“You’re the best,” I told him, to which he replied, “I know.” He handed us each a small cellphone, clearly a burner, before holding his own hands out. I placed my cell phone in his hand and he nodded and looked at Luke. There was no denying Luke was shocked by the understanding Garvin showed, but I had taught him well. He knew exactly how to disappear, if it was ever necessary.
“We’re headed to New Mexico, toward a lead on one of my sisters.” Garvin caught me eyes, a look of understanding in his. I nodded at him. “They’re out there. And I will find them,” I promised myself, even as I told him, “Someone tried to shoot me, outside of my house. Apparently, there’s a prophecy about me and my sisters.” We didn’t have much time, the danger increasing every second we remained here, so I rushed. “There was a woman, though. She knew stuff. She told us about the prophecy. She disappeared before the shooting started, but she wasn’t part of it. She didn’t have shadows.” I looked up at him and he nodded.
“I’ll find her. There are cameras all over the property. No way she didn’t get caught on one of them.” I smiled, relieved about his obvious paranoia instead of annoyed, as I usually was. “She was there yesterday too. When the door was unlocked,” I added, hoping the additional information would help him.
We had to go. Luke’s impatience next to me was clear, as was his burning desire to get me away from the danger he perceived. I threw myself across the car seat at Garvin, hugging him tight, incredibly grateful he had forced his friendship on me.
“I put condoms in the bag too. Safety first, boo,” he whispered in my ear, and I gave a startled laugh. Pulling back, I stared into his onyx face, the unusually light gold of his eyes peered back at me and I memorized them, afraid I may never see him again. He shook his head at me.
“I’ll see you again. I believe in Fate, unlike you,” he told me with a smile.
“I’m starting to,” I answered him, a rueful twist on my lips.
He turned to Luke, his hand upturned, “Keys. I’m gonna zoom around town in your car, in case they put a tracker on it.” Luke’s mouth opened and shut before he dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them to Garvin. He gave him a tight nod and said, “Thank you. For everything.” The complete sincerity in his words was obvious, and Garvin handled it like only he could.
“Ooooooh, this is like a movie! And I’m the bestie! The sidekick who saves the day. You know, the one they need, but no one admits it. Who you think they’ll get to play me in the movie? Denzel?” he exclaimed in a rush of words. “Maybe Will .... I could live with that.”
I shook my head, my shoulders shaking with helpless laughter at the stunned look on Luke’s face.
I shoved Garvin in the shoulder. “Go! I love you! Now go.” His mad rush stopped abruptly at my words.
“You love me? You’ve never actually said those words to me,” he said, stunned, and I realized I hadn’t. Five years together, and I had never admitted I loved him. And I did. He was my first and best friend. I could describe a thousand different ways he had made my life better over the years, but not once had I told him what he meant to me. I patted his face. “I do, now don’t make me say it again. I might get hives.”
“It don’t matter, you said it,” Garvin cried, opening the car door. “You love me and you can’t deny it!” he sang, pitching his natural baritone higher, as he headed to the other car. Luke crawled across the seat for the second time that day, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You ready?” he asked, starting the engine.
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s time.”
Chapter Eight
We took turns driving, and it was down a deserted stretch of highway in the middle of the night when I found it. My heart accelerated as the car slowed. There was no mistaking the sign from my memory. It was twisted now, the left leg of the sign rusted and snapped in two, pulling the sign down awkwardly. This was the last place I had seen Kincaid; the last known place she’d been. I turned onto the pitted gravel road, bumpy from lack of maintenance over the years. The headlights swept over the burnt out remains of buildings. My mind flashed back to what it looked like years ago, low white buildings with dark flat roofs. It had been night then too, and the white had glowed in the moonlight. I don’t know what urged me to stop. I knew there was nothing left, nothing here that would give me the answers I sought so desperately now.
I stopped the car carefully, turning so we faced out, my instincts still alert to the danger we were in. I tried to slip from the car quietly, but the sound of the door woke Luke up.
He came around the car, slipping his hand into mine, as we gazed at the blackened wreckage of what used to be my sister’s home.
“They never tore it down.” I said, a question in my tone.
“Maybe they didn’t have the money,” he answered.
I walked closer, my arm stretched back, as I continued to hold his hand, but he didn’t move forward with me.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he muttered, tugging back on my hand. “I don’t like it.” I knew what he was saying, I felt it too. There was a feeling as if we’d stepped into a trap for a giant rat, except it was the rat that had set the trap for us.
“I had a feeling you would find your way here, eventually,” a voice said from my left, causing me to spin around. Luke gave a strong pull on my hand, managing to tuck me behind him.
The years hadn’t changed him much, not really. He still had the same light brown hair, a little thinner now, and a thin build with a small belly in front. He smiled gently at me, and I flinched.
“Is that ...” Luke trailed off, as my father walked toward us. I cowered behind Luke, ashamed of my weakness, but unable to forget my instinctive fear of him.
“I’ve missed you, my sweet girl. I’ve looked for so long. Your mother was mistaken when she took you from me. I only wanted to keep my girls safe. Come home, baby girl.”
