Maybe this Shadow witch, if she even truly existed, could help her. At this point, Sophie was more than happy to place her hopes in fairy tales. It wasn’t like she had much else at the moment.
The two-lane highway snaked its way through the national forest, towering white pines and oaks flanking the road, branches stretching overhead making it feel like driving through a tunnel of trees. Through spring and fall, it was a shady, soothing drive, surrounded by shades of green. Now, with most of the leaves gone, it was much brighter than usual, and she could see the sky peeking through the latticework of branches over the road. As she drove, she looked for street signs. If the guidebook was right, this witch could be found just off of South Mine. Sophie still couldn’t quite believe she was even bothering with this.
After another few minutes, she spied the black and white street sign that said S. Mine. She turned onto it, trading asphalt for rutted dirt road. The trees were even thicker once she turned off, and she watched a deer bound across the road a few yards ahead of her, then disappear into the forest again.
As she drove, she began to notice the forest becoming less robust. At first, the forest just seemed less dense. Then the trees began to seem shorter, stunted. Some looked deformed, as if they’d grown despite whatever it was that wanted them not to. Another mile or so, and the trees had thinned to just a scattered few, twisted and stunted, almost painful looking. The land between them was gray; not even the hearty wild plants that thrived in the northern Michigan sand were able to withstand whatever was affecting the earth there.
This was what would happen to her land, given enough time. Her beautiful, lush, life-giving acreage would become just like this unless she did something. Unless she found her way back to the Light.
She shook her head. She’d never let it happen. She would rather leave the land she loved than see it turned into this wasteland.
She kept driving, nothing but gray soil and the occasional spindly, dead tree on either side of the road. There were no more deer bounding past, and, though her window was down, she couldn’t decipher a single bird call. Nothing but dead silence surrounded her, the sound of her engine cutting through it.
The sense of wrongness there was overwhelming, and Sophie’s Shadow magic responded to it. She felt calmer than she had in a while. Of course she did. Shadow loved destruction, she realized. Her magic would have hated every moment spent on her land, with life all around, with Calder there, loving her through even her most desperate, insane moments. But here, in this desolate, sick place, the Shadow magic within her hummed.
She navigated one more bend in the dirt road, and a house came into view. It was not the type of house Sophie expected to find there, deep in the forest. This was the domain of log cabins and little stone houses, the occasional clapboarded Cape Cod or manufactured home. What rose before her was nothing short of something out of a fairy tale. It was a tall Victorian, complete with rounded turrets, fish scale siding, and a porch that wrapped around from the front of the house to both sides. It was painted a stone gray color, with dark red trim.
It looked wrong. Sophie was used to seeing Victorians with lush plantings in front of them, bushy ferns hanging from the porches. She wondered at the appearance of this huge house here, so out of place with everything else, so prominent against the desolation. This house had not been mentioned in the guidebook or any of the stories she’d heard.
The realization crept in that the stories claimed that those who actually ventured far enough to see the house never returned.
She pulled the car to a stop. She was still quite a way away from the house. She could just turn around and go home.
And do what? she asked herself. Sit and wait helplessly for the moment when she either loses her mind or Marshall makes her do something she’ll hate herself for? Wait for Calder to decide he’s had enough, or for her life to slowly but surely become as desolate as the land around the Victorian in front of her?
She took a deep breath and put the car in “drive” again. She pulled into the driveway, aware that the only thing keeping her hands from shaking uncontrollably was her grip on the steering wheel. She felt cold, and her stomach flip-flopped with nerves.
She pulled to a stop in the long, winding gravel driveway. She could see that it lead behind the house, probably to a barn or garage, she figured. She took one final deep breath and pushed her car door open.
Her footsteps sounded too loud to her ears, the only sounds in this emptiness. First the crunch of gravel, then the crinkly sound of dead grass beneath her sneakers. She took hold of the railing and was raising her foot to the bottom step when the front door opened, and Sophie froze.
A woman stepped out onto the porch. A woman who had powers, magic that Sophie’s Shadow magic recognized and welcomed. She had a cold, hard look about her that had Sophie thinking again that this had been a phenomenally stupid idea. Her long red hair fell in a silky curtain to her waist, and greenish-gray eyes stared at her from the woman’s expressionless, porcelain face. She wore jeans and a long black sweater that fluttered around her as the wind picked up.
She and Sophie stood studying one another for a moment.
“I could kill you with nothing more than a thought,” the woman said, and her voice was deep and rich, with an underlying seductiveness to it that, despite her words, made Sophie feel flushed, confused.
“Probably,” Sophie admitted, trying to pull herself together. “I’m Sophie.”
“I really don’t care. I am giving you to the count of ten to get back in your car and drive away. And that is only because I am feeling generous today.”
“I was hoping you could teach me,” Sophie said quickly.
