The Wind Between Worlds
Julie Hutchings
For Bennett and Sammy. You’ve given me a life bursting with magic.
The Wind Between Worlds
Copyright © 2017 by Julie Hutchings
All rights reserved
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of quotations for reviews and other publicity.
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Cover art by Enchanted Whispers
Typography by Jacqueline Sweet
Formatting by Monica Corwin
Contents
The Wind Between Worlds
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Excerpt: Chapter One of Running Home
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
About the Author
Standing Still
Running Home
The Wind Between Worlds
Sixteen-year-old Celeste is the Witch of Stars and leader of her coven, the Five Poisons. But Celeste feels her greatest powers are in chewing anxiety pills and stress-eating. Uniting the vicious witches who share nothing but their unique forms of magic and a list of family dysfunctions is fruitless. The Poisons see only weakness in Celeste, for stifling her magic upon her mommy’s request. Using magic drains their mothers, the Elementals, but Celeste is the only one of the Poisons who doesn’t want her mother dead.
When a demon breaks through The Chains, the magical veil into the human world, Celeste tries proving herself to her coven by confronting him on her own. Through his eyes she discovers that the Elementals have been feeding the Poisons lies about demons, magic, their heritage, and the coven’s purpose. Worse yet, the abuse, manipulation and oppression Celeste’s coven has suffered at their mothers’ hands was more than tough love; it was to strengthen the girls’ powers for a Halloween harvest, to weave their souls into The Chains that they serve.
Celeste will do anything to save the Poisons, from traversing the wicked realm of The Gone, following the demon who's shown her the truth, to waging war upon the Elementals. But to end the grisly cycle the Elementals have created means the Witch of Stars must either show her mother mercy and live in the false world she knows, or sacrifice herself in ways no magic can reverse.
Chapter 1
I hadn’t Wished for him, but I'd dreamed of him, surrounded in black and gold, in the emptiness between stars. He looked like everything I didn’t know I was afraid of, and I wanted to hold his hand, even as it gripped something so tightly that his knuckles strained white.
"Celeste, he's talking to himself. Loud. Like, really loud," Carlie Winters said beside me.
"I know, but I can't figure out what he's saying." I squinted, knowing he was oblivious to our eyes on him, but my heart pounded thinking he might notice.
Everyone in Mrs. Albrecht's class was watching him, this kid who'd appeared out of nowhere a month into the school year, and was definitely carrying a backpack full of crazy. He wore a black suit, with silver buttons on the sleeves, crisp white collar and cuffs showing. There. In high school. He leaned his elbows on the desk and stared straight ahead, like he was playing a poker game with life or death stakes. His oil-dark hair didn't hang in his eyes so much as stab in razor-thin overgrown spikes, crude, jagged daggers and broken knives that cut across his vision and along his ears. It was violently shaved to the scalp in some spots, others overgrown like weeds, some patches styled with gel, like the minds of a hundred different boys had worked on it at once, but not together. I couldn't see his face but for slicing cheekbones.
It wasn’t just that the boy didn’t belong there—he’d invaded. His agonizing discomfort made it clear that he wasn’t all that happy about it. He pulsed with a power that wasn’t magic. The sluggish magic inside me shook to life, begging to know more.
I’d spent years reserving my magic, hiding it, strengthening it, and I was pissed that this boy could awaken it.
I wanted to Wish for his secrets to be mine. I knew they’d be as big as the night sky and twice as unfathomable. And I could do it—make his secrets known to me, Wish for him to tell us all who he was and what he was doing in our classroom. I could Wish him to do whatever I wanted.
But my powers didn’t just belong to me. Using them would affect my coven, actually hurt my mother. The others didn’t care if their mothers suffered if it stood in the way of their magic-playing-funtime. If I’d had mothers like theirs, maybe I wouldn’t care either.
"He's bleeding," Amelia James whispered. His hand hung limply at his side, working over the object in it so hard that drops of blood spattered to the floor. He growled and let go to clutch his head with bloody fingertips, dropping the thing to the linoleum amidst red pinpricks.
It was a link of chain.
My own hand fluttered to the chain link in my skirt pocket. Link stumbled over my fingers like a skittering beetle, full of need, comfort, responsibility, safety, and presence bigger than a rusty chain link should have. I clucked at it under my breath soothingly, until it settled.
The boy went still at the same time, then turned to look at me, black eyes drilling straight into my witch's soul. And I felt that the impossible had happened.
That this boy had breached The Chains without the coven knowing.
For all of our fighting amongst ourselves, we’d failed. And I was going to be the one they all blamed.
“I have to talk to her, and I won’t be scared because scared is stupid,” I said out loud. Link buzzed in my hand, vibrating in agreement. I clutched the chain link tighter as I watched Cymbeline Holliston sitting on the bench in front of the principal’s office, staring at an empty Coke bottle on the windowsill across from her.
