by Lee French
“Come here, you stupid, little—” She grunted and closed her fingers around something sharp. Yanking it out and pulling away the sword at the same time, she wrenched her arm free. The sword exploded in a shower of silvery metal.
Rondy yelped and ducked for cover behind an evergreen. Claire bared her teeth and endured the thousand tiny cuts. The shards moved in slow motion, sliding through and past her. In her hand, she held yet another sword, this one a perfect copy of Justin’s Knight blade. She glanced over her shoulder to see the shards gathering into a person-shape.
“Of course,” she snarled as the shards became the one man she didn’t want to deal with.
Djembe, an Ethiopian Knight who’d given her the most grief for being a girl in his manly arena, held his sword ready for a fight. Even if Caius had caused the worst of his attitude toward her, he definitely had a stick up his butt about women and girls. And none of that had been resolved when Caius died and the Palace blew up, because it had happened after Claire’s death.
He glowered at her. She held Justin’s sword and faced him.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she growled.
Instead of answering, he charged with a roar.
“This is my demesne, not yours.” Though Claire had training with a dagger, not a sword, she hopped to the side and slapped his blade away. She ignored the dissonant clang. This weapon would hold. The damned thing existed because of her blood, sweat, will, and memory.
Djembe whirled and slashed. His blade chopped into her shoulder. Claire bared her teeth and raised her sword in time to stop him from cutting off her arm. She kicked his chest, shoving him away and ripping his blade out of her body with a spray of silvery blood.
“This is my demesne, not yours!” Ignoring the fresh agony, she rushed him and jammed her shoulder into his chest.
He roared again and shoved her aside. Claire rolled with it as Justin had taught her and raised her blade. As Djembe shifted his weight, he sliced his blade in an arc. The two swords clashed. Tiny green sparks showered them both. Claire let his sword slide off the end of hers and kicked his arm. While Djembe recovered, she bounced in and punched him in the solar plexus.
Djembe grunted and doubled over. Claire stepped closer and shoved her knee at his groin. Justin hadn’t taught her that—she’d known how to beat someone up long before she met him. For good measure, she slammed her boot down against his knee. Djembe fell to the ground.
“This is my demesne.” She kicked his sword hand aside and stabbed him through the chest. As she jerked the blade across him, she snarled, “Not yours.”
The shape of Djembe turned to ash and fell in a cloud. Claire held out her hand and drew the ashes in, using them to coat the sword. They soaked into the metal, disappearing beneath the surface.
She threw back her head and screamed, “This is my demesne! Not yours!” For several seconds, she waited, panting and healing, for the unknown force opposing her to cause some other problem or create another challenge.
“I think it heard you.” Rondy held his hands up in surrender as he emerged from his hiding spot. “Maybe not the first time, but the last one for sure.”
“Whatever ‘it’ is.” Claire rubbed her face, suddenly tired.
“You’re defying the paths magic normally takes. That’s what ‘it’ is. The path of least resistance.”
Claire laughed. “As if I’ve ever followed that.” She waved him off, not wanting to get into the nuts and bolts of metaphysical stuff. What didn’t go over her head caused too many questions, and she had things to do. “The more important question right now is how I get this sword to Justin. Because I doubt I can carry it across the boundary to Earth, and even if I can, I’ll have a hard time getting it around Iulia and whatever defenses she might have set up after I appeared there the first time.”
Rondy draped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “He’ll need to come here. Which means you need him to figure out that he both should and can.”
“I’m not sure I want to wait that long.”
“You could cross over and tell him.”
Dropping into her chair, Claire sighed. “I’m going to sit here for a while and admire my handiwork. Then I’m going to make a second sword for Avery and a few other things they’ll need. After that, I’ll face the boundary again. Because it was so much fun the first time.”
Chapter 11
Drew
Drew brushed dirt off a large rock and gestured for Sophie to sit. They’d plunged into the woods to find the only true privacy available to either of them. In his room, Justin or Grandma Tammy wanting something might disrupt whatever Sophie decided to try. Even if they didn’t, they’d definitely get the wrong idea from Sophie’s presence. Likewise, Sophie said her mother would sense anything she tried to do and intervene.
