He laughed and I closed my eyes.
“Oka, I’ll be right back,” I said as I thought of Alaska and the snow and the cold. Three heartbeats and I opened my eyes.
We stood at the edge of what I thought might be the ocean. Behind us was nothing but bush and forest, the trees weighted down with snow. It was still early in the year and nowhere else had the icy cold claim it like this.
“I can’t leave you here.” I started to tug him closer, fully meaning to take us somewhere else. He pulled his hand from mine.
“This is perfect.” He took a step back and then grinned at me. “Thank you, Pamela, greatest witch I have ever met.” He swept into a courtly bow that made me blush. “Perhaps we’ll cross paths again one day.”
“Not if you don’t figure out that block,” I pointed out, and he grinned and had the audacity to blow me a kiss.
“Let it be then. And good luck with the ghosts. Be warned that when they realize you see them, they’ll cling like burrs to your sweet ass.” He moved a hand to his lower back and pulled something out. A knife in a back sheath. “It ain’t much, but I want you to have it. You saved my life back there.”
I took the knife. It wasn’t very big, but I’d lost my bowie knife in the Pit, burned it up in the lava when I first fell in. I tucked this new knife and sheath to my lower back. “You sure you don’t need it?”
“Ah, I’ve always got something up my sleeve. Don’t you worry about me, Pamela. Though it’s nice to think you might.” He winked, spun and was running before I could say anything in response. I took a breath of the icy cold, clean air. Alaska. What the hell had made me think of this place?
A tiny voice whispered the truth to me. He’ll be closer to you once you go home to Rylee.
I shook that away, closed my eyes and rode Spirit back to where Oka waited. Only she wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER 13
WILL STOOD ON the rooftop of the police station. His dirty blond hair stuck up in every direction and his clothes were filthy, torn and hanging off his frame. There was no sign of the man he’d been before. His eyes were wild and he lurched toward me before I had a chance to say a word. “Where is he?” The words were ripped from him along with a snarl. I saw the beast in him and knew if I didn’t diffuse this fast, he was going to shift.
“Will, it’s me. Pamela!” I held out my hands and he sniffed the air. “Will, you remember me, don’t you?”
If he shifted and attacked me . . . I wasn’t entirely sure I could stop him without killing him.
I stumbled back as he took a step in my direction. I went down to one knee and my movement set him off. He shifted, his body sliding into his black panther form with a single smooth motion. He crouched, his tail lashing across the gravel in big sweeps.
“Will, don’t do this.”
He snarled and his muscles bunched.
“Oka!” I called for her, not entirely sure what she could do. If anything.
But she ran for me, skidding to a stop between us. Another time it would have been comical to see the tiny peachy orange cat fluffed up and hissing at a black panther that could have swallowed her whole with a single bite. A single bite and she’d be dead.
What had I been thinking?
Will didn’t even look at her as he slunk toward me.
Until she shot forward and slashed her tiny dagger claws across his nose. He roared and shook his head. But she wasn’t done. She slashed at his nose and went for his eyes too. Like a fly pesters an elephant, she kept at him, dodging around, avoiding him easily.
I got to my feet. The distraction was all I’d needed to get my bearings. I called up air and spun it around Will, stilling his movements.
“Will, stop it!” I walked up to him now that he couldn’t move and slapped a hand across his furred face.
Nothing changed, nothing happened except for him to strain harder against the bonds I held him in. His eyes were still wild and my heart broke. “Will, what happened to you?”
Oka leapt up and I caught her in my arms. “He’s lost himself to his animal. With shifters sometimes . . . one thing too many and it pushes them over the edge.”
I closed my eyes. “He was my friend. Rylee’s friend. I can’t believe he’s lost too . . .”
“I’d lay money he can smell the demon on you. His blood got on you, didn’t it?” Oka pulled back and sniffed at me. “Yes, I can smell it on you now that I am looking for it. Has he had dealings with demons before?”
“They killed his sister.”
“Oh, dear,” she whispered. “That would do it, I would think.”
I backed away from the snarling face of panther Will. “As soon as I’m out of sight, I can’t hold him anymore.”
“I think you should just disappear,” Oka said.
Relief flowed through me. Of course, that’s what I should do. I just hadn’t thought of it; the skill was still new to me. I put a hand up and touched her head just to be sure she was there and thought about the pub that Jax had told me about. In a blink, I was gone from the rooftop. So much for getting help from Will.
I opened my eyes and stared around . . . and found a whole lot of humans staring right back. I had taken us just outside of the pub, that had been my plan, and it had worked a little too well. We stood in the front courtyard and the humans—all men—were in a semi-circle around me, as though they had been waiting. But how could that be?
I’d just appeared right in front of them, right out of thin air. More than one took an aggressive step toward me, and the click of a gun’s hammer froze me. I slowly raised my hands, and prepped to Ride Spirit right back out of there.
“Help me.” The plea normally would have turned me around. As it was, I felt it prudent to keep my eyes on the advancing humans.
“Oka, who is it?”
She popped up and looked behind us. “Dark-haired woman on a platform with a noose around her neck and her hands tied behind her back.”
