by Avin Vang
Helga wrapped her arms around Raven, and after a few moments Raven reciprocated. They cried together briefly. Raven could feel the truth of what Helga was saying as they embraced. Raven could sense the love and the positive energy flowing through their arms.
“I came to tell you that it isn’t over,” Helga’s eyes were filled with pain as she backed away to look at her protégé. “The three of you cannot leave Romania just yet.”
“We’re heading back to school,” Raven said as her head shook. It was like it wasn’t under her control. She just couldn’t stop it from moving back and forth as her grandmother reassured her that everything would be fine.
“We witches have always been here to keep the supernatural forces under control,” Helga explained. “Things are moving into alignment too quickly, and there will be another war if we are not careful. The three of you are the most powerful young witches in our coven. I know that you can stop the impending calamity.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Raven sneered. “So glad we could help.” Raven turned away, and then a thought nearly gave her whiplash as she spun back to her grandmother. “How much of this is your fault?”
“I don’t want to assign blame,” Helga sighed. “It’s more complicated than all of that.”
“So what do I do?” Raven sighed; it seemed there was no use resisting. She hadn’t wanted to fulfil the other prophecy and it just kind of happened. Not at all the way she thought it would, but it did. She wanted to hear the new prophecy, but she wasn’t sure it would help anyway.
“Just get on the train tomorrow, the rest will fall into place.” Helga gave Raven a kiss on the head and then transformed into the beautiful, black bird and flew off down the hall.
Raven collapsed against the wall beside her. She wasn’t sure she was ready to have another adventure. She let her head fall into her hands. “Get on the train and the rest will fall into place,” Raven groaned.
“That sounds like good advice.”
Raven opened her eyes to see Matthias standing over her. Her face lit up and she jumped to her feet and kissed him. “Really? Would you go with me?” Raven asked. She wanted an answer before she explained any further.
“I will go with you anywhere,” Matthias replied. “I will swim the oceans, and climb mountains, and…and what else do they do in love songs?”
Raven smacked his shoulder. “They go wherever their woman wants them to go without asking for an explanation, or even who suggested the trip.” Raven thought that mentioning it was Helga’s idea wouldn’t be a selling point. Raven had never been cursed before, but she was sure that it was hard to forgive the person who did the cursing.
“Then that is what I will do. When do we leave?” Matthias asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” Raven was almost crying. She wiped the tears before they could fall. She couldn’t believe Matthias was coming. “Even though you have to leave your castle?”
“I don’t need a castle, I need you.” Matthias kissed Raven again and lifted her up into his arms. “You just have to book a space for my coffin in storage. It’s surprisingly simple.”
“I have to…” Raven’s guilt was taking over. She couldn’t let Matthias do this if she wasn’t being one hundred percent honest. “I have to tell you…”
“That it is all part of a mission given to you by Helga, your grandmother, and the most evil woman I’ve ever known,” Matthias said the words as if they meant nothing to him. “I heard all of it. Well, some of it.”
“How can you be okay with this?” Raven asked in surprise. “She did all of this to you.”
“But without this, I wouldn’t have found you,” Matthias said, looking into Raven’s eyes. She was melting on the inside and she couldn’t control the tears anymore. “I’m not mad at her anymore. I’ve let it go. I don’t want any baggage holding me back and stopping me from enjoying this.”
“So, we’re going,” Raven sighed as she laid her head against Matthias’s chest and he carried her to the bedroom.
The vampire laid her down on the bed and Raven pulled him on top of her. They were going to enjoy their last night in Hunedoara. Knowing that this was only the beginning of their lives together.
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Ali
“I’m fine,” Ali wasn’t slurring her words, but it was taking a lot of focus. She had been drinking for a while. She was trying to keep the party going, and no one was helping her in the slightest. “You guys all need to relax.”
Carrie was worried about the investigation, and Raven was fully consumed by her new boyfriend Matthias. The bloodthirsty vampire that had brought all of them to Romania. The girls were brought in to stop him; Raven had taken it a little too far. Matthias didn’t have time to slaughter millions because he never spent more than three seconds away from Raven. Unless you counted the 12 hours a day when he was literally dead. Ali’s friends were being no fun at all.
Which is why Ali couldn’t believe the way everyone was coming down on her. They were the ones being so utterly boring that she needed to drink just to be around them. Spring break had ended but Helga wasn’t letting them come home. The 700-year-old coven leader needed the girls to stay in Romania and clean up the messes she had left for them during her long and tumultuous time in the mystically charged country.