Sitting on a fallen tree across from the rock, Drew wanted to be comfortable. Claire never made him this nervous. She always put him at ease—they fit together. Sophie made him worry about stupid things. Did he sit too close? Too far? Did he seem aggressive? Timid? Pathetic? Foolish? How should he open the conversation? What questions did he need to ask? If he blurted out something dumb, what would she do?
“Anne said you needed to get a magical signature. Do you or your ghost know any ways to do that?”
Relieved she’d come up with a way to open the discussion, Drew smiled at her. “His name is Kay. The ghost, I mean.”
“We could try to awaken your latent witch powers,” Kay said. “Suggest that.”
“Kay thinks we should try awakening my latent witch powers. Apparently, my mother or grandmother was a witch.”
Sophie’s lips parted, and she chewed on the lower one. “How interesting. I’ve never heard of a male witch before. So I don’t know how to trigger a male witch, but I know how it works for girls. There’s a thing we do when we know a girl should have powers but they haven’t developed naturally by the age of sixteen. Mom says that’s really unusual, but she did it to me, so I guess it’s not that weird.”
Choosing not to question the wisdom of forcing anyone to have witch powers, Drew nodded. Hopefully, the practice would benefit him. Later, if it went poorly, he might bring it up. “I’ll try most things once.” He meant to be funny, but the words fell flat.
“Okay. I’ve never done this before, so if it turns weird or doesn’t work, that’s probably why.” Sophie tugged a thin, gold chain out of her shirt to reveal a pendant dangling from it. Silvery lines marred an opaque blue teardrop with a hole drilled through the pointed end.
“I thought witches used crystals.”
“Yeah, we do. This is a special focus stone, though. One of my ancestors made it. Her name was Jacqueline, and she was a powerful witch here in Portland. My mom gave it to me because, in her words, I’m going to need it. Something about being forcibly awakened, or something like that.”
“This may not be such a good idea after all,” Kay said. “She seems kind of dumb. And also not very powerful.”
Drew coughed to keep from snorting. “As long as you know how to use it, that’s the most important thing.”
Sophie flashed him a dazzling smile. “Maybe you should sit where you won’t fall over and hit your head. Just in case.”
“Good plan.” Drew slid off the log to sit on damp leaves and twigs with his back against the dead wood. “Is there anything else I should do, like meditating or relaxing or something?”
“Whatever makes you comfy. I’m going to reach into your aura and try to jump start it. You’ll probably hallucinate. It’s not supposed to hurt. When my mom did this to me, it felt really weird. Like someone turned my skin inside out, I guess. Afterward, I ached in an abstract sort of way for a couple of days.”
“Great.” Kay harrumphed. “I’ll keep control of the power, thank you very much. No shooting lava at pretty girls or innocent trees.”
Drew chose not to comment. He took a few long, slow breaths. “Ready whenever you are.”
“Try to relax.�
� Sophie took his hand. Her aura smoothed and faded until he could barely see it.
Something invisible, soft, and light brushed against his hand without touching his skin. It danced up his arm, the sensation similar to tickling.
“This isn’t so bad,” Kay said.
The feathery ripples brushed toward his heart like a flock of butterflies swarming over his chest. Drew opened his mouth while the ripples settled, intending to ask if Sophie knew how long this would take. Before he could form a sound, the ripples snapped together and stabbed him. The thrust hit him sharp and sudden and plunged him into a world of white. Drew wanted to scream, but no sound came out.
He heard dripping water. Liquid plopped without a rhythm, hitting a small pool. Someone gasped, their breathing labored and harsh. No, two someones rasped nearby. Drew blinked in the harsh whiteness. Though he wanted to rub his eyes, something prevented him from moving his hand. Vague, fuzzy pain filled his body, too diffuse to pinpoint. His left arm flopped, unwilling to obey him.
“What happened?” Drew sounded wrong to himself—high-pitched, breathy, and scratchy.