I took a deep breath, raised my hands a little higher. The world was truly going mad. I wiggled my fingers at the humans. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be leaving.”
“Help me, please!” the woman cried out.
I spun, my cloak flared out and the gun went off. The boom of it, so close, rattled my ears and I ducked as well as I could while still staying upright. I flicked my hands out at the rope around the woman’s neck. Flames cut through the twine as though sliced with a razor and she scrambled down from the platform. I raced toward her, grabbed her hand and pulled on Spirit to take us away from the courtyard.
The world went from the chaos and yelling of the humans after us to the quiet of the forest. I’d taken us to the outskirts of the city, a park I’d been to so long ago, I could barely remember it. Except that I remembered it being far away, and very sparse with people.
“Who are you?” The witch turned slowly to look at me as she worked the ropes off her hands.
“Who are you that you couldn’t stop them?” I didn’t understand how they’d gotten a hold of her in the first place. Then I just stared at her. The face. The hair.
She was the witch that killed my mother. No longer pregnant, of course, but otherwise she was the woman. There was no doubt about it.
She sighed. “I was a fool. I thought that he loved me and when he got me drunk . . . well, you know how it is, eh lassie?” It was then I heard the Scottish brogue.
I didn’t know how it was. But I knew witches could be fooled by their hearts, same as any human. All of that was a blur, though. I was spinning through emotions. Should I want to kill her for what she’d done? Because I didn’t.
More than that, though, it was like she finally looked at me. She sucked in a sharp breath. “It cannot be.”
“You killed my mother.” I said the words simply, with zero emotional inflection.
She shook her head and her eyes were shadowed with fear. “Your mother . . . she brought it on herself. She tampered with things beyond her ken. There was a full coven that took her down. You saw her
last memory, did you? I was the one to finish the spell.”
She straightened. “If you’re going to be killing me, then do it. I’ve got nothing left since my Bonnie girl was killed.”
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My mother was not . . . she was not the kind of person I wanted to be. I had seen the darkness in her eyes and the hard line of her mouth. I didn’t love her. I no longer wanted to avenge her death.
“No. Just go.” I backed up a few steps.
Her eyes locked onto mine. “You are not like her.”
I shook my head, conviction flowing through me and, of all things, relief. “No, I’m not.”
I could see the tension ease out of her as her shoulders slumped. “There are so few left, child. If you need help, call on me. My name is Meghan. You would be of an age with my Bonnie girl.” She stared at me, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “And be safe, daughter of the forest, you are one of the last.”
She snapped her fingers and was gone.
“She Jumped the Veil.” I shook my head as I stared at the spot she’d been only a moment before.
“What now?” Oka asked softly.
Obviously I couldn’t go back to the pub where Meghan had nearly been hanged. Too many humans on the lookout for a witch. That left me one option, one I’d not thought of because doing so would mean going back to a place I had sworn I would never step foot in again.
“There is a place I know where there are ghosts.” I cringed as I spoke. “I did not want to go back there, but I know for sure there is one ghost. And if there is any that would cry, it will be him.”
I swung my cloak around me and closed my eyes. I pulled Spirit through me and let it carry me to a place I’d not wanted to go. A place where I knew there were ghosts, because I’d seen them.
The place I was handed off to when my abilities began to present themselves. When my adoptive parents couldn’t handle me anymore.
Carefully, I opened my eyes one at a time, as if by doing so, I could keep from seeing where I stood.
I was in the backyard of the home for disturbed children. The three-story structure still loomed into the sky, a massive square of gray with bars on the sparse, small lower windows. At least that was what the back of the house looked like. From the front, I knew it looked lovely. Welcoming even. But the back told the truth of what this house was. The yard, big as it was and something of an anomaly just being that large, was stripped of grass. Nothing but slick, slimy mud covered the ground making each step slide and slip.
“Where are we?” Oka peered out over my shoulder, hoisting herself up to see.
My jaw ticked as I fought the nervous fear that bubbled in my belly. “A place of many ghosts,” I said. “They took in the troubled children, and did . . . whatever they thought they had to do to correct them.”
Oka glanced at me. “I can feel your abhorrence. Did you know it well then?”
I stayed where I was, crouched in the shadows of the broken-down shack that had been my refuge more than once. “I lived here.” No other words and yet Oka picked up my swirling thoughts.
A hiss slipped out of her. “My beautiful girl, that was so wrong of your parents to leave you here.”
Just those words were all it took. No one had ever said that, not even Rylee. We all understood it was wrong to beat a child, to strap them to their bed, to burn their skin in an attempt to make them understand they were of the devil . . . I didn’t realize I was shaking until my forehead pressed to the soil.
Oka slid between me and the ground. “You are not that child any longer, Pamela. You aren’t. You are strong and kind and beautiful and no amount of hurt can take that away from you.”
I lifted my head. “There was a boy. He died here . . . while I was here. I could hear his screams in the room next to me.”
