“I know you do, but don’t be overconfident. That’s when people screw up.” She was heading into battle. I couldn’t have her going in shaking, but damned if I’d have her walk in like she was indestructible.
“Even if I do mess up, it’s not like I’ll be alone for long.”
I tried to smile back. If it had been anyone but her doing this…
I looked about the room at the familiar faces, people who’d become more a family to me than my mother had been. They annoyed the hell out of me sometimes, and when they did, there was no escape. I worked with them, I ate with them, and sometimes I fought with them. And then something would happen like this and I’d be fighting beside them. I’d fight to the death for any of them. It didn’t really matter which one of them was going; it would be horrible.
Hawk walked over with the box that held the gem and opened the lid. “You get them close and drop it. That’s all you need to do,” he said.
His hands were steady and his voice was calm. What was wrong with him? Why was I the only person that saw the potential disaster?
Bibbi plucked the gem out of the box, and it glowed a soft lavender, like a night-light of sorts. It was warm and soothing. If I’d been a Whimsy, was that what my magic would’ve looked like? Probably.
She tucked it into her pocket. “Thanks,” she said, as if he were doing her a favor.
“You ready? It’s almost dusk, and that’s their most active time,” Oscar said, coming over.
“I was born ready.” She laughed, almost gleeful.
Kill me now, because she was going to take me out with a heart attack before the night was over.
Zab handed her a bag of bloody meat. It had been explained that it was similar to throwing chum in the water for a shark.
I stepped in front of her, blocking everyone else. “You follow the plan. You walk the path. We’ll be right behind you. You don’t deviate.”
“I got it,” she said, acting as if I were being a mother hen. “See you on the other side with hopefully a couple more answers.” She waved to us as if she were leaving to go on a holiday then walked out of the front door of the office alone.
Oscar and Zab would follow her through the front a few minutes later. Musso and Bertha would leave and take a different route. Hawk and I headed toward the back door, going yet another way.
Hawk grabbed my arm as I rushed. “You have to give her a minute. If we’re going to do this, we might as well get it done the first time. The grouslies won’t get close if they sense you anywhere around.”
“There’s not going to be a second time.” I opened the door.
I walked fast, my feet refusing to listen to logic and keeping time with my heart, the one that would break if anything happened to Bibbi. My breathing was heavier, and not from the strain of the pace but from the weight of what I’d helped set in motion.
Bibbi was a kid. I shouldn’t have gone along with this. For what? To catch a glimpse of a stone’s color? Who cared? Would it really help much?
Slow down.
This was her choice. If she wanted to do this, I had to let her. I slowed my pace for all of two minutes before I double-timed it, making up for the loss and then some. Of course I didn’t have to let her. She was being an idiot.
“It will be okay,” Hawk said, following at my pace.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
The alley split off and I couldn’t remember which way to go as my nerves wiped away my memory. “Left or right? Which way?” I turned around. “Hurry up.”
“Left.”
By the next turn, he was pointing the directions before I got there. My head had been clearer when I was fighting a giant bat for my life. That was the key to the problem. I’d been fighting for my life, not lying in wait as Bibbi fought for hers. This was the stupidest thing I’d ever done, even if it hadn’t been my idea.
Oscar and Zab had taken the direct route behind her because they’d be less likely to scare off the Grouslies. Another dumb idea. What if they couldn’t scare off the grouslies at all?
“Even if they get a bite in, I’ve got the treatment on me to stop it. It’ll be okay,” Hawk said, still calm.
“Have they ever almost eaten you to death? No. Nothing about this is fine.”
How was it that the person who hadn’t wanted this to happen was now telling me it wasn’t that bad?
The sound of a whistle broke the air. It was Oscar’s signal that they were moving in on her.
We both took off at a run.
I turned the corner just as the herd surrounded Bibbi about fifty feet away.
“Come on, I know you want this.” She was drawing them close in, holding the bag of meat out, her other hand in her pocket. “Just a little closer,” she said, as calm as if she didn’t have a single nerve in her body.
I watched as they circled her, as was their way.
Hawk grabbed my arm, trying to hold me back so she could do what she needed to do.
He didn’t have to bother. I’d been running here to save her, but she didn’t need me, not yet. She had this under control.
The grouslies moved in slowly, as if they sensed a trap.
“What’s she waiting for?” How close was she going to let them get before she used the stone? It would hit at least one of them, and we’d get some sense. She didn’t have to take a bite in the process.
“She’s drawing them in tighter to make sure. She’s pretty good at this,” he said, as if he hadn’t expected it.
We were both asses, then, because I hadn’t either. She might be a Whimsy witch, but what she lacked in magic, she definitely made up for in balls. The grouslies drew in so slowly. She shook the bag, and a few more pieces of meat dropped to the ground in front of her. They snapped, the bloody meat driving them into a frenzy. She followed it immediately with the stone, dropping it right on top of where they made a blanket covering the meat.
