by Martha Carr
“Good. Start talking.” He squeezed her hand and stared at her.
Nickie wanted to just tell him he must’ve hit his head way too hard and just needed to rest. Except that’s the last thing I want. He deserves to know. Especially now. “It’s gonna sound crazy and totally impossible.”
He laughed without amusement and gestured at Dave’s office and the scattered papers lying everywhere after the man had jumped off his desk. “We’re past that point, now. As long as what you’re about to tell me is the whole truth, we won’t have any problems.”
“Chuck, I never wanted to—”
“Just please, don’t lie to me anymore, Nickie.” His other hand settled on top of hers, and she realized he was shaking. “I can handle everything else. Just not you lying to me.”
“Yeah, okay.” She nodded and slid closer to him on the floor. “I’m gonna start with saying magic…is real.”
“Uh huh…”
“And…I’m a witch.” She looked over her shoulder and whispered a spell to hide them from view.
Chuck stared at her but didn’t say a word until she’d finished telling him everything.
Chapter Eighteen
Laura sat on the living room couch, sipping an afternoon cup of coffee, flipping the pages of a Peabrain spellbook she’d been given by a former coworker. She’d almost reached the end, skimming for an hour, before she decided to call it.
“I shouldn’t be disappointed.” She closed the book and set it on the coffee table. “Humans had nothing to do with building this ship or with putting the Gorafrex in its prison. But is it too much to ask that the most powerful magical beings out of all of us know just a little about rune-making?” She took a long drink of coffee at just the right temperature, and with a sigh, settled back into the couch. “I hope Nathan has some information.” She blinked, aware of the flaring nerves in her belly at the sound of his name. “Yeah, that’s not helping.”
As soon as she relaxed, the front door burst open. Laura nearly spilled her coffee all over herself. Hissing through her teeth, she set the cup on the coffee table as Nickie barreled into the house followed by a confused and worried-looking Chuck.
“Hey.” Laura stood and folded her arms, grinning. “Looks like we have a signed musician in the—”
Nickie gazed at her with wide eyes and shook her head. Then, she glanced at Chuck, who stood just inside the doorway. He stared around the house like he hadn’t been there hundreds of times.
“Okay…” He nodded, his expression warring between awe and confusion. “All the weird stuff here is starting to make more sense now.”
“Hey, you wanna come sit down?” Nickie grabbed his hand and nodded toward the living room.
“The couch is just a couch, right?” He pointed at the item in question and peered around the corner to take in the living room.
“Yeah, babe. It’s just a couch.”
“I mean, it’s not like I’d be able to tell, right?” A disbelieving chuckle escaped him, Nickie led him into the living room. He sat down, he giggled a little, and laid his head back on the cushion.
“You want something to drink?”
“What?”
“Babe, something to drink. Water? Beer? Coffee?”
“Definitely not coffee.” He shook his head, blinking. “Is the beer…”
“The beer’s fine. I’ll get you a beer.” Nickie turned away and passed Laura, who’d watched them, completely clueless.
“What’s wrong with him?” Laura whispered when her sister walked past.
“Kitchen.” Nickie disappeared into the dining room and around the corner.
Laura glanced at Chuck, who leaned over his lap and rubbed his temples. “Okay.” She followed her sister into the kitchen. “Nickie, what’s going on?”
“You’re really not gonna like this.” Nickie stood from the fridge, closed the door, and stuck both beers, one after the other, beneath the bottle opener nailed to the cabinet. She tipped one back and chugged a few mouthfuls.
“Um…what happened in that meeting?”
“Ha!” Nickie stared at her sister, opened her mouth to say something, then took another drink of beer.
“Okay, it can’t be that bad, Nickie. Unless…” Laura stepped toward her and lowered her voice. “Did you hear the drums?”
“The drums. No, I didn’t hear the drums. But I did find the Gorafrex’s new host.”
“Hey, that’s good.”
“It’s Dave.”
“Dave? Chuck’s…” Laura pointed toward the other side of the house, and Nickie nodded. “Oh, my god.”
“Yeah. We walked into his office to sign this deal and that thing was inside him, Laura. It attacked me and could’ve hurt Chuck way worse than a little toss against a bookshelf.” Nickie leaned back against the fridge and drank until her bottle was nearly empty.
“Did Chuck see it?”
“He saw everything.” Nickie shrugged. “He didn’t exactly freak out, but it’s not like he sees stuff like that every day.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything.”
“Everything? We can’t tell humans everything. You know that—”
“What was I supposed to do, huh? He saw it all. It’s not like I have any idea how to wipe away memories, and he didn’t just see it as a random pedestrian walking by a car crash or something. The Gorafrex is using his friend, and it attacked us, and Chuck deserves to know what’s going on. That’s the least I can do after ripping apart his entire life and everything he thought he knew.”
Laura nodded and glanced through the mudroom, though she couldn’t quite see Chuck from where she stood. “Yeah, he does deserve to know. Wow. I’m sorry he had to find out like that.”
