by Sarah Beth
She nodded. It was the answer she had been expecting, really. So Wesley was only 19 years old, but he would live for hundreds of years — if he didn’t get killed before then. She wondered briefly if he would stop aging soon, or if he would just always get older but at a snail’s pace.
Abby voiced the question that she had been afraid to ask since yesterday. “And what about half-Faye?”
He looked at her then, before turning his attention back to the road as he turned to get off the highway. “What do you mean?”
She certain he knew exactly what she meant. Choosing to play with the ends of her sweater instead of looking at him, she said, “You said something last night about Claire not having a lot of Faye-blood, which made me think that maybe her body isn’t really affected by it.” She glanced at him then, but he was still watching the road. She wished she could see his eyes better. Something about those pools of ice made it easier for her to be brave. “So what does strong Faye-blood mean?”
He didn’t answer her right away. He stayed silent for long enough that Abby wondered if he was even going to answer. She had turned her attention back out the window when he finally spoke. “It’s means immortal, Abby. If your power is as strong we think it is, it would mean you are going to live for a very long time.”
Chapter Ten
❖
Wesley
Wesley cursed himself for saying anything about immortality. Abby hadn’t spoken since, and they were almost to Claire’s. He hoped that meeting another witch, even one with far less power than herself, would help to mend the worries Abby had. Immortality was just another, albeit big, thing for her to swallow. Staring forever in the face wasn’t easy to take right away. He would know.
He pulled his truck into the short cement driveway, parking behind Claire’s blue VW bug. The car was so impractical it made him laugh every time he saw it. He had told Claire on more than one occasion, to which she would just wave him off and tell him she liked the color. He glanced at Abby as he turned the engine off. He could smell her anxiety clear as day in the cab of the truck, not quite fear but not calm either. Without thinking he reached over and gently laid his hand on top of hers, ignoring the sudden heat where their skin met.
He said softly, “Claire is a sweet girl, you’ll love her. And we can leave whenever you want.”
She looked down at their hands for a moment before slowly nodding her head. It took more power than he was willing to admit to take his hand off hers and to open the driver’s side door. He calmed down only slightly when he heard her sigh and open her own door.
He waited for her at the front of the truck, allowing her to take the lead up to the front door. When they reached the steps, he imagined putting his hand on the small of her back. He needed to get control of his sudden need to touch her. He had been in control of himself the day before, only touching her that one time. But it was like being in the tiny cab of his truck for two some hours had broken some barrier he had been unwilling to cross before. He gave himself a mental shake before reaching around Abby to knock, the red door swinging open before he finished his second rap. Claire was beautiful, she always had been, even when they were kids. Her hair was pixie short and cocoa brown, her eyes just as dark as her hair. But her smile was always dazzling, just as it was now.
“Wesley! Alex called me when you left, he knew you’d have forgotten. I’ve been waiting for you! Did you take the scenic route or something?” Or something, he thought, as Abby looked at him with a raised brow.
Before he could say anything else, Claire focused on Abby and if it was possible, he was pretty sure her smile grew even bigger. She reached out and clasped one of Abby’s hand in her own. “You must be Abigail! It is so wonderful to meet you! Alex told me about your eventful day yesterday. Talk about a doozy!”
Abby’s smile was cautious.
Wesley understood, Claire was a little much sometimes. “Claire. Maybe take it down a notch.”
She rolled her eyes at him before tugging on Abby’s arm, “Ignore the wolf, he can be such a spoilsport sometimes! You should have seen him when we were kids, he wasn’t so serious back then! Come in, come in! We have so much to talk about!”
“Claire…” He mumbled through the hand he had over his face. He didn’t believe in gods of any kind, but silently prayed to every one of them that they could get through this visit without Claire telling his whole childhood story.
With a backwards glance at him, Abby got tugged into the house. With a smile on his lips, he followed the women into the house, closing the door securely behind them.
Claire’s family home never ceased to put a smile on his face. Eclectic wasn’t even the right word — it was like a mix of what you would expect a gypsy’s house and a fairy’s to look like. And it hadn’t changed at all since their days of running around in the backyard playing tag.
Tapestries hung over the windows to block out the harsh light of the sun. Except in the sun room out the back, which had walls and a ceiling made of windows. Wesley knew from watching her and her mother, that she did any of her spells or meditations in that room. It was full of comfy pillows and chairs lining the walls. The kitchen looked like a herbalist’s greenhouse, with plants hanging from the rafters and snaking down to grab at unsuspecting heads. As Claire continued to pull Abby through the kitchen and into the sitting room, where tapestries and old-school bunting covered the walls, Wesley tried his best to hide his chuckle. Abby kept looking this way and that, and he had to admit, there was a lot to look at in Claire’s home.
“Please, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable. I just put water on for some tea.” And with that Claire disappeared back into the jungle of a kitchen.
Abby gingerly sat down on one of the couches in the small room, “You were right.”
He sat down in a chair across from her and raised a brow, “Good to know. But what was I right about?”
She smiled a real smile then, for the first time since their conversations in the truck. “She is something.” They were both still chuckling when Claire returned a few minutes later with three cups of steaming nettle tea.
