this. I didn’t want Devin to have blood on his hands because of me, although I supposed it was too late for that. I’d always thought of Devin as gentle, but I realized that, when it came to me, he could be fierce. My mind flashed back to the times he’d lost his temper. It was always when he thought someone was mistreating me.
Devin put his hand on my shoulder, and I turned around to look at him. “It’s kill or be killed. You have a beautiful heart, Lilli, so it’s hard for you to understand evil, but that’s what Zoran is.”
“I know, but . . .”
“He sent a demon after you; that should be enough to convince you of what needs to be done.”
I didn’t like what Devin was saying. Not only because the idea of him going toe to toe with a powerful witch scared me, but because I knew he was right. Devin had once told me that humans and witches lived by a different code, that things were different in the Wilds than they were here, and I was finally beginning to understand.
Without replying, I crawled out of bed and grabbed my duffel bag.
“Where are you going?” Devin asked.
“I really need a shower,” I said, heading to the bathroom. And to clear my head.
I wasn’t used to staying in hotel rooms—actually I wasn’t used to staying anywhere except the home I’d grown up in—so it took me a while to figure out how to get the shower running and the water to the right temperature. Once I stepped in the tub and water sprayed over my body I took a few deep breaths and relaxed as the warm water helped to smooth out some of the kinks I’d gotten from being cramped up inside the car for so many hours.
As I thought about the conversation Devin and I just had, I wondered if the predicament we were in was as simple as Devin made it out to be. What would happen after Zoran was out of the picture? Something told me it wouldn’t be that easy, that it wouldn’t just end there. I shuddered at the idea of spending the rest of my life dodging demons and vengeful witches. How had this become my life?
*
I’d always wanted to vacation in San Diego, but despite the sunshine, perfect blue sky and swaying palm trees, I couldn’t take my mind off the reason we were here. During breakfast Devin tried to coax a smile out of me, but I couldn’t muster one. He suggested a walk on the beach, and I only agreed because the alternative, staying holed up in our hotel room all day, was a worse option.
Neither of us brought the subject of Zoran up while we walked along the shore dodging kids playing in the surf. The cool water felt good on my feet and for a while I was able to let go of what had happened over the past few days.
By the time Devin and I returned to our room we were both covered in a mess of salt and sand, so I headed straight for the shower. I was still washing my hair when I heard my cell phone and recognized the ring tone as Katy’s. I toweled off and wondered what I would tell her when I eventually talked to her. I could only avoid her calls for so long before she’d start to worry. A short trip was easy enough to explain, but I had no idea how long it would be before it was safe to return to Crescent City. Eventually she’d start asking questions I couldn’t answer.
After I was done in the bathroom I asked Devin about trying to bewitch Katy, but he said it wasn’t something you could do over the phone.
“Just tell her we decided to take a trip together,” he said.
“I suppose letting her know the truth is not an option.” I wasn’t very good at lying, but if I told Katy the truth she’d think I was crazy, so it wasn’t like there was any other choice.
“No! You can’t tell her anything. She can never know what we really are.” There was an unmistakable urgency in his voice.
I knew Devin’s fear came from the stories he’d heard about the witch trials, but my aunt would never let anything like that happen to me. “I trust Katy. If I told her about us being witches, she would keep our secret.” That is, if she even believed me.
“Humans may enjoy the idea of us, they may even like reading fairy tales to their children and watching scary vampire movies, but that’s because to them we aren’t real,” Devin continued. “And that’s how it has to stay. Like it or not, humans and magic are not meant to mix.”
“Then how is it that my mother fell in love with my dad?”
“Love is always a mystery, Lilli. Even knowing what it could cost her, something about your father must have made her willing to break the rules.”
And look where it got me. I was literally running for my life because of the rules my mother had broken.
Chapter 22
I spent most of the night tossing and turning, unable to shut off my thoughts until well after midnight. By the time I got out of bed the next morning, it was almost ten. I didn’t normally sleep that late. Devin was already dressed. He sat in the large armchair that stood in the corner of the room, waiting for me to wake up. He smiled as I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
“Are we going somewhere?” I asked.
Devin got up and came to sit beside me. “I thought this would be a nice place to spend the day.” He handed me a brochure that read Balboa Park across the front page that must have come from the lobby.
“Do you really think it’s safe for us to go?” I asked, looking through the pamphlet. “This place seems like a pretty popular tourist attraction.”
“The clerk downstairs assured me that the park is quite large, and, if privacy is what we want, we should be able to find it,” Devin replied. A smile spread across his face. “But if you prefer, we can stay here instead.” He brushed my hair back over my shoulders. The feel of his fingers on my neck sent shivers through my body. I was almost tempted to pull him back in bed beside me.
