“Summoning my real mother had a lot to do with it,” the cat pointed out in a haughty tone. “I am also too young to be on my own. Two hundred is still a baby in demon years.”
“Who’s actually the parent here? I’m only in my twenties, not counting how old I’d be outside of this place since I’ve been in stasis, I could say you’re my mother, you silly furball.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t let her fool you. She’s way more mature than I am and seems to know about everything.”
No sooner had the last word left my mouth than a giant purple jelly belly flew at my head. Twenty sharp pistachio-colored talons dug into the skin on my shoulder. As I squealed, DC jumped from her bloody perch and zoomed off with the jelly belly close on her tail. Literally.
“Well, whad’ya know. Al found someone to play with.” Johnna laughed.
Niki’s expression turned slightly apprehensive and he shook his head. “Not exactly. Imps and demon cats hate each other.”
I watched her eyebrows draw together in concern, but instead of panicking, she seemed to study the situation. I could see her underlying strength and determination and at that moment, I made the decision to be more like her.
Johnna shrugged. “They’ll just have to learn how to get along.”
“She’ll come back to me, won’t she?” I threw a worried glare at Niki. “In one piece?”
Malachi chuckled. “I’d worry more about the imp. Demon cats are vicious. Imps, not so much.”
Johnna looked worried. “Seriously?” she asked Niki.
“Al will be fine. He can take care of himself. Quit scaring her, Malachi.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I wrapped my arms around my chest and wished for my go-to comfort foods. A delicious piece of strawberry cake always made things seem better. “So, we’re standing in a never-ending graveyard for a reason?” I really wanted out of this horrible place.
“Before we leave, I want to try something,” Johnna said. “It won’t take long, but if we can eliminate a few things or even answer a few of our questions, we will be that much closer to figuring out what’s going on.”
I ignored the men’s grumbles. “I’m normally the first one to run out the back door to escape a bad situation. This time, though, I’m in agreement.” I planted myself with purpose at Johnna’s side. “I want out of here and will do anything to make it happen, but if you know how to get a few answers, I’m game.”
Malachi closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, he seemed tired, maybe even exhausted. Where his skin had been smooth and firm before, he now sported dark circles under his eyes, and he’d lost his healthy sunburn look. Did demons get sick?
“I don’t like this,” Malachi snapped. “You didn’t see her during the last nightmare. I did. Somehow it hurt her.”
“Niki and I won’t let anything happen,” Johnna reassured him. At least she tried to. The way his nostrils flared and one brow arched, I doubted he believed her.
My stomach proclaimed war against my nervous system and my stomach was winning. I held back, my thoughts bubbling inside my tired brain. I didn’t touch people for a reason. Most of my life, the only things I craved were kind words, and the reassurance only a tight hug could give. I didn’t touch people because they would die. I’d already taken a chance when I touched him earlier.
I steeled my nerves and lifted my hand, laying it on Malachi’s brawny forearm, waiting for the lightning strike. Nothing happened. I allowed my lungs to let go of my last breath and raised my gaze to meet his curious frown. When I noticed the worry lurking in the depths of his dark gaze, my heart did a few quick tango steps.
“I’ll be okay, Malachi. I’ve fought for myself a long time. Now that I can actually see a flicker of light at the end of what has been a very long tunnel, I’m going to fight even harder.” For him, I put on the bravest face I could muster. “Really, you don’t have to worry about me.”
His expression turned into an emotional battleground. The war ended when his familiar impassivity returned and erased the turmoil I’d seen. I wondered which side won.
I scowled up at him. “Remind me when this is all over to show me how you do that. I’m tired of losing at poker.”
“Malachi, go check in with Lucien and see if he can break Willow’s sentence. If Johnna’s grandfather is right, we’ll need to get her to him anyway.” Niki’s deep voice resonated behind me. “We’ll stay with Willow.”
