Emily let out a soft sigh when I finished. “Whatever that girl told you when you had your fight last night… Try not to take it seriously. It sounds like she was seriously grieving and, like I said, grief can be complicated.”
“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t right,” I said in a small voice.
“Doesn’t mean you deserved it. You’ve barely been introduced to all this magic bullshit — she can’t expect you to have a handle on it already.”
“I don’t know how I’m gonna find her,” I said. I knew it was obvious I was changing the subject, but I wasn’t in the head space to deep dive into my own short comings. I needed a real, tangible goal to focus on. “But I need to. Whether she likes it or not, I have to find her and stop her from using more than one stone.”
“Is it really that dangerous? It can corrupt her?”
I shrugged, letting my head fall back against my seat. Outside my window, a slow march of cars wound their way through the drive-thru line, gleaming under the bright sun that hung in the middle of the sky. It must have already been lunch. That explained why the seagulls were in such aggressive full swing. “Masika certainly seemed to believe so, and she lived through the original Age of Magic. Using magic killed her. She was ancient and really fragile already, so it was inevitable for her, but if Farida tries using too much magic at once…”
“There’s no guarantee it won’t kill her, too.”
“Or shave a few decades off her life, at best.” I closed my eyes. Sudden tears blurred my vision. It was stupid — lots of people during Masika’s time had used more than one stone and survived. It didn’t make sense to worry so much about Farida being killed by it.
But I couldn’t stop replaying the memory of her collapsing to the ground after calling out both of her creatures.
My phone vibrated. Heart in my throat, I immediately fished it from my sweatpants pocket and opened the new text. It was an unfamiliar number, but they had sent me a photo. I switched on my data and clicked for the picture to download. While I was waiting for it to load, the stranger sent a new message:
I still have your parents. For their safety, meet me here by 1pm. This is your last chance. The text was followed by an address that would probably only make sense if I plugged it into my maps app. I was pretty sure it was the middle of nowhere.
The photo finally loaded. The crack across my screen made the image seem disjointed: my parents in the backseat of a car, hands tied behind their backs, dirt and blood and tears smeared across their faces. I felt like someone had grabbed a fistful of my heart.
“What is it?”
I held my phone up to Emily so she could read the texts, too scared and angry to speak. I watched her eyes widen as she read, her jaw tighten, the slow sigh that deflated her shoulders. Then her eyes met mine and she said, “Alright. Let’s go.”
“Emily, no.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’? We’re not leaving your parents to—”
“I’m not talking about that,” I cut in. I dropped my phone into my lap as I buried my face in my hands, stifling… Well, at that point, I wasn’t sure. It could have been a scream just as easily as it could have been a sob. Finally, I lifted my head to face her again as I said, “Emily, you can’t come with me. It’s way too dangerous.”
She snorted. “You expect me to let you deal with this by yourself? No way in hell.”
“They have magic. Really, really powerful magic — you can’t even imagine what they could do to you.”
“I’m not letting you do it alone. Besides, how would you even do this without me?” She propped her elbow against the steering wheel as if to emphasize her point when she said, “I’m your ride.”
“I can walk.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Right. You can walk all the way to Shediac by 1:00.”
I felt like I was caught in an undertow, fighting to pull myself to the surface as the water dragged me down and far, far, far away from everything I knew. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to keep myself from succumbing to the dark, hidden current.
She was right. I couldn’t do this by myself. But I couldn’t stand the thought of putting another person I loved in danger. Too many people had already gotten hurt because of me.
“Amber,” she said seriously, her hand now on my shoulder. Her blue eyes looked grey in the dark interior of the car, but I could still see the freckles peppering her nose. “Listen to me. I’m a big girl — I know what I’m getting myself into. I’m making this choice for myself. This is no different than when I used to go bridge jumping.”
“That was stupid and reckless,” I said softly, remembering how scared for her I’d been when I found out about that particular hobby in high school.
“Right. But I chose to do it. No one made that choice for me. I did. Okay?”
I paused to study her face, the intensity in her gaze and the firm set of her jaw. I knew that expression well. I could tell when Emily had made up her mind and was ready to stand her ground, and I knew nothing short of a bulldozer would move her. Sighing, I bowed my head and grumbled, “Fine. You can come with me.”
She broke out into a grin. “Alright. Let’s get this shitshow on the road!”
Chapter Five
My stomach knotted itself increasingly tighter through the entire drive, until I was sure it had become some sort of Gordian knot and I would never be able to relax again. I was fully ready to vomit when the abandoned construction lot came into view. The wide stretch of bare earth framed by trees and piles of dirt was scarred by the deep tracks of dozers and dump trucks. The tracks mostly held their shape even after all the rain, and there were huge puddles of mud everywhere.
“There’s probably some old paper bags from Burger King on the floor somewhere,” Emily said as we drew nearer. “I know how pukey you get when you’re stressed.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, though I knew she would immediately see through me. I didn’t have time to get sick. I needed to brace myself so I could face whoever was waiting for me — Arman, with his dozens of stones and terrifying power? Tara, with her she-snake and scrying that could track me wherever I went? Patrick, with his monstrous wolf and incredible speed and strength? All three? I didn’t know what they wanted, but I knew they had my parents. There was no way I could fight any of them by myself. I would just have to do whatever they asked and get my parents someplace safe.
