by Anah Crow
“I’m glad you’re here.” Noah slid his arm around Lindsay’s shoulders and pressed his hot cheek to Lindsay’s hair for a moment. “I knew life owed me a break somewhere.”
Lindsay didn’t know how to answer that. He found Noah’s hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “I’m glad you’re here too.”
He was. He had no idea what he would’ve done these past few days if Noah hadn’t pulled through and Lindsay hadn’t had him to focus on while they worked out how to find the others. While Noah worked out how to find the others. The thought made anxiety surge up in him again—he was already so dependent on Noah.
“If there’s any kissing going on, I’m gonna puke.” With a grumble and groan, Kristan pushed herself to sit up. “Time for the little girls’ room.”
Lindsay waited until he was watching her walk away in the glow of the headlights, then turned to Noah. Focusing on Noah helped distract him from the pressure on his mind. “Are you all right?”
“Not great.” Noah let his head fall back and exhaled slowly. “I won’t let you down. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just hard. I’ll manage.” He looked over at Lindsay and mustered up a smile.
“I know.” Lindsay gave him a soft kiss on the mouth as a reward.
Once they got back on the road, the rest of the drive went quickly, and when they exited the highway, they found their way into the parking lot of a museum that was closed for the night. The sign outside read The Great Circle Museum . Lindsay looked around, then back at the map. The snake flickered and faded away.
“This is that landmark I mentioned earlier,” Lindsay said. “It’s a Native American structure, a mound.
There are a lot of them in this part of Ohio.” That made sense, though Lindsay didn’t know nearly enough about magic. A site like this would be easy for someone like Noah to track down.
Noah let the car drift as far to the back of the parking lot as it would go, where the drooping branches of an untended tree scraped across the hood as he parked. He turned off the car and exhaled slowly.
“The confluence is here. No more river to follow, so to speak.”
“I love it when he speaks in tongues.” Kristan popped open her door and dragged herself out of the car with a groan.
“Will you need the map for this part?” Lindsay couldn’t make any more sense of Noah’s words than Kristan, but he was learning as fast as he could.
“No, it won’t do us any good. I need the plastic bag that’s on the floor there, though.” Now that Noah wasn’t paying attention to Kristan, he looked tense again.
“Got it.” Lindsay passed it to Noah. “Anything else? Anything I can do to help?”
“Make sure no one knows we’re here? That’s all.” The trunk banged shut and Noah got moving.
“Okay, Kristan has some other stuff I need back there. I hope I remember the way all of this goes.”
Lindsay stayed in the dark car. The moment he was alone, he had a name for the pressure on his mind, and he grabbed the door handle, expecting to be sick. They were being hunted. The nausea didn’t come, though, just a surge of anger.
The illusion he’d already cast would keep their little party hidden from human sight, but he didn’t know if it would deceive whatever hunted them. He pushed back, enough to know that the mind—no, the minds—that kept brushing his didn’t belong to Lourdes. Lourdes had seen through his illusions before—as far as Lindsay knew, only she and Dane and Jonas could best him—and Lindsay was certain that Moore held no better players in reserve. He knew her arrogance.
Telling Noah and Kristan what was going on would distract them from finding Ylli and Zoey, and with no benefit. There wasn’t anything either of them could do to stop the hunters, not until the hunters found them. Lindsay wouldn’t let it get to that point when they were so badly outnumbered.
Lindsay’s fear had always made it easier for Dane to find him through his illusions. If these hunters were anything like Dane or Jonas, adding to Noah’s and Kristan’s anxiety would make it harder for Lindsay to keep them hidden. His last training session with Dane had made it clear he still had a long way to go in learning to keep himself hidden while he was being hunted, much less two other nervous people.
It was up to Lindsay. He’d kept them hidden this long.
There was a chance that the hunters didn’t know they were here, that the touches were simply because the minds were scanning the area. It made sense that if Noah had found his way here, another mage with the same training might have done the same. Lindsay wove more power into the illusion, opened his door, and prepared to pretend everything was well. He’d had plenty of training in those mundane illusions long before he had his magic.