The stone fell in between the bodies, but that didn’t stop the light from blasting into the alley. A rainbow of light. The only time I’d seen anything like it was when I held the stone myself. It had shone brightly for me, but still, I was the only one I knew of with a rainbow.
One creature moved from the meat, turning its attention to Bibbi, and it snapped me out of my daze. I ran forward just as it moved to sink its teeth into her ankle.
They scattered, dragging some of the meat off with them, leaving a trail of blood.
Another sound drew my attention to the opposite end of the alley, the one we’d just come from, and I saw a group of kids running off.
How long had they been there? Had they seen the light? Would they put it together the way I had? How could they not? All they had to do was see the grouslies flashing the same colors and glance at my hair. It was impossible not to add those two things up. Even if they needed a little help, the next fifty people or so they told, someone would figure it out.
I shut that out of my mind for now.
“Did it get you?” I asked Bibbi, motioning to her ankle as Oscar and Zab approached from the other side.
“It tried, but I don’t think it broke the skin,” she said, even as her attention was on my hair as she tried to figure out why the grouslies, and maybe Dread, would have the same colors.
I didn’t go for the hat I had tucked in my pocket. It was too late anyway.
There was an awkward silence as Oscar and Zab didn’t say much. They didn’t have to. I saw the wheels turning. Musso cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything. Bertha was the only one with enough restraint to not look at my hair, even though they’d arrived in time to see the flash of color.
“Let’s check your leg, just in case,” Hawk said, stepping in and breaking the silence.
“Huh?” Bibbi asked.
“Your leg, where it tried to bite you? I want to make sure it didn’t break the skin.” He stepped in front of me, disrupting her concentration on my hair.
“Oh. Yeah.” She nodded and then tugged up the pants, as if
the wheels in her brain had finally found something else to spin on than the muddy rut of my current dilemma.
She knelt down and tugged up her pants, letting everyone check out her skin for any possible penetration as I took a few steps back.
I’d always known something was off, that I’d been connected to it in some way. But flashing the same magic? I took another step back before catching myself and locking my legs down so my feet couldn’t take me anywhere else.
Frozen in place, I felt like a human slushy machine, spinning but too cold and numb to think straight.
What did that mean? Why did that light look like mine?
Musso edged toward me while they continued to examine Bibbi. “Don’t worry about it, kid. There are worse things in life than flashing the same color magic. Doesn’t mean anything.”
I shrugged. “No, yeah, not a big deal. I’m sure it’s happened before.”
His lips parted and his eyes closed up a bit as I waited to hear his words of wisdom. “Well, that I can’t say. But nothing to do about it. If there’s a similarity, then there’s a similarity. Like I said, doesn’t mean anything.”
When I looked at him, his eyes shot away from my hands. “Not sure I’ll ever get used to the fifth wind of Xest.” I shoved them inside my jacket pockets so he couldn’t see the tremble.
Hawk pointed to the gem on the ground. “Someone grab that and let’s head back.” Hawk began walking, pausing for a second once he got to where I was standing.
I started walking, falling into step with him the way we usually did, out of habit.
“But what did that mean?” Bibbi asked, trailing behind us as we all walked from the alley.
“It meant nothing,” Hawk said. “Absolutely nothing.”
7
When we got back to the broker building, everyone went their separate ways while I lingered by my desk, flipping through some cards.
Hawk was on the other side, by Zab’s desk, not pretending to do anything but wait for the room to empty out.
He was the only one who didn’t seem rattled by the revelation, almost as if it hadn’t been a surprise. It was hitting me all wrong. Something was off. He wasn’t bringing it up in front of anyone, not showing any curiosity at all.
The room downstairs emptied with unusual quiet. No one stayed to talk about what had been revealed. No one was talking about anything. They left with a few curious looks backward.
As soon as they were gone, Hawk straightened from where he was leaning and walked into the empty back room.
I followed him.
The absence of all other sound meant he’d muted the back room. As soon as he did, my suspicions turned into a landslide of murky truth.
“You knew something was going to be weird, that I was linked to Dread somehow. That’s why you didn’t want Bibbi to go through with her plan. That’s why Jasper thought I was evil. He knew too.”
He settled on one of the couches. “I didn’t know but thought it might be a possibility.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never seen magic like yours, the way it threw off that kind of intensity and that array, not with any other witch or warlock in Xest.”
“You suspected and didn’t think you should tell me, of all people?”
“No. I didn’t.” He kept staring at me as he shrugged.
“How could you not?”
He let out a sigh, as if this was the last conversation he wanted to have right now. “Because you can’t defend yourself without twisting your motivations into some story of why it’s good for your opponent if you win. If it turned out I was right, I didn’t think this would help matters. From the look of you right now, the waves of agitation you’re throwing off, I was right. You took ten steps back the minute you realized.”
I’d give him one thing: he’d never been more correct. I was rattled so badly that if I crumbled into a thousand pieces right now, it wouldn’t be a surprise. The only thing keeping me standing was pure resolve, backed by nothing other than the knowledge that I had to keep going.