“See, see!” Ali yelled as she touched her nose repeatedly. “I am fine, and you guys need to relax.” Ali stormed out of the train compartment. She was headed to the dining car. She had just left the dining car, but the five minutes she had subsequently spent in a small room with her friends was enough to keep her in the dining car all night.
“We do close,” the bartender shouted as he tried to keep Ali out of the bar area. He really wanted to close the doors and get to bed, but Ali wasn’t just going to leave without a fight. “You have to leave!”
“And I will,” Ali said as she spun off the bartender’s block and charged forward. She got her hands on the stool and the broad shoulders of the young Romanian sunk. “Two drinks at the most.”
“Fine.”
Ali took her seat and tapped her fingers on the bar. "I want a vodka cran, but I want something special for it." Ali added a touch of her baby voice, "Can you make my drink special?"
The bartender groaned and tried to control his hatred for the situation. That's when Ali locked eyes with him. She needs our help. We gotta do this, buddy. She's had a rough day.
"Okay, you look like you’ve had a rough day,” the bartender sighed as he turned around and started looking through his fancy drink accessories.
Ali had been using the eye contact telepathy spell for years. It was always a last resort, but tonight she was in a hurry. They were going to reach the station soon. “Something that you don’t use often,” Ali added as she pulled out her wand. With a quick flick she shrunk three bottles of vodka from behind the bar. She walked over and grabbed them, quickly slipping the bottles into her purse.
“What are doing?” The bartender was stunned.
“I just thought you needed help,” Ali shrugged as she turned around and went back to her seat.
“The fanciest thing I have is an umbrella,” the bartender said as he turned back holding three different colors of umbrella.
“No pink?”
The bartender’s shoulders dropped.
“I’m just kidding, red is great,” Ali smiled warmly. “It all worked out just perfect.”
* * *
“We made it,” Raven was trying to keep the peace.
“We didn’t get arrested!” Carrie’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Ali. She was choosing not to respond because she was feeling a bit hung over and opening her mouth wasn’t going to be a good idea. Ali closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She needed all of her composure to maintain the contents of her stomach.
“She was a little unruly,” Raven smiled at Ali. There w
as a shrug though. It stuck with Ali. The shrug suggested that Raven was struggling to find the will to defend Ali. It was one incident. People trash dining cars all the time. It wasn’t like the bartender was really injured.
“I only bit his finger,” Ali spat the words out quickly and then sealed her mouth again. She tried to look at the ground, but the paisley carpet pattern wasn’t helping the nausea. Ali looked up at the wood grains. It was no good, the motion of the train was too much.
“Just knock it off,” Carrie waved her wand and Ali stopped immediately.
“What did you do?”
“I fixed your…issue,” Carrie dismissed her actions with a huff. Ali couldn’t believe what was going on inside of her. She had been fighting for an hour to control her gag reflex and everything had dissipated in seconds.
“How long have you known how to do that?” Ali gasped. Carrie had been her friend for over a decade. They had met in grade school. How long had she known? How many times could she have fixed this problem for Ali?
“I looked it up a while ago.” Carrie was acting incredibly smug. “I knew there would be a time that I needed you and you were too out of it to help.”
“Well, the joke’s on you, ‘cause I’m headed into town to get smashed,” Ali sneered at her snooty friend. “You thought I was drunk before. The next time you see me I will be smashed.”
“You can’t,” Carrie sighed.
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t drink for the next 24 hours,” Carrie explained without looking Ali in the eyes. She knew that Ali was going to be pissed. Carrie didn’t need to look at her friend to know that Ali was losing her mind. “You will die.”
“Okay,” Ali sighed.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s wrong, Carrie?”
“Nothing Ali, I’m not saying anything is wrong,” Carrie tried to smile. “I just thought that there was going to be a problem. I mean when is the—“
“We don’t need to finish that thought,” Raven knew what was coming, but she hadn’t stopped Carrie soon enough. The tension in the room was running high.
“Finish the sentence,” Ali was staring daggers at Carrie.
“I don’t need to,” Carrie sighed, and for a minute Ali looked away. “But I was just going to mention that you haven’t stayed sober for 6 hours in a row since we landed in Europe.”
* * *
Ali couldn’t even look at Carrie as they walked through the busy train station. She was just glad to be done travelling for the day. Ali needed to get to the hotel, get a shower, and get into a bed of some kind. The spell had taken the nausea away, and sobered her up, but it left her feeling a bit hollow. It was like her insides were struggling to hold her body upright.
“You look green,” Raven said as she tried to get Ali to eat a granola bar. Ali needed something more substantial. She was holding out for a restaurant, or room service. Raven kept waving the cardboard posing as food in Ali’s face.
