“Don’t worry,” Jazz said. “I’ll fly a bit slower than usual.” She waved one hand over her head and shouted, “Resume!” and the marketplace noise came back like it had never been muted.
Even though she’d pissed me off, I couldn’t help but think how cool it was to know a really powerful girl, a girl who wasn’t scared and didn’t seem to be all wrapped up in herself. Jazz hesitated and stiffened in my arms as I had the sudden and strange desire to nuzzle her long black hair. But in the next moment, the only thing I thought about was holding on for my life.
We rose in the air, and at first it felt a lot like going up in the Ferris wheel at the state fair. I always hated that thing. My stomach dropped and my heart pounded as we went even higher. But then we sailed forward, and I felt a total rush, wind whipping through my hair and cooling off my sweaty skin.
I realized I was grinning like an idiot when something hit my teeth. Probably a bug. I spit over the left side of the broom and got a glimpse of the ocean. It looked cool, the oranges and pinks of the sunset reflecting on its waters. I glanced to the right to check out the sunset—
And realized the ocean was in the wrong direction. It shouldn’t have been to the east.
But I shouldn’t have been riding a broomstick with a witch, either.
“To answer your question, I wouldn’t like it,” Jazz said as she lowered us toward Shadowbridge’s massive steps.
I drew my thoughts away from the sunset and the misplaced ocean. “Wouldn’t like what?”
“For you to fall.” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t like to see you hurt.”
Jazz turned her attention to setting us down. When we landed and stood on the manor’s steps, I kept my hold on her as she flung the smoking branch onto a thick patch of grass. I could feel the tenseness in her body as she waved her fingers and the branch stopped smoking.
More magic.
She tried to move away from me, but I wouldn’t let go. There was something about her that made me want to hold on tight. My gut told me she was special—she wasn’t some giggling, make-up-and-clothes-obsessed airhead. Yeah, she was beautiful, but she had brains and a kind of self-confidence that I’d never noticed in any other girl—or guy, for that matter.
“You may release me now.” Her voice was low, and I felt her tremble.
I dropped my arms, and she spun around to stare up at me.
She was so beautiful. And as sudden as that, I knew I wasn’t angry with her anymore. A stray lock of her hair was across her face, making her look young and vulnerable—and sweet. Without thinking, I pushed the strands of black hair behind her ear, brushing her cheek with my knuckles.
Jazz’s gaze widened, and she caught her breath.
Those golden eyes—so deep and endless a guy could get lost in them. What made a girl like Jazz tick? How could she be so stiff one minute and so soft the next? But it wasn’t her hard side that unnerved me, that made me feel like I was moving in slow motion, inside and out. No, it was moments like this, when she seemed kind of delicate, and like she needed someone’s protection.
My protection.
“It is about time you returned with the pup.” Rol’s voice rumbled from the open door.
Jazz whirled to face Rol, and I stumbled back and almost fell off the step.
“We—we just arrived,” Jazz said, sweeping past Rol with her chin in the air.
Rol raised his brows. “I see that.”
As I walked by him, he winked at me and I grinned. Why couldn’t my dad be more like that?
I followed Jazz, and Rol fell into step beside me. Torches were mounted in brackets along the walls, spitting and hissing like snakes as we passed by.
“In the drawing room, Your Majesty?” Rol asked.
Jazz gave a prim nod. “Yes.”
Rol led us into a room that was cozy compared to the rest of the manor, lit with candles that gave off soft light. Jazz pointed to a wooden chair with red velvet cushions.
“Sit, Bren.”
I narrowed my gaze.
She lowered hers. “Please.”
“Okay,” I replied and sat down. “But if you don’t start talking, I’m outta here, hexes or not.”
With a sigh, she said, “I’ll tell you at least as much as you can handle for tonight.”
“Do you require anything more, my queen?” Rol asked before I could argue with Jazz.
“Nothing further.” She waved him away. “Thank you, Rol.”
Rol bowed himself out the door, and Jazz and I were alone.
