by Keary Taylor
And it was then that I realized that Gerald had yet to come out from the ocean.
My eyes scanned the horizon, but there were no signs of him.
“Margot?” a scared voice called.
My head whipped back, and I watched as Amy came running out to the arch, her date in tow.
“Call 911!” I screamed to her, praying she could hear me across the beach.
Her eyes found Nathaniel lying in my lap, and the five other boys laying sprawled on the sand. She turned and ran back to the school.
Turning my attention back to Nathaniel, my heart broke out into a sprint again. I tried to remember the babysitting training I’d done years and years ago, on how to check for a pulse and how to do CPR.
I pressed my fingers into the side of his neck and waited.
His pulse was there, but it didn’t feel strong to me.
I tore his suit jacket open and yanked his shirt up.
A massive bruise was already spreading on his left side. What did that mean? Internal bleeding?
This was bad. I didn’t know anything about medical care, but I knew Nathaniel wasn’t good.
Tears sprang into my eyes and my heart plummeted into the souls of my feet.
I couldn’t let him die. We had our entire lives to live. We’d just promised it. We were finally at our beginning.
I couldn’t let him die.
We’d read nothing about healing magic. I didn’t even know if it was possible.
But I placed my hand on Nathaniel’s chest, and I willed him to live. I imagined all the injuries inside of him and I pictured them healing. I begged his body to tap into his magical blood and heal itself. I pleaded for his lifeforce to stay inside of him.
The waves continued to crash. It started snowing harder. The wind was picking up.
I was ice cold. But I felt nothing.
I willed Nathaniel to live, because I loved him, and he deserved to live.
As I heard the sound of sirens approaching, I looked down at Nathaniel’s ribcage. The bruising wasn’t gone, but it was less. And I could actually see his chest rising and falling.
He wasn’t waking up, but I thought it was better.
It was chaos. Paramedics and police swarmed the beach, and with the noise and commotion, dozens of students flooded to the shoreline, watching.
They all peppered me with questions. Who was injured the worst? Nathaniel. What happened?
I had to think quick, because I couldn’t logically explain it all.
They were drunk. Out of their minds. They’d been beating Nathaniel up. Most of them were already passed out when I got down here. I pulled Nathaniel away from them. Maybe they were on drugs, because they all went down like flies.
The paramedics whisked them all away in ambulances, two to each.
I tried to go with Nathaniel, but the police stopped me.
“We’re going to need you to come down to the station and give an official statement,” one of the officers said, holding a hand up in front of me, standing between me and the retreating ambulance.
“Please,” I begged. “My boyfriend, he doesn’t have any family. I’m all he has. I need to be with him.”
“Ma’am,” the officer said, losing his patience. “You’ll see him soon. But first, you need to tell us what happened after you’ve calmed down.”
As I watched the ambulance with Nathaniel in it disappear, my father appeared on the grass above me.
“Dad, go to the hospital with Nathaniel!” I said, panic and relief flooding into me. “Please! Don’t make him be alone!”
“Where are you going?” he asked. I could see the fear in his eyes, the panic. He’d done this dance before, being questioned for something he hadn’t done.
Except I did do this.
“We need to take her in for questioning about what happened here,” the officer explained.
I saw the fight surge in my father’s eyes. I saw him draw in a breath.
“Dad, please,” I begged before he could say anything. “Go be with Nathaniel. I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t like it. I knew he’d do anything for me, he’d fight any battle I asked.
But he knew me. He knew what I really needed right then.
So he nodded, and he turned, and ran back for the car.
“Let’s go,” I said, in a rush to get this over with so that I could go be with Nathaniel.
Almost everyone who was inside at the ball was now out watching the drama. Who could stay away with the flashing lights and the retreating sound of sirens? When there were six unconscious men on the beach, and they didn’t even know that Gerald still hadn’t emerged from the water.
Was he dead?
Did I drown him?
I didn’t know, and my brain couldn’t process that right then.
With dozens of eyes watching me—the deranged girl with a sea-soaked ball gown and her hair covered in snow—I walked up the path and climbed into the back of the police car parked right on the grass.
Chapter Nineteen
The officers got in with me, and I didn’t look at my peers as we drove off.
I wasn’t afraid until we were pulling into the police station. And then I started remembering Mare McGregor. I remembered the way the witch trials started around the globe. With events that couldn’t be explained. With women who could do things that didn’t make sense.
How many of my kind had died? Because they’d lost their shit and done things that exposed them?
