by May Dawson
And I had to go on being strong, but when my sister studied me with those caring blue eyes, the weight of it all struck me. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t feeling any of it anymore.
“Nothing,” I said in a whisper, and then I was crying, and she wrapped me in her arms.
“You’ll find a way, Maddie,” she promised me in a whisper. “We always do. You’re a strong woman.”
“I learned it from you,” I whispered back, hugging her tight.
She brushed my hair back, cradling her cheek on top of my head even though I was pretty sure she had to reach up on tiptoes to do that. “You know you saved me from our father,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I ever would have fought so hard if I hadn’t had you. I don’t know if I would’ve been hiding money, the money he found the night I thought he was going to kill me. That was when I ran right into Kai’s arms. Without you, I don’t know if that ever would have happened.”
“You saved me,” I said. “You always protected me.”
She laughed at that. “You almost got killed on my watch, do you remember that? Kidnapped by Joan? Attacked by our father?”
I’d been feeling gutted about not being here when Skyla needed me, and that made me feel a sudden flooding sense of relief. Even Piper—my sister I adored, who had always taken care of me—had her moments she felt she’d failed.
“Did you feel guilty about that?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she cupped my face with her palms to look into my face. “You can’t raise another person without heaping doses of guilt and regret. Anyone who does is probably a psychopath. A real one, not like when I call Arthur a psycho.”
“I kind of think he might be one when he stares down Rafe,” I said.
She laughed and pressed a kiss to my forehead before she dropped her hands. “I still feel a lot of guilt, Maddie. I never felt confident trying to take care of you. Hell, I don’t think I was very empathetic last week at graduation. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”
“You’ve been thinking about that?”
She winced. “You too? That’s a bad sign.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “You know you might not have been perfect. But you were the perfect sister-mom for me. And I always knew you would come for me and save me—even when I was having my little kid tantrums. And my teenage ones too.”
“That’s the thing about family,” she said. “We save each other.”
Her cell phone rang then, and she answered it as I hastily dried my tears. I’d had my chance to fall apart. Now it was over. Sometimes I think our society’s weird anti-crying conditioning works to make women stronger than men, in a way. We at least get to feel our emotions and face them.
“Penn and Chase are coming in now,” she told me when she hung up. She had a troubled look on her face.
“Are they okay?” I demanded.
“Penn was burned,” she said. “Magic burns, so Silas can’t heal them. Stay. Work. Rafe and the others will come help you. I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as I know. Okay? We can’t have everyone crowding the infirmary.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
Rafe, Jensen and Silas came in then. Rafe immediately found the nearest whiteboard—of course he did—and began making a plan for how we’d divide the research.
Jensen came straight to me and wrapped me up in a tight hug, resting his jaw on top of my head.
He always knew just what I needed.
Then he said, “Come on, let’s get to work. The sooner we have answers, the sooner we can make everything better again.”
But of course, sometimes we can’t just make everything better. Some things go wrong, and can never be righted again.
We began to search through the texts, looking for answers.
Piper texted me soon after, and I read the text out loud to the guys: “Penn will be OK. Magic burns take time to heal—but his face is still pretty.”
Rafe groaned at that.
“It’s true, though,” Jensen said. “The man is pretty.”
“Chase, Lex, all OK,” I continued reading.
“Sure,” Jensen drawled. “But I’ll feel better when I see that for myself.”
I agreed with him. I could barely contain my restlessness. There was a wide range to “OK”.
“This is interesting,” Silas said, propping his chin on his hand as he frowned at the ancient pages of a book. I sidled over next to him, but it was in a language I didn’t recognize. Like every good witch, I knew my Latin, and that wasn’t it.
“What’s interesting?” Rafe prompted impatiently.
“This spell might mimic the transformation,” Silas said, “but it doesn’t actually create a full, lasting, permanent transformation. Clearborn thinks we missed something about how to reverse the Dark Collar’s spell, but maybe we didn’t miss it—maybe there really was no spell to fix what the Dark Collar broke. Of course we wouldn’t have used this one—none of us want to be wolves for a few months, and with a terrible cost.”
“You think there’s some kind of temporary transformation that the wolves involved with the Day experienced?” Rafe asked.
Silas nodded.
“I read a while back that after some of the witch trials, covens banded together to use magic to make it seem as if people who had accused them were actually wolves,” Jensen said, and when the rest of us stared at him, he said, “Okay, first of all, you know I’m actually pretty smart and I take school seriously? And second of all, I read. For fun. So stop looking at me that way just because I used to like to present myself as a dumb jock. It’s a little hurtful.”
“That would be this spell,” Silas said.
“I wonder if they know it’s temporary,” I said.
“I hope they don’t,” Silas said. “Because then it should be a very fun surprise when their testicles fall off.”
The rest of us looked at him, not sure if he was joking or not. Silas’s humor-from-another-world didn’t always translate for the rest of us.
“You know how those old school witches rolled after the trials,” Silas said. “They baked that into the spell.”
