Jedrek’s eyes float back and forth across my face, trying to read any doubts or uncertainty. When seeing none, his mask of a jokester melts as he turns to where Deon sits. Without any words said between them, they exchange looks holding a whole conversation in a short span of seconds.
“It may have been,” Deon admits, “but I have no knowledge of it now.”
“Is that what Daddy told you?” I hear myself ask.
“Actually,” she says turning her attention from Jedrek to myself, “Daddy said I should kill you the next time we meet. He had a thing for burning loose witches.” She says the word ‘Daddy’ with enough acidic sarcasm to melt her own tongue.
“Trust me, Deon,” Jedrek chuckles. “She is anything but loose.”
When the joke isn’t well received by either of us, he holds up hands in surrender.
“I know,” I tell her, pushing a pen upon the desk back and forth. “I felt them. They told me all your dirty little secrets. They also told me the box was here, used by one of your own who once worked at the spa but is now, how did you phrase it? Oh yes. Loose.”
I strike a nerve with Deon. I can see the soft twitch of a corner of her mouth.
“Where is this witch now?” Jedrek asks. His hands are spread out for either of us to answer.
“I don’t know of the witch she speaks of,” Deon insists, but I saw through her. “None of my witches would dare it.”
I saw through her porcelain face, sculpted with its blank expression. She knows exactly who I speak of, but what she doesn’t know is so do I. Jedrek is correct. I can control the dead. I can speak with the dead and they speak with me, and the dead here have plenty to say. In fact, they told me everything.
I smile at her, giving her much the same expression as Jedrek does when he knows a secret, he is not willing to share.
Jedrek presses his body close to mine. He leans in for a false kiss to my temple. Whispering into my ear, he asks me, “Are you sure of this?”
Some version of me, some part I know but am unfamiliar with, lets her fingers trace along his chest, testing each button along the trail. I let my magic stroke his skin, wrapping its tendrils of power around his ribs and taunt stomach. Whatever he sees in my eyes, catches his breath, removing his composure for a moment before he can collect himself.
“You could have just said yes,” he whispers with a breath hot and shaky.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I reply.
“Didn’t take you for a girl who likes to have fun,” he whispers to me, but for Deon he announces, “Well, then I guess there’s no reason to be here anymore.”
Draping his arm around my shoulders, he steers me away from the waiting beast in the armchair. Her foot is swaying a little faster now. Her cigarette, clinging to its last spark of life, drifts only a thin line of smoke, but I’m not done, yet.
“Have you gotten any yellow flowers as of late, Deon?” I ask her over my shoulder.
I can feel Jedrek’s grasp tighten on my body. He sighs a sound of disdain.
“Daily,” she tells us. “She’s coming, isn’t she?”
Jedrek doesn’t answer her. He’s staring at me with questions upon his face. I don’t answer her, either. He firmly takes me from the room before my mouth can cause any more trouble. He nods at the perfect blonde replicas we pass. Each time he feels me begin to say something, his fingers dig into the flesh of my shoulder, warning me with bruises upon my flesh.
When I step into the soft grass, I can hear the whispers. Voices urging me with their desires of vengeance, pleas of help and the general mental caressing of finally having someone to speak with after so long. I can feel each one of their emotions merging with my own until it’s hard to tell where I end, and they begin. They are showing me their deaths, their lives, their sorrows, and their joys until I feel as if I am them.
“You need to slow down.”
I hear Jedrek’s voice from some long hallway. It’s covered in warnings and apprehension. It pulls on a part of me still scared with all that has happened; a part of me which knows something is wrong but ignored by the part of me reveling in this feeling.
He’s shaking me, jostling me to gain my attention. “You need to slow down!”
I touch his lips, pushing them gently with my fingertips. They are soft, damp with his tongue nervously darting over the warm flesh. I pull his face towards mine, entangling my hands in his dark hair. I let my tongue mimic what my fingers just were. I test his lips with this new feeling, sucking on them gently before fully pressing them against his. He doesn’t resist me. He lets me toy and play, giving as much as I am to this new venture. Only when my hands begin to roam low on his body does he pull away from me.
“You are power drunk,” he tells me, whispering the words against my neck. “You must slow down.”
He kisses my forehead, pausing as he presses against me. I can feel the cold chill so familiar from the day at the spa creeping through my veins. Like a chilled river, it flows inside my body, stealing the heat of my magic. When his lips leave my flesh chilled and aching, my head is my own again. The voices have simmered to a dull roar, but they’re not overtaking or demanding. I can already feel the flush rushing to my face over my behavior.
“Don’t,” he whispers against my forehead. “Don’t apologize. Don’t make excuses. Never feel shame over what you are.”
Cupping my face between his palms he pulls it even to his. We stare at one another for a moment in which time seems to stand still. I forget about the dead little girl, unearthed against her will. I forget about this mysterious woman whom everyone fears. I even forget about the hole I keep festering in my heart from the loss of my parents - as a warning to the suffering that loss can cause from those you let get too close. I only see his eyes, feel his warm hands, and remember the taste of his mouth against mine.
“My littlest witch,” he whispers to me. “You will be my undoing.”
