“Yeah, I think so,” I answered and began trying to read what he’d written, but his handwriting was worse than mine and it seemed that half of it was written in some sort of code. Paranoia at its best. I managed to make out some symbols I recognized, but nothing that wasn’t mainstream, that he couldn’t have picked up just watching television. I was glad to see there wasn’t anything overtly evil written anywhere, at least not in anything I could make out. Only Jeremy knew what the coded text said.
“Is that gibberish or a code?” Jodi asked, pointing to a line of text.
“It’s a code,” I said, shaking my head. I closed the book and opened it from the back, finding long entries in the pages there, but again, written in a way that I couldn’t read.
“Dude, he needs some serious help.” Jodi said, standing up and walking back over to a dresser.
“No, wait,” I said, a spark of a distant memory from history class came to mind and I stood and walked over to the dresser Jodi was standing at where a large mirror was affixed to the wall above it. I opened the book wide and held it open towards the mirror and I was finally able to read what Jeremy had written.
“What the hell?” Jodi asked, furrowing her brow as she leaned closer to the mirror to read.
“Remember History last year? That thing about Da Vinci? He wrote backwards to keep people from stealing his ideas…” I explained quickly as I continued to read through the mirror. Again, it wasn’t anything terribly bad, mostly just the ranting of an angst ridden teen, but on the next entry I found what I had been looking for; Jeremy started talking about his encounters with a beautiful girl in the woods. Eventually he figured out that she was a magical creature, thinking she must be one of the mythical nymphs everyone thought had become extinct.
Jeremy went on for pages about her beauty and how much she cared about him and the promises she made to help him right the wrongs in his life because, as she explained to him, he was an amazing sorcerer who deserved to be worshiped. It took a lot of my self-control to keep reading and not throw up what little I had eaten that day.
“Wow, talk about stroking a guy’s ego,” Jodi said as she leaned back, clearly having read enough.
“Well that explains the mood swings,” I said, pulling the book away from the mirror and closing it. “She’s brainwashing him and coaxing him into these violent reactions, probably just to entertain herself. I hope when we get her the Faerie Court punishes her to the extreme.”
“Faerie Court?” Jodi cocked an eyebrow at me like I was the crazy person in the room.
“Dude, you think they have Fae Queens and Kings, but no actual courts?” I waited, but her expression didn’t change. “Don’t you remember the stories about the Seelie and Unseelie courts?”
“Yeah, of course, but those are just stories.”
“Why?” I asked, turning to face her. “Why are they just stories? I mean, is it so hard to believe? We’ve known about faeries all our lives. We know there are royals in that world. Why would you think all of the stories are just stories?”
“I guess, but,” I stepped forward and shot my hand out to cover her mouth just as I heard the sigh of a door opening. Oh my god! Jodi thought at me, her thoughts so bright I almost squinted instinctively. I held my breath as I listened and heard slow footsteps, as if someone was sneaking down the hallway.
Get under the bed! I thought at Jodi before ripping my hand away and spun, creeping over to the closet and grabbing hold of the light string and pulling on it so slowly that when the light went out there wasn’t the sound of a click to accompany it. I heard the steps stop just outside the bedroom door and grabbed the closet door, pulling it almost shut to hide behind.
The light from the hallway pooled around the threshold of the bedroom door as Jeremy’s father peered in, confusion plain on his face. He reached over with his free hand and turned on the bedroom light.
“Honey? What are you doing?” I heard Mrs. McCormack’s sleep logged voice from behind her husband who was still scanning the room.
“I thought I heard something… or saw something,” he said.
“Well, which was is?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I guess it was just the wind or something,” he said finally, shaking his head and reaching to turn off the light. He stopped just inches from it and looked at the open closet door again.
“What is it?” Mrs. McCormack asked again.
“I don’t remember that being open,” he said, nodding towards the door.
“Well, maybe it wasn’t shut all the way and it just opened on its own,” Mrs. McCormick said easily, but I was acutely aware of her anxiety and, although I was no mind reader, her emotions were screaming at me that she was afraid Jeremy had come back for refuge or shelter and didn’t want her husband to find him here. “Come on, honey, let’s go back to bed,” she said, pulling gently on his shoulder from behind. It took him another moment of staring at the opened closet before he finally nodded and turned out the light and left, shutting the door behind him.
We waited until the hallway light was turned out and could hear them close their bedroom door before either of us crawled out of our hiding places. I started to dust myself off out of habit, but realized there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on my jeans. “Wow, we really need to get this poor guy a hobby once this is all over,” I said as I laid the grimoire on his desk.
Before Jodi could respond, we heard a loud crash and the raised voices of Jeremy’s parents from their room. Scenarios of Jeremy bursting through the window and attacking his parents ran through my mind with the possibility that the two adults had gotten into a heated argument over something. No matter what, something was wrong and we were here – we had to do something. Jodi was at the door before me, flinging it open. We ran down the hall to their bedroom at the end.
We nearly tumbled over each other in our haste to get inside, righting ourselves just in time for me to see a wooden jewelry box flying through the air right for us. I grabbed Jodi by the shoulders and pulled her roughly to the floor with me, letting the jewelry box shatter against the wall above us. There was such a cacophony of sounds I couldn’t make out the screams from the crashes.