My eyes found my bedroom window on the third floor. “I need to get into his room. His ghost will be there. Trapped.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve seen him before. Before they took me away. He was so sad.” That memory I thought I’d pushed away forever because I hoped to never see this place again climbed to the front of my brain. The rage that had swelled in me as they’d dragged me away, the pain and grief at seeing my friend forever tied to a place that had terrified him . . . it had all seemed so wrong. But maybe that was why I was here. My words to Jax suddenly had more meaning than I’d even realized at the time I’d said them. To do what was right. Maybe I could make things right here, too.
I stood and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I need to do this on my own, Oka. Can you understand that?”
She closed her eyes, pinched them shut so tightly, she made wrinkles around them. “I do not like it, but yes. I understand the need to face your demons on your own legs with no one to catch you if you fall.”
It was only then I realized I hadn’t thanked her for standing between me and Will. For being braver than I could have ever hoped for. She must have picked up on my thoughts because she shook her head. “You don’t thank a familiar for doing their job.”
I smiled at her. “You were amazing. You were a tiger in that moment. My brave girl.”
Her eyes shone as she stared up at me. “I’m glad I’m your familiar, and I think for you, it is easier for me to be brave.”
I slid the cloak from my shoulders and let it drop to the ground. “I will try not to be long.”
She stepped onto the cloak and sat in the hood. “I will wait as long as I must wait.”
With my back to her I squared my shoulders and started toward the back door of the house.
The place where I’d lost my childhood.
The place where they’d tried to break my spirit.
The place where ghosts of my past waited to test my courage.
CHAPTER 14
“JUST OPEN IT.” I stood in front of the door that led into my every nightmare for years. This building tortured me, though I’d been gone years. Was I really going to put myself through this hell for something that may not exist? Tears of a ghost? With my hand on the knob, the icy cold of the metal sucking all the warmth from my fingers. This house I’d thought I’d left in my past, left in my nightmares had taken hold of me again as if I’d never left.
No, I would not fall to that fear.
In a fit of anger-laced fear, I sent a rumble of fire from my fingers into the metal.
Warmer now, but not any easier to turn. Minutes ticked by, they stretched around me like sticky taffy. “Do it.” I barked the words at myself and twisted the knob.
Letting myself in was the easy part, the guardians of the home were cocky. Inside the back door, the first room I stood in was mud and laundry. I drew a breath in, tasted the mold and dusky damp of being continually wet with both the moisture of the clothing and the jackets and boots tromping through. I pushed the door behind me shut with a silent click. Harriet and Boomer had obviously been oiling the hinges lately.
Their names made me shiver. Harriet and Boomer. My guardians. Not guardians. The devils who looked to break me under the pretense of helping me. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as the old hurts and memories stirred in my heart.
“You are not that child anymore,” I whispered to myself.
From further within the house came the grumbling snore that still haunted my dreams. You’d think it was Boomer because of his girth, the triple chins, and beady eyes sunk deeply inside his head. But it was never him. The snoring belonged to Harriet, whose girth was only slightly less than Boomer’s. In some ways, they looked more like siblings than husband and wife.
My parents—who I now knew were my adoptive parents—had dropped me off just before I turned twelve. I’d lit the living room curtains on fire. They thought I was a fire bug, a demon possessed.
Turned out, of course, it was a little more complicated than that. My mind retraced the past as I picked my way through the refuse and rubble. A stench I knew all too well billowed up from a vent in the floor. I gagged and turned my head away.
How could they live in this squalor? How could anyone let their child come here?
I let my mind go back to that first day when we’d stood in front of the huge house. The flowers decorating the window ledges, the fresh clean white paint on the door, the sign above it. Home for Challenged Children. Challenged. Harriet and Boomer had been clean, their hair combed, their hands out for the money that would keep me bound to them for nearly a year before my parents decided to take matters back into their own hands. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself, and the material gave way under my weight, sinking me in up to my wrist. I pulled back and flicked off the soft, moldy bits that clung to me.
The bottom of the stairs that went to the third floor was through the hall to my right. I could have closed my eyes and seen the passageway. But I found myself pausing at the intersection that would lead to the front of the house. To where Harriet and Boomer resided and reigned in fear over the children they were guardians of. They set up far enough away from the upstairs bedrooms so they couldn’t hear the children begging to eat. To be let out. To be unleashed from the leathers holding them to the beds. The shakes along my muscles began then as the full weight of where I was crashed around me, taking me back to a time I couldn’t save myself.
The smells and sights overwhelmed me, clung to me like ghosts I could not escape. With my fists clenched and my body fighting my every step, I made myself go to the left. I needed to see them—the two bastards who’d beaten me and made me believe there was something wrong with me. That I was worthless and an abomination.
“You smell that, Boomer?” Harriet’s voice froze me between one step and the next.
There was a grunt and the sound of flesh pulling away from the beaten-down leather furniture I’d seen only on my few trips in and out through the front door. “What?” He grunted the word, then there was a slurp of his tongue.
“Smells like one of the brats.” She sniffed several times and it was only then that something occurred to me.
How had two humans, horrible as they were, survived what I’d thrown at them? Even as an untrained witch, I’d been dangerous. I knew that now. I’d tried lashing out at them with my powers and they had bounced off their skin like nothing . . . and then after the first few incidents they’d kept my hands bound and jammed behind me.
Pamela (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 3) Page 11