Noah was standing at the back of the car, arranging things on the trunk in the light of a jittery candle flame that bounced around inside a red votive glass. Lindsay looked closer to find that there was no candle, only the flame, feeding on Noah’s magic. Kristan had wandered off with a flashlight and the white circle of light bounced around at the edge of the parking lot.
“She’s checking to see if Ylli left any clues,” Noah said, without looking up. “In case they came down this way. She says she’ll know it if she sees it.”
A black cloth was spread over the trunk. On it, Noah had set out an old silver sugar bowl without a lid, a compass, a mirror, a handful of candles, a little pocketknife with a bone handle, and an unopened bottle of spring water. He leaned against the trunk, looking down at them as though they could already tell him something.
It all seemed random, discarded bits and pieces of people’s lives. Lindsay didn’t dare touch any of it for fear of disturbing whatever Noah intended to do. Speaking didn’t feel like a wrong thing, though. “How is it supposed to work?”
“Silver holds magic.” Noah put the bowl in the middle. “So does water. There’s enough things here for more than one try. I’m not assuming anything. First thing I’m going to do is find them like you’d go north. But I’m changing the value of north.” He turned the compass over in the light, pulled a screwdriver out of the things still piled up to the side and tried to get the compass apart. “Of course, I’m looking for north in a big puddle of magnets, but I’m hoping I can get the specifics right.”
“How do you tell it what to look for? That you want Ylli and Zoey, and not whatever artifacts are tucked away in that museum or hidden in the ground?” So much of how magic worked still eluded Lindsay, but he wanted to understand it. Needed to.
“Magic and will are close in nature. I’m hoping the fact that I really want to find them helps. We’re all from the same house, you and Kristan and Ylli and I. That gives us a bond I’m banking on as well—my magic should be in harmony with Ylli’s. If this doesn’t work, we’ll go with old divination tricks. Nature knows what’s coming. If you can get her to touch your magic, your magic will show you what she sees.
That’s why Cyrus—because he was so close to the element of air—had that gift of precognition.”
The compass finally came apart in his hands and he rescued the needle from the rest. The liquid smelled flammable.
“If I were a hundred years old,” he muttered, “this would be a doddle.”
“I don’t see a damn thing.” Kristan came trudging back. “Unless Feathers forgot that the rest of us have to fucking walk and left me a message twenty feet up.”
“I may be able to sense them when we’re close enough to catch them in my illusion.” That wouldn’t tell Lindsay which way to go to find Ylli—or if Ylli, specifically, was out there, because he’d never been in Ylli’s mind enough to know the taste of it—but he would feel if someone was there.
“If it won’t hurt you to do it.” Noah paused before pouring water in the sugar bowl.
“I’ll let you know.”
“Come here.” Noah beckoned to Kristan.
“What?” She came close, looking wary.
“I need one of your hairs to add to
this to help find Ylli.”
You are wise. Most surrender such precious things too easily. Lindsay remembered being told that when he’d refused to let a mage take his blood to determine his lineage. A hair seemed equally precious, though in this situation, Lindsay’s objections were the least of their problems.
“I know what you’re thinking, and just because he has a dick... I’m not a slut.” Kristan took three steps back. She could still put his teeth on edge, no matter what.
“I am,” Noah said unapologetically. “Or I was. Probably will be again.” He grinned at Lindsay, that wicked grin that—like the first time—startled a laugh out of Lindsay. “You’re Vivian’s. So is he. But you don’t have to give me one. It’s cool.”
“Oh, God,” Kristan groaned. “Stop being so fucking nice.” She reached up and plucked a wisp from her temple and offered it to him. The winding strand glinted in the candlelight.
“Thank you.” Noah took the hair and wrapped it around the needle. “The process will destroy it—I won’t have it to use again.”
