by R. M. Webb
“Promise?”
“Yep.”
“He didn’t mean it.”
“I’m sure he didn’t.”
She lifts her head from my shoulder and sighs. “We were all in the courtyard …” Her voice cracks and she swallows hard.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She takes a breath. “I want to. It’s important.” Celine’s eyes grow sad, but the darkness that had encroached on her light doesn’t reappear. “We were in the courtyard. We had to fight. Not to the death, but, just to, like, hurt each other. I refused to use my dark magic, so that made it real hard for me. Bo, he was just as awful back then as he is now. He went right for me. I could reflect all his spells, but I was getting real tired.” Celine looks at me. “Noah was aiming for Bo.”
As the realization of what happened sinks in, my stomach falls into my feet. Celine looks to be only eleven or twelve and Noah is her younger brother. So he was at least ten, maybe younger, when Celine’s life was in danger and he lashed out at her aggressor. Only, instead of hurting the bad guy, he killed his sister.
“So, you see, it wasn’t his fault.”
I snuggle into Celine and try to wrap my mind around a place where children are made to fight each other, to hurt each other. A place where they surely learned to kill like I’ve learned to kill. A place where most of them ended up as remnants, haunting vacant rooms and swimming in sadness. This isn’t a happy place.
As Celine drifts off leaning against my shoulder, I begin working on a plan that will get her out of here. She deserves better than this. And I’m gonna be the one to give it to her.
Chapter Seventeen
“Have you tried to reach out to Noah?” I ask Celine. There’s an idea just starting to take shape in my head.
She lowers her eyes to her hands, her eyelashes - so blonde they’re nearly invisible - brushing her cheek. “I can’t leave this place.”
Ugh. My heart just keeps breaking for Celine over and over again. How can this be fair? She did everything she could to live her life the right way, and succeeded more than so many people I’ve met. And now, her reward is being trapped in this awful building for decades with a bunch of nasty remnants that pick on her and make her cry. It really threatens to break my view on karma and that whole ‘what goes around comes around’ thing.
“What about with magic? Can you talk to him?”
She makes a funny little face at me that I don’t quite understand. “Can you?”
That’s actually a really good question because I haven’t tried. I’ve been all about putting my head down and getting stuff done. You know, one foot in front of the other until I found myself in a better place. There’s this little flare of frustration in the pit of my belly, born of the realization that maybe I haven’t changed as much as I’d like to think I have. Why am I so passive?
Or is the reason I haven’t tried to reach out to Noah less because I’m passive and more because he’s not been very happy with me and I’m afraid he doesn’t like me anymore? Or is it because I don’t want to put him in any more danger than I’ve already put him in? Or maybe it’s because I’m tired of needing rescued and want to start taking care of myself...? That last one’s not passive at all.
Instead of saying any of that to Celine, I just shake my head. “I haven’t tried.”
Now Celine looks suspicious. “Why?”
I really don’t want to go into the complexities of my low self-esteem and the strain on my relationship with Noah with his eleven year old big sister. “Mostly because I’m a big silly, I guess,” I say, and hope that’s the end of it.
“Hmm. I thought it was because you were afraid Daya’d put some kind of detect magic spell on the place.”
I should have thought to say something like that. “There is that.”
I hadn’t even thought of Daya watching for any magic spells I might cast, which is absolutely stupid of me. I mean, she had the magic dampening spell on my window at Windsor, the tracking spell on me when I snuck out to talk to Becca. Images of the last time I saw Becca assault me, called into existence by the mere mention of her name - blood draining from her throat, life fading from her eyes, the body of my life-long friend crumpled and discarded on the floor of some grimy college bar …
Nope.
Not getting caught up in those memories.
I’ll find time to grieve Becca when it’s more appropriate.
“Can you detect magic?” I ask Celine after swallowing down the big ball of nausea lurching around in my tummy.
