“Why?” I whispered, our faces almost close enough to touch. I teased his upper lip with mine and said, “I love you,” again.
He didn’t speak, but he didn’t look away either.
“You stubborn jackass, would you just tell him you love him too,” Liv’s voice croaked from her bed.
Max and I leapt at her bed, hugging and kissing her deliriously. “How are you?” Max asked. “Okay, that’s a stupid question. But I’m so glad you’re awake. I was so worried about you Livvie.”
She gave him a welcoming smile and flinched under the weight of his next hug. “Relax princess,” she said to Max, “I’m gonna be okay.”
She shuffled her eyes between Max and me, before coughing from a deep chuckle. “We always did have the same taste in men,” she said, pinching Max’s arm.
“Was it him?” I started to ask Liv when Max left to tell the nurse that she was awake.
Liv nodded but put her finger over her lips to signal my silence. Within another second, doctors, nurses, and Max all came back into the room and hovered over her. She got tired quickly from all the additional tests they ran, and when the doctors finally left her alone, she fell into a deep sleep.
“We need to let her rest,” the nurse said a little while later. “You both should go.”
“No, thank you,” I said without looking at Max. I didn’t need to see his face to know he felt the same way I did. “We’re fine to stay here.”
The nurse started reciting some bitchy, memorized dialog about hospital policies and I stepped in front of Max and gently said, “Ma’am, his sister nearly died today and we’re not going to let her be here alone.”
“That’s just not possible. I don’t want to have to call security, but it’s unacceptable that . . .”
“Ma’am,” I said, interrupting her. “Do you want to know what’s really unacceptable? Having someone you love attacked and nearly die. That’s unacceptable. Dealing with a nurse who masks her complete lack of empathy as hospital policy. That’s unacceptable. So until you’re sitting here someday, being asked to walk away from someone you love, don’t try to tell anyone what’s unacceptable. He’s staying. I’m staying. Say whatever you want, call whomever you like, but at the end of it, he and I will still be sitting here. Understood?”
She reluctantly conceded, and we stole a large sofa-like chair from the waiting area and pushed it up against Liv’s bed so we could sit there together. We drifted along the edges of sleep, with Max’s hand resting comfortably over mine on his chest.
“I love you, too,” he said peacefully.
Chapter 37
“Are you there?” Liv asked. We were sitting at a table set with colorful linen napkins, crystal drinking glasses, and pitchers of lemonade with fresh lemon wedges floating along the top. The scent of lemon mixed nicely with the air from the beach in front of us.
“Yeah,” I said looking up at her. “But where is here?”
The loose material from her flowery dress flapped with the light breeze behind us. “A quiet corner inside my mind. It’s only ever me here, but I thought you might like the view,” she said, filling her glass with lemonade.
I looked out at the soft waters and squinted against the setting sun. “I do.”
“Our lives are so complicated, aren’t they? Why can’t we just be normal? Why do we have to fight and get hurt and lose people we love?” she asked.
“How’d you get away from him?”
She took a long sip of her drink and said, “I took him on from inside his own head. It’s wasn’t a pretty place. His mind was . . . broken, that’s the best way I can describe it. Tampered with maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like an ocean, the deeper you go the darker and stranger it gets, until the pressure is so intense that you either have to leave or get crushed by the weight of it. I guess I went too far down and got crushed a little, because the next thing I knew I was in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I didn’t think he’d come after you. I didn’t think all my problems would become yours. I just didn’t think.”
“Hat, stop. I told you that you’re not alone in this. I meant it. I knew what the risks of getting involved were, and it was my choice to do it.”
“Why’d he attack you instead of me?”
“We weren’t exactly chitchatting inside his head, but I don’t think he knew I was helping you until after I showed up at that lumberyard. Maybe he was trying to keep me from helping you again, or maybe he thought that killing me would distract you long enough for his plan to play out. I don’t know exactly, but I do know that whatever he’s got planned with the Opalescence, he’s getting close. He knows how it works now, and he’s just waiting for the connection to happen. You don’t have a lot of time.”
I let my eyes drift over the water’s reflection of the sun and sipped on my glass of lemonade. “I know.”
“Hat, I’m still trying to make sense of everything I saw in his head, but even if you can get the Opalescence back, he’s not going to stop. He can’t. Whatever it is that’s controlling him is just . . . it’s just too strong. He’s wanted it for a long time, and I don’t think that just taking it back is going to be enough.”
“I know that too,” I said, closing my eyes and trying not to think about what I may need to do to end it. “All the cards have been dealt at this point, and all that’s left is me and him, however that plays out.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go after him. I wish you could just stay here with me forever and look at the beach. There’s no drama here. No fighting. Just the water.”
“Me too, but can you do something for me?”
“Always.”
“If he kills me this time, you know, for real . . . I just want to make sure someone is going to be there to look after my family. He could go after them next, and with the Opalescence, I don’t know if they can stop him.”
