The Magic: Wilds Book Four

by Donna Augustine

  I turned and rested my forehead in my palm, my hair cascading around my shoulders and over my face while I waited for him to explode.

  It didn’t matter. He could rage at me all he wanted, but it wouldn’t scrape out the memory of burying him from my mind. If I were human, and I met a Plaguer, that was the traumatic memory they’d see in my mind—burying Bookie.

  I waited for the screaming, knowing I’d pushed him about as far as I could.

  “Dal, it’s not up to you to save me.” He wasn’t screaming, and it was so much worse. I realized I shouldn’t have expected that from Bookie. Wasn’t his style to scream.

  I ran my hand across my nose, refusing to sit there and sniffle like a big softy. I lifted my head and breathed past the horrible memory. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “I’ve lost people. You know that.”

  I nodded. I knew he had lost most of his family, but then he’d been here, and it was different here. “You don’t know. Everyone around me dies. I just wanted to keep you safe.”

  His eyes weren’t squinty anymore. “Hey, you fixed me once. I’m sure you could do it again.”

  “I didn’t fix you,” I said, and I was the one who was close to yelling now.

  “I came back. Just do whatever you did again.”

  I leaned forward. “What if I can’t? What if it was a one-time thing? Maybe there’s a limit on it.”

  “I’ve got faith in you.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Neither is me not being able to leave the farm. Dal, you’re my friend and I know you mean well, but—”

  “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “You’re trying to keep me trapped. That’s not living, and you of all people know it.”

  If he’d just start screaming for real this time, I might be able to hold out. If he hadn’t reminded me of how badly it hurt your soul to be trapped… Damn, I hated when sound logic was used against me in a calm way. There was no fighting it.

  I shook my head and stood. I moved a crate over to the corner, got up on it on tiptoes, and dug them off a wooden ledge where I’d hidden the spark plugs. I returned to beside his bike and held out my hand.

  He plucked them out of my palm. “They’ve been here the whole time?”

  “I know you get crazy when you can’t roam, but it’s only been about a day.”

  “How did you know these were my spark plugs?” he asked, and he might’ve well just called me stupid.

  “I know a few things,” I said, coming around to sit and watch him put them back on the bike.

  He paused to tell me, “You used to call the bikes ‘metal monsters.’”

  “You only have five million books on mechanics.” Not that I’d looked at any of them.

  “You used the power of my library against me? Talk about sins. I’m going to check with Fudge. There’s got to be something sinful about that.”

  “Girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.”

  As he put the second one back on, I wondered how well he’d take it if they disappeared again. “Promise me you’ll be safe?”

  “I’d like to remind you, I didn’t die from a run or going out digging. I died sitting at the Rock, skipping stones, and doing it horribly, by the way. Sometimes you can’t avoid these things.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “But you’ll do me the favor of trying to avoid the things you can?”

  He stopped tinkering for a moment. “Promise.”

  “Good, because I have to go back there, and I have your word now.”

  “You tricked me!”

  “I was afraid you’d want to come, and you can’t.”

  “That promise shouldn’t count.”

  “Too late. You swore, and I’m not letting you out of it. I’ve got to go and I need you in one piece. And I need you for more important things, like helping me figure out what it is they are using me to find.”

  “Tell me everything that happened.”

  I nodded and then filled him in on most of the details I’d learned, leaving out the cut and the chanting, because I wasn’t going to test his promise that far.

  He dropped the wrench and leaned back against the wall. “I think we need to do a process of elimination, since we have no other leads. Do you think you, like, healed me?”

  “It would be sort of a neat trick, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why? Because Dax said no?”

  “Because all I did was bury you. You know I’ve got magic. When I use it, it’s like I get a burning feeling in my chest. I don’t remember burning.”

  “I think we find something dead for you to bury there and see if it comes back to life.”

  I leaned back on my arms, thinking it over for a minute, pretending as if I hadn’t considered doing that exact thing. “But where do we get something dead? I don’t like to kill stuff.”

  Bookie did a double take.

  “Lower your eyebrows, if you don’t mind. I only kill Dark Walkers or people trying to kill me.”

  “Let’s go see if any of those guards you already killed are still around,” he suggested, like he was ready to hop on the bike and get them right now.

  “No. Too risky. That area’s hot now, and they would’ve collected their people anyway.” I did the math in my head and thought of how sunny it had been last couple of days before I made a sour face. “Plus, they might be a bit stale.”

  He sat up straight. “I know where to get something dead.”

  “Are you going to kill it?”

  He made a tsking noise. “I’m a healer, not a killer.”

  “Then how’s it going to be dead?”

  “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

  Chapter 15

  The house was silent as I climbed out of bed. It wasn’t like I could sleep anyway. I felt exhausted but wide awake at the same time, and the feeling utterly sucked. When I’d been tired at the Cement Giant, it was because they wouldn’t let me sleep. No one was stopping me here.

  Or were they? Had that thing Zarrod had done to me left some sort of weird insomnia spell? Either way, I couldn’t sleep, so there was only one thing to do.