“It’s okay,” a man said, his words punctuated by pain. “We’re going to be okay.”
Ice surged through Drew’s veins as he recognized his father’s voice. Because he now knew exactly what moment he faced, and had no way to prevent the details from filling in. Harsh, cold sunshine poured into the back seat of the car where Drew sat, strapped into a booster seat on the passenger side. Twisted metal pinned his leg to the seat. Ragged shards of plastic held down the rest of his body.
“Lynn? Can you hear me?”
The front seats of the car filled in. Black metal, once the roof of the car, obscured his view of both his parents’ heads, but he saw their arms on the center console. Blood speckled both. His father’s fingers curled in slow motion. Mom’s arm remained limp.
“Mom?”
“Mom is okay, Drew.” Dad panted and groaned between words. “We’re all going to be okay.”
Glass and metal tinkled as it fell. Bright light flared at random moments. Mom wheezed. Dad groaned.
“I want out,” Drew whined.
“It’s okay, buddy. Keep still. The good guys will come. Lynn? Do something if you can hear me. Please.”
Drew noticed blood dribbling down Mom’s arm to the console, where it slid to the floor and dripped into a puddle on the carpet. He heard Dad gurgle. Mom’s wheezing grew louder.
“Mommy?” Throbbing in his leg overwhelmed Drew. “Mommy, I hurt.”
“It’ll be okay,” Dad said. He managed to turn his hand and brush his thumb against Mom’s hand. She didn’t react. “Lynn, I’m so sorry. Please wake up.”
Mom let out a slow, rattling breath. The wheezing stopped.
“No, Lynn, please. We need you.” His voice broke and he whimpered.
“Mom? Mommy!” Tears slid down Drew’s cheeks. He knew.
“Wake up!” Kay rattled his brain. “It’s not real!”
“Drew,” a girl said, “come on. Wake up.”
Drew opened his eyes. Sophie filled his sight, framed by filtered sunshine streaming through the canopy. No cars, no broken glass, no blood, no death. The memory faded, creeping back into the dark recesses where it belonged. He hated reliving that. No matter how hard he wanted to forget, it always lurked in the background.
“Thank goodness,” Sophie said. “I’m so sorry, Drew. I don’t know what happened. You’re not supposed to do that.”
Raw and ragged with fresh grief over his parents, he clutched Sophie’s arms and kissed her. She jerked away. He let go and covered his face while he wept. Everyone he cared about died in front of him. While he watched, helpless to stop anything. The moment he got close to Claire, he’d signed her death warrant. If only he’d let her go. She might have survived without him there.
“I’m sorry,” Sophie murmured.
“Wow,” Kay said. “Way to screw that to the wall. Good job. How about for an encore, we relive Claire’s death? And look, I found more. Maybe we can go back to these really crappy memories of your first two weeks in foster care while we’re at it. Oh, hey, there’s a suicide attempt in here. Let’s do that again. We can do that one twice for good measure. I’d hate to walk out of this with you still sane.”
Through his sobs, Drew choked out, “Shut up. Just shut up, Kay.” He knew what he’d struggled through. Kay shouting about it didn’t help.
“Hey, shh. It’s okay. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.”
Drew’s sobs turned hysterical as he curled into a ball to get away from her. It was all real. Every tiny fragment had happened. He’d been stuck in that forsaken car with two dead bodies for eons before anyone showed up to rescue him. Someone told him it had been about half an hour after his father died, but he never believed them. More like half a year or half a decade.
“Whatever,” Kay snapped. His short sharpness cut through Drew’s memory, giving him what he needed to start forcing it all back into its box. “We just need to get you through her tampering with your stuff. Put me in charge and let’s do this. I don’t have anything traumatic to relive, so I can hack it.”
As much as he disliked that sensation of being trapped with his pain, Drew stepped aside. He huddled in the corner of his mind and watched while Kay forged through an almost natural transition from crying on the ground to ready for more torture.