Malachi’s heavy hands grazed the tops of my shoulders. My sudden interest in his boots didn’t fool him, and with his finger beneath the tip of my chin, he tilted my head up, though my attention remained on his chains.
“Willow, look at me.” His silky voice caressed away my jittery nerves, and I raised my eyes to his calming brown gaze. The brush of his thumb over the sensitive skin on my shoulder made me shiver, and his lips tightened.
“Stay with Niki and Johnna. Do everything they tell you and don’t do anything stupid. Understand?”
I nodded, but the ornery part of my brain rebelled at his bossiness. After all, I’d been in this godforsaken place how long without any help? I was still here, wasn’t I? I also knew something in this place was wonky. Malachi himself said the realm wasn’t working right. Anything could happen to any of us, good or bad. A horrible thought popped into my head. What if he left and couldn’t get back in? What if we were stuck here forever?
I felt dots of perspiration bead on my forehead as I started to panic. I didn’t want to be here without him. Somehow, he kept the nightmares away, and if he never came back . . .
When he slowly, methodically re-tucked my hair behind my ears, my stomach dipped. His fingers sent warm tingles along the tops of my ears until my face felt as hot and flushed as I knew my ears were.
The space where he’d been standing popped like a bubble, and I stared down at his giant boot prints, barely visible in the sparse dusting of gray sand. “I hate it when he does that.”
“You get used to it.” Johnna wound her arm through mine and led me a few feet away. She stopped and let her gaze roam the area, brushing her foot across the ground. “This spot is perfect.”
I wondered how Johnna saw the world. She seemed so positive everything would work out. My view looked more like the bullet-riddled silhouette on a target. I guess I needed to work on my version a bit harder.
Niki turned in a circle with his nose in the air, reminding me of a dog sniffing the wind, just without the wind. Squatting, he pressed the palm of his hand to the ground. He moved several feet to our right and squatted again, feeling the ground. He did this a total of five times before standing, a satisfied expression on his face. “Imp, this spot would be better.”
“Why?”
Niki pointed to a spot at his feet. “The boundary line between the realms is here.” He dragged the toe of his boot along the ground, marking the exact location. “Each realm has its own magic, and as your grandfather taught you, magic leaves a residue. The boundaries separating each realm are the collecting point for this residue.”
I listened to his explanation but didn’t understand a word. “Wait a minute. Can we go back to the magical residue part? What is it?” I ignored the quick spasm in my brain as several long-forgotten memories resurfaced, very bad times I found myself reliving every day in this horrific place. “Are you talking about the putrid, gunky stuff at the bottom of swimming pools? I worked for a pool cleaning company one summer and always had to dredge the bottom of the pools. If you’ve never smelled the inside of a port-o-potty after sitting in hundred-degree heat for months on end, you wouldn’t understand.”
Johnna’s face looked a little bit green. Niki nodded. “We’ve experienced something similar. Recently, in fact,” he answered.
Johnna’s nose wrinkled up and she puckered her lips. “The Hell Hole.” Her shoulders jerked a couple of
times. “So horrible. I’m never going back there.” She scowled. “Who knew poo could smell so bad?”
I had no response to that.
“As I’ve explained to you before, you never actually made it to the Hell Hole, only the trash area. Besides, magical residue isn’t like that anyway. Think of it as static electricity with a punch or, better yet, horny bouncing bunnies with teeth.”
“Niki!” Johnna sputtered, her eyes as round as saucers.
He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “What?”
“There are some things your mind can’t erase and that’s one of them.” She grabbed my hand and sat, pulling me with her. Since my genetic material deemed me unfit to have any sense of gracefulness, my butt hit the sandy earth with a loud splat.
“From the beginning,” Johnna demanded in a breathy voice as she sat. “How do your nightmares start?”
I shrugged and pulled my legs against my chest. “Your guess is as good as mine. Before meeting Malachi, they were fairly consistent.” I thought a moment. “No, that’s not exactly true. Even before he arrived they were growing more sporadic. When I first got here, I had them back to back. And now, well, you’ve been with me, how long? And I haven’t had one yet.”