  I got out of bed and crept down the hallway to the door on the left. Slowly, I turned the knob, relieved to find it unlocked again. I lifted the weight of the door slightly with the knob in hand, hoping to avoid the hinges creaking like they always did, and then closed it as quietly as possible.

  Each step was placed carefully as I crossed the room, closer and closer to his bed. I stopped inches from him, only his head visible above the blankets. I leaned down, my cheek to his face.

  His breath hit my skin like a wave of tension releasing. Bookie was still alive. Not that there was any reason he should’ve died in between the time I’d seen him a couple hours ago in the barn and now, but he shouldn’t exactly have come back to life, either. It was hard to rely on logic when the world had decided it didn’t count anymore.

  I took the book that was facedown on his chest and put it beside the bed before I tiptoed back out of the room in the same zigzag path I’d taken.

  With as much care as I used to open the door, I was closing it when I saw Dax walking up the stairs.

  He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I knew how it looked. I didn’t care if it seemed weird. The fact that Bookie was breathing at all was weird. He walked past me toward his room and I followed, because as strange as it was, it was my room too now.

  “How many times a night do you check on him?” he asked as I shut the door.

  I watched him walk over to the dresser, wondering if he was done for the night or going back out. Even if it was our room, I occupied it mostly alone, and I had a weird urge to blockade the door while I had him in here.

  “I only do it once in a while,” I said as I walked across the room and nearly tripped over a boot I’d kicked off earlier because my eyes had refused to move off Dax’s back. I’d thought there might be something wrong with my need to look at him, but then I r
ealized I wasn’t the only one that liked to stare at him. Most of the women on the farm did. I’d even caught Lucy staring at him the other day before she’d turned to me and said, “Chill your horses. I know he’s yours, but I’ve got blood in my veins.”

  I’d deciphered that to mean, I think he’s sexy, too.

  Sometimes I wondered if the only one who didn’t realize Dax was sexy was Dax.

  “Every night is once in a while?”

  I dropped onto the bed with a bit of a huff. Why did he keep insisting on asking me questions when he knew the answers? “You do know how I hate that, right? It might be the most annoying trait you have.” He was sexy but aggravating, so I needed to not get all entranced.

  He had the nerve to laugh. When he didn’t ask what I hated, in my mind he’d pleaded guilty.

  He stopped what he was doing and came over to the foot of the bed, resting a forearm against the post. “While we’re on the subject of Bookie, did you tell him I didn’t want anyone leaving the farm?”

  His brow furrowed and he acted like he was having a hard time figuring out this particular mystery. It should have been irritating, and it was. But why’d he have to look so sexy while he did it?

  “You going to answer?”

  “I already told you I hate these questions. You only ask the ones you know the answers to. You might as well have the conversations with yourself.”

  “I might know the answers, but that doesn’t mean I know what you’ll say.”

  I watched as he looked me over, and I hoped he didn’t ask about the long-sleeve shirts I’d taken to wearing recently. Another day and the mark should be gone.

  “You look worn down since you came back.”

  Oh no. I’d already won this fight. There would be no do-overs. I straightened my shoulders and tried to put some steel in my spine.

  “Well, I feel fine.” I wasn’t sure if it was the dark circles under my eyes or that my hair was sticking out worse than normal, but he didn’t believe me.

  The laughter from early was gone, but I wasn’t having this fight if I could help it—not when things weren’t going to change. I needed to derail this topic, and now.

  I stretched out my arms. “Yikes, I’m never awake this late. I’m going to hit the hay.” I lay down and turned on my side, annoyed I was going to have to feign sleep instead of doing what I really wanted, like running my hands all over his naked flesh.

  He didn’t ask any more questions, and I heard the door as he left for the night.

  Chapter 16

  Dax had barely spoken to me when I’d passed by him this morning. When I tried to pretend everything was fine and ask what he had planned for the day, I’d been relegated to one-word answers. He knew I was hiding something, but it wasn’t as if he was laying out what he did every night either.

  My relationship with Dax might be murky and confusing, but the situation with my current companion was perfectly clear, and one of the reasons I’d come here today. I was sick of wandering around in a relationship, if that was even what we had. I wanted to know where I stood, even if only for a small moment in the middle of the afternoon. But at least I was feeling better today; whatever residual drain I’d experienced had washed away by this morning, and I was ready to fight.

  I stopped about twenty feet shy of where he or she was planted, literally with roots in the ground. I’d never quite decided on which sex it was.

  “So, my old foe, we meet again.”

  Assassin tree, the dead maple I used for target practice, didn’t reply, but I could see the evil look in its carved eyes. He/she wanted me dead, I was sure of it.

  With a blur of motion, I had both my knives in my hands. A quick throw and they were planted in the place that would’ve been its forehead if it were actually an assassin. I was quicker than I used to be. I wasn’t sure how exactly I was achieving this speed, and I didn’t think it was just from practice. Maybe that was the thing about magic. It was magical. No logic needed?