“No. I don’t want to stay inside all day.” I could see that it was sunny outside. Even with the curtains drawn, the sun’s rays still splashed into the room from the crack between where the curtains met. So despite Devin’s offer, I got out of bed and readied myself for the day.
We stopped at a bagel shop, where we bought a few things to take with us. At the park, we wandered along a path that sliced through endless green lawns edged with towering palm trees. Balboa Park turned out to be enormous, and a bigger tourist attraction than I’d anticipated, drawing in a pretty large crowd. When Devin had said that he’d found somewhere private for us to spend the day, I wasn’t expecting to have to wade through so many people to get to it. It took some doing, but eventually we found a spot away from the park’s other visitors.
I lay a blanket that I’d grabbed from the trunk of my car down on the grass in a shady spot. It was a perfect day, the sun was out which made it hot, almost too hot, but underneath the shade of a tree the temperature was perfect.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I said. The quiet splendor of our surroundings gave me a momentary sense of peace even though I knew that there was no real peace for me as long as Zoran was hunting me. My head filled first with worry,
then frustration, and resentment. “Have you come up with any ideas on how to get Zoran off our backs yet?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, but nothing definite,” Devin replied.
“Isn’t there some sort of magical police force that we could turn to? There has to be someone who could help us.”
“There’s the Council of Witches, but they don’t concern themselves with these types of situations. They’re more concerned with the greater good rather than personal squabbles.”
“Really? So the killing of an innocent girl boils down to nothing more than a personal problem. That can’t be right.”
“You have to look at things from the Council’s perspective. Your mother took a huge risk coming here. Then she took an even greater risk by falling in love and having a child with a human. Humans aren’t supposed to know we exist. If either of us went to the Council, they’d be more focused on making sure that we weren’t exposed than saving us from Zoran. They may even view him getting rid of you as a convenient way to make sure magic isn’t exposed.”
“That can’t be all they care about.”
“No, it’s not. In fact, the Council’s main concern is to enforce the prohibition on the use of dark magic. Practicing it is strictly forbidden in the Wilds.”
“If the Council doesn’t want witches to use dark magic, then they can’t be okay with Zoran sending a demon after me. Maybe if we told them . . .”
“We have no proof, Lilli. And without proof, they won’t believe either of us.”
“Wouldn’t they at least look into whatever we told them?”
Devin sighed. “I wish it were that easy, but when it comes to Zoran the Council isn’t exactly impartial.”
“And why is that?”
“Remember the dream you told me about, the one you had at my house?”
“The one where that man got killed by demons in front of his family?”
“Yes. From what you described, I’m almost certain that the man you watched die was Zoran’s father. He was a Messenger . . .”
“Wait. What’s a Messenger?”
“Messengers work for the Council. They do everything from taking care of their compound to protecting them. Which is why, at one point in time, almost all of the Council’s Messengers were eliminated by demons. Zoran’s father was one of those Messengers that got killed. After his death, Zoran’s mother was so heartbroken and buried in grief that she wasn’t able to care for her child properly, so members of the Council raised him as their own. They aren’t allowed to marry or have children, so caring for Zoran made them very attached to him and clouded their judgment. They aren’t likely to believe you, me or even Naiara if we came to them claiming their precious adopted son is in league with demons. They may even think we are trying to deflect attention away from ourselves by making Zoran look bad.”
I folded my legs and leaned forward, pressing my elbows to my knees. The peaceful feeling from earlier was eclipsed by a sense of frustration at how heavily the odds were stacked against us. “Can’t you cast some sort of spell like my mother did? Maybe a memory spell,” I suggested, not even sure that such a thing existed. “Something that would make Zoran forget that my mother had a daughter at all.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy.” Devin sat up and took my hands in his. “I don’t have the same power with spells that your mother does.”
“This feels hopeless.” I let out a deep sigh as my shoulders slumped. “And it’s so hard for me to understand. I get that my mother betrayed Zoran, but it happened so long ago. Why can’t he just get over it?”
“You have to stop applying human rules to supernatural creatures, Lilli. What may seem like a long time for humans isn’t for witches. Perhaps that’s why we behave so differently. We cling to old traditions that humans have let go of long ago. We can be prideful, jealous, and possessive, and when it comes to matters of the heart, we follow a different set of rules.”
“Which is why Zoran would’ve never just let my mother go to be with the man she really loved?”
“Never. Witches are tempestuous creatures, and the fact that Zoran is such a powerful witch who so many of our kind admire, worship even, makes him feel free to do as he wishes. We don’t have the same control of our emotions the way humans do, especially when it comes to love. What humans here call reason, we think of as weakness, foolishness. We practically worship our mates. Zoran will always think of your mother as his. The fact that she loved another man, a human, and bore his child isn’t something he can accept, even if he wanted to. People would see him as weak if he did.”