I released the tight grip from around my shins and relaxed my legs into a similar pose as hers. Almost immediately, tiny yet painful needles prickled up and down my calves and feet, signaling the return of blood.
I carefully chose my words in order to give her as truthful an explanation as I possibly could. “The last time Malachi left, the nightmare hit within minutes. Guess this time will be lon—”
“Now we know how long it takes,” Niki drawled as everything around me turned dark.
Chapter 10
I stared at the black, square bowl half-filled with spaghetti. Only one person I knew made their spaghetti with white sauce instead of tomato. Lucinda Travers, another wicked foster mother. Her daughter Deidre wasn’t much better. Both had made my life miserable, not a good descriptive word at all for how it had really been.
The events on this particular night had killed my hopes of ever having a normal, happy future. Since Ahma had cursed me to the Nightmare Realm, my thoughts turned more and more often to bathing in acid and getting it over with faster.
During the original event, I’d sat on my stool, not saying a word, while Deidre ranted and railed, threatening me about keeping my mouth shut. Now, listening again to her whiny falsetto as she moved toward the kitchen where my nightmare unfolded, I decided I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and let those same painful events happen again. The moment Deidre came through the door, I opened my mouth to see if I could actually change the rules and test the realm’s power of illusion.
Before she could spit out her hateful words, I dropped my elbows onto the countertop, the white surface as cold as it looked, and rested my chin on my fists. “What did I do to piss you off this time?” Not the most imaginative of quips but thinking fast wasn’t one of my strong points.
“You . . . you . . .” she stuttered.
“Yes, I’m Willow and you’re Deidre, but you’re not answering my question.” I smiled to infuriate her even more. For a second, I could have sworn I actually saw steam puffing from her nostrils.
Deidre stopped on the other side of the island and planted her palms on the countertop, her fingers spread as far apart as they could go. “You are dead meat if you say anything, skank.”
I had no doubt she meant every word. I’d only seen her face this red one other time since I’d moved in. A tiny kernel of satisfaction fluttered inside me, knowing I’d shattered her tight control.
Was I asking for trouble? Probably. But right now I didn’t care. She still hadn’t told me what I’d done to piss her off. Trying to stop the upward curl of my mouth was harder than I thought it would be. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her pink-painted lips puckered in an ugly snarl. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. Christian heard you today in chemistry telling your slut of a friend Mr. Sloan was having sex with a student.”
Confused, I slumped on my stool. This was news to me. I had no clue what she was talking about. “Deidre—”
“Just shut up, Willow. Shut. Up. I don’t know how you found out about us, but if I even think you might’ve said something to my parents, I will kill you,” she hissed.
A tight band of irritation spread across my chest as I stared at Deidre. Through clenched teeth, I drew in the dry, cinnamon-scented air, so thick I could taste the pungent flavor. Her stupid candle fetish had ruined one of my favorite aromas.
“Deidre, I don’t know what Christian thought he heard or why he would even tell you that. Darcy and I were talking about her mom, whose name is Joan, and her relationship with her new boyfriend.”
“I am done listening to your bullshit, Willow. I’ve seen you following me, watching my every move. I don’t know how you did it, but you somehow found out about Brian and me and thought you’d use it to your advantage, didn’t you?”
“Who’s Brian?” I pushed away from the island. My mind seemed out of focus, fuzzy. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about or who, but I didn’t care. From the corner of my eye, I saw a dark blur. I turned my head and found Deidre’s band of friends standing there. I took a step backward, away from the snarling faces directed at me.
I’d be really freaked out if I wasn’t so damn confused. Since I’d changed the nightmare’s original playbook, I couldn’t even rely on the real events of my memory to get me through this. I was so screwed.