Amazing. She still looked perfect—not a hair out of place, not a speck on her clothing. Me, I could feel my own hair standing on end after that wild ride, and I needed a bath, despite that little magic trick in the village where she got rid of all the dirt on me. How’d she do that?
“Tell me where I really am,” I said a few seconds after Rol was gone. “I know I’m not in California any longer. I don’t even know if I’m on Earth anymore.”
Jazz clasped her hands in front of her, her back straight and her shoulders squared as she sat at the edge of her seat. “You’re correct that we’re no longer in California; however, we are on Earth.” She paused and stared at her black polished nails, and I imagined gold glowing around their edges. “We’re in Massachusetts, only it’s the year 15, almost two thousand years in your past.”
My jaw about hit the floor. “15 AD, as in before King Arthur?”
“This village is called Shallym.” Jazz looked everywhere but at me as she spoke. “A pre-medieval version of the Salem you may have knowledge of from your history texts. Shallym existed before any other permanent villages on this continent. It has always been a haven for witches facing persecution in other civilizations, and one of the only places in time where there are no non-witching humans.”
I could barely focus on what Jazz was saying. My mind kept going back to the 15 AD thing. I forced myself to pay attention, even though I was thinking she was a little nuts.
For a moment she stared out the window, into the growing darkness. “In one form or another, in every time, there has been a Shallym. A Salem. A place of peace. That’s what the name means, in fact. Peace. From the word shalom.”
“A haven for witches,” I repeated, not really believing a bit of it. “A secret ancient town.”
“Towns. Many of them.” She turned her gaze back to me. “Shallym was the first safehaven. When my father created the Path of Shadows, a ribbon tying together all of our safehavens, he made Shallym the first Sanctuary connected to it.” Her golden eyes looked a little sad when she mentioned her dad, but it was so brief I wasn’t sure.
My knee bounced while I struggled to pay attention to what she was saying, and I started pulling at the laces of my tunic. “I don’t get it. Your dad couldn’t be that old, so he made this Path recently, right? Like within this century.”
Jazz glanced at my bouncing knee as she nodded. “Only five years past.”
“If we’re really back in 15 AD, then how can Shall—uh, Shallwhatsit—be a part of this Path thing?” I gestured in the direction I thought the village was. “This place existed thousands of years ago, if what you said is true.”
“Sh-aa-llim.” Pursing her lips, she tilted her head and looked like she was trying to think of a way to respond. “My father’s Path reaches through time, touching magical places where witches go to avoid torture and murder at the hands of those who don’t understand us.”
She stretched out her fingers and traced a line in the air—and the air between us started to glitter. The sparkles twisted and slid together, until it looked like some weird version of the yellow brick road. Floating in front of my nose.
“Think of the Path as a moving magnetic road,” she said as her hand worked, “running from spot to spot, touching places where the magical energy is strong enough to attract it.”
I blinked at it, trying not to let my mouth hang open. Jazz kept drawing in the air, and little silver bubbles drifted up and attached to
the yellow ribbon.
Jazz pointed to the bubble on the end closest to me. “This is Shallym. At the beginning of witches’ recorded time, where we are now.”
All I could do was nod and stare at the floating colors.
“These are Sanctuaries in other times.” She tapped a bubble closer to her. “Like Middle Salem in the 1600s.”
“What’s the one right next to you?” I nodded toward the last bubble, which was drifting beside Jazz’s cheek.
She glanced at it, and for a second, she looked soft. Almost relaxed. “L.O.S.T. The Sanctuary I just made, where you entered the Path.”
My frown was automatic. I was about to make some smart remark about being kidnapped, but Jazz waved her hand and the yellow ribbon and bubbles popped into nothing. I couldn’t help staring at where they had been. Sort of neat, how she did that. I almost wanted her to put it back.
“So, this Path is a place all witches can go?” I asked.