“Okay, but I’d assumed that Alice might want the Dark Collar so she had the power to take away their ability to shift again,” Jensen said. “Now once we find something to help Skyla, we’ve got to figure out what other spells can be used with the Dark Collar.”
“Unless she just doesn’t want us to have it,” I said slowly. “Maybe the combination of the shield and the Dark Collar is dangerous.”
“Or maybe the Fae want the Dark Collar back and she was trying to make a deal with them,” Rafe said.
“In which case, Ty could be in danger.” I thought for a second. “After meeting their shifters, I can see why they might be so interested in controlling them.”
“Or maybe they’re like that because they were controlled, and they lost their human side,” Silas suggested.
After a while, we discovered that there could be a way to cure Skyla—we could use the completed shield to stall her wolf from developing and taking over. It would lay dormant within her—just as if she’d been born with it.
“We can leave now,” Jensen said, slamming the book he was reading closed. “Get into the Greyworld and get the other half of the shield.”
“Hold on,” Rafe said. “We have to find a solution in the meantime. We don’t know how long it will take us in the Grey. It took a whole lot longer in the Fae world than we expected.”
“Should we expect any complications like that in your world, Silas?” Jensen asked.
Silas snorted at that. “There definitely won’t be any surprises like Silas Zip is actually a prince, that’s for sure. My world is surprising and unpleasant though, even for those who are born in it.”
“Great,” Jensen muttered, dragging another book in front of him. “Constantly expanding excitement over here, that’s for sure.”
Blake was young to change, but should be able to deal with it just fine—he’d just be a
teenage boy with even more hormones and less control over his feelings.
“I’m worried about Skyla, but Blake should be fine. We can look out for him,” Rafe said. “He’ll be safe—it’s not like he’ll be going through the shifts on his own.”
That reminded me of how Rafe had been alone for his own first experiences shifting, but he moved on, pulling another book in front of him.
For a few minutes, all was quiet except for pages turning.
“Are we really pretending we can concentrate when we don’t know how Penn is?” Jensen demanded.
“Yeah, we are,” Rafe said. “We’ve got a job to do. If we lack focus, we put more people at danger without doing a damn thing to help Penn. We’ll hear when there’s news.”
Jensen nodded, then turned his back to Rafe and gave me a look, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. Any other time, it would have made me smile, and it still eased some of the tension I felt. It was easier to focus and keep researching when I knew I wasn’t alone in my feelings. Everyone at this table stacked with books shared those feelings. But we all worried and turned pages and jotted down notes and obsessed some more.
“I think I found something,” I said suddenly. “What about using one of these sleep spells on the animal itself? Piper said that Skyla was getting sick from the wolf trying to take over when her body isn’t strong enough for it yet. But if we can get it to sleep….”
“That’s the idea behind the sedation, but this would allow her to wake up. If it worked,” Jensen agreed.
Silas stood from the table. “It’s an idea. Let’s take it to the infirmary.”
The rest of us looked at Rafe, and he huffed a laugh, raking his hand through his hair. “Now you’re looking for permission. Sure. Go ahead.”
“I’m not—“ I started.
“It’s fine,” he said, his voice gruff. I thought he was still angry, but then he admitted, “I’ll feel a lot better when I’ve seen them too.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
At least the team was all united in the infirmary. Penn sat on the bed across from Skyla’s, shirtless and swathed in bandages. Despite the nurse still tending his angry wounds, he looked relaxed as ever, as if the man didn’t quite feel pain like a normal human.
Skyla was asleep, hooked up to machines that hummed quietly, monitoring her. She was so funny and bright and fit in so comfortably with us all that I was jarred by how small and helpless she looked, with her pale lips slack and her brown hair falling around her small face.
Blake and Chase both hovered by her bedside, and I’d never noticed just how much they looked alike until now--the dark hair, the big shoulders, the rough, masculine features.
Chase hugged me tight, and as I hugged him back, I wondered if he would still hug me if he knew I was the reason why we hadn’t been by their sides soon after Blake and Skyla were taken. Would we have made a difference?
Then I turned to kiss Penn hello as Rafe spoke quietly to the doctor. I didn’t know where to touch Penn to make sure I didn’t hurt him, but that didn’t stop him from kissing me so hard he took my breath away and left me smiling.
Penn was burned across his shoulders, torso, and especially his hands. “My leather jacket helped give me a second,” he said, “before Chase came to my rescue.”
“Turned out the Science Experiment was useful after all,” Chase said, but his gaze was troubled as he looked at Blake and Skyla, who would now be science experiments too.
“This could work,” the doctor said, after looking over the spell. “Keeping her medically sedated long-term isn’t a good solution. If we can deal with the...symptoms… and bring her out of sedation, she’ll be much safer.”
“We’ll get the stuff for the spell,” Jensen said.
Penn frowned. “Where’s Ty?”
Rafe’s jaw tensed. “He didn’t come back with us. He’s fine, just—it’s a long story.”
Penn pushed the nurse away. “A long story? A long fucking story, Rafe?”
“We’ll get him back,” Rafe promised.
