by Jen Kirchner
Uncle Rick disappeared to grab me a box of tissues. When he returned, the ritual was still going on and my eyes were watering badly. My throat started to swell and I was having some difficulty breathing. This was definitely some sort of allergic reaction, but I didn’t know the source. I didn’t have any food allergies. Besides, I hadn’t eaten anything yet.
A piercing shrill echoed in my ears, drowning out every other sound. Suzanne continued jerking and mouthing words but I could barely hear her now. My throat tightened with her every move. I reached up and rubbed my nose again, a little more vigorously, but another sneeze came on so hard I was thrown forward. My head snapped back up and gave me sudden clarity: Suzanne was casting a spell on me and I couldn’t see it because it was voodoo. Her spell was suffocating me to death. Panicked, I grabbed Brad’s arm and pinched hard.
He turned to me, looking startled. His lips moved, but I couldn't hear anything over the ringing in my ears. The room started to spin. I never felt myself hit the floor, but once the room was lopsided, I knew I had fallen hard.
White, shimmery particles appeared in the air, trailing away from Brad’s fingers. The sickening wave of magic I felt was growing thicker, harder, and more persistent. I wanted to grab it with my hands and control it like I could with everyone else’s magic, but I couldn’t see the runes. I waved my fingers in a futile attempt to capture the foreign energies and felt searing streams between my fingers. Panic took over and I pushed like I was in labor. I felt a thin film hovering just above my skin. I pushed again, harder, and punctured the film. An ethereal cloud of black smoke burst around me. My ears popped; I heard a loud slam and voices screaming.
The room rolled and spiraled like I was at the center of a whirlpool, then fell on top of me. Everything went black.
SEVEN
Soft pulses of energy washed over me, one after the other. Opening my eyes was a struggle. I found myself in Brad's old bedroom, lying on the bed. A small desk sat in the corner. Above it, sports trophies ranging from little league to high school were neatly arranged on a shelf. The desk displayed whatever couldn’t fit on the wall. Brad hovered over me, brow furrowed in concentration, drawing symbols in the air with his index finger. I watched the white particles trail from his finger and form a very complicated symbol. Once it was complete, Brad whispered the command to activate the spell and the symbol dissipated.
“Velutto incati!”
I had no idea what the trigger words meant; the spell's creator was long dead and so was his language. The symbol flashed brightly, and I felt another wave of energy trying to purge any residual voodoo. I thought I was going to throw up.
Brad started drawing another spell. I rolled over and tried batting his hand away.
“Stop,” I croaked.
“No, you need this one.”
I tried to sit up. My head swam. Brad pushed me back down. “Kepkata!”
That one just hurt. I pushed Brad's hand away again and sat up, this time more successfully.
“How long was I out?”
“About ten minutes,” he said. “I called your Dad.”
“So he can remove Suzanne from the earth?”
“I wish.” His hand fell back into his lap. “She’s not into voodoo at all. She bought the rock and stick from some New Age shop. It was on sale and came with some scented candles that she liked.”
Figures. “So what did my dad say?”
“He didn't pick up, so I left a message. Called Grandpa right after.”
“Is he upset?”
“Very. We’re lucky he didn’t send anyone over here.”
Heavy footsteps on the stairs brought our conversation to a quick close. We tried to act natural. Brad resumed his spells, and I sat there, happy to be breathing.
Uncle Rick appeared in the doorway. His eyes fell upon Brad, skillfully executing one spell after another, then shifted to me. I saw a look of awareness that worried me. Uncle Rick knew my secret.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Brad says you fainted from smoke inhalation.” He looked at me expectantly, as if he thought I might say otherwise.
“Well, I’m fine now.”
Uncle Rick leaned back against the wall and slipped his hands into his pockets. “That was a lot of smoke.” He paused. “Actually, it didn’t look like kitchen smoke, and it wasn’t coming from the food.”
I said nothing. Brad didn’t look up when he responded. “It was smoke from the kitchen.” He started another spell.
Uncle Rick looked back and forth between us. Two more spells went by before he finally asked, “Where did you learn to do that?”
Brad’s hand faltered. The white particles began to fade. “I just picked it up over the years.”
Uncle Rick’s eyebrows lifted. “Son, you pulverized that rock. Someone who just ‘picked up’ a few spells here and there wouldn’t be able to do that.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I’m third channel.”
I pinched my lips together. Brad’s eyes widened. He turned around and looked up at his father.
Uncle Rick said, “When you were young, I tried to help you cast one of my spells, but you couldn’t do it. Your mother isn’t a magic user, so it never occurred to me that you would be anything other than third channel like me.” His voice sobered. “I also never thought someone else would be training you as a child.”
I still didn’t know what to say. Apparently neither did Brad. We sometimes talked about what we’d do if Uncle Rick found out, but we never thought it would be like this.
“Is this why you were trained so well?” he asked. “To protect Kari?”
Brad’s jaw tightened. He quickly turned away, as if trying to hide his reaction. “Did you know Suzanne was casting voodoo?”