I looked up and saw Jeremy’s mother cowering at the head of their bed, clutching a pillow for protection while Jeremy and his father were caught in each other’s grip, wrestling. I vaguely noticed the fact that Jeremy held a knife in one hand and that was why his father was trying to wrestle him, to get it away from him. For some reason, he couldn’t over power his much smaller son.
I clawed at the bag on Jodi’s back and found the container of salt inside. I opened it quickly and poured a palmful into my hand and flung it out, aiming for the air just past Jeremy’s shoulder, towards the window, and heard a spine-chilling scream. The room seemed to freeze in time when the scream sounded. Jeremy finally noticed us on the floor in front of the door. His face contorted into a snarl, but I was watching as the Sylph materialized where I had thrown the salt. She was beautiful and terrible all at once, the anger at being caught ruining her lovely face. I only had a moment for that to register before she was flying at me, fingers crooked into claws, aiming for my face.
Jodi tried to keep herself in between the Sylph and me, using herself as a target much like Steven had done in the backyard, but the faerie merely threw Jodi out of the way like a child with a ragdoll. I was speaking a binding incantation before I even realized the spell was flying from my lips. She hesitated, inches from me and I felt her fury like fire on my skin, churning my stomach. I stumbled on the words in my haste and she took the momentary falter and closed the distance between us, grabbing me by the front of my sweatshirt and lifting me off of the ground.
I heard Jodi’s voice over her snarls, trying for a banishing spell and I knew it was starting to work because the complete rage in her face gave way to a flicker of frustration. The Sylph roared suddenly and pitched me sideways into the wall. As I crashed, my head bashed into the corner of a dresser and everything we
nt black.
Chapter 19
I was dreaming again. Five years old and in a field of clover with Jodi sitting a few feet away while we plucked the tiny white flowers out of the clovers and made chains out of them. We were each already wearing a crown made out of the chains and were working on matching jewelry. I saw a ladybug crawling on my bare knee as I reached for another flower, making me hesitate, afraid I’d scare it off. I blinked at the size of my legs, realizing I wasn’t just remembering something from so many years ago; I was reliving it.
“Make a wish,” Jodi said, having looked up to see what had caught my attention.
“What?” I asked and was confused to hear a child’s voice come from my mouth.
“Remember? Make a wish,” she prompted again, nodding her head forward for emphasis. In the back of my mind I knew there were more important things that I should be doing or worrying about than watching this ladybug crawl in circles on my knee while I thought of a wish.
“Hurry or she’s gonna fly off to get someone else’s wish,” Jodi said, turning her attention back to her growing chain. I breathed in deep through my nose and closed my eyes, holding in the breath.
I wish I knew what to do, I thought automatically and opened my eyes and blew out the breath. The ladybug immediately opened her wings and flew off, bobbing up and down on the air currents until I couldn’t see her anymore.
“Good job. Now she’ll take your wish to the faeries and maybe it’ll come true,” Jodi said as she plucked another flower from the ground.
“What?” I asked, having forgotten my own chain now lying tangled in my lap.
“What?” Jodi repeated back to me with a furrowed brow.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying not to become lost in the fact that Jodi was sitting there, so tiny and making her blue eyes seem big enough to take up most of her face. It was bizarre to think I was on eye level with her and not looking down at her from an adult frame.
“What’s the matter with you?” Jodi asked, dropping her hands into her lap. “Are you forgetting everything the faeries told us?” She waited for me to respond, studying my face like she was looking at a stranger. “Fine,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “The faeries told us that ladybugs are the barer of children’s wishes and to be careful not to step in toadstool rings in case the faeries are dancing there and to never bring iron with you if you want the faeries to see you as a friend.”
“Iron?” I asked, hearing how lame I sounded even to me, knowing that I’d get another sigh and eye-roll from my tiny friend.
“Oh my god!” Jodi said, granting me that eye-roll I expected. “Iron can kill a faerie, remember? And since you’re a…” she hesitated, looking up and off to the right as if trying to remember something and it would be written on the sky above her. “Oh right, you’re an Earth Child and can call iron from the dirt in the Earth and the blood in your veins, so you must be that much more careful than the rest of us.” Jodi said in a voice that made me think she’d memorized that speech so she could repeat it back at a moment’s notice.
“I can call the iron from the ground and in my blood?” I blinked my surprise at her, but her attention was back on her ever-growing flower chain.
“Yep,” she said casually, “and they say that someday you might be able to teach me how to do the blood one because there’s some oxygen in blood.”
“Because you’re Air,” I said carefully, not wanting to tell her something she didn’t yet know, but thankfully she nodded without looking up. “And that’s why she’s been keeping him off of the ground and out of my reach,” I said, hearing my own disbelief, the memories suddenly flooding to the front of my mind.