Turns out, she can, which is great, but the thing is, suddenly I’m afraid that Daya has this room rigged from top to bottom with magical surveillance. She could be listening. She could be watching. Hell, there’s a great big one-way mirror in the wall. She doesn’t need magic to watch me, she could be sitting ten feet away, on the other side of the glass right now. I want to ask Celine to try and see if she can detect anything that Daya might have left to spy on me, but I don’t want Daya to hear me ask the question or see Celine use magic.
I’m all kinds of creeped out thinking she might have been watching us this whole time. I just took the mirror for granted. I mean, I recognize that it’s a one-way mirror, that whoever’s on the other side could be looking right in, taking notes, I just never let that thought play all the way out to completion. What if Daya’s been watching everything? The tears. The talks. The hollows picking on Celine. Hell. What if it’s some other, non-Daya person? Just because I haven’t seen anyone else around here, doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone else around here.
Oh, I am so not cut out for all this conspiracy stuff.
Aware - now - of the one-way mirror, I smile and shift so that it’s at my back. There’s got to be a way I can communicate to Celine without speaking up. I purse my lips together and pull down my eyebrows, tilt my head as if I’m trying to ask a question. Her eyes light with a smile … a confused smile. Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything.
I try to indicate the mirror behind me with just my eyes, kind of using them to look over to the left and raising my eyebrows again and again. Celine just giggles and bounces off the bed to stand behind me and start braiding my hair.
“Those are some weird faces you’re making.”
It takes me a minute to realize that she didn’t speak out loud. That, in fact, her words were only in my head.
“You trying not to sneeze or somethin’?” Again, her words are only in my head.
I’m hesitant to answer, mostly because I don’t know how I’d say anything that would both manage to answer her question and not sound suspicious to anyone watching or listening.
“I can hear your thoughts, silly. I’m not a real girl. I’m not even a real ghost. I’m a remnant. I’ve got all kinds of magical tricks up my sleeve.”
Right now, it’s a very good thing that the mirror is behind me because a huge smile is spreading across my face and I couldn’t do anything to stop it if I tried. Apparently, she’s one big magic detector. She just sees it. Anything that’s been spelled, anything that can cast spells, there’s this aura for her that gives her a sense of what kind of magic she’s dealing with and how powerful the magic is.
“And you’re, like, the most powerful thing I’ve ever see,” she says, not out loud.
“So I’ve been told,” I think back to her and can’t keep my thoughts from darkening. She sends me a comforting thought and I take a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you could read my mind?” I’m suddenly uncomfortable.
“I thought you knew. What witch doesn’t know? Plus, I’ve agreed with thoughts you never said out loud, I saw that you loved Noah and you didn’t question how I knew. You’re a big old open book to me, silly.”
There’s this strange feeling of vulnerability and a little bit of violation, but I push that feeling away. If there’s anyone I can trust with my most basic thoughts and desires, I think it’s Celine.
“And Noah.” Her voice in my head is clear and pure and so young
and so full of hope that I can’t help but smile. She loves her little brother. I think I could, too. If he’ll let me.
Turns out, Daya does have some detect magic spells around my room, but they’re set for me, not for Celine. The moment I do anything other than wake up and follow orders, Daya knows. As far as listening and watching, yep. Those things are happening, too. When I ask why Daya can’t detect the conversation we’re having Celine just giggles.
“Because I’m the one who opened the channel, silly. She doesn’t care about my magic.” Well, that’s just one more thing that makes it pretty damn clear I’m so not cut out for this. I didn’t even know there were channels or that it mattered who opened them.
I’d love to say that I’ve got some grand plan to get Celine out of here. Unfortunately, what I’ve got in my head is way more simple. Sometimes there’s elegance in simplicity but this isn’t one of those times. My plan is to reach out to Noah and see if I can get him to come here and talk to Celine. Maybe, if she can see her brother and finally, after all these years, tell him not to feel bad for what happened, she can pass on. And if I can’t get a hold of Noah, then I’ll find Luke and ask him to take a message to him.
