Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series)

by Reckenwald, Sarah

  “Is that why Chad looked at me like that when Amy made the introductions?” I asked.

  “Chad? Oh, you mean Chase,” Stefanie continued as if I had simply clicked on a pop-up window. “Chase is one of those. He isn’t exactly happy that we’re trying to help you.”

  I would have liked to continue on this subject, especially the part about them helping me since I thought this was all about me helping them, but just then, Madilyn came into the kitchen.

  “Stefanie,” she interrupted us. “Why don’t you leave Jade alone and let her eat her meal?”

  “Oh, I think I am actually done,” I said, standing to clear my plate. Stefanie beat me to it, quickly gathering up the remaining plates on the table and carrying them to the sink. She had them rinsed and clean before I could help with anything.

  “Alright then, girls,” Madilyn beckoned, “Let’s go to the meeting room.”

  “I’m really not sure about this,” I tried to think of an excuse to get out of having to sit down with all of them. “I should probably be getting back to my apartment.” I started to look for a back door, but I could already feel the pull of the spell Stefanie had cast earlier and knew I didn’t really have a choice. They were treating me as an Unknown until I made my decision. Hearing them out was a part of the bargain to regain my solitary freedom. If I left now, it would be with Stefanie in tow. I looked at Stefanie, and she shrugged her shoulders guiltily. I couldn’t be angry at her anymore. This was not her plan.

  I reluctantly followed Madilyn into the front meeting room with Stefanie trailing behind us. Everyone already sat on a couch or chair in the circle. The afghan and end table with my water were gone. With the summer heat baking the paint chips off the house, a fire did not seem appropriate. Instead, three candles glowed from the fireplace. A few dim lamps spotted the room casting an eerie glow on its inhabitants. Amy gestured to the flowered couch, and Stefanie and I obediently sat down. Madilyn sat in the overstuffed chair Stefanie had resided in earlier in the day. Amy sat next to her in an upright armchair that looked stiff and regal. She obviously led this group and would be leading this meeting tonight. Paul sat slightly outside of the circle, but his hand rested on Madilyn’s shoulder and her hand intertwined with his. I felt a small pain at this sight, but I wasn’t sure why.

  Everyone had been talking until we stepped out of the hallway. Now, a hush filled the room as everyone’s eyes flitted from Amy to me. The witches around me had obviously been waiting for this meeting, but now they seemed tense with anticipation to see how the whole thing unraveled. Amy cleared her throat and began.

  “As most of you know, we have been expecting Jade to join us. Jade, although we have been expecting you, I want you to understand that once you have been given all of the facts and once you have taken the time to sort through your thoughts, it will be your choice whether or not to join us. You are welcome here, but you are not being pressured into a commitment to our cause.” She paused here, and I felt compelled to respond.

  “Thank you,” I muttered as appreciatively as I could. Silently, I thought about the pressure I felt from the spell connecting me to Stefanie. If there was no pressure, why did I have to hear them out at all?

  Amy continued, “I want you to understand all of the facts before you decide two things. Number one, if you will help us fight the Shadow Rulers, and number two, if you will let us help you. I know you have not been practicing your abilities. If you are going to join us, you will need help. Your rare gifts will only get you so far without fine tuning your abilities as a witch.”

  I must have stared at her incredulously at this point because she went on to explain how everyone in the room already knew about my rare gifts. Everyone in the room had been together long enough to be trusted. They knew I was a firestarter and a time traveler. This was something they had known for a long time.

  “That is why this meeting is so important, Jade. You have to understand we are not the only ones who know about you. A witch with two rare gifts is hard to find. You are desired as a commodity on both sides of this war.”

  I looked around the room and realized that one face from the night in the bar, other than those who had died and those who were in Salem, was missing.

  “Where is Jeffrey?” I interrupted Amy’s speech. She gave me a sympathetic look, but she continued in her no-nonsense tone.

  “Jeffrey is part of the reason others know about you. He left us to join the Shadow Rulers a few months after the fire. He must have been hanging around to see if he could learn more about where your aunt had taken you, but she and I were extremely careful about our communications. When he realized he was wasting his time, he went to join a group of Shadow Rulers. They launched attacks on us for a while, but we found a new place for sanctuary and regrouping. We haven’t had to move quite as often as you and Lynn did over the years.”

  The room remained quiet when she stopped talking. I watched the flicker of the candles in the fireplace and wondered what this group that was essentially holding me captive would do if I simply added fuel to the existing flames. I could probably have the whole house turned to cinders in fifteen minutes. The house stood feebly in the clearing—dry and brittle and in want of repair. It would welcome the flames as a release from this state. The house, like me, was a prisoner; I would be doing it a favor to start its funeral pyre. All of this, I thought in the silence, but I did not take action. These people were not the enemy. They were well meaning—even if their intentions annoyed me and kept me from what I really wanted to do.

  I looked back at Amy. She patiently waited for me to leave the flames of the candles and join her back in the circle. I glanced back at the flames, but their allure had faded. Amy smiled gently at me.

  “Jade,” she pulled me back in, back to listening to her, to hearing her out. “There is more to what happened that night that you need to know.”