* * *
The witch wasn’t what Abby had been expecting, although she wasn’t really sure what she had been expecting. The last conversation in the car had rattled her, so she hadn’t been prepared to be greeted by a vibrant and jubilant soul like Claire. But Wesley had been right — she loved her already. From her house, to her hair, to her smiling eyes — Claire really was the kind of girl you wanted to be friends with.
Her clothes were just as eclectic as her home, too. She wore a long bell-sleeved tunic dress, a bright blue floral print covering the whole thing. Her hair, though short enough to not need it, had a bright yellow scarf tied around it, settling on the top of her head in a knot. And the funniest, if not most predictable thing, was the gold bangles on both of her wrists. She certainly was doing the whole fortune-telling-witch thing very well. When she came back into the room with tea, Abby tried to stifle her laughter.
It felt so nice to laugh with Wesley. She knew he felt bad for freaking her out in the car, but it wasn’t exactly his fault. She didn’t know anything about witches or this new world that she stumbled into. He was probably going to answer more of her questions and cause more anxiety in the future. She better to get used to it now.
“So, you two came here for two very different reasons.” said Claire as she set the tea on the table between them. “Which one do we want to start on first?” Abby saw her glance at Wesley, her eyebrows raised.
Wesley only shrugged, choosing to pick up his tea and sit back in the chair. “Abby, what do you want to talk about first? This meeting is going to affect you a lot more than it’s going to affect me.”
She bit her lip. If she was being honest with herself at all, she didn’t really want to talk about either of the reasons for their visit. Part of her just wanted to go home and pretend that nothing ever happened. But that wasn’t an option, not really. She had always been a part
of this world, she just hadn’t known. So instead of running away like she wanted to do, Abby sighed. “Let’s start with the more important issue — the missing girl.”
Claire nodded her head, sitting down on the other end of the same couch as Abby. “Alright, so Mr. Protector. What do you guys know?”
What kind of nickname was that? What was “protector” supposed to mean? She hadn’t heard it from any of the wolves up in the mountain.
Wesley set his mug down, leaning his arms on his thighs. It made his shirt pull over his muscles, “Well. We know that the Canry girl went missing while visiting her sister in the city. We know that one minute they were walking down the street and the next Jessie had seemingly vanished. According to the sister, they were walking by a dark alley at the moment it happened. The sister shone her phone’s flashlight into the alley, but there was nothing there. That’s all the helpful information the sister was able to give. Alex had me speak to their grandmother, but she didn’t know anything more. She hoped that we might be able to find her granddaughter before it was too late.”
Abby listened to Wesley with sharp attention. She hadn’t realized that the pack had been actively searching for the girl since she disappeared, not just in the last day or so. Of course, she hadn’t thought about it all that much. She was a little preoccupied with finding out she’s half-Faye.
Claire nodded her head, her eyes growing sad, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot more.” Wesley sighed and leaned back into the chair, mumbling something under his breath. But Claire continued, “What I do have, however, is evidence that would explain how she suddenly disappeared like that.” Wesley sat up straighter again, giving her his full attention.
Claire looked at Abby when she spoke. “A witch can’t really make someone disappear from one place and reappear in another. That’s Hollywood talking, no matter how useful that would be. What some can do though, is make it appear like someone vanished.”
Setting her own mug of tea down, Abby looked at the witch beside her, “So you mean like a trick of the eye? Or camouflage?”
Claire smiled wide, glancing at Wesley before saying to Abby, “Exactly. Whoever took the girl used magic to shield them from her sister’s eyes. So although her sister thought she saw nothing in the alley…”
“The girl was actually right there.” How horrible would that have been to have your sister so close and yet you couldn’t reach out and touch her?
As if reading her thoughts, Claire’s smile fell, “More than likely the poor girl had been knocked out already by that point, by magic or more mundane means. A spell can hide the person, but hiding sound is a lot harder to do.”
“You think a dark witch is behind this?” Wesley’s voice was like steel.
Abby looked over at him and all evidence of their earlier shared laughter was gone. His crystal blue eyes that she had wanted to fall into moments before, had grown cold and hard. She could understand, for the first time since she met him, why people should fear a werewolf.
Claire’s expression was grim, “Whether they’re behind it or were hired to do someone else’s bidding. That remains unclear. But no magic user tortures an innocent like that poor girl for nothing.”
Alright, now they were starting to lose her. She held her hands up in a stop motion, “Okay, wait. What’s a dark witch? And what’s the difference between us and them?”
Claire offered her a small smile — encouragement Abby thought — for asking a good question. “The difference, dear Abby, is because we gain our powers from nature and Mother Earth. A dark witch only gains power from pain and death.”
Abby thought back to the dead girl at the university, covered up by a white sheet, blood seeping through the fabric. Oh, God. “The girl from the college campus, she was tortured?”
Wesley and Claire shared a look before Claire nodded, “Yes, Abby. She was. Tortured for her energy, her life force. A human’s life force is strong, but a witch’s, even one with hardly any power, is much stronger. She was likely kept alive until the murderer could gain all they could.”