Celine flinches a little when I think of Luke. I can’t see it, but I sure can feel it. It’s like my thoughts are hot and she’s pulling her mind out so as not to get burned. I turn to look at her, concern pulling my features together.
“Do you remember Luke?” I choose to speak out loud for several reasons. I don’t want to look suspicious to anyone watching us since we’ve never been silent for long periods of time. And I want to watch her expression as she answers. I take so many cues from physical reactions, communicating purely through thought feels a little like flying blind. Plus, it’s a little creepy having someone in my head.
Celine nods and starts chewing on her bottom lip. “Ya…” She draws out the word and can’t meet my eyes.
“What is it? Why don’t you like Luke?”
“It’s not that I don’t like him.” She still can’t meet my eyes and I see Noah’s distaste for him mirrored on her face. I wish someone would just tell me what happened with him, already.
“Well, then why have you gotten all weird?” I hear Becca in my question. There you go, getting all weird again. I immediately miss the comfort of the pre-everything going to hell era, even if I did hate it when she’d say that to me.
Celine blushes and still can’t look at me. “Zoooee…” she draws my name out and sounds like the pre-teen she is for the first time since I’d started sharing my time here with her.
There’s just enough embarrassment in her voice, just enough pride in her eyes, just enough red on her cheeks that I understand. Celine didn’t hate Luke.
“You had a crush on him?”
Huge tears well in her eyes and I feel like the biggest creep since the beginning of time. “He was my boyfriend. I miss him, too.” Her eyes go wide and she throws up her palms. “But please don’t tell Noah.”
I don’t know if it’s sad or sweet that she’s worried about her little brother finding out about her relationship with Luke all these years later.
No, that’s not true. I do know. It’s both.
Well, hell. This is weird. I might be in love with Celine’s brother, and I think I used to be in love with her childhood boyfriend.
I might be a terrible person.
Celine presses her forehead against mine, her huge blue eyes gleaming, partly because of the otherworldly light that just comes with being a remnant, partly from the tears gathering there, and partly from something that looks like happiness. “You’re not a terrible person.”
She says it with her voice and with her mind and a flood of images follow her words:
Me fighting the hollows for her.
Me figuring out how to stop time in the courtyard rather than bow to Daya’s orders.
Me pulling waves of dark magic back into myself, bringing life back to the trees in the orchard.
Me, getting up and doing the things Daya asked of me, but never giving myself fully to my dark magic.
I realize, with a little jolt of surprise, that this is me as Celine sees me. She thinks I’m strong. And brave. She respects me. I don’t know what to say.
“I’ll do what I can to bring the boys here, but you might have to help me figure out how.” As brave and strong as she thinks I am, I know from the very bottom of my heart that I don’t deserve someone as pure as Celine.
“You just tell me how,” I think back to her. “I’ll do whatever you need.” And I mean it. Whatever this little girl needs to finally earn herself some happiness, I’ll do it.
Chapter Eighteen
Over the last couple days, Celine has worked out some way to channel my magic while I’m sleeping so she can start trying to reach Noah and Luke. She calls it dreamweaving. I’m not really sure how remnant magic works, but she assures me that by using her magic and my dreamscapes, she’s flying under Daya’s radar. At first the fear that she doesn’t know as much about magic as she thinks knows kept me awake each night, but after a few nights of nothing happening other than some very vivid dreams, I’ve settled down.
Is it working? No clue. Supposedly, I’ll feel when I get their attention and I can start actually trying to communicate, but all I’ve been feeling up to this point is creeped out by all the freaky dreams and tired because of all the broken sleep. Plus, Daya’s really upped the game as far as my training goes. I’m starting to feel less like she’s trying to help me understand my dark magic and more like she’s trying to ... what? It’s such a tiny little sneaky feeling. It’s like all of her lessons have this similar thread, this similar idea … and I can’t quite put my finger on why that seems off to me, but it does.