“Okay. But can you do something for me?” Liv asked, taking a sip of her drink.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t die.”
It was funny the way she said it. What was not as funny was how hard it would be to do what she was asking.
“I’m not asking for me, or for your family, but for you. You still have so much left to do in your life, I don’t want you to miss out on it. And . . . well, maybe just a little bit, I want you to come back for my brother,” she said, giggling to herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you.”
The sun was barely awake when I came back from Liv’s mind. I rolled over from my stiff position on the couch and yawned. I might as well have slept on a piece of cardboard across the floor for as comfortable as that couch was. If I hadn’t been lying against Max, I may not have slept at all.
Noticing me waking up, Max leaned in and kiss me. “I missed waking up to you,” he said.
“Who wouldn’t?” I said with a laugh. I would never get tired of kissing him. “Listen,” I whispered before kissing him again. “I have to go. I . . . I don’t know how to explain why, and there isn’t really time to, but I don’t want you to think I’m not telling you . . .”
“It’s okay,” Max ran his fingers along my scratchy chin, “she told me everything, you know, in that special way only she can.”
“Everything?”
He laughed. “Well I assume it was everything. But we’ll have time to talk about anything she missed later, right?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping it would be true.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “She told me I couldn’t, but I don’t care. I don’t want you to walk into this alone.”
“Mmm. I love you, but you can’t come. You have to stay here and make sure nothing else happens to her. Besides, I’m not alone. I have my whole family behind me.”
He started to talk again, but I cut
him off with a kiss. “I’m sorry that there isn’t more time,” I said, “but I have to go, and it has to be now. But, you should know that . . . I know I said it last night, but . . . I love you. I’ll always love you . . . no matter what.”
He grabbed my chin hard, pulling my face up so my eyes met his. “Hey,” he said firmly. “Don’t you fucking talk like that. I’ve lost enough people to magic and I’m not losing you too. Don’t act like you’re not coming back. If it’s that dangerous then don’t go. It’s not worth it. We’ll figure something else out.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” I said faintly, pulling his hand away from my face.
“Promise me you’re coming back.”
I kissed him one more time and pulled myself away, walking out of the room without saying anything more. I couldn’t promise him that, because I had already learned just how dangerous my life had become, and I knew it would be all too easy for the Universe to decide that I wasn’t coming back this time. But there was a certain amount of comfort in the idea that I had a reason, a really handsome and wonderful reason, to fight my way back.
“Thanks,” I said to Cooper as he handed me a fresh cup of coffee outside of Liv’s room.
“What’s next then?” he asked, sipping from his own cup.
“Next, I go after the man who did this.”
“Right. When do we leave?”
“I’m leaving now, but you’re not.”
“Why not? Trust me, mate, I can do much more than persuade people. I can fight head-on when I have to.”
“And you may have to. If I don’t make it back from this, someone else is going to have to go after him. He won’t stop otherwise. It’ll have to be you and her; there’s no one else.”
“But we’ll be stronger together, now. We should go at him with everything we have. There’s only one . . .”
“No,” I said, putting my hand on Cooper’s shoulder. “With his powers, it’ll be too easy for him to get away if we charge at him. He already thinks he’s more powerful than me, and I doubt he’ll turn down the opportunity to take me out, so I’m going at him alone.”
Cooper looked through the window into Liv’s room as she slept, and then back at me. “Call me as soon as it’s finished. I’ll gather anyone I can find at The Playground and we’ll wait for you. If we don’t hear from you soon, I’ll assume you’ve . . . I’ll assume you need our assistance.”
* * * * *
Cars shuffled through the city early the next morning. All the normal people were heading to work on a normal day, oblivious to the clandestine world of magic that lived beneath their own. It was better that way, I think. They didn’t need to know how close they were to death and destruction that day.
I texted Talia to find out if Graham was in the office yet, only for her to tell me he was at Storage. The air was stale there from a weekend without the HVAC system running. It was quiet; even the mice that inhabited the place seemed to know what was coming and made themselves scarce.
“Graham! I know you’re here,” I yelled.
As I walked deeper into the room, something grappled with my ability to stand and I fell over from the weight of nothing. It felt like an invisible brick wall had crumbled on top of me. It was crushing my bones and I was helpless to move.
I’m not off to a good start.
“Gravity is such a simple thing,” Talia said, appearing from one of the side rooms. “We take for granted the pure power of it, how it holds us to the Earth, but eases itself enough so we can walk around freely on it.”
Her legs crossed over each other as she sauntered toward me. She was twisting her fingers above her head and holding me down with powers I never suspected she had. “Who knew that just a little bit of magic could change all that?”
“Talia?” I yelled as her powers crushed me further into the floor. “What are you doing?”
“Exactly what I was hired to do,” she said, tilting her head to enjoy the view of my incapacitated body. “Don’t look so pathetic.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Life is pain. I just orchestrate it,” she said.