Abby suddenly felt all of the blood rush out of her head, the room beginning to spin around her. This certainly wasn’t anything she had signed up for.
Abruptly, Wesley stood, “Enough, Claire.” His voice was deeper than usual, and his eyes shone brighter when Abby turned to look at him. She wasn’t sure how she knew, or where the thought came from, but she knew exactly why his eyes glowed — wolf.
Claire rolled her eyes at him, “Don’t baby her, Wesley. She’s been a part of this world long before yesterday, she just didn’t know it. Whatever Faye hid their child for this long was no one to mess with. Our world isn’t all pixie dust and sunshine, she best learn that quickly.” Claire glanced towards her then, “Besides, it could be dangerous out there for her. She needs all of the information.”
Abby could almost feel Wesley’s temper rising, like a burning sensation coming from under her own skin. He needed to calm down, or it wouldn’t be pretty. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. She stood up, her legs working on their own accord, and walked around the coffee table. Placing a hand on his arm, s simmering heat spread from her hand up her arm and into the rest of her body, her nerves feeling like she had stuck her finger in a light socket. She swore she could suddenly see and hear better, and she could smell her tea from where she stood. His eyes snapped to her face, blue luminous light that drew her in.
They stood there for a moment before the light in his eyes faded back to normal. He glanced down at her hand and she removed it quickly. He didn’t say a word before he left the room, going out the front door, and slamming it behind him.
The two witches were silent for a few breaths before Claire began to laugh. A high pitched laugh that Abby couldn’t help but associate with old stories of fairies. “Oh, Alex didn’t even do this story justice. Abby, sweet girl, sit. We have much to talk about. Ignore the wolf, he’ll be back inside before you know it.” Abby looked down at Claire who hadn’t moved from her seat.
The witch winked at her, a wide smile on her little lips, “Trust me, he won’t be able to stay far away even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t. Clearly.” With one more glance out of the living room, trying to figure out why she had a burning need to follow him, Abby sat back down beside Claire.
Chapter Eleven
❖
Abby
The living room was warm, a few candles had been lit and fresh water boiled for their tea. Abby watched Claire sip her tea for a moment while she tried to calm her racing heart. Wesley storming out had left her feeling shaken, more than she wanted to admit. She didn’t understand why him being upset had made her feel anxious — like his emotions were her own. Taking a deep breath, she turned her attention back to Claire. “I have a question.”
Claire smiled around her mug before setting it down, “I’m sure you have many questions.”
Abby chuckled, the sensation loosening some of the tension in her shoulders. “True, I have many. Why do you both seem so concerned about this dark witch? Couldn’t you guys just go in and stop her?”
Claire hummed, setting her mug down on the coffee table beside them. “If only it was that easy. You see, energy gained through torture is powerful. More powerful than my magic, and far more powerful than a werewolf.”
Pulling her brows together, Abby said, “But I thought werewolves couldn’t die easily?”
Claire shook her head, “True, but they can still die. They’re lifespans are very long, they don’t grow old, but they can be killed.” She shrugged, “This witch is trying to become stronger, that’s why she’s killing other witches. A witch like that is dangerous, volatile. It would be easy for her to kill a werewolf with her magic.”
Abby pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She hadn’t thought about how dangerous this whole situation could be for Wesley and the pack. She had been so focused on her own magic. But just the thought of losing one of the pack, who were quickly starting to mean somethin
g to her, was terrifying. “And me being danger?”
“This person, whoever they are, is clearly looking to gain power. There would be no better source than a half-Faye.”
The weight of everything settled on her, then. She had already felt horrible for the murdered girl; for Jessie and whatever she was being subjected too. But the realization that it could be her next — that someone could try to come after her — was terrifying. What if someone got hurt trying to protect her? Abby knew that Wesley would do anything to keep her safe, whether by making conscious decisions or not. She couldn’t let anything happen to him.
And to think that just over twenty-four hours previous, Abby was ignorant to all of this. How did her life become so complicated?
A hand was gently laid on her arm. Abby looked to see Claire smiling softly at her, “Don’t worry just yet, your wolf is fine. We’re going to figure this out, but we’ll be smart about it. You won’t be in any danger.”
Abby sighed and reached for her own mug of tea, but she didn’t bring it to her lips. Claire was right — there was nothing threatening them at the moment. They needed to be proactive. “Is there anything that can stop this witch?”
“We have to be smarter, catch her off guard.” Claire pointed to a map that sat off to the corner of the coffee table, a large crystal on a string laid on top. Abby hadn’t even noticed it was sitting there. “I’ve been trying to scry for the witch’s magic, but I haven’t been able to find anything yet.”
“What do you mean? How do you do that?”
Claire smiled before reaching across the table for the crystal. Attached to the crystal by a string was a piece of hair. “Someone I know was able to see the body of the second victim, before the autopsy had started. He found this hair on the girl’s body. According to him, it smelled different than the girl’s body. I’ve been using it to try to find the witch but…” she sighed and laid the crystal back down, “it hasn’t worked yet.”