  Despite my desire to leave as quickly as possible, I found myself begin to feel intrigued. Two nights ago, I thought I knew all I needed to know about the night my mother died. I set the fire that killed her. End of story. Last night, I learned I never really knew anything about the night my mother died. She was murdered. I tried to stop it, but I was powerless. Now, twenty-four hours later, this woman I had known for so little time but who had known me for a lifetime wanted to change what I knew about that same night again.

  “Before that night,” Amy spoke with purpose, “the Salem Witch Trials were virtually non-existent. Two people were killed before the court decided the whole matter was foolishness. Several people were jailed, but they were only kept for a few days and then released when the matter was dropped.”

  Amy paused again. She took a deep breath and looked almost regretful—like she had to hit me with a bus, but she really didn’t want to do it.

  “Now, over one hundred people were killed in Salem and in other towns. The majority of them were not witches. The majority of them were innocent people being targeted by the hatred of others. I could accept this as a horrible event in history if it had always been this way. But I remember, as does Madilyn and as did your aunt, the lessons I learned from history before that night at the bar. The Salem Witch Trials were an inconsequential speck before, but as a witch, I had made note of them. There are people missing now. I have traces of memories of people I think I must have known, but I just can’t put my finger on it. I can’t conjure up their names with any spells. It is as if they never existed.” Amy paused again, but this time I couldn’t wait for her to continue. I couldn’t outlast the silence.

  “I don’t understand. Are you saying the Salem Witch Trials were my fault?” I was incredulous. I knew time travel could have drastic consequences, but how could my traveling back in time fifteen years create consequences for people living hundreds of years before that time?

  “No, not directly,” she looked at me with an aggravating patience. If she was going to accuse me of causing the murders of over a hundred people, if that was why I was being held prisoner in th
is decrepit house in the middle of nowhere, she had better just say it now.

  “Let’s look at some other facts in addition to the details about Salem,” she continued, sounding like a television lawyer. “Two people died in the bar that night.”

  Her voice softened for a moment, “One of them was your mother, and the papers the next day reported the other was Evan Michaels. The only problem there is that theory left out two people who were there that night. Justin and Cameron. Evan murdered Justin. I saw that myself.”

  Even after all of these years, her voice still cracked a little, and she had to clear her throat quietly before she could go on.

  “So, the other body was Justin’s?” I asked, finally allowing all of the details I had known before to merge with the details I had learned in my second experience with that night.

  “Yes,” Amy continued, “which means Evan and his son did not die in that fire, but they also didn’t escape it. At least not the way the rest of us did. I think they escaped the fire the same way you did. One of them is a time traveler. We know you didn’t go to Salem and create an environment in which all of those people would be killed, so it had to be Evan and Cameron.”

  “Only one of them is a time traveler? You can take someone else with you when you travel through time?” Despite everything Amy had just assailed my ears with, this was what stuck out the most. I realized immediately that not only had I revealed how little I knew about my own gift, but I also came across as a bit self-centered. It’s not that I didn’t care about all of those people, but I didn’t want to fight someone else’s battle. It was not my fault Evan and Cameron escaped to wreak havoc in Salem in 1692. Yet, these people expected me to fix it now that it had happened.

  “I’m sorry. That’s not important,” I tried to back pedal through the muck I had left with my words. I searched for Stefanie’s friendly face in the circle, but before I came to it, I saw Chase’s face again. His was not so friendly. He looked smug. Like I had just confirmed for him all of the ineptitude he felt I possessed. I quickly moved on to Stefanie, but she was looking down. Was she embarrassed by me? Had I, her apparent hero, let her down by revealing how inadequate I really was as a witch?

  “Actually,” Amy corrected me, “It is very important. We want to help you learn about your gifts and practice your abilities. In return, we want you to take a small group of us with you back in time to Salem. We think we have figured out approximately when Evan and Cameron arrived, and we are working on a plan to stop them.”

  Amy sat silently again, but this time she stared at me. Everyone was looking at me. On the one hand, it would be nice to have someone to help me, but on the other, missions of revenge are best completed solo. I knew the reason I wanted to get to Cameron and Evan was not the same reason they wanted to get to the pair. Still, I had to admit I was not exactly up to par on my skills. Practicing my abilities had never seemed prudent since the last thing I wanted to be was a witch.

  This time it was Paul who cleared his throat. The people within the circle were not all staring at me at once. They watched the candles, they looked from me to Amy to each other, but their eyes all kept returning to me.

  “Um, can I think about this, please?” I asked, half expecting them to burn me at the stake for not agreeing immediately to help all of the people of Salem and the people in this room.

  “Of course,” Amy replied, “I meant what I said. The choice is yours. No one blames you for what happened.” I could have sworn she glared at Chase with her last sentence, but I couldn’t tell for sure in the dim lighting.

  “Stefanie will take you to your room,” Madilyn chimed in now.

  “Well, I was thinking about sleeping on this in my own apartment,” I tried to explain.