“Yeah, you and me both.” Nickie bit her lip and stared at the wall across from the fridge. Her eyes and nose started tingled with the first wave of tears, but she pushed it back and stood straight. “The Gorafrex got away.” She couldn’t look at her sister and the disappointed expression she knew she’d find there.
“What?”
“I tried to stop it.” Nickie shrugged. “I’m not exactly the best at attack spells. You know that.”
“Hey, look at me.” Laura stepped closer and waited for Nickie to meet her gaze. “I would never expect you to take that thing down by yourself. Are you kidding me? It’s not even possible. We’re still looking for the last part of what we need to put it away, and it’s something the three of us have to do together. So don’t apologize. That was the right decision, because you’re safe. And so is Chuck.” They both leaned to glance around the corner, where Chuck had both arms over the back of the couch and his head bent back against the cushion, blowing raspberries at the ceiling. “Mostly.”
“He’s safe. We’ll make sure of that.” Nickie headed through the mudroom and turned to whisper, “So far, he’s taken it pretty well, but there’s gonna be some adjustment time, right? So just go easy on him. Please.”
Laura nodded and followed her sister to the living room.
Nickie stepped around the couch with a reassuring smile and handed the beer bottle to her boyfriend. “This might help. A little.” When he took it from her, she glanced at Laura and gave her a look that said her sister needed to help her out. Nickie sat next to the baffled Chuck.
Laura took a deep breath and headed for the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. “So…” With a smile, she sat and nodded. “Rough day, huh?”
He looked at Nickie, then turned his attention to Laura. “You don’t have to rub it in, you know.”
Laura bit her lip. “Sorry. If it helps at all, this is the first time we’ve ever…um…” She pursed her lips, trying to find the right words. “We’ve never had to explain anything to anyone before, so it’s kinda new for us too.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t really help. But thanks.” Chuck lifted his beer toward her before taking a long drink. He blew out a sigh and stared at the coffee table. “Let me recap this, okay?”
Shrugging, Laura added, “Okay.”
“Magic is a thing. Planet Earth isn’t a planet but a spaceship that got lost in space.”
“Actually, it’s not so much lost as it was thrown off—”
“Laura.” Nickie shook her head, and her sister pressed her lips together.
“You, Laura, and Emily are witches, which is like another race that comes from a different planet.” Chuck scratched his head. “Boy, you know, I’ve always believed in aliens, but this is not the way I expected to….”
“We’re not aliens like that.” Laura glanced around the room, hoping she could come up with something helpful. “I mean, all of these races have been on the ship since it left Arenya V thousands of years ago. We’re from Earth just as much as you are.”
He cocked his head. “All of these races?” He frowned at Nickie. “There are more? You didn’t mention anything but witches and wizards and humans.”
“Yeah, that’s because that’s all we’re dealing with right now. In our lives, most of the time.” Nickie rubbed his back and hoped some of this would help him not freak out. “There are a lot of different races, it’s true. I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with mentioning every one of them, which you probably won’t even see, so it’s not an issue.”
“Unless I’ve already seen them and just didn’t know it.” Chuck rubbed his chin. “This is nuts.”
“Well, let’s just stick with the basics for now, okay?” Nickie shot her sister another warning glance. Laura did a relatively good job of not trying to overexplain a complicated rule that was sure to fry Chuck’s brain, so the three of them just sat in silence.
Chuck took a sharp, sudden breath and turned to Nickie. “And that thing you guys are trying to…lock up.”
“The Gorafrex, yeah.” Laura nodded and forced herself not to keep going.
“Yeah. Gorafrex. It kills people?”
“Just witches and wizards, actually.” Nickie shifted uncomfortably on the couch and tried not to jump up and run away to hide in a dark closet somewhere. This is the weirdest conversation, especially because it’s Chuck.
Her boyfriend frowned. “So, it’s like a dietary thing?”
“Not…” Nickie almost laughed. “More like it needs witch and wizard magic to sustain itself. I mean, I guess that might fall under dietary.”
“And it took over Dave’s body.”
The Hadstrom sisters exchanged a glance and took a few seconds to respond. “Pretty much,” Nickie said. “But Dave’s fine. He’s still in there, and that thing can’t hurt him. It’s probably scary, yeah, but Dave won’t remember anything once it’s gone.”
“So…it will leave.”
“Definitely.”
Chuck glanced from one sister to the other. “What’s gonna happen to him after that?”
“That’s just…” Laura bit her lip and glanced at Nickie.
“That’s something only Dave gets to find out, really.” The middle Hadstrom sister shrugged and drank her beer. There’s only so much we can tell him. The fact that humans have a second brain and the most powerful magic out of all of us is not on that list. Not today while the Gorafrex is running around waking up those brains and dropping hosts into a new world of chaos.
Chapter Nineteen
“Man.” Chuck shook his head, drank some more beer, and leaned forward over his knees. “Why Dave, though?”
“No idea,” Laura said. “We haven’t even figured out yet if that part’s random or not. He didn’t do anything, Chuck. That’s the part that really sucks about this. As far as we know, it’s random, and none of us can predict who’s next or when or how.”
“Except now that thing knows a lot more about us than it did before.” Nickie rubbed the back of her neck and pushed back into the couch cushions.
