by Mason Sabre
“Where are you going?” she called after him, grabbing the top of the rail at the stairs to steady herself.
Jason stopped at the front door, the one that was still locked, his hand on the handle. “To find someone who will help me.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Crystal said, but the words felt like lies. “This place is old. It hasn’t been used in a couple of years at least. There is no way to know that this place is connected to her.”
“You're a Seeker. You’d have not connected two very separate dots if you didn't believe them.”
“I could have made a mistake?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets, a move she was becoming very familiar with. Then rocked on his heels. “Have you ever been wrong before?”
She pressed her lips together in a firm line. That was the problem. She was a Seeker. She had some femoral connection with the very essence of time. Actions left a path, a trail of breadcrumbs and maybe they were far apart. Maybe they were years apart, but still … standing in that room with those bottles on the counter, she had felt that connection with Shayla. She had felt it the way someone would feel the sun on their skin and know it was right. She couldn’t ever explain it. Not in a way that could be proven with real, physical evidence. “No,” she said, almost whispering it to him as if that would make it not true.
“Exactly.” He nodded at her.
Crystal took a couple of steps down closer to Jason. “They’ll kill you.”
“I just want my sister back. I have to do this for her.”
Crystal watched him for a long moment. She read him, tried to see the sincerity in what he said. He meant it as he said it just now, but she knew more than many that when he would stare into the face of those who had killed Shayla. The wolf inside would rise and ask no questions. But it was his choice, wasn't it? That was what her coven had always said about things. Everything is a choice … everything, even if we can’t see the choice, there is one.
“Will you help me?”
“You’re going up against a witch.”
“All the more reason I need you with me. Who has my sister?”
Zoey … the name echoed in Crystal’s head like a betrayal she wanted to spit out and stamp on. “I …”
“Who is it?”
“When I was a child, I had lived in a coven with my mother. I had a friend there.” Friend … that word was so alien to her as she said it now. “We thought we’d be friends forever. Our mothers said we were like sisters. One day, Zoey, my friend … we were playing outside by the lake. You know, the lake up at Stanton?”
Jason nodded. He’d come closer and she hadn’t even realised he’d let go of the handle.
“One minute, I turned around, and Zoey was gone. I searched for her for hours. Even when it was dark, I tried to find her.”
“Why didn’t you just go home?”
Crystal smiled. Yes, that was the logical answer now. “I was eleven, she was ten. I thought I’d get into trouble for it. Anyway. Months went by and still nothing. I went back to that spot almost every day. Maybe I could find her. My Seeker powers came in a couple of years later, along with puberty, but there was nothing. Like at Shayla’s place. Just an absence. Like someone had magically wiped the place clean. My mum told me it wasn’t me and sometimes, we just can’t find what we’re looking for, especially if we’re close.”
“You never found her?”
Crystal cast her eyes toward the door. “I did,” she said, solemnly. “A few years later. I was nineteen by then and using my powers for work. Helping people. I knew what it felt like to have that wondering inside. You know, the what if?”
“What if Shayla is still alive?”
Crystal shifted from one foot to the other, her heart heavy. “Yeah.” Although she knew with all her heart that Shayla wasn’t anymore. “I ran into Zoey. She looked just the same as she had when we were younger. Smelt the same, but … something had changed in her. She had this … edge. Something was broken. She was with a Human. They had a couple of young witches with them, training them. I don’t even know. The last time I saw her, she was beating on some young girl. I tried to stop her, but she hit me with such magic … dark magic. I knew my friend was gone.”
“You never got her out of there?”
“She didn’t want to leave.”
“Zoey has my sister?”
Crystal let her eyes close in a long slow blink, then she lifted her hand and opened her fingers. She’d picked up one of the bottles from inside the room where she had seen the boy. The magic on it was thick, clinging, but the label … it held the image of a tree, one that was upside down. That was the same as the bottles that had been in Shayla’s apartment. “Look close,” she said, as she handed him the one she’d found.
“Mengele? Why do I know that name?”
Cold sweat had already formed on Crystal’s back. It trickled down, making her shiver, but she wasn’t cold. “He was a Nazi doctor. Did the Mengele twin experiments. Zoey … when I saw her, she had on a shirt with a badge that said, Daughter of Mengele.”
Jason wrapped his fingers around the bottle. His entire body went into such an alert that she could feel the electrical vibes of it rushing over her skin. He pulled out the bottle he had and although the picture was the same, the name was missing. “They took her for experiments?”
She wanted to say no. God, she wanted to lie to him. His beautiful face, the way he stood there … “I’m sorry,” was all she could manage, and she was. So very sorry.
Chapter 10
Crystal pulled the car to a stop at the edge of the road. The docks were where they were really heading to, but it was better to park the car far away and walk, than to pull right up to them and announce they were there. These docks led to Exile, although not Exile through any legal form of transportation. No. These were the docks where people bargained with their lives for tickets that cost more than they should. This was the place that promised hopes and dreams, and more often than not delivered nothing more than shattered dreams and tears.