Luke shook his head, and I glanced up at him, seeing the truth.
“He’s not real. In fact, it’s not even a very good illusion,” Luke said, angrily, stomping toward the image of my father and shoving his fist through it. Not once did my father blink, only continuing to stare at me with sad eyes, eyes I knew were a lie. No shadows played around him, gleeful in his darkness. This was nothing more than a trick, a ploy to play on my emotions, and perhaps gain him one of the tools he’d so carelessly lost the day our mother saved us.
I knew then what the woman had told us was true. Some wanted to destroy us, so we could never fulfill the prophecy, but others wanted to use us for their own advantage. I knew now what category my father fell into.
“We should go,” I told him, my voice flat. “This is serious magic, to last this long. I know how illusions work. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was alerted when the illusion was triggered.”
Luke looked back at me, concerned, but I was past feeling betrayed by this point. Some tiny part of me had held onto the hope that my father wasn’t the monster I had painted him as, but tonight that last piece died.
“I’ll drive,” Luke answered me, moving around the car, as I nodded. I looked back one last time at the face that used to play patty cake with Kincaid and tell me I was his special little girl. It was the last time I would be fooled by it.
Dawn was breaking as we pulled into the town, and Luke turned into the parking lot of a Waffle House. It was about the only thing open at this time of day, and we were both hungry after driving most of the night.
“The woman lives a few blocks from here,” he said, putting sugar in his coffee. “We can go over there when we’re done. It’s early, but I don’t think we should delay.” I nodded in agreement, my mind blissfully blank for the moment. I could see Luke was worried about me, but I couldn’t persuade myself to care. I knew I would start feeling soon enough. This was only my mind’s way of protecting itself. Seeing the last place I knew my sister had been as a burned pile of rubble, and then my father, had been too much. I knew instinctively he had done it, not some boy they accu
sed of the crime. He had found that Kincaid had been left there, and when she wasn’t, he’d burned it down in a fit of rage. Then left his bit of magic, in case one of us would ever show up there. That illusion hadn’t been for my benefit, but anyone with his blood. A well-executed trick.
The waitress set a plate in front of me that I didn’t remember ordering, but I dug in anyway. It was hot and greasy and exactly what I needed. I inhaled the plate of food in front of me and the Diet Coke Luke must have ordered. The bubble that had been surrounding me popped at that realization. We had stopped at a gas station on the way, and I had gotten a fountain drink, a Diet Coke, because I loved them. He must have been paying attention and ordered it for me with the food.
I had never really considered the idea that you could fall in love with someone even more, because of a Diet Coke, but apparently I could. I stared at it for a long moment, aware that Luke was watching me worriedly.
“I love you,” I told him, looking up at him through my eyelashes. He exhaled loudly, a surprised smile crossing his face.
“I love you too,” he responded confidently, his eyes crinkling at the corners from the hugeness of his smile. I smiled then too, happy I had said the words out loud. We had known each other less than seventy-two hours, and already I had told him I loved him. I wasn’t sure, but that seemed like it should be recorded as a record somewhere, because I knew we would be together, until we took our last breath. A feat many would never accomplish.
“Are you ready?” he asked, indicating my spotless plate. “Or do you want more food?” I shook my head, full. “I ordered the biggest plate they had, since I’ve seen you eat,” he said, referring to our lunch together, a lunch that had only been two days ago, I thought. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. I was not a bashful eater. My appetite was enormous, and I never gained weight, considering the amount of food I consumed. Partly because of my nocturnal runs when sleep eluded me, but I also thought it was because of the amount of energy it took for me to create the illusions I did so regularly.
Magic, and I understood now that was what I had been doing, was a different type of energy than most people possessed. Manipulating it with any type of success required massive amounts of energy, an energy I seemed to possess naturally. The more complicated the illusion, the more energy it consumed. While I had never really considered it before, I realized now most of my illusions relied solely on my own magical energy. With one exception. Illusions like the one with Jeremy needed a continual source of energy, an energy I pulled from the person experiencing the illusion.
I frowned as I thought about it. My father’s illusion required some source of constant energy to keep powered, waiting for a trigger such as me to show up. I wanted to know what it was and stop it, but first we needed to find out what we could about my sister. I feared my father’s presence here meant any information that would be useful to me had already been found and destroyed by him, but I wasn’t willing to turn back now. Not without at least asking.
It was six-thirty when we pulled up to her house. The street was quiet, with small comfortable houses lining each side. The house in front of us had an American flag in front and a pot full of geraniums on the steps. It was welcoming.
I took a deep breath, “This is it,” I said, opening my door. Luke knocked firmly on the front door, and I hoped she answered. Time had a strange tendency to slow down before suddenly rushing forward, and it felt like we were running out of time.
A minute later, the door creaked open, and a round smiling face appeared behind the screen door.
“Hello,” she said, her voice soft and melodic. She was a comforting type of woman, round and soft, her gray hair pulled up in a bun, the quintessential grandmother, I thought.
I seemed to have lost the ability to speak, so Luke stepped up. “Hi, I’m Luke Spencer and this is …” He paused, and I knew he was trying to decide what name to use, so I piped in.