We slowly pulled around one of the mountains of dirt. A white car came into view. There were long scratches and deep dents across the hood and roof, and I realized with another sickening twist of my gut that those were the same marks that Farida’s magical grey heron, Bennu, had left on Tara and Patrick’s car. So I was dealing with the two of them, at the very least.
God, I hoped my parents were okay. Even as I grasped at hope, my mind kept drifting to Patrick’s strength and brutality, to his massive wolf and it’s long, puncturing teeth. Phantom pains spiked through my arm at the memory.
The driver side door on the white car opened as Emily pulled her own car to a stop. Tara stepped out. We were close enough that I could see her eyes darting around suspiciously, first to our car, then past us to the rest of the lot — she even glanced over her shoulder, though there was nothing but a pile of dirt behind her.
“Okay,” I said quietly to Emily, “this could get ugly. If you see any black smoke coming from me, hold your breath as long as you can.”
Emily nodded, expression grim.
I stepped out of the car. “Show me my parents.”
“In a minute,” Tara said. Then she strode toward our car.
I slammed my door shut, took a couple steps forward so I could put myself between Emily and Tara, and started trying to call on the pool of blackness at my core, feeling the heat trickle along my arms—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Tara had stopped in her tracks, hands up placatingly. “No gas, please. I’m not coming to attack you or anything. I just wanna talk. Alright?”
I had only mustered the barest wisp of
blackness, but I let it fade. I tilted my chin up, trying to look defiant and intimidating like I’d seen Emily do countless times before. “Then let me see my parents.”
Tara sighed. “Just… Hang on a second, okay?” She glanced toward the road, which was in her line of sight now that she had moved forward. Still keeping one hand raised, she reached down with the other to pull her phone out of her back pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax. I’m not gonna call backup or anything crazy.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, then let my gaze drift to just over her shoulder. It didn’t look like anyone else was in the car.
Wait… It didn’t look like anyone was in the car.
“Where are my parents?” I demanded again. I knew panic was edging into my voice. I couldn’t stop the sick, terrified thoughts that were swirling in my head, imagining Patrick’s crushing fists and his dog’s tearing teeth and the she-snake’s venomous stinger and that photo. The last image I had ever seen of my parents was of their faces streaked with blood.
“Here. Just look.” Tara was crouching down, sliding her phone across the ground. It only reached halfway to me, so I hurried forward to pick it up with shaking hands, quickly brushing the mud off with the hem of my new sweater so I could see the screen.
The photo was so unexpected I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first. Tara had taken a selfie in a kitchen I knew intimately well, the kitchen where I had spent summers annoying my grammy by tracking sand inside, where I had helped her bake shortbread cookies, where I had weathered freak thunderstorms rolling in off the ocean while my grampy told me ghost stories. In the background, behind Tara’s grinning face, were my grandparents sitting at a familiar table. And my parents.
“Your parents are safe,” Tara said as I stared in stunned disbelief.
“I… How? Why?”
I almost jumped at the sound of Emily rolling her window down. When I turned to her, she was leaning out, making a grabbing motion with her hand toward me. “Let me see.”
I walked over and handed her the phone. Meanwhile, Tara said, “It’s gonna be kind of a long story. And I’d rather not hang around here for too long while I tell it. So can I ditch my car and join you guys?”
I glanced at Emily, unsure. She was still inspecting the image on the phone. Her frown was deep, brow furrowed and jaw clenched. Finally, her eyes lifted to me. “Can we be sure this isn’t some sort of photoshop bullshit?”
“It’s not,” Tara said immediately. “Trust me. I don’t even know how to remove red eye on a photo, let alone completely invent a scene like that.”
I studied her cautiously before asking, “Why did you lie? When you texted, I mean.”
“I needed to know you would actually come meet me,” she said, crossing her arms. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to look stubborn and standoffish or if she was hugging herself. “My scrying doesn’t work on you, and you weren’t with Farida when I checked. So I needed you to come to me.”
Something in my brain clicked. Tara could scry. She could find people. She might actually be able to help me track down Farida and stop her from getting herself killed.
“Okay,” I said. “Hop in.”
“What?” Emily cried, head snapping toward me with an incredulous expression. “You can’t seriously be buying this.”
I was already making my way back to the passenger side door, waving Tara toward the backseat. “I don’t know why, but she saved my parents. We need to at least hear her out.”
“You don’t know that, though.” Emily held up the phone with its picture of my family as I climbed into the passenger seat. “This could be fake. Or staged. Just because your parents were on the Island with your grandparents doesn’t mean they still are. She’s chased you and attacked you, Amber — you can’t trust that.”
“They are still on the Island,” Tara said as she settled into the backseat. “And if you doubt me, you can call your grandparents and check.”
Emily looked unconvinced.
“Please,” I whispered, widening my eyes and leaning toward her. “Please. She can help me. We should at least give her a chance.”
Emily was scowling when she shifted the car back into drive, but she said, “Okay. We’ll give her a shot. But she better not make me regret this.”
