Split at the Seams

by Yolanda Sfetsos

  I had many fond memories of going for drives in this car with Grandpa when I was a confused and misunderstood kid. He even taught me how to drive in it. I spent a lot of time with him because my parents didn’t know how to deal with my condition, and after their marriage broke down and they moved away to get on with their separate lives, I stayed with him. They liked pretending I wasn’t their daughter, and I loved living with Grandpa. He actually listened and tried to help me, rather than continually contemplate whether or not to stick me into an institution.

  If he hadn’t taken on the job of guardian, my life probably wouldn’t have turned out this way. That was why having the biological grandfather title stolen away from him hurt so much. It’s also why I can’t give up this car.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything earlier on,” Oren said, breaking the silence inside the car, and the havoc inside my head.

  Right now, the radio wasn’t working. It worked when it wanted to, and I wished it was working now. I didn’t want Oren to try to fill the silence.

  “When?”

  “When I visited your house earlier, you seemed…busy.” He didn’t turn to look at me, but I couldn’t help swiveling enough to glance at him. “I saw your young chap storm out when I got there. Is everything okay between you two?”

  I rolled down my window all the way, and told Oren to do the same with his. Otherwise we were going to roast. “Where are we headed?”

  “Into the city,” he pointed up ahead.

  For a few minutes, I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject. It wasn’t even his business really, but I knew Oren wanted a place in my life that wasn’t just for magic and mayhem. He knew I considered one man my true grandfather, but he wanted to be my friend.

  “Sierra, you know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

  “Yes, Oren, I know.”

  I tried very hard to pretend I was concentrating on the road. Of course, we both knew I wasn’t. I travelled this road many times every week and could probably get into the heart of Sydney with my eyes closed. It was so hard to figure out how best to tackle this, or if I should even bother talking about it. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Ebony. Since Jonathan was introduced as the new healer in our group of misfit hunters, I didn’t want to voice my suspicions about him.

  “Jonathan got upset with me because I’m helping out a friend,” I finally blurted. “He’s being an irrational fool. It’s nothing.” The lie stung my tongue, even as I said it.

  “He’s jealous of the werewolf.” It wasn’t a question, more like a statement, which made me wonder how he knew what Papan was.

  “You know Papan’s a werewolf?”

  “I know he’s the wolf who saved both of our lives in the cemetery,” he said with a nod.

  I stopped at a red light and turned to look at him. “You haven’t said anything about it before.”

  “Didn’t think I had to,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, Jonathan’s not just jealous about my helping him…I tried breaking up with him, and he doesn’t want to accept it.” I pressed my foot down on the accelerator when the light turned green. “I’m beginning to think it would’ve been easier to cut Jonathan out of everything before it got to this.” Then again, Jonathan was the one who healed Papan when we found him in a back alley and helped me get him to my place.

  “You told him how you feel because you wanted to be honest,” Oren said.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Honesty’s the best policy, and all that jazz.”

  “And are you being honest with yourself?”

  I could feel his eyes on me. Sometimes I felt like having a conversation with Oren was just a way to vocalize what he’d already read inside my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, offering your friend a place to stay while he’s recovering is a very noble thing to do, but was there more to it than that?”

  I spared him a quick glance. “Sure there is.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  I sighed. “I don’t know if I should even be telling you this, but Vixen’s after Papan. She’s convinced that he’s been killing people and she wants to stop him.” It felt so strange to be talking about this in the open. “I don’t want her to find him. I want to keep him safe.”

  “Jason means a lot to you.” Again, he made it sound like fact, not question.

  “Yes, he does.” Why did my chest constrict all of a sudden? Maybe it was because the thought of losing Jason Papan made my heart and soul ache. I couldn’t imagine life without him, without his cheeky smile and endless flirting. When I was alone and left to my own thoughts, Papan was the man I thought about. The one I fantasized about and dreamed would one day want to be by my side.

  “Maybe Jonathan has reason to be worried then.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Well, judging by your reaction, Jason means a lot to you. Personally, I think he means more to you than Jonathan does. Now, before you interrupt, hear me out.” Oren chuckled, and it grated on my nerves. “I understand how important friendship is, but I get the feeling that you and Jason feel a lot more than just what mutual friends do. Sure, your relationship was probably built on friendship, which is a great basis, but it looks like you should be asking yourself some very hard questions. Starting with, what are you doing with Jonathan when you obviously want to be with Jason?”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Of course, it was nothing new. Ebony had been saying a more tactless variation of the same thing for some time now, and I’d finally realized who I truly desired weeks ago. I’d just been putting off breaking up with Jonathan because I didn’t want to complicate things now that he was part of the hunters group. And if I was honest with myself, I wanted to keep him close to find out more about his involvement with the elusive Obscurus.

  “Oren, I think you’re looking into things a little more closely than you need to—”

  “Oh, really, so what I said isn’t true? You only think of Jason as a dear friend and nothing else?”

  I sighed. “Well, I didn’t say that exactly…”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that it’s complicated.” Not entirely a lie.

  “See if you can get a parking spot somewhere on this street.”