“Where are we?” Ali asked, pushing past her friend to the large map on the wall of the train station. “This isn’t Sinaia.”
“I told you that already,” Carrie didn’t even look up from her phone. She was checking the itinerary, and didn’t seem to care that Ali was on the verge of another meltdown. Carrie always looked so put together. Her white blazer transitioned her jeans and tank top travel look into upscale tourist chic. The blazer had the opposite effect on Ali’s travel sweatsuit. Somehow, Carrie looking put together made Ali seem even more broken.
“I told you that already,” Ali mocked. She needed to find a bathroom and a mirror. She just hoped that she didn’t look as bad as she felt. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Just remember—“
“Finish that sentence and I’ll kill you!” Ali yelled over her shoulder. “Oof!”
“Did you seriously just walk into me?” the man yelled as he shook the coffee off of his sleeves. He didn’t even offer to help Ali off the cold, cement floor.
Ali grunted and moaned to herself as she got up off the floor. She was hurt and covered in cold coffee. She was about to ask who carries around a full cup of cold coffee, when the answer hit her like a ton of bricks, just like the hit that had taken her to the ground. The vampire had barely been jostled by the blow.
Ali felt around to make sure nothing was broken. Everything had happened so fast, she couldn’t tell how she felt. Ali and her friends were still getting over their last brutal encounter with a vampire. Ali felt in her pocket, and then realized that her wand was still in her backpack. She didn’t have it on her. Raven was carrying it.
“Are you okay?” The vampire sounded like it hurt him to try and be considerate.
“She’s fine,” Carrie said as she offered her hand to the vampire.
“Where is Raven?” Ali tried to speak under her breath, but Carrie didn’t pick up on what Ali was trying to do.
“Raven is going to get Matthias from the baggage claim.” Carrie had to know Ali’s thought as she straightened up and tried to pull herself together. “This has got to be Anatolie, he’s our contact.” The vampire rolled his eyes at Ali as she looked up.
He was tall, and his jet-black hair stood out against his pale skin and icy blue eyes. His jaw line was firm, and he was good-looking, but he was literally looking down his nose at them. Ali could feel her blood boiling as she watched him stand there beside them without saying a word.
“What is your problem?” Ali would’ve normally been screaming at Anatolie, but she didn’t have the energy. It wasn’t just the spell. Ali was in dumpy clothes, and there was coffee dripping from her hair and her sweatshirt. The sticky brown liquid had managed to run just about everywhere.
As they waited for Raven and Matthias, Carrie was doing most of the talking. Anatolie was offering condescending one-word answers to all of her questions. Ali was pissed at Carrie, but that rage was slowly being overwhelmed by Ali’s hatred for the new guy. She could already tell that they weren’t going to get along.
“We are heading to Sinaia tonight.” It was the longest response that Anatolie had offered, and the only one that caught Ali’s attention.
“Leaving now?” Ali snapped at Carrie. “I need a shower, food, a bed—“
“Now,” Anatolie interrupted. “There is no way for us to get there unless we start moving now. We can get food on the way.”
“And a shower on the way?” Ali hissed at the vampire. “I don’t know if you know this, but some jack ass threw coffee all over me.”
“You walked into me!”
“You added cream and sugar to a coffee that you knew you were never going to drink!” Ali whisper yelled the last part. She didn’t want to give the vampire away. There had to be a reason that Helga had sent the girls a guide. The coven elder didn’t do things without a reason behind them.
“I didn’t intend to wear it,” Anatolie turned and walked off.
“Where’s he going?”
“He’s pulling the car around,” Carrie sighed as she looked over Ali’s outfit and general appearance.
“You need to work on your poker face,” Ali snapped as she looked around for the bathrooms she had been trying to find. “I can feel the judgement in your eyes. It’s like, literally burning my skin.”
Carrie didn’t say a word, and Ali stomped off to a door marked with a stick figure in a skirt. She was going to have to take a quick, public washroom wipe down, or suffer through the rest of the night covered in coffee. Both thoughts made her cringe, so she went for the option that made her cringe less.
Her hair was the worst; the coffee seemed to have stained her light blonde hair. “I guess I won’t need to add low lights any time soon,” Ali moaned as she stuck her head under the sink. Trying to dry her hair with paper towels bordered on futile.
Ali unzipped her sweatshirt and took it off. The coffee had also stained her white tank top. Ali pushed her breasts together, watching in the mirror. “Let’s see Anatolie ignore these,” she laughed
to herself as she got more paper towel and dabbed at the stain.
“Hey, I brought your clothes,” Raven said as she walked into the room. She was the dark and pale counterpart to the tanned, blonde Ali. “You aren’t getting that out.”