~
Tara’s only instruction was for us to drive — anywhere. Emily hadn’t taken too kindly to being told what to do by a kidnapper, but she’d complied after some gentle nudging on my part.
“Okay,” I said once we were cruising along the highway again, “start talking.”
“Arman has a way to keep himself alive, and he can restore himself if he’s badly injured.”
“I already figured that out. He’s as old as Masika and he should have died in that fight they had thousands of years ago.”
“Right. But he’s able to keep himself alive by using a modified version of Masika’s ritual.”
I twisted in my seat to face her, eyes wide. “How do you know about the ritual? How did he find out about the ritual? It was supposed to be secret — only members of the circle knew anything about it.”
“Arman had somebody on the inside — I don’t know all the details, though. He brags about surviving all this time, but he doesn’t exactly explain how he did it.”
“So he shows somewhat more restraint than a cartoon villain,” Emily said sarcastically. I shot her a look, but she didn’t notice; her eyes were glued unwaveringly to the road. Her surly expression told me she still wasn’t impressed with our situation. “And you’re stalling. None of this has anything to do with Amber’s parents.”
“I’m getting to that!” Tara took a shaky breath as she tucked her straight, dark hair behind her ears. “So. I knew… I knew Arman had a way to keep himself alive, and I had some idea of how it worked, but I’d never… I’d never had to watch him do it. After your fight with him, he was in really rough shape — his eyes had been gouged out. Patrick dragged him to the car I was assigned and we drove off. While I drove, Arman…” She broke off, breath catching in her throat as she squeezed her eyes shut. She gave her head a sharp shake. When she opened her eyes again, tears were spilling down her cheeks and she said in a choked rush, “He grabbed Patrick by the throat and sucked his lifeforce out of him. Patrick tried to fight, but he couldn’t breathe — he couldn’t even scream — and then he went limp and Arman turned to me and I thought — I thought — I thought he was going to grab me.” She clapped her hand over her mouth as a sob burst out.
I watched, torn between horror and distrust and the urge to pull her into a hug. None of this sounded anything like Masika’s ritual. It didn’t even sound like a ritual. Arman’s method was just pure brutality.
“But he didn’t grab me. I don’t know if it’s because he’d gotten enough from Patrick or… or if it was just because I was driving.” She wiped at her tears and tucked her hair behind her ears again. “So when we found a place to stop and regroup for a while, Arman took Patrick’s stone and left me to pull Patrick’s… corpse out of the car. I’d never really liked Patrick, but…” she trailed off, staring with a distant expression at something I couldn’t see, a memory passing before her eyes. “No one deserves that.
“Kidnapping your parents had already been too much — I hated it. But seeing him kill Patrick, and knowing he could do the same to me as soon as I stopped being useful? I had to get out of there. I knew once I was gone he would have a hard time finding me, so I brought your parents home and started trying to figure out how I could find you.”
“So you left to save your own ass,” Emily said bitterly. “Doesn’t mean we should trust you.”
As much as I wanted to trust Tara so she could maybe help find Farida, Emily was right. “She has a point. You still sided with Arman and kidnapped my parents in the first place.”
Tara sighed, shoulders sagging. “It’s complicated.”
“Then start talking,” Emily growled.
Ther
e was a long pause. The only noise was the car rattling over the uneven pavement of a New Brunswick highway. Finally, squeezing her eyes shut as more tears spilled down her cheeks, Tara spat, “It’s my mom, okay?”
“Your mom made you work with Arman?” I asked in disbelieving deadpan.
“No,” she snapped, eyes opening to glare at me. “My mom’s sick, asshole. Her treatment is expensive. Arman showed up and offered to pay me enough to cover it all and then some if I worked for him. But I’m an idiot and it was just another fucking scam.”
“No offense,” Emily said, gaze lifting to the rear-view mirror to study Tara, “but you look Native to me.”
“Mi’kmaq,” Tara said with a defiant tilt of her chin.
“Right. So your story is bullshit. First Nations people get free medical care through the treaties.”
“I said Mi’kmaq, not First Nations. I’m from Maine.”
“And?”
“And health care doesn’t work the same in the States,” Tara said. “If we go to an Indian Health Care Provider, we’re covered, but there aren’t exactly an abundance of those and my family is off-reservation. Anything that’s not covered can easily cost thousands of dollars — which my family doesn’t have.”
Emily didn’t have a response for that, though I noticed her pale cheeks had reddened slightly.
We fell into a heavy, uncomfortable silence. I was struggling to wrap my head around what Tara had just told us. I’d never really thought about First Nations issues — it wasn’t like we were taught about them in school — and I certainly hadn’t thought a whole lot about Native people from south of the border. Paying for health care wasn’t something I ever really worried about, either. I guess it had been an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue. But if things were as bad as Tara said they were…
Guilt gnawed at me. Was I a bad person for never knowing about this stuff? For never thinking of it? I mean, the whole goal of my degree was to learn how to fix broken and harmful structures in society, but obviously I was completely oblivious to some of those structures — even to the ones that existed very close to home.
Those Who Fall Page 4