There’s a heavy silence between us now. It sits as thick as fog and as heavy as a winter quilt. Jedrek isn’t humming. He fidgets with the old radio display of his car, trying to find anything to fill the void, as we once again head back to the spa.
“What will you say to her?” I ask with a voice hesitant to speak first.
“What should I say to her?” he asks, still shuffling through the radio noise. “I really wasn’t going to say anything. She lied. She knew.”
“Regan may not have,” I offer in the defense of a woman I don’t know. “Not fully.”
He makes a sound of disdain upon hearing me. “No one keeps such a secret. What she had to go through to get it, no one would keep such a secret.”
“I told you, it’s not her. It someone close to her. They whispered her name, but I couldn’t hear it. It was soft. Almost like they were afraid to say her name too loudly.”
“She has to have a touch of necromancy in her blood to be able to handle the box,” Jedrek muses as he drives us back to the spa. “They may have been afraid of her or known she could have been listening.”
“Without being there?’ I ask with full amazement.
Jedrek looks to me, smirking. “Yes, without being there.”
“You’re right. I do have a lot to learn.”
“You have no idea.” Jedrek says with flat honesty.
The building still has the punch of grandeur. As we drive through the swinging iron gate, I can’t subdue the gasp of shock. It seems to stand even taller, the bricks a deeper hue and the vines thicker than when we were here before.
“It seems different,” I tell Jedrek as we park and exit his black Camaro.
Jedrek sniffs the air. Shutting his door, he shrugs. “Mortals must be very bored.” He holds up his hand before I can ask what he means. “Part of what the witches take feeds the building. The more ‘clients’,’’ he says the word with sarcasm, “the stronger the illusion. This place was an abandoned mansion before the Ripples took it over years ago. They found it easier
to remodel with the many covens’ magic than to actually pay a crew to come redo the whole place.”
“I have so much to learn,” I mutter behind him as I follow him up the path.
The same valet meets us at the door. Without a car to help me out of, I lacked an excuse for my reluctance to enter again. If warning bells and red flags were visible, this place would be decorated in them from every window to each proudly standing pillar. They would be displayed like banners or framed art upon the walls on the interior to clash with the white textured wallpaper hung to make the place feel upscale. The illusion shimmers in my mind, flashing between what is present and what was the past.
It wasn’t the crumbling exterior causing my heart to flutter behind my fragile ribs. It was the blood. Blood streaking down the red bricks, painting them a dark shade of almost black. The handprints, pressed and smeared, screaming of those who were unable to escape, but there are no dead here. There are no screams from those souls locked in their purgatory, reliving their last horrific moments for all eternity. There’s not even a shade of a ghost, or a shadow figure roaming, trapped between this world and the world it knew. Seeing what I am seeing, it seems impossible.
“This isn’t right,” I whisper out loud, to no one in particular.
“Ma’am?” the once silent valet asks.
Jedrek spins, wearing an amused expression. “Lookie there. Igor speaks,” he contemptuously tells me.
I’m not looking at Jedrek though. My eyes are centered on the man who once stood tall in a red jacket and black slacks. The skin upon his face has shrunken, clinging to the bones of his cheeks. Eyes which once watched with intense scrutiny, are now pale globes, almost floating, rolling in rotting sockets. When he smiles at me, his lips are pulled too thin, cracking the skin to ooze a black substance down his chin and dripping onto his no longer pristine red jacket.
Jedrek’s eyes swing from me to the man, mimicking the motion with his finger, pointing in the direction each time. “Why is he smiling at you?”
“Because I finally see him,” I explain. “The real him.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s quite the bummer for you, but how about we move this little event inside?” Jedrek asks, unmoved by the fact that I’m seeing past the façade of the place.
“Sure,” I reply. “I can’t wait to see what’s inside!” I fill my voice with such false cheer it borders on sarcasm and frustration.
I don’t want to step through the entry way. I have already seen what awaits just beyond the grinning skull of the valet. I don’t want to know what other truths are waiting to be whispered.
“There’s no need,” Regan’s voice breaks through my mental prison.
Unbeknown to me, she has been leaning on the building’s column, watching our arrival and all which came after. Her purple hair, fashioned in random braids, is held high, cascading around her face to frame it with the various shades. She is running her fingers through the grout of the bricks, toying with it like a pouting kid or a bored teen. Her white sock displaying the spa’s logo is tightly tied around her waist giving the only hint of her shape with her black scrubs hanging loose in a bell-bottom style.
“Ah, there she is,” Jedrek walks slowly to come stand by me. He’s doing his performance again and I roll my eyes, drained by his many mood swings. “We were just looking for you. Weren’t we, Harper?”
Staring at her, I listen to the many voices tilting my head with their whispers. Someone is looking for her, definitely, but I’m not sure it’s us.
“This is where you agree with me,” Jedrek says from the corner of his mouth nearest to me.
“Who is Johanna?” I ask her, not surprised to see her head snap in my direction.
Jedrek claps, rubbing his hands together in his emoted glee. Regan’s eyes are cast from me to him, wondering what we know and trying to attain those answers from our faces. Hers is filled with fear. It caresses the color of her eyes, turning them into a deeper shade than their normal color. Her breath catches and the coloring of her face seems to fade for a moment upon hearing the name.