But that didn’t make it any better. I was somehow connected to something that was pure evil. What did that make me? How could I be good if I was linked to evil? All the fears I’d barely buried felt like they were being washed ashore by the storm of tonight’s revelation.
This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t afford to have a crisis of self on top of all the other problems happening. I needed to be on top of my game, not clinging to stay in the arena.
His eyes tracked me around the room, making me realize I’d been pacing. I stopped moving, gripping the back of the couch in front of me with both hands to anchor myself. I’d use whatever I had to get through this, even a stupid piece of furniture.
He wasn’t talking, but his gaze didn’t leave me, as if he were waiting to see if I was going to implode.
“It was a shock, but I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
He nodded, not fighting. It had an altogether placating feel that I wasn’t fond of. The fight I could handle. This was new territory.
“You didn’t want to run this little experiment because of me, did you?” I asked.
“No. If there was a connection, I did not want an audience to observe it. Just as you’re rattled, I was afraid of others being rattled and the possible ramifications. If word gets out that it throws off a rainbow, all they need to do is look at your hair to know there’s some link.”
“If word gets out…” I scoffed. There was no way it wouldn’t, but we both knew that. As soon as two people know a secret, it’s not a secret, and a lot more than two knew. Besides our group, we’d had an audience at the end of the alley.
I didn’t need to ask if this was going to become a bigger issue. It would. Impossible for it not to.
“Will our alliance hold?” Half of Xest hated me enough to dream of murder. I couldn’t afford to lose the other half, not even a fraction of it.
“It will hold even if I have to make it hold.” The placating tone was replaced by steel. This was a Hawk that was much more familiar.
“If you had told me…” The woulda/couldas were piling up in my head so high that I’d be scaling a mountain before I slept tonight.
“We already covered this. I wasn’t getting in your head over a guess. No one knew what was going to happen.”
But some of us had guessed better than others.
“There’s one good thing that came out of this,” he said.
I waited for him to continue, hoping he had something good. I needed a silver lining in this cloud like a person getting pounded by a category five hurricane on the slippery rocks of the coast.
“We don’t know what Dread is, but if we follow the connection back, figure out where your magic originated, we might be able to find Dread’s origin. If you know what a thing is, you can destroy it. Tonight did serve a purpose. Bibbi was right. This was our first step toward getting Dread.”
“Yeah, it proved I’m connected to this monster somehow.” I waited for shock, condemnation, revulsion, something that mirrored the dredged-up feelings shifting inside me.
He continued to sit there, staring at me, no change in his expression.
“Well? You’ve got nothing to say about that?” I asked, daring him to speak the truth, that I might be a monster as well.
“No. I thought that a possible connection was an obvious problem.”
I took a step closer, still waiting for the disgust I was feeling to show on his face. What was wrong with this man? Couldn’t he put two and two together? Had he failed math completely?
“I’m connected to a monster.” Did he not understand what that meant? The worst evil Xest might’ve ever known, and I was linked to it.
“I know.” Still as calm as ever.
Screw it. I was going to have to spell it out. “What if I’m not just casually connected but from it somehow?”
“You mean you think your mother slept with the invisible evil?” He cocked
a brow, not looking sold on my theory. Then, to top it off, he scoffed and shook his head.
Really? Did he think it was impossible?
“It could’ve happened,” I said, waiting for him to finally wake up. My own mother had called me evil. Maybe this was why.
“I’m not arguing about this. There is nothing you can say that will make that believable.”
That was what he thought. Telling me not to argue only meant he wasn’t taking this seriously enough. He might as well have waved the flag for me to start my engine.
I leaned toward him, bringing my fist to my chest. “You saw the colors. I could very well be half monster, and you can’t say otherwise. I might be genetically programmed to be half evil.” Why couldn’t he admit that it was possible? That I could be?
“Even if somehow you were part of that monster, I’ve told you before and I’m telling you again, you’re not evil. I’ve stood toe to toe with evil. I know it when I see it. The positive is that at least this gives us a lead.”
If my connection was a silver lining, it was the most pathetic sliver of tarnished metal I’d ever seen.
It was hours later when I put my ear to my door and listened. Nothing, finally. With this place constantly crawling with people, there wasn’t a minute left to get Helen alone. I made my way downstairs, forgoing shoes or anything that might add noise. I closed the door as softly as I could and then sighed as it shut.
Her gears hummed as I walked over to the wall she covered.
“Helen, we need to talk.”
Her gears sped up for a second before slowing down again.
“Glad you agree. I’m guessing you know what happened tonight.”
She made a clicking sound.
Of course she knew. Helen knew everything that happened.
“This thing out there, it doesn’t like me. I already knew that.” I hopped up and sat on Zab’s desk, knowing this next part was going to be the big one. “It looks like me and Dread, well, we might be linked somehow. Is there anything you can say about that?”
Her gears didn’t move—nothing hummed, no clicks or ticks. I gave her another few moments, in case she needed some time to think, but it was becoming clear quickly that she wasn’t going to reply.
The Most Wanted Witch: Tales of Xest Page 4