Uncle Rick shrugged. “It’s usually harmless crystals and potpourri. When she showed me the rock, I had an idea, but I didn’t think anything of it. There’s only one type of person voodoo goes aggressive on, and they’re rare.” He looked at me as if I had just been diagnosed with a life-threatening ailment. I looked down at my feet. “Kari, your life has been surrounded with unanswered questions: the changed birth certificate, the financial sponsors… You had a bedroom at your mother’s apartment, but it was clear you had never lived in it. Is there something about you I should know?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brad close his eyes as if he wished this wasn’t happening. He shook his head so slightly I almost missed it.
I looked up at Uncle Rick. I smiled, but inside I wanted to cry. Lying was painful. “No, Uncle Rick. There’s nothing you should know.”
He exhaled slowly, looking between me and Brad. I recognized his expression. It was the same one Brad wore when he was ready to concede defeat. “Okay. Suzanne is concerned about Kari and wants her to take a few vitamin supplements, so let’s go downstairs.”
Brad rolled his eyes, stood up, and marched out like a dutiful son. I started to follow, but Uncle Rick took my arm and pulled me back. He put his arm around my shoulders and turned me toward the left wall of pictures. I realized I was in half of them.
“You know I love you no matter what,” he said, and gave me a light squeeze.
A lump formed in my throat. “I love you too, Uncle Rick.”
It was the longest, most horrible dinner of our lives—and that wasn’t even taking the food into consideration. At one o’clock in the morning, when we got out to the car, I checked my phone and saw I had twelve voicemails from my dad. I was feeling bad enough already so I didn’t listen to them.
Brad backed the car out of the driveway and drove to the four-way stop at the end of the street. He put the car in park, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the headrest.
“Now you know how I feel when I meet one of your stupid girlfriends.”
“They aren’t that stupid.”
I responded with a look that he didn’t have to open his eyes to see.
“You'
re right,” he said, “I don’t know why I just said that, either.”
His eyes opened. He shifted the car into drive and turned up the radio. Whenever a DJ mentioned either of us by name or tonight’s incident with Cody Springer, we switched to another station. We had to switch it so often we ended up on soft jazz. Not a bad choice at this time of night.
Three blocks from my house, Brad hit the brakes, throwing me hard against the seatbelt.
“Sorry.” He whipped the car into a U-turn and started in the wrong direction. “I forgot about the grocery store. Aunt Isadora asked me to take you.”
I sat up straight. “My mom called you? Did she sound okay?”
“She left a message. Why? You don’t think the toothpaste has to do with changing the future, do you?” He shot me a quick sideways glance. “I thought she was just being a concerned parent.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “she said a lot of things and it all sounded important.”
Brad pulled the car to the side of the road and put it in park. “Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“I don’t know. It’s only toothpaste, but if buying a tube is enough to change the future and prevent the event she’s so afraid of, then we should do it.”
He stared ahead, tapping one hand thoughtfully against the steering wheel. “Okay, we’ll run in and out of there.” He pulled the car back onto the road and mumbled, “I could use some antacid anyway. What was in that salad dressing?”
Five minutes later, we turned into Wegmans Grocery. The twenty-four-hour superstore was in a long, brick building that butted up against woodlands. Given the late hour, there were only a dozen cars in the lot.
We parked three rows from the front door. Since we were only going to be a few minutes, I grabbed a credit card and stashed my purse under the seat.
The store felt cold and customers milled around half-asleep. Either no one recognized us or they were too tired to care. Whichever it was, we were thankful for it.
We went straight to the toothpaste aisle but the spot for Tilene was empty. I could feel Brad’s eyes on me as I studied the empty tray.
“My mom isn’t making herself crazy just to stop a local shortage in toothpaste.”
“I didn’t say it.”
“You were thinking it.”
We wandered around until we found a clerk who knew what we were talking about.
“Tilene? Yeah, we have some in the back. Go to the service doors by the dairy section. One of the guys in the stockroom will get it for you.” He studied us for a half second and his eyes narrowed. “Hey, aren’t you two—”
“No!” Brad said, then grabbed my wrist and yanked me away.
We found the entrance to the stockroom and ducked through the swinging door. The air reeked of stale produce and sweat. Wooden pallets sat partially unloaded, but the room was oddly abandoned.
I didn’t want to wait for an employee to help us; I just wanted to find the toothpaste and go home. I started rummaging through boxes. Brad walked off and disappeared behind a pallet, probably to do the same thing. I guessed we’d meet in the middle.
Five minutes later I found the toothpaste, still in its box on the floor, grouped with other items destined for the hygiene section. I grabbed two tubes and stood.
“Hey.”
I turned around. Brad had returned and had a funny smirk on his face. He motioned for me to follow.
He led me deeper into the stockroom, past the loading docks, to a metal door that was cracked open. I could smell the rancid dumpsters out back. I stepped around a tall pallet so I could see what he was looking at, and I giggled. Two clerks were sprawled out on top of an empty pallet and napping hard. No wonder we couldn’t find anyone to help us.
As we turned to leave, a wave of energy wafted against me. I stopped. “Did you feel that?”
Brad turned around. “No, what?”
“A spell, I think.”
“What do you mean ‘you think’?”
“After that voodoo spell, my senses are muddled.” Another one rocked against me. “That. Did you feel that?”