“With help entering the energy field, yes. It was.” With a slight shake of her head, she continued. “At present, no witches may walk the Path unless I admit them. When I allow them on the Path, they must take the vow—a binding magical agreement to use magic against another witch only for self-protection. To save life or limb—their own or a family member’s.” Jazz looked at her black nails and back to me. “Now, with everything that has happened—with the evil we’re fighting—once on the Path, it isn’t possible for any witch but me to leave. Their magic simply isn’t strong enough to survive more than one exposure to the moving road.” She leaned forward, her face intent. “Thus, if a witch is expelled from the Path, they are simply banished into the Shadows, a sort of nonexistence. And they become vulnerable to corruption.”
I rubbed my face with my hand, my head aching with all that had happened and all that she was telling me. “That’s what you meant when you told those old crones that it would be a breach of their vows if they did anything to me. And what you’re saying is that if they were expelled, it’d be almost like they didn’t exist anymore.”
Jazz’s smile lit up her face. “Yes, you understand.”
I frowned. “No, I don’t. Not all the way.”
Her smile vanished. “I see. Perhaps you require rest. I can explain more in the morning.”
As stubborn as I felt, as much as I wanted to know what was going on, she was right. I was beat. I couldn’t absorb another word, even if I tried. And even if I could find my mom’s truck tonight, I was too wiped out to drive without falling asleep at the wheel.
“Yeah,” I said. “I could use some sleep.”
Like a graceful cat, Jazz stood and led me from the drawing room, up a huge staircase, and into a dark room. She said, “Light,” and in an instant, a fat candle burned on a bedside table.
Real magic? Or some kind of trick? Had all that I’d seen so far been a slick sleight of hand? I brushed the thoughts away, too tired to think about it right now.
“Rol’s quarters are next door to yours.” Jazz pointed to her left. “If you have need of anything, ask him. He sleeps lightly.”
I yawned and stretched my arms. “Not me. I sleep like the dead.” My vision blurred, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. “’Night, Jazz.”
“Jasmina,” she said softly, like a last-ditch effort to get me to stop calling her Jazz. But I had the feeling she didn’t really mind anymore. “Good night, Bren.”
When she left, I blew out the candle and collapsed face-first on the bed. The statue in my pocket dug into my thigh, and I groaned and turned onto my side.
Maybe the statue was bad luck or something. Look at the mess I was in.
But thoughts of it faded as I slid into a deep sleep.
Minutes later, I startled awake, heart pounding. I was awake, wasn’t I? The air—it looked so strange. I was outside, not in a bed. More like a forest. No, wait. A village, close to the trees. I was standing outside an old village much smaller than Shallym.
A hollow thock made me jump.
It sounded like someone hammering once on wood, only louder. An image jumped into my mind of a huge, faceless monster pounding on a castle door-while the people inside the castle huddled and screamed.
Again I heard it. Thock.
Then thock, thock, thock!
And this time, people did scream. From inside the village. From inside little huts and buildings. The ground shook, and I fought not to fall down and start screaming, too. The wrongness of the night, the sounds, even the feeling of the air made me sick inside. Dizziness hit me harder than the knocking as the ground tremors came and went. A tearing sound above me made me grind my teeth.
What was happening? It sounded like the sky was ripping in half. Or maybe I was losing my mind.
Bizarre shadows flooded the night around me. My skin crawled as if spiders raced up my spine. I tried to yell, to run forward, but I couldn’t move or breathe. The shadows bled through the air, appearing and vanishing, then appearing again.
Were they alive?
Wind came from nowhere, blowing and howling, drowning screams and awful, inhuman sounds from those shadow-things.
And then everything went quiet.
Soft laughter drew my attention, and I cut my gaze from the shadows. A dark form appeared against a moonlit backdrop of silver-shaded trees. Something about the silhouette was familiar. Yet I couldn’t see the being’s face, couldn’t tell who it was—or even what it was.
A witch?
No. Something far more terrible.
I felt that sharp pain in my gut, like a knife pressed under my ribs. My blood ran colder than cold. I watched the shadows flow through the night toward a village. Something told me it was a Sanctuary, like Jazz had talked about.