The dock was empty today. Crystal had seen it twice in her lifetime, and both times, it had been bursting with life. Society members tended to stay away from these parts, sort of a ‘if we don’t see it, we can ignore it.’ The boat was an old thing, falling apart, something they had dredged up from the bottom of the ocean and then applied sticking plasters in hopes that it would hold and make safe passage. What did it matter if it didn't? It was used to transport Others. It was manned by Others, too … traitors to their kind who would ferry over prisoners, escapees and people with hope. The problem was, the Others who ran the transfers could be bought and bribed for very little coin. They had little morals and even less integrity. Crystal heard so many rumours about these places, so many things that could go wrong; it made her wonder why anyone dared to make the trip in the first place. What could be so bad in one’s life that it was worth selling a soul for a place that no one wanted to go to?
She’d asked Raven about it once, and he’d given her a smirk. The all-knowing smirk that infuriated her. “Don’t get your hands dirty,” he’d said. She’d never seen Exile. It was like the bogyman story from when she was small. Things parents told their children to scare them into safety, stories of how Others were hunted for sport, how they were killed, tortured. It was a nightmare place.
The first time she had heard of the place, she’d had nightmares for a week. Her aunt had told her about the witches over there. They used real sacrifices when it came to magic, because it made magic stronger. Powerful magic needed blood and death, but it was a dangerous magic, a dark magic. Magic that would cost so much more than anyone could realise. “Once the black touches you,” her aunt had warned, “It’ll always want a taste. Dark magic never runs out, and it never grows tired.”
The scariest part was that magic over in Exile wasn’t monitored or governed by any authority. At least in Society, witches were helped to control their powers, to stop from going crazy with it. An unwatched witch
was a firework. The question was how long she would take before she exploded and set everyone around her on fire. Crystal never even wanted to think about that. White magic, that was what she stuck to, or had.
“That is where Shayla is?” Jason asked. He was peering out of the window at the place ahead of them. Crystal had been trying her best not to stare at him, but God, he was too nice to not look at.
“It’s where Zoey is.” Even after all this time, saying that was still something she had to take and swallow and deal with it. Some intense part of herself yearned for the girl she remembered, the one who’d shared all the same dreams and adventures.
“It doesn’t look like anyone is in there,” he said, turning to her. “It’s more like a decrepit—a death trap.”
She frowned and glanced past him, not understanding, because the building wasn’t what she would describe as decrepit. “What? It’s not a … Oh.”
He cocked his head. “Oh?”
“Tell me what you see.” She pointed at the building. “What does it look like to you?”
He gave her an odd expression. “I see a knackered looking building that’s falling apart.”
“No lights?”
“Lights? No. What lights?”
She shifted in her seat, so she could lean up to him. She didn’t want to do this … she really didn't want to. Touching him was such a bad idea in any capacity. She slammed her mental walls into place first, blocked him. If he really was her familiar, then she should be able to control the influx of magic that came off him and into her. She was ready. “Close your eyes,” she said. She knelt on her seat, so she was higher than him and her head was practically touching the roof.
“What are you doing?” He leant against the passenger door, as if he was ready to leap out.
“Trust me a second. Look that way.” She pointed at the building. “Close your eyes.”
Carefully, she placed her hands above his temples, hovering them with reluctance and a pinch of fear that knotted in her stomach. She bit on her lip. She was suddenly afraid … apprehensive as to what would happen next, but everything was in place. She checked her shields, checked the status of her magic levels and her walls. It was all locked down tight, safe and secure, but God, she could feel the heat coming off Jason. It was like holding her hand in front of a burner. She had to do this.
She placed both hands against his hot skin, palms touching his temples. Slowly, she let her fingers straighten so she could shield his eyes the way one might do with a horse when applying blinkers. Essentially, that was what she was giving him … blinkers, but in reverse. “Open your eyes now,” she whispered, feeling that if she spoke too much, she would lose control of herself and her walls would crash down around her ears and leave everything in pieces. Whatever it was between them was so desperate to come through, to smash its way in … but … nothing. Only the faint hum of it lingered on the outside as she went through each shield in turn.
“Wow,” he said. She could feel the tickle of his breath along the tips of her fingers, like stroking warm wool. “I … It looks so different. What did you do?”
“Magic,” she said. “Don’t move, just look. Someone put a ward on the place, so you can only see what they want you to see. Looked pretty closed down before, right? To you I mean.”
“It did.” He moved closer without warning, taking Crystal with him. She was shorter than him, and her arms weren't long enough to accommodate the movement he made. She toppled over him, slamming her breasts into his back. Dropping her hands instantly, she tried to catch herself, but the fall had been too far gone. “Shit.”
He twisted and caught her as she tried to scramble out of the way and back to her seat. For a brief moment, her eyes locked onto his and something cool and familiar seeped into her skin, into her.
