Experimentally, I tried moving my hand through the table. My fingers touched cool, solid material. The texture of the laminate was smooth, except for the sharp bits around the edge of the table where it was peeling up slightly.
Rory was watching me with a frown. It looked almost like he wasn't really sure what to say next. After a moment of hesitation, he slid the pie across the table to me.
I glared at him. I didn’t make a move to touch the pie, though my stomach growled.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said.
I didn't wait for him to reply. I stood up and marched across the dining room. I turned a corner and saw a long row of vacant booths. The seats were red vinyl that had been torn and patched over the years. In the middle of the left wall, there was a server's station with a cash register and a pair of swinging black double-doors that presumably led into the kitchen. There was a little alcove set into the back wall. The alcove had two doors. I went into the one marked for ladies.
The bathroom, if it was possible, was even more depressing than the diner. The mirror was filthy. Someone had scratched their name into the corner of the glass. It was barely recognizable as “Sally”. The light above the sink was flickering. The waste basket in the corner was overflowing with paper towels.
I splashed some water on my face. The water, at least, seemed clean enough. I was careful to not touch the sink.
Think, I commanded myself, staring at my reflection in the mirror. Not a ghost then, I thought. Or maybe ghosts could see their own reflections, but no one else could. But no, that didn't make any sense. I realized that my brain was fuzzy from shock and fear. The woman looking back at me was wide-eyed and pale. Other people had called me pretty. I supposed that maybe I was, though my face was too angular and my features were too sharp. It gave me a severe look that I wore constantly.
Now, my brown-black eyes looked scared. My chestnut brown hair was straight and pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail that was just beginning to loosen. There was a single leaf caught in it. I pulled it out and adjusted my ponytail. I took a deep breath.
My fear of Rory had mostly subsided. If all he wanted was to harm me, I reasoned, he would've done it already. He wouldn't have brought me here and ordered me a coffee. However, I knew deep in my bones, that he was dangerous. Or, at the very least, he had the potential to be dangerous. He'd caused my car accident for reasons that only he knew.
I also knew that something strange was happening right now, something utterly impossible, and Rory was to blame for it. I couldn't trust my senses anymore, because the world was no longer bothering to play by the rules. The uncanny was encroaching, pressing in on me, and I wouldn’t be able to rationalize it or ignore it for much longer. I wanted to return to my ordinary life. I thought longingly of my couch, warm and inviting. I should be listening to music and poring over case files, I thought. Or enjoying a glass of wine and watching television mindlessly. Or doing literally anything else.
I no longer believed that Rory was going to kill me or harm me in some irrevocable way, but I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was unnatural somehow. And that if I wanted any semblance of a normal life after tonight, I needed to get away from him. I sensed that I was at the precipice of a vast strangeness that would change everything for me. And I wanted to get away from it. The first order of business, then, was to get away from Rory.
Now that I was calmer, I could think more clearly. I'd seen a back door from the parking lot. I guessed that it was for receiving deliveries. Very likely, I'd be able to get to it from the kitchen. From there, I supposed that I would cut through the woods towards town. The woods around Hollow Hill were vast, but I was reasonably sure that I knew which way to go. I just needed to get to a phone, so that I could call Gwydion. He would come pick me up, no questions asked.
I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and exited the bathroom. I scanned the dining room. It was still empty. Rory was, presumably, still seated around the corner, near the front entrance and out of my line of sight. It was now or never.
With one last glance at the dining room, assuring myself that it was deserted, I pushed through the double-doors and into the kitchen.
It was a long and narrow galley-style kitchen, much cleaner and better lit than I'd thought it would be. There was a chest-high stainless steel counter dividing the kitchen in half. On the left, behind the counter was a row of stoves and ovens. On the other side were stainless steel prep tables, stacks of plates and glassware, and rows of worn wooden and plastic cutting boards. Gleaming stainless steel pans hung from a rack on the wall. There was a lone cook, muttering under his breath as he sliced something red with a large kitchen knife. A tomato. He was thin, with long scraggly blond hair. He was wearing a baseball cap and had on an apron that was crusted with dried food. His back was to me and he didn't look up as I edged past him.
My eyes scanned the kitchen again, then landed on a door that, I was almost certain, must lead outside. I beelined towards it. There was a metal handle. I pulled it open and was rewarded with the sight of the back parking lot. A gust of cold breeze hit my face. I turned back to the kitchen and gave it a once-over. The cook was still studiously ignoring me and apart from him, I was alone.
I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped through the door and onto the rickety wooden platform. The wood was slick and wet, but it was no longer raining. I turned to pull the door carefully and silently shut behind me. I turned back around, prepared to descend the wooden steps to the parking lot.
I froze, unable to believe my eyes. I was standing in the server station at the other end of the kitchen, facing the dining room. Rory was seated in our booth, calmly watching me.
CHAPTER FIVE
No longer trusting my feet, I slid into the booth.
“What are you?” I asked, forcing myself to meet his gaze. I was proud of the fact that my voice didn't quaver.
