by D. N. Hoxa
“Where is it?” I asked, not entirely convinced, but very close to it. A place where nobody knew we’d be sure sounded better than my office, and Lynn was right. The place was not going to fit us all in.
“It’s in Providence,” she said.
“What the hell does he want a house in Providence for?” Bender had mentioned that he had a few houses, but I thought they were all in Bloomsburg.
“My grandparents left it to him, but he really never goes there. The last time I was there was when I was fourteen,” Lynn explained.
“It does sound good,” Julian mumbled, which made Lynn’s eyes sparkle when she looked at me through the rearview mirror.
“It sounds far,” I said, angry for no reason at all. It wasn’t far—it was far enough so that nobody could guess where we were. Hopefully. But something about breaking and entering in Bender’s house was very unsettling. Add the fact that Lynn was lying to her parents because of me, and Ezra had run away from his parents to come to me, and even Julian had made his father kick him out of an entire realm because of me…oh, boy, I really was a bad influence on people. Parents all over the world probably wanted their children as far away from me as possible—and with right.
But it was pointless to go round about this, because we had no other choice. Apparently, we were going to spend a lot of money on gas, and that wasn’t nice at all, considering the last client I had still had not paid me for finding her brother. Still, all things considered, it was a good option. A safe option, especially since Jane had no way of knowing where Bender owned properties. In the end, that alone did the trick.
We stopped for gas, food and the toilet without incident, though my heart beat like crazy until we were on the road again, as if Turtle was going to be a better place to be attacked than a gas station. But Turtle was mine and it gave me a sense of security, though it was false.
When we finally reached our destination, both my arms and legs felt numb. I’d driven all day long. Good thing I’d eaten a cold sandwich and some protein bars because I’d have probably hit the ground as soon as I got out of the car.
“This is it?” Lynn asked, looking at the house in front of us. Springfield was a lot noisier than I thought it would be, though I’d never been before. Crowds of people all around us, or maybe the werewolf lived in a crowded neighborhood. As far as I could tell, most of the people we saw were human. Most importantly, they weren’t fairies.
“Probably. I don’t know because I’ve never seen the house before,” Julian said, and with a nod, he put his hand on Ezra’s shoulder and walked over to the house.
The building was only one story high, but it was pretty big. The lawn was perfectly mowed, the pretty lamps on the porch all working and clean. It smelled like fresh paint there, as if somebody had just painted the dark red exterior of the house. For some reason, it looked like a house of humans, and just the thought that we’d come all this way for nothing made me want to start crying. Instead, I focused on Ezra.
“We’re going to meet this guy who will hopefully tell us what you are, okay? You don’t have to be afraid about anything,” I said to him when we took the three steps of the porch that led to the front door. The mat in front of it said welcome, but I doubted it meant us.
“Just don’t let go of my hand,” Ezra said and quickly wrapped my fingers with his tightly. My stomach rolled at the feeling it gave me. I’d never held anybody’s hand before. It was…kind of nice.
“Ready?” Julian asked, and I nodded. He knocked on the window of the door.
I held my breath as I waited to see the shadow of the person who was going to open it, all the while fearing that it would be a human.
But when the door opened, relief covered me. The man in front of me was definitely not human. He looked right at me and didn’t blink once.
His grey hair was short and curly, his brown skin full of wrinkles. He wore a grey knitted sweater, even though it was really warm outside, and he used a polished brown stick to hold his weight while he walked.
All that aside, the man did not look happy to see us.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice surprisingly strong.
“Mr. Wylde, my name is Julian Walker. I’m sorry to come here unannounced, but we need your help.”
The man narrowed his grey brows. “I don’t care about what you need, boy. Get the hell out of here before I make you—and don’t come back.” And he tried to shut the door.
Instinct took over and I put my hand on it before it closed. “Mr. Wylde, if you could just give us a second and hear us out,” I said, but the man suddenly looked very angry. “I can pay you. Name your price.”