  I plucked my knives from the wood. “This end was inevitable. We both knew only one of us could live.” I returned to my previous spot and stood with my back to assassin tree. “So you lived? You think you can sneak up on me?” I asked, and without looking first, I stirred up that spot in the center of my chest and then spun on my heel, releasing both knives before I stopped.

  They flew through a man robed in gold, and I heard them hit the wood with a thump. But I didn’t really care about my knives anymore, other than I didn’t have them in my hands.

  I’d been waiting for this day. Seemed like I’d been waiting for a lot of days lately. This one was near the top of days I didn’t feel like having. I’d agreed to do something in exchange for their help fixing Croq, and I hadn’t been able to.

  The day of reckoning had arrived. Somebody was going to be cranky. Even with no face to speak of, I could practically feel the irritability rolling off him…her? Another it?

  “You didn’t uphold your part of the bargain,” it said with no mouth, which was way creepier than one would imagine until you actually experienced it.

  “Yeah, about that. I tried.”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?” it asked.

  “Actually, no. I have no idea, but I’d love if someone would tell me.” Gone were the days I’d shake in my boots over the Wood Mist, especially not one on its own.

  But of course it didn’t stay alone. Nope. Needed its buddies with it.

  As I waited for a response, I felt the poking and prodding start. Their invisible magic was trying to push at my own. “This again? It didn’t work last time so I’d cut it out,” I said, hoping they might listen, because it wasn’t the nicest feeling in the world. It felt a little like being manhandled from the inside out. Didn’t necessarily leave any bruises, but you walked away feeling violated and disgusted. Magic was strangely personal like that, and the more I became comfortable with my own, the less I was okay with someone else getting friendly with it.

  “What have you done to yourself?” they said in unison as more appeared.

  That was another annoying thing. Couldn’t they speak singly once in a while? It was bad enough no one had a damn mouth, but couldn’t it be one voice? What was with the gang mentality?

  “Not sure what you mean by that? Maybe if you people answered some questions then so would I.” Calling them people was a nice concession on my part.

  Nothing but the leaves of the trees rustled as I waited for answers.

  “Do not help them again,” I heard as the robed figure disappeared and the magical prodding ebbed.

  I’d walked over to the stump and yanked my knives out, expecting to see another one appear, when I heard leaves crackling under foot.

  “My friends are mad,” Tiffy said as she walked across the grass toward me.

  “Were you just with them?”

  “Yeah, they were asking questions about you, but I told them I didn’t know anything. Had a feeling they were coming to talk to you.” She pointed a finger as she mimicked how she’d scolded them. “I told them they had to be nice to you or I wouldn’t be friends with them anymore.”

  “Tiffy, what do your friends really look like?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about them.”

  “I dislike the no-mouth thing, is all.” She started giggling as if it was the funniest thing I’d ever said. “What’s funny about that?”

  “I told them that it wasn’t a good look, but they think it makes them scary. They told me I always think I know best.”

  “They did?”

  “Yeah, which is weird, since, you know, I’m only four. I do have some shortcomings as far as past history goes.” She held up her hand, a piece of jerky in it. “I brought you a snack.”

  “Is this Tank’s?” I asked as I accepted her offering. I had my answer as soon as I bit into it. Tank had the best jerky.

  She nodded as I took another bite and my taste buds did a little dance. I looked up and the sun was sparkling in between the tree leave
s. It was a beautiful day. I’d go back to the house, stuff myself silly, and then go work in my garden a couple of hours before dinner. It was going to take a long time to get that mess cleaned up, but I was excited to do it.

  We walked back to the farm and people were busy about their day. I didn’t get the cheerful hellos I’d gotten at the Rock, but they weren’t trying to burn me at the stake either. Did most of these people care for me that much? Probably not. But they knew what I was and accepted it now. And I had a long life ahead of me to work on them if the spell Bitters had put on me really meant I’d live as long as Dax.

  I just needed to get through this mess with Zarrod and things would work out. This life was worth the sacrifice.

  “Dal?”

  I turned to look at Tiffy as we made our way across the lawn. The smile I’d gotten so used to seeing wasn’t there. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She paused a moment as she climbed up on the bench on the front porch, her four-year-old legs needing a little leverage. She got settled in and continued, “This is sort of an awkward discussion.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why she’d chosen me before she launched into an explanation.

  “I’d talk to Fudge about this, but I don’t want to worry her. Bookie, well, we all know he’s got his own problems. You seemed like a good choice, because you’re so overloaded with your own crap that I don’t think this will seem like a big deal to you.”

  I didn’t say anything, not about my stuff or how much she knew about Bookie’s. Just took it all in because she was probably right.

  “What did you need to discuss?” I asked, never knowing Tiffy to be the kind to skirt a subject. She looked up from where she was toying with the last of her jerky to the proximity of the closest set of ears, which was Tony, one of the night guards, who must’ve pulled a double and was probably heading for bed. He passed slowly and I waited.