Rory looked at me, his brown-black eyes unreadable. “I'm a witch,” he said.
If the circumstances had been any different, I might have laughed. Witches – real ones – didn't exist. Everyone knew that. Everything in my adult life had taught me that.
Instead of laughing, I nodded as though that made all of the sense in the world. I felt suddenly disconnected from myself in some essential way, as though I were merely observing from outside myself.
Distantly, I realized that I was barely surprised. I had seen impossible things tonight. Or maybe I was going insane. The same way that my uncle had.
“What do you want from me?” My voice was even and steady, a stranger's voice. I looked at him and realized that there were traces of fear in his eyes.
“Kendra, please,” Rory said. I noticed, once again, that he said my name as though we knew each other. “Please know that I never intended you any harm. I wouldn't have done any of this, except that I had no other choice. I'm here about Gwydion.”
I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Whatever I had been expecting the reason to be, it hadn't been Gwydion. Fear followed close behind.
“What does my brother have to do with this?” I asked, a note of steel entering my voice. If he had done something to Gwydion...
“You're a fighter,” Rory said, interrupting my thought. He exhaled slowly through his teeth. “That's good. That's exactly what he needs right now. You need to listen to me, Kendra. Gwydion's life depends on it.”
“I'm listening.”
“First, and please understand this, I would never harm Gwydion. I'd destroy anyone who would. I would do anything to keep him safe. Even something crazy,” He gave me a rueful, almost apologetic smile. “I'm in love with him.”
He said it plainly, but there was something about the way his breath caught when he said it that made me instantly believe him. That my brother might be in love with another man wasn't a surprise to me. Gwydion had come out to me during freshman year of high school, after coming home with a torn shirt and blood oozing from his lower lip. Our fos
ter parents weren't home, so it was just us. I'd cleaned him up in the upstairs bathroom. I hadn't asked him what had happened, because I already knew. But he told me anyway. Two boys from our school had waited for him in the parking lot. They’d beaten him because, according to them, they’d caught him looking at one of them the wrong way in the locker room. But, Gwydion had said, his voice breaking, they were right about him. They were exactly right. He’d looked away from me the entire time as he told me, and I knew that he was crying. And, listening to him speak, I realized it didn't matter. I loved him and it was just a part of who he was, like his strange electric blue eyes or his bad taste in music.
Then, a sudden thought wiped away the past. “You said that Gwydion's life depends on my listening to you.”
“Your brother will be dead by sunrise if we don't do something to stop it.”
An icy feeling entered my heart, but I laughed anyway. It sounded sharp, like broken glass. He couldn't be serious. People only said things like that in movies. They didn't say things like that in real life. And besides, nothing could happen to Gwydion. It was unthinkable.
Your brother will be dead by sunrise. The words echoed in my mind, stabbing me again and again.
“The first thing that you need to know is that I belong to a coven. And I'm about to break just about every vow to them that I've ever made.”
I listened, feeling riveted in place.
“No matter what happens or how we have to do it, we protect our secret from outsiders. It's something I've done for my entire life, until I met your brother. And, impossibly, when he found out about me, he wasn't afraid.”
No, I thought. Gwydion would have been fascinated, perhaps. But not afraid.
“Months passed. Gwydion finally knew me – the real me, the one no one’s ever seen before – and he loved me for it. I told him...” Rory paused and took a deep breath. “I told him too much. I told him our secrets, our old stories. I even told him how someone becomes a witch.”
He paused again.
“The coven found out. We have a potion we use to protect our secret. It's called the Water of Lethe,” He grimaced as he said it.
Lethe, I thought. Like the river of Hades. The one that causes forgetfulness.
“It causes anyone who drinks it to forget the existence of magic. To forget anything that they've ever learned about magic or witches. And if they drink enough of it, it will make them forget they'd ever even met a real witch altogether. They tried to use it on him. To make him forget.”
I was silent, though my mind was racing forward, putting things together. Gwydion didn't get close to people. It was just a part of who he was. But that didn't mean that he didn't care. And those he was close to, he would do anything for. Even something crazy.
Rory continued, “They came for us. I don’t know how they found out, but they didn’t give me a chance to explain. I tried to fight, but there were too many of them. The coven took us out into the woods. Everyone was there, surrounding us. The entire time, Gwydion was calm — maybe he thought I’d be able to protect us somehow. Then they said that they were going to make both of us drink it.”
“It would have worked on you?” I asked.
Like most trauma victims, when faced with an impossible stimulus, I tend to focus on meaningless details. Normally, it freezes me up and reminds me all over again that I’m quintessentially different in a way I’ll never really be able to entirely fix. Right then, I didn’t care.
“Oh yes,” Rory said bitterly. “It would have worked. I would have lost everything I’ve ever done and I would have forgotten them. It was the ultimate punishment. Because in their eyes, I was a traitor.”