My hands were shaking uncontrollably by the time the officers parked in front of the station, and not just because I was nearly frozen solid. My stomach had disappeared. I could hardly see straight.
So, as they opened the door and let me out, I took a deep breath. I held my head high. And walked inside.
They brought me a blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders, because I couldn’t stop shivering. One kind secretary even brought me a cup of hot chocolate to try and thaw me out.
And then I told my story very calmly.
I told them how David had been pursuing me relentlessly for weeks, nearly to the point of stalking. I told them I’d explained that I was very happy with Nathaniel, but David seemed determined to change my mind.
I told them how I’d seen the five of them acting strangely earlier in the night. That at first, I’d thought they were just drunk. But they weren’t just acting drunk. They were acting violent, dark.
I was lying. I knew lying was bad.
But these were the most powerful boys in the school.
I knew their rich and powerful parents would get them out of any trouble I could get them in.
I knew these cops would believe me, even if they knew that there was no way they could hold these boys to anything.
So, I lied. I said I thought they were on drugs.
And then I told some truth. How they all disappeared. How a friend came and told me that she’d seen the Society Boys take Nathaniel out of the school against his will. I told the police how I’d ran down to the beach and seen them beating Nathaniel and trying to drown him.
And I elaborated my story of them passing out.
How some of them were already down when I got to the beach. How they were stumbling all over and blinking a million times a minute. How they could barely talk. I told them I’d dragged Nathaniel away from them. And how they’d collapsed.
And then they arrived.
“So, what are you going to do about them?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. “They tried to drown Nathaniel.”
The police officers looked at each other and I watched a silent conversation pass between their eyes. And I knew. They knew.
There would be no punishment. Not with families like the Sinclairs involved. The Richards. The Stewarts.
“We will be interviewing all the boys when they’re treated and stable,” the first one said. “We’ll follow standard procedure.”
But we all knew that would lead to nothing.
I just nodded. I k
new, I’d still be on my own. That I’d have to handle the Society Boys myself.
“Am I free to go now?” I asked. My voice was hoarse by this point. I didn’t know if they believed me and my lies. I thought they did. But I was tired. All the adrenaline had drained out of my body. And I just wanted to see Nathaniel.
Once more, they looked at each other, and in that wordless conversation between them, I found my exoneration. They nodded.
“We’ll give you a ride to the hospital,” one said. “We’ll need to talk to those boys as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” I said numbly.
I didn’t even remember walking back out into the snow or getting into their car. I didn’t remember the drive to the hospital.
Just that suddenly I was walking into the doors of the emergency room. I was asking for Nathaniel’s room number. There were white halls. And then a door with a number.
I stepped in, and tears immediately welled in my eyes as I took in Nathaniel, lying in that hospital bed.
He was awake. He looked over at me immediately. His eye was completely swollen shut now. There were stitches in his cheek. I think they’d glued his lip closed.
He wore no shirt, and his ribs were all taped up.
Tears instantly started streaming down my face. I stepped across the room and wrapped my arms around him. Silently, I sobbed into his chest.
His hand came to the back of my head. He kissed the top of my head. But he didn’t say anything. And for that I was grateful. He knew that I just needed to hold him and feel that he was real.
“What happened at the station?” my dad asked from his chair in the corner of the room.
“I told them what I could,” I said as I turned my head and rested my cheek against Nathaniel’s bare chest. “I lied about the rest.”
“Did they believe you?” he asked. His words were quiet and shook just slightly. He was remembering what he’d gone through with my mother’s investigation.
Finally, I stood, but I took one of Nathaniel’s hands in mine. “I think so. But they know they won’t be able to punish the Society Boys. Their families are too powerful.”
My father just shook his head, his expression filled with disgusted anger.
Nathaniel opened his mouth to say something, but just then a doctor walked in. He smiled in my direction but looked down at Nathaniel’s chart.
“Your x-ray results are back,” he said. “You do have one broken rib. And it looks like you’ve broken another recently that’s just barely healed?”
Nathaniel’s brows furrowed in confusion.
But I squeezed his hand.
“Yes,” I answered for him.
The doctor nodded. “The internal damage should have been much worse, considering the break. You’re lucky. Sometimes the internal bleeding can get into your lungs. You can actually drown on your own blood.”
I swallowed once as Nathaniel squeezed my hand. He finally understood.
The Society Boys had broken two of Nathaniel’s ribs. They’d caused massive internal bleeding. No wonder he could hardly breathe.
But I’d put my hands on Nathaniel.