“You know I can’t.”
I went to the open door and poked my head out. Brad came up behind me and opened it further so he could look, too.
“That’s not so unusual. Spells happen,” he quipped. “You know, that should be a bumper sticker.”
Tonight’s dinner must have thrown him off because that joke was lame. I was off, too, because I laughed at it.
I stepped outside for a better look. Service lights along the building were sparse and faint, and for some reason all of the ones to the left were out. A chain link fence ran along the back alley, keeping the untamed woods at bay. I was sure the spells were coming from that direction, but I didn’t see any runes flashing and was having a hard time pushing Death Radar farther than three feet.
I pushed again and managed to pick up a dead squirrel and some immortals down the alley where the lights were burnt out. My curiosity was aroused.
Planting my feet apart, I squared my shoulders and concentrated hard.
Brad released the door and came to stand next to me. “You look like you’re about to pop a vein,” he said, and laughed.
The metal door slammed shut behind us, scaring me to death. I jumped and slapped a hand over my mouth, barely muffling a scream. My reflexes kicked in and Death Radar stretched out a half dozen blocks. My head rebelled with an intense throbbing and I saw stars. I grabbed Brad’s arm as a dozen spells pulsed against me in rapid succession.
He cursed and jerked on the door handle. “Locked. We’re going to have to walk around.”
“Well, don’t go that way,” I whispered, using a tube of toothpaste to point. “Four immortals are down there having an all-out brawl.”
He squinted in the direction I was pointing. “Okay, we’ll go the other way.”
“It’s weird,” I said. “Three of them are under fifty years old and they’re attacking a guy who’s almost five hundred.”
“Do we know the guy?”
I struggled to push out Death Radar again. My head spun and I resisted the urge to vomit. “Not unless you know a Luucas...” The immortal’s last name actually registered as “Son of Mikkel” since he was christened before modern naming conventions. I assumed he didn’t go by that now. “Luucas Mikkelson. Third channel.”
“Three on one? They still don’t stand a chance against a five-hundred-year-old third-channeler.”
I shrugged. “Maybe they’re practicing.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, Death Radar blipped and one of the signals changed.
“Brad, one of them is dead.”
“They’re all dead, dummy.”
“No, I mean dead dead.”
He grabbed me and pulled me away from the door. “We’re out of here.”
We half-walked, half-jogged toward the parking lot. A few feet from the alley’s end, Brad abruptly stopped. I wasn’t paying attention and crashed into him.
“Sorry.”
“Quiet!”
I followed his hard stare into the parking lot. Before I could figure out why we had stopped, he pulled me behind a dumpster.
“What is that?” he whispered.
I didn’t see anything. There were even fewer parked cars than before. Most of the lot was dark, but the back half was getting darker quickly. I wasn’t surprised to see that the industrial lights were shutting off. Sometimes they did that. What struck me as odd was that they were all shutting off, systematically, at an angle.
The darkness was coming straight for us.
My eyes flickered to Brad’s car halfway across the lot. There was no way we would make it.
Brad lifted his index finger and started to cast a spell, drawing a white symbol in the air. As soon as his spell started, a string of blue runes flashed brightly within the darkness. Two clusters of lights went out in rapid succession as the darkness hurried toward us.
I ripped Brad’s half-finished spell out of the air and kill
ed it. The sound of the runes slapping against the dumpster was like a firecracker. Brad jumped. I waved the dead runes away and grabbed his hand, sharing my sight.
“It’s a scan,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “The darkness is a second-channel scan. It picked up on your spell.”
“What the hell is it looking for? The fight behind us?”
“Maybe. But we can’t get around it.”
Our choices were to go through the scan or back through the fight. I didn’t like either. My gut said we didn’t want anyone knowing we were here.
“What if we—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish. Brad pulled me deeper behind the dumpster, pressing us against the chain link fence.
He pointed off to the right and hissed, “Who are they?”
I didn’t immediately see the two figures he was pointing at because of their dark clothes. They were two men, one short and the other tall and rail-thin, and they were following the wall of darkness. Gray, ethereal strands wrapped around each figure, winking in and out of sight. I had never seen these supernatural strands before and I didn’t know why I couldn’t see a regular string of runes with them.
There were only two more clusters of lights before we were engulfed in darkness. We stood there, hesitant, staring at the two men strolling toward us. The next cluster of lights went out. So did the tall man’s shield.
Information flooded my brain. Name: Hamilton Edwards. Age: 146. Channel: second. Cause of death: blood disease.
Startled, I jumped back and banged into the chain link fence, sending out the sound of clanging metal in every direction. Brad grabbed me by the shoulders and held me still.
I whispered, “They’re immortal, and their shields are blocking them from Death Radar.” Dad and Mikelis were the only two immortals I knew who could hide themselves from Death Radar, though they couldn’t block their information when I looked directly at them. There was only one explanation I could think of. “It’s voodoo.”
“We have to call Grandpa. He’ll get us out of this.”
Grandpa was powerful enough to cast spells over the phone, so that was a terrific idea. Brad patted down his pockets. His head snapped up, hands still on his pants.