I mean, on the one hand, it’s totally within the realm of normal that all the lessons have a similar thread. Like, the whole ‘let’s get Zoe to understand her dark magic and incorporate it into who she is’ thread? But on the other hand, something just feels off. My spidey-senses are tingling. I’ve decided to pay extra attention to the nuances of the lessons to see if I might be able to discover just what’s got all my alarm bells going off. Plus, I’m being careful to use my judgement about how and when I use my dark magic.
Thing is, light magic comes from such a place of positivity, there’s very little repercussion to using it. It generally takes longer to use than dark magic, and maybe has a slower effect than dark magic. It pulls its energy out of the witch casting the spell, so the worst that happens is that the user gets a little (or a lot) tired. Light magic is mostly defensive … it works best when it’s defensive, hell, it’s easiest when it’s defensive, but it can be offensive too, as long as the offense is really a defense. It’s tricky, but if you think about it, there’s some sense there.
Dark magic? It’s wicked fast and wicked effective and is almost completely offensive, but it requires some huge sacrifice to use, usually pulling energy out of things around it. The bigger the spell, the bigger the consequence. Basically, you have to hurt something, kill something, or make some kind of personal sacrifice to use it.
Dark magic is a drug. It’s giving into your selfish side. It’s like that desire to lash out and say exactly what you’re thinking, even when you know it’s the wrong thing to say. It feels great to get it out. I think for a lot of people, you feel bad afterwards - I know I do - but in the middle of it? Ya. That’s good stuff. So, when I’m using my dark magic, which is almost constantly now because all of Daya’s lessons require that strange blend of light and dark, it’s a constant effort not to lose control to the luscious feeling of awesome that comes along with it.
But I’m determined not to give in.
‘Cause I’ve got a plan.
Kind of.
If it ever starts to work.
After several nights of nothing but strange dreams and grumpy mornings, I’m starting to wonder if the ghost of an eleven-year old girl and a hugely powerful but under-trained witch have what it takes
to escape from the Wicked Witch of the West. I’m still writing in my journal each night, and I’d love to try and write what I’m really thinking, but I don’t. ‘Cause you know, fool me once, shame on you and all that jazz. I don’t even remember the name Becca used for the book she’d tricked me into using for a journal, the one that let her have access to all my personal thoughts and moments, but I’m not taking any chances that Daya’s thought of the same trick. The only thing I write about now is what happened during the day, what I thought about it, and what I learned. This is not going to be a shame on me situation.
Celine asked me to create some wards in my room to keep the hollows out. She explained that having a source of my magic to draw from would help her with the dreamweaving. Since it has the added bonus of keeping Bo and his entourage of nasties out, I’ve been more than happy to comply. Each day, after stumbling back to my room, depleted and dirty from the day’s activities, I write in my journal and refresh my wards before crawling into bed and tumbling into sleep.
Celine usually curls up with me, snuggling close. While we hope Daya will just think it’s a comfort thing - and I’ll be honest, that’s a big part of it - we need the contact so Celine can filter her magic through my wards, into my dreams, and out towards the guys. Like I said, the whole thing seems kind of transparent to me, but Daya’s not slammed into my room and wrenched Celine out of my arms, so I guess that means something’s working.
Tonight, my dreams have a different quality almost from the get go. There’s a familiarity to them, a level of serenity, of tranquility. Off in the distance, there’s this pillar of light that just feels like solace and all I know is that I need to GO THERE. I wander through strange worlds and alien landscapes, searching and lost, just aiming myself at the beacon until somehow, I’m just … there.
And then, out of nowhere, the beacon has a name.
“Hey, Noah.”
He looks up, startled and his face lights up and then crumbles and it’s like he goes from seeing me to seeing straight through me. I made the connection but lost it in the next instant. Or maybe he didn’t care enough to reach out and finish the connection. Who knows?