She raised her hand and the invisible bricks lifted, but the severe force of reversed gravity was thrusting me from below, and I shot up to the ceiling, my entire body slamming against the textured popcorn paint.
“Up and down. Up and down,” Talia said, twisting her hands back and forth, dropping me ferociously to the ground, only to fling me back up to hit the ceiling again. By the third round, the outline of my body was clearly plastered into the ceiling, along with splatters of blood from my scrapped skin. When I fell to the floor that time, she crushed me harder—so hard that I could practically hear my bones start to buckle and crack under the weight of her gravitational control.
She crouched over me and hiked up her already too-short dress to straddle my stomach. The weight of her body on top of me was nothing compared to the weight of her powers, and my organs shifted to keep from being crushed by the pressure.
The pain was making me dizzy and her weight was the only thing stopping my stomach from exploding out of my throat. “Stop,” I pleaded. “Please.”
“That’s right. Keep begging like a little bitch.”
“Talia, this isn’t you,” I struggled to say. More painful than the crushing effects of her powers were the thoughts behind them. A friend, my closest friend outside my family, was helping the man who killed my mother, and was now trying to kill me.
“But it is, and you have no idea how thankful I am that I can finally stop pretending to give a shit while you carry on with your incessant whining.” She bent down closer so our faces were almost touching. Chortling the entire time, she stuck out her tongue and licked my face from chin to forehead. The dribble left in the wake of it was as gross as it was taunting. As she finished, a small vial from around her neck tapped my chin.
“This?” she asked when she saw me looking at it. “Cute, right? It’s filled with your hair.” She moved it directly over my face and swung it back and forth so it would hit me on the nose each time.
“You can still stop this . . .”
“You know I love your hair, it smells so . . .” She stopped to examine her surroundings before shaking her head eccentrically.
“I took it as a precaution against those visions of yours,” she said, and she almost sounded like a normal person again. “Don’t you just love the attention? All that work, just for you.” The normalcy in her voice dwindled away as she rested one of her long fingernails from her free hand on my lip. Then she giggled maliciously before pulling it back sharply and drawing blood.
“This is all so . . . anticlimactic, don’t you think? You came here for the fight of your life and you can’t even move underneath my power.” She rubbed the blood over my lips before moving her finger to her own mouth and sucking the last of the blood from it. “Mmmm. Tastes sweet, like victory.”
Drip. Drip. Drip. Something somewhere was dripping, and the sound of it was getting loud. “What is that?” Talia asked, looking around confused.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The sounds got louder. I followed her eyes and saw black, molasses-like goo dripping down the walls from every corner of the room. We were still there, alone in Storage, but the room was mutating around us as the goo covered and then swallowed everything.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The dripping continued, and color itself was drained from existence. The remaining black and white inverted, making everything distorted like a badly exposed photograph.
“What is this?” She slapped me across the face, and when my face bounced back easily, I realized her powers were no longer holding me down. I pushed her off me and moved behind a broken table.
“How are you doing this?” she yelled, her voice elevated into a full-on shriek.
“Scared of your own mind, Talia?” Liv asked, appearing in the corner. She was still in her hospital
robe and she looked tired, too tired to be casting her powers to save me.
“What are you doing?” I asked Liv.
“Shhh . . . it’s okay,” she whispered.
Talia held out her hand and twisted her fingers at Liv but nothing happened.
“There’s no gravity inside your head,” Liv said. Her voice bounced playfully around us, but her mouth wasn’t moving. She was in control of that moment, and that alone was enough to make Talia pull on her own hair and spin in circles in fear.
The blackened walls of Storage, Talia’s mind set in Storage, started to rustle. Outlines of faceless bodies thrust themselves against the paint like it was made of fabric, clawing with their fingers to break free. Moaning followed, and the bodies pushed harder. The walls started closing in, drawing the bodies closer and closer to Talia. She was shrieking again and charging into what little open space was left, desperately hunting for a way out of her own mind.
“Graham’s at home. The rest is yours,” Liv said to me before disappearing and taking the haunted house of Talia’s mind with her.
The color returned to the room, but Talia was still huddled in the corner shaking and shifting her eyes back and forth between the walls to see which monstrous body would break free first.
“Make it stop. Make them stop,” she said.
I ripped the vial from around her neck, threw it to the ground and smashed it with my foot. “Why did you do this?” I asked, moving my hand over her throat and holding her down with the power of the Opalescence.
“I know they’ll hurt me, I know they will . . . but you won’t. You can’t. We’re friends . . .” Talia babbled in a breathy voice.
“That’s right . . . best friends forever,” I said, waving my hand at a stack of boxes and walking away as they fell on top of her.
Chapter 38
“All you had to do was walk away,” Graham said as I entered his condo.
He was sitting in a tall-backed, beige accent chair in the entryway near the base of the stairs to the second floor. The Opalescence, still safely in my setting, dangled from his neck, and his voice and face were still hidden underneath the Mask of Apate.
Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1) Page 30