“You left him in the Fae world.” Penn’s voice was cold.
“We didn’t have a choice, Penn,” I told him. “It was his decision. But we will get him back.”
“Fuck.” Penn got up and strode out of the room, as if he were too furious to stay still, and the nurse trailed him carrying his supplies.
“That went well,” Rafe muttered. “Let’s focus on Skyla for now.”
Chase slung his arm over my shoulders. “Stay with me?”
I nodded. “If you want me.”
“Always.”
“I have to tell you something,” I whispered. It felt like a lie not to tell him right away.
“Maddie,” Lex said. “In the hall for a second.”
“Oh, that’s not suspicious at all,” Chase said, but he squeezed my waist and let me go.
I followed Lex into the hall.
“Let it go. He’s got enough to worry about right now,” he told me. “I know you feel guilty. You always feel guilty.”
He looked affectionate, but the words rankled.
“I always have something to feel guilty about,” I said. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this, Lex.”
“You need some rest,” he said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
I tucked my hair back behind my ears impatiently, but it wasn’t Lex I was angry with. “I just want to do everything right.”
“I know.” He stepped intimately close to me. “It kills me that you can forgive all of us for fucking up over and over, but you can’t forgive yourself.”
“Should I?” I asked softly. “I was just trying to do the right thing, to protect the Fae who protected us, but…”
“I wish you saw yourself the way I see you,” he said.
His words made me think about what I’d said to Jensen. Jensen was still haunted by what he saw as his weaknesses. But I knew Jensen was a better man than he knew. He couldn’t leave the hurt boy he’d been in the past, but I could.
And Lex—Lex acted as if it were a miracle that I’d forgiven him for how he hurt me when we broke up, but knowing who he was and what he’d been through, I couldn’t imagine not loving him despite his mistakes.
“It seems like we all think better of each other than we do of ourselves,” I said. “The way we see each other… it’s a lot to live up to.”
“Good problem to have,” he said, and I knew he was right. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Go take care of Chase. I’ll be back.”
I went back into the room just as Chase sent Blake to look for food in the empty dining hall, and it was just the two of us. I hesitated, chewing my lower lip as I studied his rough, handsome features.
Chase tented his hands in front of his face, his elbows braced on his knees as he studied Skyla. “I should’ve been here when she needed me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
He pulled me into his lap, but as his muscular arm circled my waist, I couldn’t relax into the warmth of his touch. I knew Lex meant well with his advice, but I couldn’t lie to Chase, not even by omission.
“We should have come back sooner,” I said. “I wanted to help the Fae. Raura and the others--they were in this desperate fight, I think they would’ve died without us--”
Chase had been absently rubbing my hip, but his hand stilled. “What are you saying?”
“Rafe wanted me to open a portal, and I refused. I should’ve been here, Chase. With you. When you all needed me.”
For a few long minutes, silence fell between us. Chase stared at Skyla. He was still holding me but his body had gone very still. The only sound in the room was the slight hum of the machines, which were barely audible.
They were the longest minutes of my life, waiting for him to say something.
“You didn’t know what was happening here,” he said. “You went where you were needed most. That’s kind of what I expect from you, Maddie.”
Some de
ep tension in my body relaxed, and I realized I hadn’t drawn a full breath since I came back to our world. “We’re going to get that shield and make sure she’s fine, you know.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to my shoulder, then crinkled his nose. “Smells like you’ve been fighting for days.”
“Pretty much.”
“I’m going to wait with her,” Chase told me. “I should be here when she wakes up.”
“I’ll stay with you if you want. Even though I’m disgusting.”
He grinned at that. “When we were both wolves, you always smelled good to me.”
“One more reason to fix this.”
But he held me close anyway, the two of us taking comfort in each other’s nearness.
Blake and Penn came back in, carrying coffee for all of us. Penn’s wounds were all covered now, so the nurse must have pinned him down somewhere along the way, and then Penn must have found Blake. Penn hid it well, but he certainly had his own big-brotherly, protective tendencies.
Blake handed his brother a cup, and Penn brought me a cup fixed the way I liked it—with enough milk and sugar to cover the bitter taste of the coffee.
The nurse came in as Skyla started to stir, watching over her, and my heart beat faster until Rafe and Lex and the rest of the guys came in, followed by the doctor.
Silas led the spell. It was tricky to put the wolf within her to sleep without it impacting her, but we made it through the enchantment. The room was eerily silent when the last of the Latin had faded, as if we were all holding our breath.
Skyla was slowly surfacing from sleep, groggy and mumbling.
Rafe glanced at Chase’s tense face, then ordered everyone out. “Get some rest.”
“Speaking of rest,” Penn slid off the bed. The bandages flexed over his tanned, muscular skin as he crossed the distance between us, a mischievous light in his eyes. “The doc said I could go sleep in my own bed. As long as I actually slept.”
“There you go,” Lex told me, as if he knew I needed another mission. “Go take care of Penn. I’ll watch over Chase and Blake and Skyla.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of,” Penn said skeptically.