The bottle filled with a black bubbling liquid that almost looked like soda. Almost.
I took long strides through the students who paid no attention until I stood in front of the Witch of Empty Things.
“Hey Cymbeline,” I said, the meekness in my voice coming out in this squirrelish little screech. She didn’t look at me.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey there, Cymbeline. How’s it going?”
Chin on her chest, she turned her milk saucer-sized blue eyes up at me, as empty as they were wide. Her skin was so pale it was almost clear, waist-length blonde hair curtaining her face. The only other thing I could focus on were her bee-stung lips, the color of wine. She looked like an angel, but I knew better.
Squeezing Link, I kept going. I had to keep going. “I—um, I need to talk to you.”
She cocked her head, unblinking. “You don’t.”
Her tiny voice rang through me like a church bell crashing to the ground.
I stumbled over my own foot to sit next to her, and she moved not an inch, turning her head impossibly slow
ly to look at me. Having her that close, those endless eyes on mine, felt like being pulled into the freezing Atlantic in December. I grit my teeth to keep them from chattering.
“We’ve got trouble. Like, massive, asteroid-sized, planet-sized, ugly trouble.” Not that ugly, I thought, but I tucked the thought away with the mental image of the elegant broken boy. “A demon is here from The Gone.”
“Not possible.” Clean, cold breath.
She finally blinked, and it gave me the courage to keep talking to her. “He was in Albrecht’s class. Just poof, there, like a boy shaped pop-up book, and everyone noticed but nobody talked about it. And he’s off.”
“So.”
“So? He’s confused everyone enough that it’s cool for him to show up a month after school starts, and life continues as usual, even though he’s clearly nuts and we all see it. He’s wearing a suit, for the love of Jesus.”
She turned her head back to the Coke bottle in time to see the color of the liquid change to blood red. Leaning against the wall was Una, the Witch of Shades, glaring at us. She grabbed the bottle just as a boy went to take it off the windowsill. His eyes were glazed over as if in a trance, mouth open, ready to drink whatever Cymbeline had filled it with.
“Play nice,” Shades mouthed at Cymbeline, ignoring me entirely. Cymbeline stiffened even more, and Shades dropped the bottle to the floor, rubbing her hand as if it had burned her. The bottle melted, and red liquid fizzled, hissing all over the tile. Students parted quickly as the Witch of Shades stomped off, white skirt trailing, white heels slamming. Cymbeline and I looked at each other.
“Given my choices, you’re the Witch I could see as a friend,” I said. Both of our lips twitched and Cym nodded once.
“You know where I live,” Cymbeline said. “Come after school. I’ll wait.”
If my English teacher hadn’t been wearing the most distracting unicorn shirt ever made, I wouldn’t have been able to sit through last period at all. As it was, I was imagining that walking into Cymbeline’s house would be the same as getting swallowed by the nothingness of her glassy eyes. I wouldn’t be able to Wish myself out of it.
The demon boy hadn’t been in my history class, or the next class. I hadn’t see him in the halls. If he’d been in my mind then I’d have made an ass of myself to Cymbeline. I should have known better about what my imagination could conjure up. It had taken me too long to learn to keep my mouth shut about the wildness in my head—it was dangerous. What if my curiosity about The Gone had created a demon out of thin air? Of course, I was curious about the place I was born to control, I couldn’t help that. But part of me wanted that demon boy to have crossed The Chains for another reason. Part of me wanted to see what would happen, and in just thinking of that, had I made it real?
How potent had my Wishing magic become as I muzzled it for my mom’s sake?
My thoughts rolled over and over each other, quickly turning into senseless worries, and I was hyperventilating, chest constricting. I barely stopped myself from Wishing for death. Panic attacks do that to me, before they even get really bad. Sweating. The sound of Mrs. White’s voice was too loud, painfully loud. With shaking fingers, I opened the bottle of Prescription Panic Pills under my desk, and ate one, when I really just wanted to Wish for the attack to be over.
It was a hearty sacrifice, to stifle my Wishes, but it was a power that couldn’t run free. I couldn’t run free.
The bell rang, and I was the first one out of my seat, thankful I’d managed to evade answering questions from the unicorn-clad Mrs. White; I had absolutely no idea what we went over in class.
I clung to Link in my pocket as I left the building, rushing out to my car before anyone asked me if I was all right. Before my own scaredy-cat, trembling nerves and the clenching in my belly could stop me from going to the actual home of the Witch of Empty Things. Christ, I just wanted Taco Bell.
“You.”
The taste of candy apple and cinnamon hearts filled my mouth, and my head snapped up against my will. I stopped in my tracks as the smell of October goodness that came with the taste surrounded me. My head was foggy, but I knew exactly what was happening.