He put the needle down carefully and picked up the tiny pocketknife. It was a folding knife with only a single blade about an inch long. Once it was open, he stared at it for a long moment, like he was weighing something. Then he drew it across his left palm.
In the dark, it was hard to see how much damage a little thing like that could do, and Noah kept his hand closed. He put the knife down and picked up the compass needle. That went into his left hand as well and he clenched his fist around it.
“Here we go.” Noah picked up the sugar bowl full of water and backed away from the car. “Someone else want to put that stuff away?”
“I’ll get it.” Lindsay tried to keep an eye on Noah while he was at it. He didn’t like the idea of Noah slicing his hand open, however shallowly it might have been, and he had no idea what Noah might do next.
The water bottle, compass pieces and mirror all went back in the bag with the black cloth. Lindsay left the bag in the trunk and, after checking that Kristan had the car keys, closed it up. “What now?”
“Now we get directions.” Noah held his hand out and light began seeping through his fingers. For a moment, the blood running down his wrist was visible, and then the fire flared white, sucking the blood into it. Lindsay could feel raw heat coming from the flames; it was like standing next to a torch. “This had better work.”
Noah opened his hand and the fire rolled into to a red-orange globe on his palm. The compass needle was a tiny shadow spinning on top. Moving carefully, Noah slipped the ball of fire into the bowl, where it sank beneath the surface until only the needle remained on top, lit from underneath by the burning globe.
The spinning slowed once the needle met the resistance of the water, and it wiggled about before selecting a direction that would take them deep into the circle of the mound.
“And why do we not know how to do this?” Kristan flicked her flashlight on.
“Excellent question.” Lindsay could think of a few reasons. “Poor timing, maybe. It isn’t as though we haven’t been busy with other things.” Like Moore.
“I need to focus on this little bastard,” Noah muttered. “Must be your influence, Kristan. Thing won’t stop nattering.” The colors of the globe oscillated like it was trying to get hotter, flaring and subsiding.
“Someone else can find the best path.” He held his wounded hand out to Lindsay.
In the light from the bowl, Lindsay could see it was clean except for a few beads of blood gathering along the edge of a clotted gash across Noah’s palm. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had Noah’s blood on him—there wasn’t anything of Noah that Lindsay hadn’t touched, nothing of Noah he couldn’t have. He was struck all over again by how much Noah was his. He slipped his hand into Noah’s and guided him around a rock.
“I feel like an idiot doing parlor tricks,” Noah murmured when they stopped to let Kristan go ahead and find the best way around a small gully. “I’m sorry if this doesn’t work. If we end up outside a liquor store, we know what happened, though.”
Lindsay snorted quietly. “We’ll figure something out.”
As they walked, Lindsay stretched his illusion out in front of them. For a long time, there was nothing. This was a magical place, though, and even the nothingness was filled with eddies of magic flowing around them. The last time he’d been in a place this full of magic, everything had been different. In Ezqel’s cave, Dane had stood beside him, had held his hands and kissed his lips and washed away his fear.
Now, Dane was lost and Lindsay was alone with his fear.
Finally, the illusion snagged on one person, and another. He kept going, feeling for more, until he started touching the crowds of the residential areas, clumps of minds, all sleeping, dreaming.
And something more. The wild, raw taste of chaos. They were human, but not, and every one of them felt somehow familiar, though not all the same. Hounds, Lindsay realized, ripping his illusion back into himself as quickly as he could. There were Hounds near here, Hounds that tasted like Jonas.
The soft sounds of Noah and Kristan breathing reminded him he wasn’t alone. He could tell them what he’d found... But there was nothing any of them could do about it now.
Slowly, he sent out a fresh wave of illusion to conceal them, and with it, he sought those first two minds he’d caught before.
“There’s someone nearby,” Lindsay said quietly. “Two people.” He’d never had Ylli or Zoey in his illusions before, and the magic around him was too intense to tell if any of it belonged to either person.
With the Hounds nearby and something already hunting them, Lindsay didn’t dare try to put himself behind the eyes of the people he’d caught. He needed to be inside himself, in case his illusion failed.