“What—” I turned back to Deidre and bit the end of my tongue in my haste to get out of the way of the rather lethal-looking knife sailing toward my head. I went down hard. My elbow cracked against the travertine floor, pain shooting through my shoulder and hip as they hit the ground. I scrambled backward in my panic to get away from her and anyone else thinking to take up the fight. Waves of pain surged through my body.
Doing my best floppy fish routine, I turned over and pulled myself up against the wall, newly redecorated with Deidre’s wicked knife. Pressing back, I tilted my head until I could see the end of the knife handle hanging above me. Thankfully, the tip of the short, slightly curved blade had barely cut into the drywall.
As I watched, the handle slowly dropped toward me, one millimeter at a time, but it was still too high for me to reach. One good, solid hit should do it. I slammed my good elbow into the wall, but the knife didn’t budge. I tried to ignore the screaming and raised male voices, as well as the rest of the people trying to shove their way from the living room and into the kitchen. Channeling the anger threatening to explode in my head, I hit the wall again. The knife tilted downward another millimeter.
“Don’t let her get the knife,” Deidre screamed, slipping and sliding as she scrambled around the island.
I slammed against the wall one last time, forcing my body sideways to avoid the sharp blade as it wobbled and fell. Luckily, I wasn’t skewered as the knife hit the floor, skittering close to my leg on the slick surface of the tile. I gripped the handle and, ignoring my throbbing elbow, used my fury to maneuver myself onto my hands and knees. As I managed to get one foot underneath me, a searing pain tore across my right side.
I crumpled back to the cold tile, my hand still fisted around the knife, and stared into my foster sister’s unrecognizable face, twisted into an evil sneer. I couldn’t move. My eyes blurred and I drew in shallow breaths when another surge of excruciating pain punctured my side. I blinked several times until my eyesight cleared enough to see Deidre’s white-knuckled grip around a broken wooden pole. My gaze dropped to the blade, embedded under my ribcage, and sucked in a sob.
Fighting to stay conscious, I glanced back up at Deidre and ignored her smug look. “You’ve ruined your dad’s spear. He’s going to kill you.”
; She craned her neck toward me, one side of her mouth turned upward in a sneer. “Probably. But killing you was worth any punishment I’ll get.”
The thundering thud, thud, thud of my heart painfully beat against my ribs. A hot flush raced across my face. Anger and fright were not a good combination for me. Bad things happened to people near me when these two emotions combined forces, another thought that hiked my level of fear even more.
Overlying everything, I saw Malachi’s face, flushed and redder than usual. Anger flashed in his eyes as he took in the broken lance jutting from my side. I watched his mouth open. He yelled at me, but I couldn’t hear what he said. From a self-preservation standpoint, it was definitely a good thing.
Why had this nightmare changed from what really happened? Was it possible I’d had the ability to change these dreams the entire time?
A fiery sensation blossomed in my hand. As it travelled up my arm, it turned white-hot and sweat formed across my brow. My foster sister reached down and grabbed the knife, still held fast in my fist. The moment our hands touched, she screamed and pulled away.
With morbid fascination I studied the way her skin liquefied, dripping and melting from the bones of her hand. Her screams pierced my ears, but I didn’t flinch. I watched a blazing white line travel up her arm, crossing over her chest to the other shoulder. Where it passed, the skin slid downward.
I squeezed my eyelids together as tight as I could. My stomach rolled, pitching one way then toppling back in the opposite direction. I willed the nightmare to end, and a hard tug pulled my insides downward. My lungs struggled to draw in enough air for a sufficient scream. The air had other plans as it swooshed away from me, and the sensation of falling increased. I pulled my legs up as close to my body as I could without fainting from the pain of the blade still stuck in my side.
I tried to hold still but because of the way the blade had twisted when Deidre had shoved the spear into my side, it was impossible. No matter how little I moved, the sharp edges sliced through skin and organs. Breathing shallowly didn’t help.
Saved by the Spell (Of Mystics and Mayhem Book 2) Page 10