  “Really, we’re here?” The Spook Catcher Council Tower was on this street.

  “Almost there.” Oren was quiet for a moment. “Sierra, can I tell you something?”

  “When’s asking beforehand ever stopped you?”

  He chuckled again. “Listen, I hate to see you unhappy. I think that being with Jonathan isn’t going to lead you to happiness. When I saw him storm out of your house, he looked livid.”

  “Yeah, he was pretty pissed.” I squirmed when I remembered how dark his eyes had gotten, and his rough treatment.

  “No, it was more than that.”

  “Ah, there’s a spot!” I sped up, hoping to beat all of the other smaller cars around me. If I could find a spot to fit this whale of a car, I had to take it. “By the way, what do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but I felt a menace radiating from him that wasn’t…normal. At least, not in a human,” he answered, and a dark shadow seemed to cross over his face when I looked at him.

  “He’s jealous.” I maneuvered the beast into the parking spot. “And angry.”

  “I realize that. But there was something else, a darkness I hadn’t noticed around him until now. I think it was because he didn’t know anyone else was there, watching him.”

  I tried to concentrate on straightening the car, not on the memory of the hollow face I’d imagined several weeks ago, the elongated shadow I’d seen behind Jonathan in an alley, or how Lavie stayed as far away from him as she could. If Oren could also feel something there, I hadn’t imagined the out-of-control darkness he’d displayed inside my house.

  “What do you think it is?” My pulse sped up.


  “I’m not sure, but I’ll keep an eye on him.” Oren opened the passenger-side door as soon as I clicked the engine off. He rolled up the window before stepping out onto the sidewalk.

  I followed close behind, double-checking the locked doors. He was popping a handful of gold coins into the parking meter. “What do you suggest I do?” I sure as hell didn’t know how to handle any of this.

  Oren turned to me. “I think you should listen to your instincts. I don’t think any of this is news to you. You just want to believe the best in people, but you can’t deny what’s in your heart.”

  As I listened to his words, two things struck me simultaneously—just how right he was about this situation, and how the sudden sadness in his eyes probably reflected how he’d felt about my grandmother.

  Since finding out the truth about Oren’s involvement with her, I’d resented him. Now, I was starting to see him in a different light. He’d cared deeply about my grandmother, but still stepped aside when she’d wanted to abandon her supernatural lifestyle and settle into a peaceful life with another man.

  I stared at him for a few moments longer, realizing Ebony was right. I’d been treating Oren badly from the moment we met. At first I’d resented his interference in my life because I wasn’t sure why he was meddling, then when I found out what I was to him and why, I disliked him for the pain he’d caused my grandfather. But there were two sides to every story, and my grandmother had loved this man enough to ask him to watch over me while lying on her deathbed. Maybe I needed to start appreciating everything Oren had done, and was even now doing to help me understand the witchy side amplifying my spook-catching power.

  When he looked at me, I smiled. A genuine smile with affection and appreciation, not the smirk I usually reserved for our constant bickering. “Thanks, Oren.”

  He lifted one thin shoulder in a half-shrug. “You’re welcome to speak to me about anything. I’m here to listen, and hopefully to help too.”

  I nodded and broke eye contact. Both sides of the one-way street were crammed with parked cars, even though parking meters littered the sidewalks. The sun was already fading behind the tall buildings, causing shadows to spread, but we were only a few streets away from Darling Harbour. There, we’d be away from the tall skyscrapers stealing sunshine.

  “Let’s go and see if we can find out something useful,” he said.

  I nodded and we crossed the road together, headed down the opposite side of the street in comfortable silence. I couldn’t help but wonder why it had taken this conversation to finally make me realize how immature I’d been behaving toward Oren. It was a wonder he’d hung around at all.

  As we continued silently down the sidewalk, I was starting to wonder if we were headed for Darling Harbour. When we crossed the intersection and Oren tapped my wrist, motioning me to veer off the path, I got my answer. Instead of following the foot traffic, we wandered underneath the pedestrian overpass and kept walking until we were near the trees, mostly hidden from view but way too close to the Council building for my liking.

  I looked around. “What are we doing here?”

  “We’re going to do a bit of scrying.” He reached into his jacket and seemed to be looking for something.

  “Scrying? What exactly does that mean and why are we doing it?” I still had a long way to go as far as understanding many terms in this new world I was constantly finding myself in. Sure, I was pretty well versed in the spook-catcher field, but everything else was still a dark and mysterious chapter. I really needed to start changing that.

  “Scrying, dowsing, whatever you want to call it, that’s what we need to do to see if we can find the spot I’m looking for.”

  “What spot?”

  “Sierra,” he said with a sigh. “I told you I would help you locate your grandparents and this is the next step. Are you still willing to help, or did you expect me to do all the work myself?”

  “Of course I’m still in,” I snapped. I bit my tongue before I reverted into the immature brat I’d just convinced myself I wasn’t.

  “Good.” Oren pulled out a small dagger and held it in his right hand. The shiny silver blade glowed under the patchy sunlight. “Can you hold this for a sec?”