“I don’t need you to pay me,” he hissed, but let go of the door. “I need you to get the hell off my property.”
“Sir, all we need is for you to tell us what this boy is. It’ll require just a minute of your time. Please. I can’t tell you how important this is,” Julian said, and he was much more subtle than I was. Maybe I should have let him do all the talking.
“How the hell do you know about that?” Wylde shouted, waving his stick at Julian.
“Because I used to work with the ECU when you were brought in. We’ve never met but I did see you. We wouldn’t be here if we had any other choice,” Julian said. “This boy is in danger, and if we don’t know what he is, we’re not going to be able to help him.”
Finally, Wylde’s eyes fell on Ezra’s face. He looked so innocent, so much younger than ten. Every word that left his mouth was testimony that he’d never had any friends. That he’d never hung out with anyone but his younger sisters, and that was the only way he knew how to speak. My heart ached for him, and suddenly, even if Wylde decided he didn’t want to help us, I knew for certain that I was going to find a way to make him.
“You’re using a child to manipulate me?” Wylde cried.
“No, Mr. Wylde—” Julian tried but he wouldn’t let him.
“This is exactly why I left that world behind! This is why I came here—to hide from people like you,” he said, then sighed, shaking his head. “Using a kid to play me,” Wylde mumbled, then stepped to the side. “Get in before I change my mind.”
My lips stretched into a wide smile and I squeezed Ezra’s hand to encourage him. It looked like I wouldn’t have to make anyone do anything.
Fourteen
The inside of Wylde’s house was just as pretty and well-maintained as the outside. The living room was decorated tastefully with dark reds and warm browns. It smelled like soup in there—the good kind of soup, not the kind my aunt made—and it definitely made you feel like you were at home. The brown couches with red covers were very comfortable, too. With a nod of his head, Wylde told us to take a seat while he proceeded to turn the blinds on the two windows that looked at the street in front of the house. I wanted to tell him that I could do it—the man was old and walking with a stick, after all—but I decided against it because I didn’t want to anger him any further.
When he finally sat on the couch in front of us, he sighed as if he were exhausted. Lynn squeezed my arm as if to say that she was afraid of him, and Ezra, sitting on my other side, right next to Julian, squeezed my fingers, too. I felt like a babysitter, and I mean that in the best possible sense.
“Thank you for giving us a chance,” Julian said. “We won’t waste your time, so I’ll get right to the point. Ezra here is ten, and he’s a Bone witch. People are after him, bad people, but we don’t know why. It’s why we’re here.”
The man raised a grey brow and his brown eyes scrolled up and down Ezra a few times.
“Where are your parents, boy?” he asked.
“Home,” Ezra whispered, and I squeezed his fingers to let him know that it was okay to speak.
“Then what are you doing here with these fairies?” Wylde spit. Of course he was going to mind that we had pointy ears, Julian and I, but I didn’t let that get to me. “Did they make you come? Did they force you to do anything?”
I’d have been
mad, except I appreciated the man’s concern.
Ezra shook his head. “I ran away from home myself.”
Wylde was surprised. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I had a vision that told me to find Winter,” the boy said.
The man looked up at me. “And who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Just someone trying to help the kid, that’s all.” He didn’t need to know more.
Turning to Ezra again, Wylde cleared his throat. “Visions, you say? What kinds of visions?”
Oh, shit. “Just two. One told me how to run away and how to find Winter, and another shows me a man in a prison somewhere, but that’s all.”
Julian looked at me, brows raised in question. I just shook my head to say that I’d tell him all about it later.
“A Bone witch, eh?” Wylde said. “Can you do magic?”
Ezra shrugged. “Not really.”
“Come sit with me.” The man patted the sofa next to him. Ezra looked at me, suddenly terrified.
“I’ll come with,” I assured him, and I stood up. He followed me, and dragging his feet, he sat next to Wylde, and I beside him.