The mask of indifference slipped, and for just an instant Sophie saw disbelief. And then it was gone so quickly Sophie wondered if she had imagined it. “You wasted your ten seconds,” the witch said. With a flick of her fingers, Sophie felt herself lifted from the ground, tossed through the air like a rag doll. She landed, hard, on the driveway behind her car, the sharp gravel cutting into her palms as she tried to stand.
“Are you one of Marshall’s?” Sophie asked, realizing that if the witch was going to kill her anyway, she could at least get an answer or two before she died.
“I am nobody’s,” the witch said.
Sophie stared at her. “Are you one of them, then? One of those who turns witches and grows fat from their power?”
The woman sneered. “I have no need of anyone else. And while I’m not sure if you’re brave or stupid, I really…”
“I need to learn how to control myself. I don’t want him to control me,” Sophie said quickly, begging. “I don’t know who else to turn to. I followed a ghost story to you, because I have no idea what else to do. I was Light, and the Light abandoned me, and then I was Shadow. And I don’t know how to make it work.”
The woman stood there watching her, her hair blowing behind her, sweater fluttering around her legs. “Then you will die,” she said with a shrug. “I have no interest in killing weaklings, but I can’t speak for the others out there. Put your affairs in order. Walk away now, before I change my mind.”
Sophie watched as the woman crossed her arms over her chest, waiting impatiently for Sophie to get into her car.
“I have nothing to lose,” Sophie said quietly.
“Don’t you? You have the aura of a woman in love, though the love is wreathed in darkness. You have the aura of foolish hope. And so much fear, so much that it chokes everything else out.”
Sophie swallowed, her throat dry at the woman’s words. “Yes. I have all of that.”
The witch shook her head. “I have no interest in teaching you. You are like a little lost puppy. Go home to your man, and live fully in what little time you likely have left. If I see you here again, it will be the end of you.” With that, she turned and went back into the house, leaving Sophie standing on the driveway, the day growing darker as it got closer to sunset. Her hands were still shaking, though now it was a
mix of fear and anger coursing through her. Frustration. She knew she was grasping at straws. She knew it, and yet she’d been stupid enough to hope.
She shook her head and climbed back into her car, slowly pulling out of the driveway and making her way back down the dirt road toward the highway. She knew she should be grateful to be getting away with her life. She could feel the witch, could feel how the other woman’s power dwarfed her own — not that that was overly difficult to do, she reminded herself. That instant when she’d sent Sophie flying through the air had taken no effort at all.
Yes. She should be grateful to still be alive, to be able to drive down the tree-lined highway and back home to Calder. She knew it, and yet she chafed against the idea that she was helpless, that she was basically just supposed to wait until Marshall showed up and used her, or until something went wrong and she pushed Calder away. As she drove, she thought. Migisi had had this same Shadow magic flowing trough her, a Lightwitch who had turned Shadow thanks to Marshall’s influence. Marshall, who had been on his own little crusade to steal the Light from her family in a deranged personal quest to keep a promise to a long lost love.
How she hated that ancestor. Even more than she hated Migisi, and that was quite a lot. How could anyone ever love Marshall? And how could anyone try to control their descendants, even from their grave? How egomaniacal could you get?
Migisi, at least, she could somewhat understand now that she was living through the same thing. Turned to the Shadow thanks to a curse planted on the one she loved. She was still living that nightmare. And that could not be blamed on Migisi. That was all Marshall, using Luc in his desperation to turn Migisi from the Light.
If only Migisi hadn’t totally lost her ever-loving mind and cursed Luc with the endless hunger that drove him and his descendants insane. If only she’d held it together enough to keep the evil to herself.
Sophie leaned her elbow on her car door, breathing a sigh of relief as she left the gray soil and twisted trees of the Shadow witch’s domain behind. She turned onto the highway, toward home.
If only’s didn’t actually get her anywhere, she thought. She was sure Migisi had had a few “if only” moments of her own, especially since she and Luc had likely become close again later in life. It perhaps hadn’t been the smartest idea, going to see the Shadow witch. She knew of Sophie now, and if she decided at some point that she was not happy with Sophie knowing where her home is, or what she looks like, or whatever, that could be a problem. She shook her head a little. It couldn’t be changed now. And the other witch had made it clear that she didn’t see Sophie as any kind of an actual threat.
Sophie let the cool air revive her and calm her as she drove toward home. She let herself be soothed by the smell of the forest around her, the sight of the sun setting over the horizon. This land, her blood. They were one and the same and she would find a way out of the Shadow before she ever let the land become what she had seen around the Shadow witch’s home.
She promised this to herself, among so many other things, and silently hoped that she’d have enough time and sanity to manage it all.
Chapter Seven
Calder was greeted with several shouted greetings as he walked through the front door of Jack’s. He waved and smiled, traded good-natured insults with some of the shifters he’d known his entire life. For most of his adult years, this had been as natural as breathing, a weekly tradition. A way to blow off steam and relax for a few hours from the tension involved in watching his father and trying to find a way to ward off his own impending insanity. Him, Bryce, Jon, beer, and a dark bar. It had been so easy.