“Sinclair Davis.” Her eyes flickered slightly when I said my name, giving me hope.
“We’re looking for a little girl that was left at the Youth Village eighteen years ago. She was blond with brown eyes. Would you remember her by chance?” Luke asked the woman. She looked at him in puzzlement, before shaking her head and dashing my hopes.
“No, young man, I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. The Youth Village burned down twelve years ago. They said it was young Douglas Sampson, but I never could believe it. That boy didn’t have it in him to be destructive. I worked there for better than thirty years, and I don’t ever remember a child being left there. We only took children in from the state,” she explained. I knew where Kincaid had been left, and it had been the middle of the night, so something had happened to make this woman believe differently.
“Thank you. You don’t remember a little girl named Kincaid? She would have been four when she was brought to the village,” Luke persisted, but the woman just shook her head. She seemed to have no idea what he was talking about. She looked at us apologetically, something on my face giving away my desperation to her. She pushed open the screen door and asked, “Would you like to come in for some coffee? I just made a pot.” We didn’t have the time but stepped forward anyway. Her offer was kind, and there was a comforting familiarity about her.
She poured us each a cup, offering sugar and creamer. Her look was astute, as she asked me, “Why are you looking for the little girl? She would be all grown up by now.”
“She is my sister,” I answered, unwanted tears pooling in my eyes. The woman saw and reached over to pat my arm. When her skin touched mine, it was as if a veil slipped from her eyes. Recognition washed over her, and she grasped my hand tightly. “You came by the village years ago. You were so desperate that night. You begged me to take your darling little girl and keep her safe.”
I gasped, knowing she saw my mother and not me. We were similar in appearance, but not so much that this woman would think I was my mother, when minutes before she had no idea what we were talking about. Another form of magic was the only thing I could think of, one that my mother must have cast as additional protection for us.
“Yes,” I replied, playing along in the hope that this woman could lead me closer to Kincaid. “What happened to her?”
“Such a darling little girl was our Katie,” she answered, a reminiscent smile on her face. “Those long blonde curls. Everyone adored her. A lovely couple, the Maxwell’s, adopted her when she was eight. Katie Maxwell.” She gave me a shrewd look. “I destroyed all records of her long before the fire. I knew you’d want that.” I nodded, a lump in my throat at the lengths my mother had gone to keep us safe. A suspicion had been growing, but it was too devastating to allow a place in my mind. “I have their information, I’ve kept it all this time, knowing you would come back.” She tapped her head. “A vault, protected from those that would try and harm your little girl. 452 Whitewood Road, Tucson, Arizona. 555-555-7561. I told them moving wouldn’t be a bad idea after the papers were signed. And not to leave a forwarding address.”
I nodded emphatically, knowing she had done her best to protect my sister and believing she had succeeded. I leaned forward impulsively and kissed the papery skin of her cheek. She smelled of powder and very faintly of rose, a scent my own mother wore often.
“Thank you,” I whispered against her cheek, a sense of comfort enveloping me momentarily, almost as if my mother was there hugging me.
She cupped my cheek, looking deep into my eyes, “Blessed be, child. May the mother guide you always.”
A tingle raced up my spine at her words, electrifying me. It felt as if my hair was standing on end with her blessing. Power strummed through her, and I could feel her protection surrounding me. I knew it was time to leave. She could help us no more, and I didn’t want to endanger her by remaining any longer.
We were buckled up in the car when Luke finally spoke. “That was incredible. Odd, spooky, but incredible. Your mother’s work, I assume?”
“I think so. I sme
lled roses when I hugged her. A scent I associate with my mother. I think she must have put a spell on the woman. Something so that she would only tell me what she knew.”
“You think she was a witch? My hair damn near stood on end when she blessed you.”
I looked over in surprise, “You felt it too?”
“I felt something, a power surge. Kinda felt like sticking your finger in a light socket.”
“I think she must be ... something. My mother had a plan when she put us where she did. I can see that now,” I murmured, before realizing he was headed back to the interstate.
“We need to go back to the Youth Village,” I exclaimed, gesturing for him to turn. He looked startled, but made the turn.
“Do you think that’s a good idea? I’d rather get as far away from this place as possible, in case your father shows up,” he answered.
“I thought of something at breakfast. I want to see if I’m right,” I told him, knowing I was, but needing to see the proof of it anyway.
The bumpy drive seemed shorter in the daylight, and as we pulled up I saw what I had missed the night before. A towering Ponderosa Pine stood next to the burned out shells, but it was sick, the pine needles yellow when they should have been green. I marched toward it, knowing it was my father’s source of power for whatever spell or magic he’d done. My presence triggered his illusion again, but this time it held no power over me. Luke followed me curiously, watching as I banged my hands on her trunk in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” he asked me, cautiously.
“This tree. He’s using her energy to generate the spell. But his magic is wrong. It’s slowly killing the tree, because the energy drains her life.” I shook my head, tears of frustration springing to my eyes. “But I can’t see the lines. I don’t know how to undo it.”
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