The next thing I knew, the wind sound came back, along with screaming, shouting, screeching. Shadows slipped through one dark building after another. The wicked being followed, a black form blending with darkness. As people—witches, I assumed—fled out into the night, purple sparks dripped from the being’s fingertips. The…thing…threw purple ropes of power—I didn’t know what else to call them—around the witches.
That was bad. I knew it. Very, very bad. The evil creature was planning to kill them all—for no reason I could see. I tried to do something to help, but I still couldn’t move. Couldn’t help anyone.
The being secured the witches tight with the magical ropes. Immediately, shadow-things attacked the bound victims.
Screams of the dying echoed through my head, and my own silent screams joined theirs.
When I woke again, this time for real, I bolted up in bed, shaking. Where was I? It wasn’t my own room back in Yuma.
And then I realized I was in the bed in Shallym. I really was in another time, another place. My mouth hung open, and I kept coughing. My heart wouldn’t slow down.
What had I heard? I rubbed my sleep-coated eyes and tried to breathe normally.
What had I just seen?
***
Chapter Eight
The only thing I wanted was to be back in my bed back at Shadowbridge, tucked tightly beneath the covers and dreaming just before the dawn—but such was not the lot of the Queen of the Witches. A sense of distress and disaster drove me from my sanctuary and into the air, moving from place to place and time to time until I located the disturbance.
As I landed and threw away my burning branch, my body ached, inside and out. Smoke stung my eyes, and soot settled heavily on my cheeks. I couldn’t see the sun in this once beautiful, bright village outside of Trier. The two witches kneeling before me looked as if they might never see the sun again, so dark was the terror in their eyes.
“It happened so quickly, Your Majesty,” said Grelda, a hag, in halting English. Her hag-spirit coiled tightly around her arm. I couldn’t see its eyes, which unnerved me. Grelda had been from an older time in Germany. Two years ago, when she asked for asylum, I had brought her forward to the Trier area just before the year 1590, in hopes she would be happy in a somewhat fami
liar environment.
I never imagined a horror like this.
“We heard knocking,” said the second witch, a girl of only thirteen, who had been introduced to me as Helden. “An unearthly, evil sound. Another noise came, like wood splintering—and then—and then—”
She coughed and broke down, sobbing in Grelda’s arms.
I bit my lip and forced myself to take stock of what was left of the village—a small churchlike structure and two hovels that looked to be storage bins, perhaps for corn or grain. Everything else had been burned. On a few fallen rafters, embers yet glowed, and an unnatural purple hue hung about the charred remnants of corpses and animals.
“How did Nire know of this place?” Grelda growled, casting a suspicious look upward. “Were we sacrificed? Betrayed?”
I knelt and placed a hand on her shoulder. With the other, I stroked Helden’s arm. “Neither. I believe the Shadowmaster has been biding time and gaining power. Nire is growing more skilled at searching. Soon, nowhere will be safe.”
Not here, not Shallym—and before long, not even L.O.S.T., my last hope.
“Nowhere will be safe as long as you are on the Path,” the hag snarled. “Nire seeks your power.”
“Don’t be a fool.” Helden recovered herself and pushed away from the hag. “Without Jasmina’s protection, the Shadowmaster would slaughter us all!”
“Protection.” Grelda’s sarcasm was unmistakable. “Some protection she has given us.”
My stomach burned almost as hot as my cheeks. “You know the strength of Nire’s magic when it’s focused and at full strength. The Shadowmaster murdered your clan, and I saved you.”
“For what?” The hag leapt to her feet. Her hag-spirit unfurled and took the form of a great, dark bird, wings spread, beak wide like a maw. “More massacres? More chaos? If you cannot contain Nire, perhaps we should dispose of you and find a proper leader from the oldeFolke!”
I couldn’t double my fists, as Grelda might take it for the threat of a spell and act, harming all of us, or at the least, dooming herself to banishment.
“Consider your words,” I urged through clenched teeth, forcing my hands to remain at my sides. “You are overwrought, and Helden may have need of you to make her choice.”
L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set Page 5