“I …”
His mouth was an inch from hers, so kissably close she could almost taste him.
“Sorry,” he said, pushing her back and breaking the link. Her stomach clenched at the sudden rejection, even when it shouldn’t. “I didn’t mean to move.” He nodded back towards the building. “It all looks the same again.”
“Yes.” She brushed her hands down her front almost as if she could brush away the feel of Jason there. “Someone has placed magic over it.” Her heart was beating so wildly in her chest that it sent waves strumming around her body, echoing in her ears like all the blood had rushed there. She sucked in a breath and held it for just a moment. It was all she could do to compose herself. If touching him was a bad idea, body slamming that perfect muscular torso was beyond dangerous, and my God, did her femininity know it. Her brain pinged like a bitch on heat and she shot out of the car. “Give me a second.”
It was handy that she kept a bag of tricks with her. It was even handier that she kept them in the boot of the car and it would give her the moments peace she needed to calm herself down and get back onto the task at hand, instead of thinking about the thousand ways she could take Jason to her bed. It was beyond crazy. This was what happened when she decided to just focus on school and teaching. Lord knows her last dates had been nothing short of idiots, but Jason … if he was her familiar, then damn, she was in trouble, or he was. That would depend on one’s perspective.
Returning to the car, she didn’t get back in and close the door. Instead, she opened it and the handed Jason a virtually empty tube of cream. It was enough, though, and they were shit out of luck if it wasn’t because she didn't have the time to brew anymore. That one tube alone needed a good forty-eight-hour setting time, and that was cutting it as short as possible. “Take a small blob of this and rub it across your eyes.”
“My eyes?” His hand had stopped mid-air when he went for the tube, but she thrust it at him, so he had to take it.
“Yes,” she said. “It’ll cancel out the magic … the illusion over there and let you see what is real.”
He uncapped it and then sniffed at the end. It made him jerk his head back and screw up his face. “What’s in it?”
She shrugged and then sat herself at the edge of the driver’s seat, not getting in the car fully. “Some herbs. Nothing that’s going to make you go blind. Don’t worry. Just rub it across your eyelids.”
The tube was plain white with no writing other than a code she had scrawled across it, and the date it was made, neither of which meant anything to him, but still he turned it over in his hands as if he might find some secret words written there. Like maybe … ‘Warning. Not for optical use.’ When he was satisfied, he squeezed a small pea sized blob onto his finger and then rubbed his thumb over it. “My eyelids?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed a while, watching the cream ooze between his thumb and forefinger, then he gave himself a nod as if he had decided he was going to do this. He rubbed it slowly across one lid, testing. Perhaps he worried his eyeball might fall out. It didn’t. At worst it would make his eyes swell up, maybe make them red and itchy. She didn’t tell him that part of course. If they were going into that building, and she was pretty sure they would be, he needed to be able to see through the magic.
Blinking a couple of times, he opened his eyes wide, making his forehead crinkle. “Wow,” he said, putting his head back and looking all around him. “It’s amazing. I mean …”
“Pretty colours?”
“Like everything is alive. Is this how you see the world all the time?” he held his hand out in front, brought it close, took it back … back and forth. “I feel like I could set everything on fire with just my hands.”
“That would be handy. You see colour?”
“Oh yeah.” She loved the way he said that. It ignited something, and she was pretty sure he was right … his hands could set something on fire … her. “I see a whole damn spectrum. I don't even know what some of these shades are called.”
“Give it a moment. You’ll get used to it.” She got back out of the car then and this time closed the door and locked it. They had parked far enough away that if anyone was loo
king from the building, they’d not see them in enough detail to know who they were. Most likely, they’d be mistaken for people taking a walk along the side of the river. It was a place for that with its slated path and fine greenery all around. The trees were bare, oddly beautiful in their darkness as their spiny branches reached out hundreds of twigs. She’d take an autumn stripped tree any day over one that was covered in green. Trees were such a sight to behold in their raw state like this. She loved it.
“How long does this last?” Jason asked as he got out of the car and came around the front to stand near her.
“I don't know,” she said. “I’ve never actually used it on anyone else before.”
Right then, he froze. “You’ve never …”
“Have your eyes fallen out?” she asked him before his ticking mind could ask anything else.
“No, but …”
“Good.” She smacked his arm in a friendly gesture. “Come on. I want to get us closer to the building.”
Chapter 11
The path split off into a fork. Across one way, the path ran along the edge, and in winter, when the tide was high, and the weather was bad, the waters would cover the path and flood the grounds around it. The other direction ran along a path that raised eventually to a path that wound its way around the whole place. It ran a nice direction between the trees and the hedges. Both paths were rarely used, though, and Crystal could see it was no coincidence. The magic was subtle, almost undetectable, but it was there, warding the place and putting off people who would walk this way and then accidentally stumble onto the docks.