The long walk, got easier once the little compass locked on to a direction and held steady. As far as Lindsay could tell, they were headed for the two people he felt.
That left Noah free to help them find the way, instead of trying to tame the needle, and he was more skilled at this than Lindsay had expected. He had a better sense of where the best paths lay than either Kristan or Lindsay. Now, Noah was helping Lindsay up slopes and around obstacles, and Kristan was only a few feet behind them, keeping the light pooled around their feet.
Lindsay was grimy and sweaty, his hair had been snagged by branches at almost every turn, his shins had been banged on deadfalls lurking in the dark, and he’d nearly turned his ankle when the footing on a hill turned out to be insufficient. Kristan was muttering curses and threatening Noah in turns. As they trudged along the tree line on the side of a hill, the minds inside his illusion grew larger, closer.
“We’re close,” he said, then realized Ylli and Zoey wouldn’t be able to see them. “I need to fix the illusion.”
“Okay.” Noah let go of him and sank down to sit in the long grass. Kristan sat next to him and wiped her face with the hem of her shirt. She ran her hands through her hair, pulling out twigs. Both of them looked like completely different people from the ones who had last left Cyrus’s house. Given how exhausted they seemed, Lindsay could only assume he resembled the walking dead.
Cautiously, he focused on the illusion keeping them hidden from view. Ylli and Zoey wouldn’t be able to find them if they couldn’t be seen. Without dropping the illusion entirely, he wove a hole in it to exclude the two minds he now recognized.
Once he’d sealed it into place again, he dropped down to sit near Noah and Kristan. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he said, “They’ll be able to see us now, even if no one else can.”
“Ylli will be here soon.” Kristan pushed herself to her feet. “He’s a jumpy little bugger. You said no one else could hear or see us, right?”
“Right.”
This moment of relief in the wilderness reminded Lindsay of his hike with Dane through the Black Forest. Dane. He hoped this didn’t turn out the same way, with some monster jumping out of the woodwork and leaving one of them near
ly dead. Jonas was wherever Moore held Dane, but there were other beasts at Moore’s disposal, and they weren’t far from here.
Noah let the globe of fire go out and emptied the bowl before he tucked the bowl and needle away in one of his jacket pockets. They were alone in the dark now, with Kristan carrying the flashlight toward the trees.
Lindsay tensed, sitting up again, watching the darkness for movement. The Hounds were out there somewhere. A repeat of the Black Forest was more likely than he wanted to admit to himself.
Kristan whistled sharply, cutting the silence. “I think he’s coming.” She kept looking up to the tops of the trees. Moments later, there was a soft sound of wings on the air, and a large shadow detached from the
dark mass of the tree line.
“Lindsay? Kristan?” The shadow dropped into the ring of light cast by the flashlight. Ylli looked thinner than usual, but he seemed to be in one piece.
Lindsay took a slow breath, keeping a grip on his fear, and stood.
“We’re here.”
“How did you—” Ylli stopped abruptly as he caught sight of Noah. “You’re alive?” He stared a moment and shook his head. “Never mind. I need to get back and tell Zoey it’s safe.”
Lindsay glanced at Noah, remembering what he’d looked like the last time Ylli had seen him, but he pushed it away and turned to Ylli.
“Bring her. We can’t stay here.” Lindsay’s anxiety was making it hard to breathe. “We have to go.”
“Where?” Ylli paused with his wings half-spread. “We can’t go home.” Lindsay wanted to answer, but he couldn’t make the words.
“We have a place,” Noah said, getting to his feet. He brought up a flame in one hand and came to stand in front of Lindsay, pushing Lindsay’s hair back with his free hand. “Lindsay, what’s wrong?”
The firelight made the orange heat in Noah’s eyes burn brighter. He was as warm as sunshine.
Lindsay remembered the wall of fire sweeping down the boardwalk, and his fear eased enough that he could talk.