“Give me your hand, boy,” Wylde said, and offered his wrinkled palm to Ezra.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, putting my other hand around his shoulders just to make him feel a bit safer. As long as I was there, nothing was going to happen to him. My beads said so, and so did my magic.
Ezra must have sensed it, too, because he put his slightly shaking hand on Wylde’s.
“All right, then,” the man mumbled, and pulling Ezra’s hand to his nose, he sniffed it three time.
It was strange to see it happen. Even when Julian explained it to us, I still hadn’t believed it, but now that it was right in front of me, I had no choice.
Wylde let go of Ezra’s hand and, holding his breath, pulled his head back, his eyes closed.
I looked at Julian and he nodded. This was exactly what he was supposed to do.
I was a mess of nerves by the time the man lowered his head again, and slowly opened his eyes.
I thought he’d been mad before. Now? He looked furious. The white of his eyes was almost completely red, and his nostrils grew as he slowly leaned away from Ezra and me.
“What’s the matter?” Julian asked halfheartedly. I wrapped both hands around Ezra’s torso.
“Evil,” Wylde whispered. “He’s evil.”
Jumping to my feet, I took Ezra with me. “Let’s go.” This man was clearly insane and we didn’t need to hear another word.
“There’s darkness in him, the kind no light can brighten. He’s full of it,” the man cried, his shaking finger pointing at Ezra.
“Let’s go!” I shouted at Julian and Lynn, who were still sitting on the couch.
I rushed for the door, hoping Wylde wouldn’t say anything else, but he did, and we heard it. “Take him away! He’s dark. He’s evil! That boy has no soul!”
If he’d been shorter, I’d have grabbed Ezra, put him on my shoulder and ran to the car as fast as I could. As it was, I had to drag him by the hand until we finally made it to Turtle, breathing heavily. I sat on my knees in front of him, and made sure he could see my face, though the street lamps were very dim.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, though his face was pale, his eyes full of tears. Goddamn it.
“Yes,” he said, but it was a lie.
“Hey, don’t listen to that man, okay? He doesn’t know anything. He’s just an old werewolf. You know how old people are, right? They’re all a bit crazy.” I tried to smile for his sake, but I wasn’t sure I managed.
“What if he’s right?” Ezra asked, and I almost went back in there and slapped the hell out of Wylde.
“He’s not. I promise you, you’re not evil. He’s just a crazy old man.”
“Yeah, Ezra. He was crazy. Did you see his eyes?” Lynn said, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“That’s right. Now, get in the car so we can go to the house and get some sleep, okay? We’ll get some pizza on the way, too.” A tear slipped from Ezra’s eyes, and to hide it, he turned around fast and practically jumped into the backseat. Lynn climbed in behind him and closed the door.
“What the hell was that?” I said when I turned to Julian, who was pale as a sheet, too, and confused as hell.
“Winter, he was never wrong before,” Julian whispered.
“Are you mad?!” I hissed and pushed him back down the sidewalk. Ezra didn’t need to hear this. “Do you really think that kid is evil? How can he be evil?”
“I’m not saying that he’s right,” Julian said. “Just that he’s never been wrong.”
“You don’t know that, Julian.” He didn’t. He wasn’t there to see this man’s whole life.
He pressed his lips together. “What if he’s right?”
I cringed. “He’s not. He can’t be.” This was a ten-year-old boy we were talking about. People weren’t born evil. They were made, and Ezra was way too young to have been made anything.
“Let’s just get going. It’s late and we all need to sleep on this,” Julian said after a long sigh.
“Don’t mention this in the car,” I whispered. “He’s had enough of it already.”
“Don’t worry,” said Julian. “I’ll cheer him up.”
And he did. Fifteen minutes later, Ezra was laughing at his jokes, and it just made me feel even worse. God, he was just a kid! So young and so naive, there was no way in hell he was evil. I didn’t care what Wylde, Jane Dunham, or anyone else had to say about him. Ezra had a soul, and a damn pure one as well.
