by Casey Lane
“We both were,” I said. “It was May, wind blowing off the ocean, with the water sparkling on the surf below. My mom and I walked out to the lookout. She’d planned a picnic for the park, but first we wanted to go look down at the water, scare ourselves silly by tiptoeing to the edge. So to speak.”
My throat cramped.
"We didn't go beyond the railing, though," I added quickly. "We weren’t careless.”
The corners of my eyes threatened to spill over as they still did whenever I thought about that day.
“What we didn’t understand, what no one realized is that the lookout was weakened by an earthquake that had struck fifty miles offshore during the winter. A huge crack ran through the ground from the bottom of the cliff, slicing at an angle upward to about seven feet behind the railing and just beneath the surface of the trail.”
“It crumbled,” he said.
“It crumbled,” I said. “My mother and I fell more than 140 feet, along with five others standing at the railing, and hundreds of tons of dirt and rock.”
“What do you remember of the fall?” he said, and then when I didn’t answer, “Do you remember the fall?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
I took a deep breath and went on. “When I was a kid, I believed huge nests of snakes had fallen with us, but I figured out when I was older the hissing came from the sand and dirt dropping under our feet. I remember a clacking like bowling balls the size of cars knocking against each other. Those were the boulders. The blue sky got messy over my head with all the dust. And the seagulls on the beach below, they were so angry.”
One particular gull had wheeled in front of me, knocked about by the rubble. Its wings were speckled with blood.
“I screamed,” I told Pluto. “I heard the other people screaming, too, as they plunged to their deaths.”
I swiped at my eyes with the back of one hand. This wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t control myself in front of him. He handed me a napkin.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you relive that.”
“No. It’s okay.” I continued. Once started, I had to finish. “My mom didn’t scream. She was the only one who didn’t. She flung out her arms at me and shouted something. For years, I pretended it was I love you, but that’s not what it was. I don’t know what it was. I’ll never know.”
I did, however, know what she’d done. With her special gift, the ability to forever go through life unharmed, she could have survived the fall, no problem. Instead, when the railing gave way and our fates were sealed, my mother used her gift to protect me. She gave up that special part of herself and passed it to me for that one moment so I could live. I rode the landslide down to the beach surrounded by a soft blue light that repelled anything that threatened to hurt me, dirt, rock, other bodies, slamming into the beach, even the tide I might have drowned in minutes later.
I lied to Pluto. “I don’t know how I survived, but I did.”
I’d come out of the disaster with nothing more than a broken toe. Even that had probably happened when the cliff first gave way before my mother sacrificed her life.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What a horrible thing to have to survive.”
After coffee, we climbed into his SUV and went for a drive. I didn't question why I agreed to leave my car in the parking lot again to fetch later. Pluto said I needed time to relax and not worry about driving or anything particular, just let the morning go by. So that’s what I did. Riding in the soft leather passenger seat, I allowed the road to mesmerize me. At first, I worried the thing that still didn’t have a name would jump out somewhere along the line to attack us, but he reassured me.
“Nothing is going to happen to you while you’re with me, Saige, I promise.”
We never stopped, not for gasoline or food or to get out and look. Pluto simply drove. We sped along the coast highway as it climbed windswept hills covered in winter-brown grass, turned off on other roads that curved along rocky bays and crossed creeks emptying into the ocean. We zipped by tiny beach communities and threaded through forests that no doubt concealed dozens of illegal marijuana farms. The wind buffeted the vehicle, but it caused only a gentle rocking with Pluto’s firm hand on the wheel. By the time we returned to my grandmother’s house I felt calmer. Our trip had served as the adult version of taking a fitful baby out in the car at night to lull it to sleep.
“Thank you again,” I said. “You’ve been so kind over the last couple of days. I know you must have tons of things to do.”
He smiled at me, another of those subtle quirks of the lips, but his eyes communicated more, a heated intensity I’d never seen before, or had simply never realized was there.
“Nothing is more important than what I’m doing right now,” he said.
Potential stirred in the space between us, leaving me nervous, but also excited—with nowhere for that excitement to go. I had the craziest desire to lean over and touch that damaged brow of his as if I alone had the power to smooth it and put it right again. But I had no such power, and would he really want me to heal it anyway? It was a part of him, a crucial part, the intuition flashed in my head. Take it away and I would take away the heart of him.
He caught me staring at the deformity, but it didn’t bother him. It only made the smolder in his eyes deepen.
“Well, thanks again,” I said.
My words cut through the spell between us. Harsh, but I didn’t know what to say or do. This was a Pluto I didn’t know, not yet. I got out of the SUV. To his credit, he didn’t let his disappointment show.
“I’ll take you to pick up your car later this afternoon,” he said.
“Okay.”
I headed toward the backyard where I could use the porch entrance to take the stairs up to my bedroom. When I turned the corner at the side the house, however, I glanced at the old, neglected greenhouse at the back and froze.
Spiderlike, the thing clung to the glass roofline, climbing toward the peak where the Victorian-era conservatory joined the rest of the house.