Until Sophie.
He spotted Bryce and Jon at one end of the bar, nodded at a lynx shifter he knew, clapped another wolf shifter on the shoulder as he walked past.
He should have stayed home. What if she had a rough night? What if she tried to cook again and didn’t manage to hold it together the way she had the other night? What if the fucking warlock showed up?
What if some guy showed up, and Sophie couldn’t control her needs?
As soon as he had the thought, he hated himself. Was he really that shallow, that she had sacrificed pretty much everything for him and he was focusing on the fact that some other asshole could find his way into her bed?
As he sat down on the stool between where Bryce and Jon were sitting, he tried to keep an impassive expression on his face. They’d finally managed to convince him to come out with them, and Sophie had practically pushed him out the door, telling him that he deserved a break from babysitting duty and that she was perfectly able of managing for a few hours without him.
And, damn it, he knew she was. He knew it, and he still felt like he should run back to her little cottage as quickly as he could.
Part of it was that edge of madness he saw in her eyes.
Part of it was the fear that, yeah, some other guy would take advantage of the situation.
And part of it was the fact that he knew she’d lied to him. She’d told him a couple of nights back that she was stopping to see her friend Thea at the reservation, yet when she’d gotten home, her car was dusty as if she’d been driving dirt roads, and she seemed on edge. Tense.
There were no dirt roads on the reservation. At least, not the part Thea and Sophie usually spent time in.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sophie. He trusted her. What he didn’t trust was the fucking curse he’d lived with for so long, or the Shadow warlock who’d made it clear that he could force her to his will whenever he decided he wanted to.
He didn’t even realize he was starting to stand up again until Bryce and Jon each put a hand on his shoulders and pushed him back down onto his bar stool.
“You can’t watch her every second,” Bryce said in a low voice. “And you need a break, man.”
“And she doesn’t want you to watch her every second,” Jon continued from his other side. Calder glanced over, briefly meeting his brother’s serious gaze. “You remember how it is. I know you do. I know how it was with dad. She’s ashamed enough of how she’s feeling, how crazy she feels. You watching her every second, waiting for her to lose it, doesn’t help.”
“And if she loses it and I’m not there?” Calder shot back.
“Then you pick up the pieces after, and you’re there for her when she needs you.”
“This is so much worse than when it was your dad,” Bryce muttered. “This is your woman. You can’t babysit the woman you’re supposed to see as your equal.”
“I do see her as my equal. More than my equal,” Calder corrected himself.
“Then start freaking listening when she gently tries to tell you to back off,” Bryce told him, taking a swig of his beer.
Calder stared at him, dumbfounded. “She never told me to back off. Where is this shit coming from?”
Bryce furrowed his brow. “Layla said Sophie was upset the other day. And if Sophie’s upset, then I know enough to know that you’re not much better.”
“She could have told me,” Calder said, irritated. He wasn’t sure who he was more irritated with: himself, or with Sophie.
“She tried to. Layla said Sophie told her she kept hinting that you should get back to work on my car, which, by the way, man, I totally agree with,” he added, and Calder shook his head. “And she said you just kept sitting there, watching her until it felt like you were this close to putting her in a playpen or something.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Calder answered, stinging from Bryce’s words.
“I don’t think so,” Jon piped up. “With as much trouble as it was to get you to come out tonight, I’m surprised you’re not following her to work and watching her.”
Calder felt a blush heat his face. He’d been tempted. He had. He heaved a deep sigh. “Fine, you dickheads. Point taken. Can we stop talking about it now?” Bryce and Jon nodded, and they all sat for a few minutes, attention directed toward the large TV behind the bar. The Tigers were in the playoffs, and the bar was more full that night tha
n usual as the local shifters took in the game. Of course, there were non-shifters there, too, but for the most part Jack’s served a very specific clientele. Shifters weren’t all that common, for the most part living in wild, wooded areas like that around Copper Falls. There were maybe five thousand of them in the entire country, from what they were able to gather about their notoriously reclusive brethren. Maybe around ten times that across the world. Part of the reason there were so few of them was that they didn’t breed easily. Most shifters were only children; he and Jon, and Sophie’s friends, Layla and Cara, were the only siblings Calder knew of. It was likely another reason shifter communities were so close-knit; lacking brothers and sisters, shifters usually sought out other shifters to befriend. And, unless two shifters bred together, their offspring would be normal humans. It took both a female shifter and a male shifter to create a shifter child.
His children with Sophie, should they have them, wouldn’t be shifters. Really, one would have thought that his ancestors would have stopped breeding with other shifters to keep the curse a little more manageable. And some did. But even if you weren’t a shifter, the genetic code for shapeshifting might still be there, sometimes buried back several generations, so two people who seemed totally human could find themselves with a shifter child if they’d both had shifters somewhere in their ancestry.
Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2) Page 6