  “Nonsense,” Madilyn chirped, “Besides, you don’t want to try to drive home from here in the dark. Are you sure you remember the way?” I was not sure. In fact, I was decidedly sure that if I left immediately, I would not find my way home until sometime next week. It had to be past midnight, and I was actually feeling tired again. The meeting was obviously over; the rest of the people in the room were chatting amongst themselves or getting up and wandering out of the room.

  “Sleep here tonight,” Amy commanded. “In the morning, Stefanie will have removed the connection spell, and you can decide to go home, to make a decision then, or to stay a few more days before you decide. You really are a guest here—not a prisoner.”

  I conceded to sleeping the night in the house of witches. It was better than roaming the country roads in my car for the rest of the night or bringing Stefanie back to my apartment on an invisible tether. In spite of my change of heart for her, my apartment was mine. I didn’t need to be followed there by a gossipy, teenage witch.

  Stefanie led me up a creaky staircase worthy of an Alfred Hitchcock film. We kept walking until we reached the end of a long hallway. Here I realized I would not be alone as there were two twin beds in this room, but Stefanie simply opened the door for me to enter, told me she would see me in the morning and left. I had the room to myself after all.

  Sleep crept up on me so quickly I barely managed to drag myself to the bed nearest the window. I slithered under the sheets, pushing the comforter to the foot of the bed, and stared for only a moment at the full moon outside the window. It glowed the color of Chase’s aura. As I tried to process the meeting from only moments ago, my eyelids fell like anchors and the gentle waters of my private lagoon beckoned me.

  Chapter 7

  I slept so soundly that night that no one dared disturb my lagoon. I had it all to myself and relished in the calm and tranquility I had been longing for since this whole ordeal began. When I woke in the morning, I could no longer feel the invisible tether that had been linking me to Stefanie since I left Zach’s apartment. Yet, I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave. There was something decidedly comforting about being around people with whom I didn’t need to pretend. They knew I was a witch, and as far as I knew, most of them shared in that. They knew about my being a firestarter and now the new gift of being a time traveler. In fact, they had known I was a time traveler longer than I had. I was fairly certain no one knew about my gift for reading auras, but it was also nice to keep some things for myself. Most importantly, they knew the truth about my mother. They knew who she was, who I lost, and how I lost her. I decided to stay a few days and enjoy this comfort level while I could. After all, I was a time traveler, so there really wasn’t such a thing as lost time—not when you were planning a journey into the past.

  I told them I needed more time to think things over. In reality, I had made my mind up already. I would stay and glean whatever information came my way. In a couple of days, I would announce my decision to set out on my own. I would thank them for their hospitality and commence with my own plans.

  I did exactly that. I spent two wonderful days recouping from the chasm of chaos my life had become. Stefanie taught me my mother’s tethering spell. I learned the tethering spell was a part of their plan for trapping Evan and Cameron. The witches of this house believed in all of the principles of being a Guardian. They were peaceful and simply wanted to protect others. Some of them felt they could kill Evan and Cameron if it came down to a trade between the two lives of murderous Shadow Rulers or the lives of hundreds of Puritans. Some of them did not think they could kill, even to protect others. Stefanie was one of those.

  I didn’t tell them my plan involved killing both Evan and Cameron regardless of whether or not it was necessary to protect anyone, and I didn’t care if it happened before or after the deaths of all the innocent people in Salem. I felt bad for them, and if I could kill Evan and Cameron before they caused harm to all of those people, I would, but if I couldn’t get to them at the right time, it wouldn’t matter. I would still kill them. They murdered my mother.

  When a couple of days had passed, I explained to Amy that I would be leaving.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” Amy asked me with a look of concern on
her face.

  “I am,” I told her, “I really need to work some things out on my own.” I worried for a moment about my decision. What if I was closing a door I might need later? She immediately released me from having to think about that problem.

  “If you change your mind, just come back,” Amy told me. “I can’t promise everyone will be as welcoming, but you always have a home with me. I promised your aunt that long ago.”

  Amy hugged me then, and I realized even though we had been the same age when I first remembered meeting her, she had always thought of me as a child who needed guidance and protection. In her eyes, I remained the friendly, redheaded toddler she met many years ago when neither of us had yet experienced a deep sense of loss.

  “If you need anything, you let me know,” Amy added. She did not hold my quest for independence or my denial of her cause against me. For a double orphan, I felt a strange sense of family as I said goodbye. I would let Amy tell everyone else. Cowardly, I know, but I did not want to face Chase’s smug grin when I confirmed my treachery, that I had in fact been wasting their time over the past days. I also did not want to face the disappointment Stefanie’s face would surely register with my news.

  I had already washed the clothes I borrowed from Stefanie and left them in the room I had been staying in. It was Stefanie’s room, but she had stayed out of it as much as possible while I supposedly mulled over my decision. Either she was afraid of scaring me off or Madilyn had ordered her to give me some privacy to think. I wore the same outfit I had arrived in—the same clothes I had worn at Zach’s party and at the bar. I thought about incinerating them when I got home, but there wasn’t really a good place to start a fire the way I wanted to in my small apartment. I might end up burning the whole building down and making myself homeless.