I could not breathe. Couldn’t move a muscle. I was thrust back into the nightmare scenario from my dream of only hours before. I couldn’t see its face, which was insane. I wasn’t driving along a fogged-in coastal road in the middle of the night. This was broad daylight, or as near to it as we got in our backyard. I stared hard, so hard, to see what the mouth was like, the unreal, terrifyingly sharp teeth I suspected were there, but my eyes would not cooperate. My fear was so great my brain created a hole in my vision where its face should be. It had two arms and two legs, I was sure of that. Though superficially they appeared human, the joints were backward, grotesque. It wore clothes, a skirt of all things, which meant it was female? Long, black hair swung back and forth with the bizarre rhythm of its gait.
I still hadn’t made a sound, not even a gasp, but suddenly it knew I was there and turned my way.
Oh, fuck. Is that a head?
Whatever sat atop the shoulders, I didn’t think it could remotely be called human. Bloated and twice as tall as a normal face, it lay flat against the right shoulder, with the neck bent sharply at a 90-degree angle. I shuddered. Still blinded to the thing’s features, I got no sense of eyes or a nose but the mouth—my mind jibbered like an idiot trying to comprehend the impossibility of it—when that mouth opened, I knew flesh would unzip from the base of its throat to the top of its head.
Apparently, my being there caused it no worry whatsoever. Instead of coming after me, it resumed its crawl along the roofline. It had almost reached the main part of the house. When it did, it would have easy access to the second story and the bedroom window above.
Grandma Lida’s bedroom.
“Oh, no you don’t, you ugly piece of crap,” I said.
That freakish ability I couldn’t control kicked in. Power surged up into me from the ground under my feet. My bones and heart and hands grew so hot I could have been standing over the hole to a boiling geyser. Throwing out my arms in front o
f me, I prepared to fry the bitch.
An urgent shout came from my left.
“No, Saige!”
Pluto leapt directly into the path of my raw power.
But I’d already let loose.
Livid white light blasted him. It caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him sideways while hurling him back. He’d blocked nearly all of what I’d conjured, but enough shot past him straight for the creature that even now reached for the window sill at Lida’s bedroom.
I heard a brain-piercing shriek from the glass rooftop, echoed by another shriek so close it almost sounded like it came from my lips. Fire crackled and scorched my cheek. I smelled burnt hair and then nothing.
I blacked out.
“Saige?” the familiar, comforting voice urged me awake. “Saige, come back now. Can you hear me? Time to come back.”
I took a huge, shuddering breath. My arms twitched uncontrollably at my sides and when I opened my eyes everything looked like it was underwater. I was crying, violently but completely soundlessly.
Through the tears, I made out the partly-deformed, model gorgeous face. I’d never seen him act worried and afraid before. Wasn’t he supposed to be dead? Hadn’t I killed him by mistake?
“Steinar?” I said, calling him by his real name for the first time in years. My voice barely registered above a croak.
“I’m here,” he said.
He didn’t look dead. He didn’t even look hurt. I blinked to clear more of the tears and looked around. We were on the back porch. We didn’t have any furniture out here, so he’d laid me on the wood planks with a blanket under me. Evidently, he hadn’t felt comfortable about carrying me indoors where there would be a sofa. And Lida.
“Why am I crying?”
“Because you hurt yourself. It’s going to take a while for the pain to let go of you.”
“I don’t understand…” My eyes shut again, my consciousness flickered.
“No, Saige. Don’t you fade out on me.”
Fingers touched my forehead. Cooling, healing energy flowed into my body, spreading into my brain to clear away the cobwebs, down my neck into my heart, strengthening it, and from there to each arm and leg, every finger and toe.
I opened my eyes again.
“Why aren’t you dead?” I asked Steinar.
“Because I’m a lot tougher than I look.”
“You look plenty tough to me.”
“Says the war witch who almost obliterated herself two hours ago.”
“What?”
I struggled to a sitting position. My hands still trembled. The tops of my thighs felt numb. Steinar helped me stay upright, one strong arm around my lower back, supporting me. The other hand brushed hair out of my face and finger-combed it softly behind my ear.
“I tried to stop you,” Steinar said, “But I didn’t reach you in time.”
This wasn’t the Pluto I’d known for most of my life. Apparently, I’d never known him. Not really.
“Who are you? What are you?”
“I’m your guardian. It’s my job to protect you.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“You’re a witch?”
I'd never been sure if male witches existed since the only witches I knew were those in my family and family tree, all women.
“Of a sort,” he said. “Protectors are rare. Only a few in any generation, and only when there’s a war witch born who will need a guardian at her side.”
My mind absolutely reeled. Pluto had magical gifts. How long had he known about me? Why hadn’t he told me?
“War witch?” I repeated what he’d called me. “I can’t even. What the hell are you talking about? Besides, I’m not strong enough to be a regular witch, let alone the war variety, whatever that is.”
“You underestimate yourself, Saige,” he said. “You have a lot of power. You need to be careful how you use it, though. Like just now, when you blasted yourself half to death.”
“Blasted myself? I was flinging everything I had at that creature on the roof. You saw it, right? It’s what killed Coco. It was trying to get into my grandmother’s room.”