Her glistening cherry lips and black forest hair were right in my face. The heat behind her pale green eyes made my eyebrows furrow. A real wave of heat emanated from where she stood, hands on red leather hips, smiling nastily at me. She stamped a cigarette out too close to my foot.
“Put your candy-coated tricks away, Delcine. I’ll listen to you,” I said. The Witch of Sweets probably could have kept me fixed there, licking my lips at all her false, delicious temptations, but I was too eager to find out what she wanted to walk away. Delcine was not only my arch enemy, or rival, or whatever you want to call a witch that you share a bond with, but would do anything to never see again; she had a Siren-like, Lotus Eater, come-to-my-gingerbread-house-and-I-promise-not-to-eat-you quality that had boys dropping at her feet and girls running in the other direction.
She gave me a quick nod and the heady fog around me that smelled like the world’s coziest candy shop disappeared. “Fine. Tell me what you know about the boy.” She lit another cigarette with a snap of her fingers.
“You saw him too?”
With an arrogant sniff, “Obviously. No boy walks through these halls without me knowing.”
“Then why are you asking me about him?”
She licked her lips, and turned her head away. It made the air between us taste like overly sugary cereal. “Because I couldn’t get him to come to me,” she said, too loud. She focused her eyes on me again, daring me to laugh at her. “He resisted me.”
This filled me with glee, but I didn’t dare show it. I wasn’t afraid of Delcine, but pissing her off would be a colossal pain in my ass. I tried to put on a poker face, and failed. Like I did at poker.
“Don’t look at me like that, Twinkles,” she hissed. “I could take you any day of the week.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But right now, you want my help. So, I think you should be extra nice to me, don’t you? You’re the Witch of Sweets. ‘Honey catches more flies than vinegar’ was pretty much invented for you.”
She shook her head slowly, smiling with glinting white teeth. “You got me there. So, tell me, Celeste. What do you know about him?” Her red nails tapped her hips.
I hadn’t picked the Witch of Sweets to confide in about the demon. I’d picked Cymbeline, and I wasn’t about to let Delcine bully me into changing my plans.
Leaning closer to her, I said, “I think you need to honey me up better than this.”
“You love that I need something from you. Well, don’t love it for long, Celeste. You’ll fall flat on your face trying to create the little dream team you want us to be, and I’ll be on top again. I always get what I want and I’ve never needed a friend to do it.”
“Good thing we’re not friends then,” I said with only a little sadness, and pushed past her. Shivers of rotten apple scent followed me.
Chapter 2
I didn’t regret a thing as I knocked on Cymbeline’s front door. I knew where she lived because I had to; the coven was mine. I was its leader.
Sure I was.
I tried not to be freaked walking through the jungle of grass, the overhanging trees that were thicker there than any other part of town, the slithering snakes and jumping frogs around my feet. Her home was a rounded pile of old bricks and wood with an actual thatched roof, and if elves didn’t make it, gnomes must have. It felt like a fairy tale falling apart.
Cymbeline’s mother opened the door slowly, making it creak extra loud. The Air Elemental was something not of this world, the ghost of a ghost. Cymbeline got her eeriness from dear old Mom.
“Hi there, Mrs. Holliston,” I said, like I was selling cookies or something. “I’m here to see Cymbeline.”
But of course, Mrs. Holliston knew that. We knew as much as we had to about each other in order to keep one another in check, and if the air saw it, The Air Elemental saw it.
The five immortal Elementals were our mothers. Me, Cymbeline, and the others were the Five Poisons, and between the ten of us we tethered The Chains—the magical bindings that kept the demons of The Gone from taking over.
Our families were more than just a witch coven. We’d been thrown together in this duty, and we hated each other for it. We were bound together, and we trusted not a one of the others. We all knew that in a heartbeat, any one of the Elementals would destroy the others to take control of The Chains. Holding down a blockade that covered an entire world was a responsibility no one witch could survive alone, but they’d try, just so they didn’t have to answer to the others ever again. And they’d drag us, their daughters, along for the death ride.
Being smited down by one another on the regular had built up a hell of a grudge between us all.
Mrs. Holliston disappeared, leaving the door open. I edged inside, feeling more uneasy than a scream queen at a cabin in the woods.
I might have been invited, but I sure wasn’t welcome. The house was as weird inside as out. Everything was old, like from the seventies, all those muted colors of brown and pea green. Wood paneling. Smoke hung in the air, permeated from ashtrays all over the place. Their home felt stagnant, if not for every curtain and dust ruffle and hanging picture fluttering in the breeze—even though there was no breeze. The windows were all closed. The air was talking to its Elemental, but she was nowhere to be seen. I felt myself being looked over, could feel the air reporting back to her. I wrinkled my nose, grossed out.
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