I sat quietly, not knowing what to say.
“Does it scare you, the things I just explained?” Devin asked, his voice gentle.
“A little,” I admitted, looking into his eyes. “You don’t seem anything like what you just described, though. You’re so kind and patient. I can’t picture you angry or possessive.”
“I’ve tried my very best to behave around you, but if you think I’m none of those things, then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in me,” Devin said. “There were many times when I caught a man staring at you and had to restrain myself from saying that you were mine, even though I had no right to, and at Tim’s party . . .” He shook his head. “Maybe it’s better I don’t tell you what I wanted to do when that boy was lusting after you.”
“Girls look at you too, you know; lots of them, and I don’t like it either.” I left out the more colorful emotions that came over me whenever I sensed someone’s interest in Devin.
“But I’m yours completely and nothing will change that. You’re the only one I see, even when you’re not by my side. I close my eyes and it’s always your face in my mind, everywhere I go.”
Devin pulled me onto his lap. First his lips, then his tongue grazed my neck and he inhaled deeply as he pushed his hands through my hair. I reached for the back of his head, redirecting it so I could press my lips to his. “My Lilli,” he said between kisses.
Chapter 23
After returning to our hotel room, Katy called again just as Devin locked the door behind us. I ignored my phone once more, still not sure what I would tell her. I knew I didn’t have much time before I’d have to come up with a cover story. I just prayed she hadn’t called work looking for me. Devin had spoken with our manager Rob on the drive to San Diego and told him that the two of us weren’t coming back to work anymore, which meant if Katy called the Tides asking for me, whoever picked up the phone would tell her I’d quit. I could already picture her reaction to that.
Three days had passed since we’d left Crescent City. Devin said that was enough time for Zoran to realize his tracker wasn’t coming back and that finding me wouldn’t be as easy as he thought.
“When he realizes you’re not in Crescent City anymore, Zoran will have something of yours brought to him so he can try and use a locator spell,” Devin said as the two of us sat on the edge of our bed eating Chinese food from white take-out boxes. I didn’t bother to remind Devin that Zoran already had something of mine—my graduation picture. “That means we’ll need to be more careful about where we go. Since neither one of us are using magic, the spell will only be reveal our general vicinity.”
“I wish I knew how to cast spells,” I said bitterly. “If I did I’d use that locator spell to find Zoran and kill him myself, just to end this once and for all.”
Devin’s face froze. “Don’t say that again. You have to promise me you won’t go doing anything that can put you in danger.”
“Why is it okay for you to take chances, but not me?”
“I know what I’m up against. You don’t”
“Well, then maybe you should tell me.”
“You’re right, I should.” Devin set his take-out box down on the side table. “Zoran is almost as powerful as your mother is. Besides his active power, which is formidable enough, he’s also talented at spell-casting.”
“What is an active power?”
“A witch’s ability. As you a
lready know, your mother’s is seeing. Zoran’s is telekinesis; he can move things with his mind. If he wanted to, he could throw me across this room with nothing more than a blink of his eyes.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded.
“You see why I don’t want you going after him on your own? If Zoran is to be taken out, we need the element of surprise on our side. Otherwise, it won’t work.”
“How do we stand a chance against him then?” I asked, realizing why it was taking Devin so long to come up with a plan.
“I have an idea, but it’s getting late and I want to work things out in my head a bit more before I tell you. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
*
The next morning, I woke to the sound of Katy’s ringtone. I reached for my phone and glanced at the number, even though I already knew who it was.
“You really should pick it up,” Devin said.
Hesitantly, I followed his advice. “Hey Katy,” I said, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Finally! Where on earth have you been and why don’t you answer your phone anymore? I left you like a hundred messages.”
Sorry, Katy,” I mumbled. “It was only three, though.”
“Three what?”
“Three messages.”
“Very funny. My point is, you usually return my calls right away,” she said. “Where are you? And why didn’t you tell me you were going out of town?”
“What makes you think I’m out of town?”
“When you didn’t pick up your cell I called you at home. Your friend picked up, the one you asked to housesit, and he told me you’d left town.”
“My friend?” Dread crept its way through my chest. Someone had been at my house searching for me when Katy called and answered the phone hoping whoever was on the line might help him track me down somehow.
“Yes, Lilli, your friend. What’s wrong with you? You sound . . . strange.”
“I . . . I just woke up.”
“Well, are you going to tell me where you are?”
“Devin and I decided to take a trip for a few days, get out of Crescent City. We’re in . . . Portland. We drove up to Oregon.” It was better she didn’t know where I really was, in case she accidentally told someone who shouldn’t know.