“Johanna?” Jedrek asks me, making certain he heard the name correctly.
“Why does she want you?” I’m ignoring the instigator beside me. My attention is for the whispers, spilling their secrets, and the blanched face of the witch in front of me.
“How do you know that name?” Regan pushes from the wall to take a small step forward, whispering to me as if the house will hear her. “We don’t speak her name.”
I lift an eyebrow, asking why without putting my question into words.
Regan shakes her head, refusing to answer.
“She’s exiled,” Jedrek answers, making a great show of whispering it to me. “As is her name. It’s a witch thing.”
“To say her name is to admit her ties, thus allowing the ancestors to know her once more,” Regan whispers.
“But it’s not a witch thing,” I press, repeating the voices in my mind. “It was a Deon thing.”
Jedrek’s head spins towards me with such speed I fear he may have broken his neck.
“Johanna failed Deon. This was all Deon’s idea, for if she could find a way to raise the dead, the war could begin again…” my voice trails off
“….because Johanna deals with the demons. She has their magic,” Regan continues when I drift.
Jedrek takes a dangerous step towards Regan. He is staring at her with a face awash in rage. “She does what?”
Regan is visibly shaking. Her fingers almost twitch with it and the witches who died here swallow her emotions like a rare nectar.
“I didn’t know!” Regan exclaims. “None of our coven knew. Only Deon and the wolves knew about what she was doing at the time.”
I don’t know why I moved. I don’t know what little tickle of ancient instincts spurred me into action. I just moved, almost tossing myself behind Jedrek. The pain was red hot and instant. My back is seared with the sudden attack, stealing my breath as I collapse from it all.
I don’t know what Jedrek did. Or even what Regan did. All I can see is the crushed gravel I have crumpled upon. Through my hazed vision it seems to almost have a glitter-like coating upon the rocks. My head swims, wanting to desperately escape the pain coating me. The gravel fades, as if time herself has returned to an earlier date. There’s wet ground, almost mud under my hands now. It’s cold, damp, thicker than anything I remember from my youth.
There are voices. There’s a woman urging me to get up. Her voice is gentle like a caress, coaxing me to do what I don’t want to do. What I don’t think I can do. When a male voice covers hers, I know it’s not me to whom she speaks.
“What is the point?” he asks her, and I grunt in agreement.
“So that we don’t die!” She almost shouts with anguish.
“We all die eventually. At least this death would be quick.”
“This death will be the death of all of us,” she tells him. “Not just us, or those we know, but our descendants, too. If you don’t get up, everyone who should ever be, will never be free. You must get up!”
Lifting my head, I see the two who have been speaking. They are hazy, like a water-colored painting with soft colors and blurred edges. Around them lay so many people, bleeding and dying, strewn about like discarded dolls. The dolls cry out, begging for help or mercy, maybe both. It sounds all the same.
“If we survive this,” the man says, “we will never side with any faction again. Witches are to stay neutral or risk becoming enslaved.”
“Agreed,” the woman says, offering a hand to help the man stand.
I know, without knowing them, they both die shortly after this memory which is lodged in this thick mud. The clay of the land cradles it, holds it, keeping it safe like a treasure long since buried. I know he got up. I know they tried in some long-lost war. I also know they failed for witches now seem to be very much enslaved. At least the ones who listen to the rules, that is.
&nbs
p; A cold chill is crawling along my skin. It prickles and pokes, pushing a thousand needles into my flesh. Even as this chill is pushing me to my already tested limits, I am calm, welcoming it. This is Jedrek pulling me from this world around me and back into the world around him, the world I somehow slipped from with my fall.
The pain in my back is the first sadistic welcome party when I arrive back on the gravel. “What happened?” I ask the man whose magic still travels along my skin.
“You, being stupid, made a meat shield out of your back against the doorman,” Jedrek’s voice holds a touch of concern, but it’s mostly amusement to cover his worry.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Regan asks.
I don’t have to see her to know she is examining what is left of my back. With the amount of searing pain, my mind has already imagined it to be nothing but gaps of hanging flesh, cut raw and ragged.
“We were supposed to stay neutral,” I mutter more to myself than those around me with my thoughts still marred in the images I saw.
“What is she talking about?” Regan asks Jedrek.
Her fingers are like molten lava, pouring into each space of flesh. They burn with such searing pain my head fights to stay clear. My body crumples to the cold earth wishing to show me so much more of those who still linger in this place, this prison for witches.
I know it’s Jedrek who has lifted me, carrying my limp body back to his car. Each rocking motion of his gait rekindles the fire consuming my body. My vision is trapped between what is around us and what was before us. It rolls my stomach with an almost motion sickness of a sensation. Their voices are growing, roaring, lamenting my departure, begging me to stay or at least return. I cry, not only from the pain, but the pain of those who are now just shades lost forever within the red bricks and wet clay of the mud.
Reaching my fingers to touch their outstretched hands, I tell them, “I’ll come back. I’ll come back for you.”
“Great,” Regan’s voice floats around theirs. “Now, who is she talking to?”
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 11