“Try it again,” Kay said as he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Sophie frowned and shook her head. “That really affected you. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“I’m fine. Just do it. This is life and death stuff. That’s more important than my feelings.” He sneered, but softened as he caught sight of Sophie again. “I’m sorry I,” he gestured between them, “you know. The kissing thing. It was…” He groped for a word.
“Rude,” Drew offered.
“Rude,” Kay echoed.
Sophie blushed. “Well. I mean. I wasn’t really expecting that. And I barely know you. So, yeah. It’s okay, though. It was kind of…” She scratched her forehead and looked away. “Something. It was something. Just, next time? Ask first.”
“Right. Sorry.” Kay hugged himself, making a show of gripping the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Hands to myself. Try again.”
Sophie nodded. “Okay. But if doesn’t work this time, we’re both going to need food before doing anything else. Magic is hard work.”
“I’ll take you out to dinner.” Kay gave her a small, encouraging smile. “Whether it works or not.”
“Like a date?” She echoed his smile. “Deal.”
Chapter 12
Claire
Sitting up from her body again, Claire checked the room. Iulia hunched over a book at the other table, scribbling with a ballpoint pen on crinkly paper. Tiny Leeloo played with a ball of yarn on the floor. Neither seemed to have noticed her arrival.
Instead of immediately tugging on Enion’s thread, she drifted to the nearby wall. Even if she’d have trouble understanding what she found, she had to check outside. Some minor detail could help Justin find Iulia’s new home. Her ability to explain things after seeing them hadn’t suffered. Making new memories worked fine.
She hit the wall and spasmed as a jolt dispersed her mist. Her vision blurred. The shock threw her to the center of the room, where she watched her body flow together again in slow motion. As her mist returned to its Claire shape, her vision cleared.
Iulia jerked upright and dropped her pen. “Who’s there? I know there’s a spirit in here.” Standing, she dipped a hand into a bowl on her desk and darted her gaze around the room. “Show yourself or I’ll force you. You won’t like me forcing you.”
Leeloo tried to jump to her feet, but yarn wrapped around all four claws. She fell over with a squeak and wriggled to free herself.
Seeing no point to evading Iulia, Claire shifted her mist to visible. “Hello, Iulia.”
“Claire.” Iulia smiled and held up a clear crystal. “Please, sit.
Let’s talk.”
“What did you do to the walls?” Claire drifted to the couch and held herself over it, her body bent as if she sat.
Iulia joined her, taking the opposite end of the couch. “Trapped it with wards to keep in any spirit manifesting here.”
“You set a trap for me, and now we’re going to chat like civilized people.”
“Oh, Claire, please.” Iulia laughed. “I had no way to be sure it was you. And even if I did, you fled so quickly the last time. I only want to talk, and these are the tools at my disposal.”
“Here I am. I’m willing to talk. You can lift them now.”
Iulia huffed and waved a hand dismissively. “It’s more involved than snapping my fingers. Come, I want to discuss how we’re going to build the new seal. We’ll have plenty of time for other things later.”
Claire had little choice. She could try to escape back to her demesne, but that solved nothing. Then she’d have to wait for Justin to come to her, and who knew how long that might take. Considering the giant hole in his roof, he might put off visiting her until he finished the repairs. Even with giant ants rampaging in downtown Portland.
“Sure. Fine. Let’s talk about that.”
“Since I know your understanding of magic is limited, I’ll use a simplistic explanation.” Iulia traced a circle in the air, leaving behind a flickering blue line. “This is Earth. If I make it a sphere, you won’t be able to see the rest, so I’m just using circles.” She drew a larger, green circle around it. “We’ll call this Earth’s ghostly aura. This is what allows ghosts to exist. Which, to be clear, are echoes left behind by the dead. The aura is about the same size as the atmosphere. There’s also a magical aura, and a few others.”
Iulia added a yellow circle above the green one, then a white one, a red one, and a dark purple one. Each new circle enclosed the previous ones, reminding Claire of Saturn’s rings. Claire didn’t know how to relate the echo comment to herself, and didn’t want to interrupt, so she said nothing. Later, she’d ask Rondy and think about it.