“You mean that we know Dave?” Chuck asked. “Wait, you guys didn’t actually know any of the other people, did you?”
“The other hosts?”
“‘People’ sounds a lot less creepy, Laura.” He raised his beer toward her.
“Okay. Well, I’m guessing that it at least made the connection between the two of you and Dave,” Laura offered.
“I’m not talking about that, though.” Nickie shifted away from Chuck to look him in the eyes. “Charlie said Dave had been in his office all morning. I think he came in with the Gorafrex already there.”
“Why would that thing pretend to be Dave for half a day?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it takes some getting used to. But if it was using Dave for that long before we got there…” Nickie frowned. “It knew where to go. It knew where Dave worked, and which office was his…it might know exactly who we are now.”
“Oh, great.” Laura closed her eyes.
“I don’t…I don’t get it.” Chuck glanced back and forth between them. “Why is that bad if it knows you’re witches?”
“That’s not the problem, babe.” Nickie put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “The Gorafrex can tell who’s human and who’s anything else. It’s a problem for us because we’ve run into that thing a few times trying to stop it.”
“Didn’t work.” Laura shook her head.
“If that thing can read Dave’s memories, it knows everything about us Dave knows. Our names. That we’re all Hadstroms, in case the thing had any doubt about us being the ones coming for it. It knows where we live and who our friends are. I don’t know how much you and Dave have talked about our lives.” Nickie gestured to her sister and then herself. “Whatever he knows, though, it’ll use against us.”
Laura rubbed her forehead and stood from the armchair. “That means we can’t waste any more time with this extra stuff. We need to tear down the rest of those energy cores, pronto. At least one to keep the escape pod from fully powering, but as many as we can if we don’t want magic to get any worse.”
“Oh, it’s getting worse.” Chuck nodded, like he knew what they were talking about. “Was it bad to begin with?”
“Yesterday morning, at least.” Nickie wrinkled her nose. “There were a few weird things happening.”
“And they keep getting weirder,” Laura added. “And probably more dangerous, the longer this goes on.” She turned toward the staircase off the foyer, then stopped. “Oh…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Emily already left.”
Nickie leaned forward on the couch. “How is she gone already? It’s only…” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket to check the time. “Oh. Wow, really? How did get to six o’clock so fast?”
“Well, how much time did you spend filling Chuck in on all the…stuff?”
“The stuff.” Chuck snorted. “That sums it up.”
“I guess longer than I thought.” Nickie offered a tiny smile. “That was worth it, though. You needed to know everything.”
Her boyfriend cleared his throat and nodded at his beer. “Honestly, I can’t say what’s worth it and what isn’t. I’m just gonna let this all sink in and hope I don’t end up in some mental institution.”
“That won’t happen.” When he looked at Nickie, she saw he truly believed her, which was the only thing keeping either of them sane through all this.
“Well, Chuck, I guess you’re in luck. Make yourself at home while everything sinks in.” Laura clapped her hands together and caught her sister’s gaze. “We should go.”
“Wait, what?” Chuck blinked at them both with those blue puppy-dog eyes Nickie had fallen in love with, and it killed her that she had to agree with her sister.
“Sorry, babe.” She stood, bent down to cup his cheeks, and kissed him. “This is one of those time-sensitive sister things, you know? Where we run off to do something after giving you a super weird and confusing explanation. Only this time, you know where we’re going.”
“No I don’t.” The man sat there, unable to decide which one of the Hadstrom sisters he wanted to plead with more. “Where are you going?”
Chuck’s voice broke when he said, “A little.”
“I promise we’ll be back in about an hour and a half, two hours tops.” Nickie turned toward her sister. “So, we’re gonna do this without Em?”
“I mean, she made it clear she wasn’t putting her date on hold for anything. Honestly, I’d feel bad about ruining her night with something like this.”
Nickie snorted. “Yeah. We’ll just ruin her day tomorrow. Speed!” Nickie leaned toward the mudroom and whistled through her teeth. The click of their bulldog’s paws across the floor came from the upstairs hallways instead. It took the family pet a good minute to shuffle his chubby self down the stairs, then he trotted into the living room, wagging his tail while his tongue hung from one side of his mouth. Nickie squatted to scratch behind his ears and pointed at Chuck. “Just hang out with him for a while, okay? He could use a little company right now.”
“Actually, yeah.” Chuck let out a small laugh that didn’t sound like he was about to lose it. The bulldog hopped onto the couch beside him, reveling in the huge amount of attention he was about to get. “I like you, Speed. Just another normal guy in this weird world. That’s what I need right now. A regular dog with regular-dog instincts and…” When he looked at the Hadstrom sisters standing in the foyer, his stomach dropped. “Wait. He…he is just a regular dog, right?” His hand lifted from Speed’s back, and the bulldog nuzzled his wrist to keep going.
Nickie licked her lips. “Not really.”
Speed grunted, and Chuck flinched away for a second before settling his hand back down on the dog’s back. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. We’re good, buddy.”
Laura grabbed her keys. “Uh…” She lowered her voice and leaned toward her sister. “Do we still need to hide things, or…”