  “Whoa, what are you doing? Someone will see us.” I frantically looked over both shoulders. We might be hiding like trolls under a bridge, but there were still plenty of people and cars around. If someone saw us with a knife out here, we could be in a lot of trouble. Not to mention that with the Council so close, would they detect whatever magic Oren was about to perform?

  “Don’t worry, they can’t see us.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve set up a cloaking spell around us,” he answered, still pointing the hilt of the dagger my way. “Now take this and relax. I know what I’m doing.”

  When I took it from him, I felt a jolt of familiarity. I’d used this double-edged weapon before, but chose not to dwell on it. Instead, I turned my attention to Oren.

  He pulled out a wooden stick and held it out to me. “Okay, now take this and hand me the athame.”

  I followed his instructions, even if I didn’t know why he needed a tree branch and a knife.

  “Give me your hand.”

  “Uh-uh. Is this so you can take another sip of my essence?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the dagger. I had a feeling he wanted to use it on me.

  “No, I just need some of your blood.”

  I couldn’t believe this. “Are you serious? And what’s this stick for?”

  “You’re holding a dowsing rod.”

  “It’s a stick!”

  “From a willow tree,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and took several deep breaths, letting them out very slowly. “Okay, let’s just say I go with this…what will my blood do?”

  “Well, I’ve been using my own blood for weeks, trying to get a sense of the location. But this is as close as I can get.” Oren’s eyes searched mine, as if he was trying to say so much more and he wanted me to read between the lines, to understand what he wasn’t saying. “I’ve gone as far as I can with my own power, but I think your blood will lead us the rest of the way.”

  “What are you trying to find?” I asked. “I know the ultimate goal is my grandparents, but this dowsing isn’t going to locate them, is it?”

  “No, it won’t lead us straight to them, but it will point us to the closest ley line. I believe wherever this ley line is, that’s where the problem stems from.” He sighed. “There’s something really strange going on around here, I can feel it.”

  So he actually had some answers. Suddenly, I didn’t care if he wanted a few drops of my blood, or a pint. He’d actually investigated deep enough to find out this much. What he didn’t know was that if we did locate this ley line, I was pretty sure it would also help me figure out why Mr. and Mrs. Wicker had faded.

  My pulse sped up as I nodded. “Are you sure this will help?”

  “I think it will.”

  I held out my left palm. “Then do it, take some of my blood.”

  Oren closed the distance between us and took my offered hand in his. His skin made me wince because it was always so cold. He wrapped his fingers around mine and held my hand steady as he ran one of the dagger’s sharp edges over the middle of my palm so briskly I didn’t even feel it. He pocketed the blade and forcibly closed my hand into a fist.

  “Squeeze it tight, and give me the dowsing rod.” He held the end of the branch beneath my hand and a line of blood dribbled onto it. Instead of coating the wood, the drops were actually sucked into the stick, as if it were drinking them up.

  Oren then kneeled and shoved the stick into the concrete tiles. As bizarre as it seemed, it sank in easily. As if he’d pushed it into sand, dirt or mud instead of hard concrete. A pink neon line raced out from the stick and continued all the way along the ground. Up and into the Spook Catcher Council Tower which was situated on the other side of the overpass.


  A cool chill ran through me, because something deep down inside set off warning bells. I’d been trying to avoid what was towering nearby the moment we’d stepped into the shadows, but had tried to convince myself the Council would stay in the distance and not have anything to do with this. Now, the sound of the passing traffic, the monorail and the people who couldn’t see us dimmed, and my surroundings darkened until all I could hear and see was the tall glass-and-metal building shining like a pink beacon with a cloud of mist writhing around it.

  The dark patch was closing in.

  Oren had once told me I was like a beacon, calling out to anyone who desired great power and wanted to possess or manipulate it. It was why the Slevani brothers had set their sights on me in the first place, also why Mace Clamber tried to seduce me back into the Council’s fold and then threatened my life for refusing him.

  Funny how the building I’d barely escaped was now the place responsible for some very bad things. Mace had admitted trying to use my grandmother’s power before me, so why was I surprised?

  “It looks like we’ve found the ley line,” I said, blinking and swallowing the lump in my throat. My ears popped and the darkness dropped away to allow the afternoon to settle around me.

  Trust the Council to have set up shop over a ley line.

  Oren rubbed the back of his head. “I was looking for the closest ley line, but it looks like we’ve actually found the location.”

  I nodded, keeping my hand squeezed tight.

  “This really isn’t a surprise. I just needed to be sure.” Oren stared at the towering building. “After all, Mace did try to kill us at the cemetery.”

  Well, he’d tried to kill Oren. He’d had other things in mind for me. The Council was corrupt, but I wondered if they knew what Mace tried to do last month.

  The ground beneath us trembled and I looked down. My blood drops were still hitting the concrete and were being sucked into it, making the ley line’s neon pink too bright.

  “Here, wrap this around your hand.” Oren handed me a white handkerchief. “The last thing we need is for every network of ley lines to light up and announce what we’ve found to others who might be watching.”