“Who?” the tiny Jodi asked me, looking up from her chain again, but before I could think of an answer, the world around me was becoming dark, stealing away the foliage around me. The flowers and clovers were harder to see and when I looked back up to Jodi, she was gone. Vaguely I could hear voices raised in anger and confusion swirling around me like water rushing down a drain. Bursts of lights were erupting behind my eyelids, making me cringe. I willed myself to swim up through the blackness and break the surface.
Sounds came back first. Still in a strange echo, it wasn’t until I was finally able to pry open my eyes that I saw Jodi and Jeremy’s father screaming at each other over me. It took me longer than it should have to realize I was lying on my back on the floor, probably where I fell after hitting my head as I was awkwardly wedged between a wide dresser and the wall.
“I’ve had enough of this crazy bullshit!” Mr. McCormack yelled, spittle flying from his lips. “I’m calling the cops and reporting your break-in!”
“I told you we were here to help, you jackass!” Jodi yelled back and even from the strange angle I could see her usual deep blue eyes had faded with an icy edge to them.
“Help?” he scoffed. “How? By telling me that my son was here to kill me?”
“Well, he wasn’t here to bake cookies,” I said roughly, feeling the dryness in my throat as I pushed myself up on my elbows.
“Oh thank God!” Jodi said, dropping down quickly to take my hands and help extract me from the corner.
“I don’t care what you accused my son of doing to you. That doesn’t give you the right to break into my house,” he yelled down at both of us, trying to loom over us and I finally felt the heat of his anger radiating off of him and into my skin, down to my veins. I closed my eyes against it as Jodi helped me to my feet and I took the moment I needed to reinforce my shields against him just as my skin started to run red with his heat.
“You’re right, but you are grateful that we were here to stop Jeremy,” I said pushing my empathetic magic into my voice, feeling the air around us sing with power. My magic was so close to the surface it felt as if it was bubbling out of me. Light glinted between my fingers and from the corner of my eyes, I could see the burgundy glow of my hair as it floated gently on a wind that shouldn’t have been in the room. I took a deep breath, drawing the magic further into me, and I realized I could still smell the field of clover around me.
Mr. McCormack blinked at me, his mouth open, but words caught in his throat. Jodi squeezed my hand in hers, offering her added power. “You are not angry in the least,” I said, my voice echoing around us with its weight, and he nodded slowly at me. “You are thankful that we took the attack and saved you and especially your wife, whom you love.” I forced my will on him and watched as he shrank back from me under the weight of my power and he nodded again.
“Thank you so much,” he stammered, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He reached out a hand to me and I took it, despite the anxiety I felt from Jodi, wanting to pull me back from him. “Thank you so much,” he said again, shaking my hand. I think he would’ve kissed it if I would’ve let him.
“You’re welcome,” I said, pushing one last wave of emotion into him, reinforcing these newfound feelings and erasing any lingering doubt he may have had about us. All thoughts of calling the police were completely forgotten.
“What,” he started to say, but his voice failed him and he had to take a moment to think, remembering how to talk through my magic. “What are you going to do now?” he finally managed.
“You aren’t going to hurt my son, are you?” Mrs. McCormack asked, drawing our attention to her on the bed where she was huddled, still clutching a pillow to her chest. I saw the worry in her wide eyes. The strain this week had put on her heart had aged her several years and I hoped, when this was all done, I could help ease some of that strain.
“No, Mrs. McCormack, we are not going to hurt Jeremy,” I said carefully, redirecting some of my powers to her, envisioning soothing caresses over her cheeks and forehead, comforting her like a mother would a child. “We only want to help him before he hurts himself,” I explained and watched as the magic worked on her, easing some of the creases in her brow, slowing her heart rate back to a normal pulse before I eased Jodi and me towards the door.
“Sha
yna,” Mr. McCormack said, reaching out and touching my shoulder to stop me just at the door. “I am sorry for what he’s done. I think maybe I have a lot of apologizing to do where my son is concerned.” I caught his gaze with mine and pushed into his mind, searching for the meaning of his words, happy to realize he meant that he was probably mostly to blame for Jeremy’s behavior, rather than, for once in his son’s life, blaming Jeremy for everything.
***
I pulled the door closed behind us and drew a protective charm over the door with my fingers, feeling the tingle and burn of magic on the tips. I looked at my hand once I finished and saw the swirling iron just below the surface of the skin, closer than it ever had been.
“Shay?” Jodi’s faint whisper brought my gaze up and I saw her staring at the door. Turning to look at it, I saw the shimmer of silver fading into the wood in the pattern I had drawn with my fingers.
“I guess we don’t have to do anything special to get it out of us,” I said, my voice not much more than a whisper. The iron shimmered in the faint light in the hallway until it was totally absorbed into the wood and no traces were left behind.
“Did it hurt?” Jodi asked and I was surprised not to hear any hint of fear in her question.
“It burns a little,” I said honestly, not wanting to lie to her for fear the burn would hurt her more than me and break whatever concentration she would be using when trying to use the metal in her hand. We stared at each other for a moment before she nodded briefly, accepting the warning without comment.
“What did you say to them?” I motioned to the door and Jeremy’s parents beyond with a nod of my head.
“The truth,” she said in a whisper as we took a few steps away from the bedroom door. “Well, some truth anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 53