“Gwydion did try to fight them then. He begged them to spare me. But they wouldn't do it. I looked around at the faces of people I had known for my entire life and I saw strangers. For some reason, they chose to give it to me first. Maybe they assumed that I was the bigger threat. They didn't know what Gwydion was planning. No one did.”
Rory smiled, but there was no humor in it. “You see, I had told him how one becomes a witch. It begins with a blood oath, binding you to a specific power. Usually, it's done with an experienced member of the coven – someone willing to guide you through the process. Most witches bind themselves to the bloodline in their families or the lineage of power in their coven. That’s the only safe way to do it, since once you take the oath, your fate is sealed.”
Uneasily, I thought of stories I'd heard about books signed in blood. Gwydion would never have done something like that, would he?
“Gwydion sliced his hand open on a sharp rock and before anyone could stop him, he called out to the forces of nature and bound himself to the earth itself.” Rory smiled again, but it was dark. “The binding is the first step, but after a nascent witch binds themselves, they’re tested. The witch and their guide enter the underworld. To everyone else, they seem to be dead. Once the trial begins, they have three days and three nights to escape the underworld.”
“Why would he do that?”
Rory’s face crumpled and he looked away from me sharply. He took a long moment to steady himself.
“Because I had told him that the claiming ritual opens a direct channel to the deepest powers in the underworld. He knew that I would need that power in order to escape. He did it to protect me.”
His words sounded faraway. My mind was racing, but I could hardly follow what he was saying.
“How did you get away from the coven?”
“While the coven was distracted by what Gwydion had done, I tapped into the power released by the claiming and used a binding spell on the witches that were holding me.”
I felt a chill rip through me. Pieces slid into place.
“And Gwydion is there right now. Alone.”
Rory nodded and a shadow crossed his face.
“When?” I whispered. “When did this happen?”
“Two nights ago.”
“And what happens if he fails?”
“When a witch fails their claiming, they die. And something else comes back in their body. Something unnatural.”
The pit of dread crystalized into something sharp and hot in the pit of my stomach. What Rory had told me was impossible. I didn’t want to believe it. More than that, I couldn’t believe it.
And yet, Gwydion hadn’t spoken to me for two days. That wasn’t like him. Not anymore.
I had tried not to worry about it. My brother had his own life. Except that he didn’t just vanish anymore.
And witches existed. I believed that part, as impossible as it was. There was no other explanation for what I had seen tonight.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered. “This can’t be true.”
“Kendra, I need you to listen to me. I know this is a lot to take in right now, but Gwydion is in the underworld, with no guide and no way back. He will die, unless we do something.”
“Do something?” I stared at him. “This is crazy. What you’re saying to me is literally crazy. How can I do anything about this?”
Rory was watching me steadily, his mouth set into a tight line. I could practically feel the tension vibrating off of him.
“The underworld is a big place. I can’t find him. But you can. Blood calls to blood. You’re the only living person who has a blood connection to him.”
“You’re saying I can find him. If I go into the underworld with you,” I said slowly, feeling a strange mixture of horror and relief at the thought.
Relief, because it meant that if what he was saying was true then the situation wasn’t hopeless. Horror because the idea of going anywhere with Rory — much less into the underworld — was terrifying.
“Yes,” Rory said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Gwydion will die at sunrise unless we cross into the underworld tonight and help him. And once we cross over, you’re the only one who has any hope of finding him. You’re the one chance he has of making it out of this alive.”
CHAPTER SIX
We were plunged into the darkness. The exploding lights sounded almost like a balloon being popped, but it was so loud and unexpected that I let out a humiliating squeal of surprise. I don’t remember standing, but I was suddenly on me feet.
I shot a worried look at Rory and saw that he’d also climbed to his feet. I could only barely make him out in the sudden darkness.
“Did you do that?” I asked, even though I already knew he hadn't.
In the darkness, his expression was unreadable, but I could hear the rage in his voice. “The coven. They're here to stop us.”
I didn't have a chance to respond.
The double doors leading to the parking lot blew open. A draft of cold wind blew over me and I suddenly felt as though I had been turned to stone. Three figures stood in the doorway, blocking our exit. They didn't look human – they just looked like inky black silhouettes in the darkness, but I could somehow still see their eyes, glinting animal-like in the dim light. None of their feet were touching the ground.
I suddenly understood why so many people throughout history had been afraid of witches. Because witches — real witches — were terrifying. They looked human, but there was something alien about them. Something monstrous. I wondered if they were going to kill me. I wondered what was going to happen to Gwydion without me.
I tried to run, but it was as though my muscles had turned to stone. I couldn't even let out the scream that was building up in the back of my throat. I wanted to shut my eyes, but my eyelids seemed to be glued in place on my skull. It was as though my body was no longer my own. It wouldn't obey my commands.
A spell, I realized. The witches had put some kind of spell on me.
The witches drifted into the dining room, moving slowly and inexorably towards us. Still, their feet didn't touch the ground. At any moment, I expected them to cackle, but they were eerily silent. Somehow, that was worse.
The Claiming Page 3