“Yes.” His expression turned grim. “I saw it.”
“Is it gone?”
“For now.”
“Then I didn’t kill it.”
Damn.
“I’m going after it.”
“Saige, no. You can’t use your power on it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s part of you.”
My heart convulsed. My mouth went dry.
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid it is.”
I jerked away from him and his attempts to soothe me. My knees came up and I scuttled backward using my hands and feet. For a second, my own crablike movements reminded me too clearly of what I’d seen up on the roof, which only heightened my anxiety.
A part of me was responsible for what happened at Scented Miracles? Part of me had done that to–
“Coco.”
I wanted to vomit.
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I couldn’t…”
“No,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
I jumped to my feet. “I understand all right.” I was so agitated I couldn’t properly pace, only take a partial step one way, and then another part-step the other way. Back and forth, working up to a panic attack. I pointed at the grave under the redwoods. “I murdered that innocent little dog out there.”
“No, Saige. You’re wrong.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
And then I took off.
I sprinted across the yard but avoided the grave. I couldn’t go near it. I vowed I would never go near it again. Rain fell as a light drizzle. It must have started while I was out of it, because the grass was wet, and in seconds my canvas sneakers had soaked through. Freezing mist beaded on my skin. I wasn’t dressed for this. I didn’t care. Anyone who had done what a part of me had done didn’t deserve to be warm or dry.
Run, the terror inside me said. Run.
Fleeing into the trees, where the canopy hadn’t yet allowed the rain to reach the ground, I picked up speed, pushed myself to the limit. You can’t escape yourself, no matter how hard you run, but dammit I was going to try. Maybe my heart would explode, or a blood vessel in my brain. Maybe I would trip over a rock or a fallen log and fly head first into a tree.
Make it over. Make it quick. I don’t want to be that thing.
Faster. My side ached and my lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen.
You can’t be that thing.
Powerful arms wrapped around me and jerked me back. I cried out in surprise, struggled and kicked. Instincts rebelled at being held prisoner. I yanked and clawed frantically at the muscular embrace.
“Let go of me!”
Next second, I found myself pinned to a massive redwood trunk. Steinar’s body covered mine protectively, pressed so closely I couldn’t have kneed him in the groin if I’d wanted to.
“Not beyond the salt line,” he said. With a tip of his head, he indicated a white salt block identical to the one I’d seen last night. It was sunk partway into the ground. About 10 feet beyond, another block peeked out of the mulch. Steinar had created a circle of protection.
I remembered hearing a small object drop into the mulch before I’d discovered him out here last night.
“You didn’t really lose your iPhone.”
“No,” he said. “I was busy enclosing your entire property.”
We both breathed hard. My feet rested on one of the tree’s massive roots, lifting me up so that our faces were inches apart. He’d cleaned himself up and put on fresh clothes while I was out cold. He smelled wonderful, of heated male musk, and some wild storm blowing in from over the North Sea. He hadn’t shaved, however, and the rough, dangerous stubble combined with the vulnerable question in those gray and brown eyes built delicious excitement inside me. Deep in the pit of my stomach, an unknown power was eager to be unleashed.
Not magic, but something better. I’d never felt so amped and dizzy.
He leaned in, his face now less than an inch away. I wanted even that slight distance gone. My eyes noted the pale eyelashes, the shadow under the bad brow, the angle of his strong nose, and then my lips parted on their own, the urge to kiss beyond my ability to resist. His lips met mine, pressed hard and urgent. The tip of my tongue raced along the edge of his white teeth and slid past to taste what I knew waited for me, what had waited a long, long time for me to claim it. He welcomed me with a moan that made my pulse hitch in surprise at his desire for me. I placed both hands on his chest, the smooth, hard ridges of muscle, feeling his body’s heat through my palms and fingers. Magic swirled just beneath my skin, raising goosebumps as it tingled and flowed from where we made contact, rushing up my arms and down deep into my chest. Our hearts started to beat in unison.
“Steinar,” I breathed against his lips.
We parted, pulling just inches away. I wanted to be close enough to still feel the heat of him. I raised my hand to his forehead and let my fingertips skip over the odd shape of the damaged bone beneath the brow. I didn’t think it was a birth defect. The bone had been broken, crushed perhaps, and knitted together roughly in more than one place.
“I got that on the day I found out I was a guardian,” he said. “Your guardian.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When we were eight. When the cliff collapsed. I was there.”
“I thought you said you didn’t move to town until you were nine.”
“We didn’t.”
“But–”
“You didn’t just break your toe during the fall from the cliff,” he said. “The railing at the lookout hit you in the forehead. It should have killed you, but instead, I took the wound for you at my home in Nordstrand. My parents found me at the bottom of our garden and thought I’d hit my head on a rock. I was in a coma for weeks. When I finally woke and told them what I’d seen through your eyes, the cliff disintegrating with all those people, the bloody seagull, your mom hurling her gift at you to save your life, the blue glow surrounding you when she did, my mother and father knew exactly what had happened. My father is my mother’s guardian.”