***
We arrived at Bender’s house around one in the morning. It was a beautiful building full of dark wood and glass. A bit too much glass, if you asked me. The neighbors, though far, could see the living room perfectly through the floor to ceiling windows on three sides. I’d wanted for us all to stick to one room, but that was obviously not going to happen.
The upstairs had four bedrooms, a relatively small gym with outdated gear nobody seemed to have ever used, and a large bathroom with a tub right in the middle of it. Why on earth did Bender never come to this place? It was beautiful. You could tell by the emptiness that nobody lived here, but that was something that could be fixed. Lots of books on the three stands around the living room, a few carpets here and there, a lamp and some pretty decorations was all it would take to make the place livable, but what did I know? I slept in the smallest room in Manhattan, so anything bigger than that looked like Heaven to me
True to her word, Lynn disarmed the alarm by putting in the code. We waited for her on the other side of the fence, and when she came back, she made us all hold hands and walk all the way to the house that way. It was at least thirty feet away, but the overgrown trees and bushes and grass around did provide a bit of privacy, so nobody saw us.
We’d already checked the perimeter by driving around the neighborhood twice, very slowly. The streets were empty for the most part, but we did spot a vampire. He didn’t seem interested in us, so we had no reason to suspect.
“I’m taking this one,” Lynn said, pointing at the first door on the round hallway of the second floor of the house. “It’s connected to the next, so maybe you guys can sleep in the other?”
“Sounds good. But we need to bring in an extra bed for Ezra.” All the beds were king sized in every room, and I was not leaving Ezra out of sight. He couldn’t very well sleep on the same bed with me, so we had to put in another one. The room was more than big enough. “And you’re leaving the door open,” I said to Lynn.
She flinched. “I can’t sleep with the door open,” she muttered, but lowered her head and walked into her room because she knew better than to argue. We weren’t safe as it was. We were not going to take any chances.
“You two get comfortable. I’ll drag a bed over here,” Julian said, nodding at the second door.
“I can help.” My arms and legs were numb from all the driving, and I could use the exercise, b
ut Julian shook his head.
“Just tuck him in. I’ll be fine,” he said and began to look for the smallest bed in the other two rooms. I wasn’t sure he was going to find one, though.
“Can we sleep now?” Ezra asked as I took him inside the room. The huge bed was on the right, right next to the connecting door.
“Sure thing. Do you want to take your clothes off?” He’d showered and changed into brand new clothes in my office the morning before, so maybe he also had pajamas in his backpack.
“I’ll just take my shoes off,” Ezra said. He was exhausted, his eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep, so I didn’t argue. While he took off his shoes, I grabbed the sheets, opened the window across from the door, and dusted them off as well as I could. Then, I held the blanket while he lay down. It felt so strange to do that, to take care of someone so small. The only person I’d ever had to take care of was my mother while she was sick. I’d tucked her into bed every night, helped her to the bathroom, and by the end, she couldn’t walk anywhere on her own. Putting the blanket over Ezra, for a second, I felt exactly as I had when I did the same thing for her.
Pain, like a sharp blade going through my heart, made my knees shake. I never allowed myself to open to the memories. Not to the way they felt, anyway. It was the surest way I knew of to lose myself in a whirlwind of thoughts until I could no longer find the way back, or even care to. But in those moments, it felt like Jane Dunham was right there, whispering in my ear, telling me that she knew something about my father, and I just couldn’t keep the door shut. Everything came back to me with a rush—my mother’s smile, her eyes, her words…It was never meant to be.
Was it because he was a fairy?
Was it because she didn’t love him?
Or was it because he didn’t love her?
Better yet, was there any love at all involved between them?
It was only a matter of time before my brain stuck into that one question I’d ran from my whole life: was my father alive?
“Winter?”
Like a bucket of cold water, Julian’s voice brought me back to the present. He was standing by the door, looking at me like he knew something was wrong.