I didn’t know how to heal. So I hadn’t been able to completely heal him.
But I’d stopped him from dying and healed one rib.
“You’ll need to restrict activity for the next six weeks,” the doctor continued, looking up at Nathaniel. “Little bending and twisting. Your rib will heal up, but you need to be cautious since there isn’t any kind of casting we can do for it. Icing it helps. Your lip should close up within a week. Those stitches will need to be taken out in six days. And the swelling in your eye will go down within a few days.”
The doctor stepped toward the door. “We’ll keep an eye on you for another hour to be sure there’s not a concussion. But you’ll be home tonight.”
“That’s it?” I questioned. Nathaniel would have died! And they were sending him home in the same night?
“That’s it,” the doctor said with a nod. And then he was gone.
I shook my head. I was angry and scared and unsure about what was going to happen.
“You saved him, Margot,” my father said softly, pulling me out of my spiral.
I looked at him. He looked proud. And worried, because he was a historian and he was just as aware of what had happened to the past mages as Nathaniel and I were. But he looked proud.
I looked back at Nathaniel.
He squeezed my hand again. “My shield maiden in a bloody gown.”
Looking down at myself, I really was a mess. Nathaniel’s blood was all over the front of the dress. And the bottom half of it was stained with saltwater, white ring lines all over it.
I laughed, more tears falling down my face, and shook my head.
“This has been the craziest night of my life,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. “From the best, to one of the absolute worst.”
My eyes flicked to the door, where I saw the police walking down the hall, asking for Borden Stewart’s room.
“So, uh, we better get our stories straight,” I whispered.
I told Nathaniel and my father everything I’d told the police. We lined up all the details and were just finishing when the same officers who had driven me here stepped into the room.
“Nathaniel Nightingale,” one said. “We’re sorry to hear you’ve been injured. If you’re feeling well enough, we’d like to ask you some questions. We’re still waiting for all the other boys to wake up.”
And something sparked in me. Now that I had magic, I had so many things to think of. I had exposed myself, in so many ways.
I’d blasted them out into the ocean. I’d knocked them out with some dark sparks that came from my hand.
What if they remembered all of that?
I looked down at Nathaniel. I held his eyes, hoping and praying that he understood what I had to do as I bent down to kiss him. I didn’t know if he understood, but I saw that he trusted me. He gave just one little nod.
“We’ll wait outside,” I said, nodding for my dad to get up. And he didn’t hesitate as he stood, and walked with me outside of the room, and pulled the door closed behind him.
“What if they remember?” I said in a whispered hiss as we walked down the hall a few paces. “What I did to them? They might say something, and most people wouldn’t believe them, but they come from powerful families.”
I watched Dad’s eyes widen and fear spark in his eyes. He looked up and down the hall. “So, what? We run? Disappear?”
I pulled back, looking into his face with shock. “No,” I said. “I make it so they can’t remember a damn thing.”
I think it really hit Dad then. What I was. What I could do. What his wife could do.
He got really pale.
He looked a little scared.
But in the end, he took my hand, and he nodded.
We walked down the hall, and thankfully, just in the very next room, we found Howard Starrling.
Dad kept watch while I walked up to Howard’s bed. He slept peacefully. Maybe not peacefully. I had no idea what I’d done to him.
I’d only briefly read through the book when we were sorting through them. A book on altering or stealing memories. So, I had no idea how to do this correctly.
But I stepped up beside him. I placed my fingertips to the temples of his head, and I let my eyes slide closed.
I pulled up my recollection of a few hours ago. And I listened.
There was an echo in Howard. And suddenly what I was seeing was from his perspective. Everything was funny and he was happy to make Nathaniel pay for being such a weirdo. He’d kicked Nathaniel and pushed his face under the water.
Hot rage flared through me, turning the memory red.
And with it, I saw cracks forming in the memory.
So, I grabbed them, and I twisted them.
I put it in Howard’s mind that they’d taken something just before dinner. Something to make the night fun. Things started getting a little hazy
and black as the night went on.
I showed him passing out face down into the sand after taking a few swings at Nathaniel, and then black.
My eyes slid open and I looked at Howard as I let go of him.
He slept peacefully.
And now I just had to hope that he remembered things the way I told him to.
One by one, I walked to each room. I visited Donald. I went to James.
And to my exceptional relief, just before I slipped into Borden’s room, some doctors went running into a room with a gurney, Gerald Paulson lying on it.
He was alive.
I didn’t kill him.
I visited Borden. I told him to believe what I put in his mind.
And then I moved on to David.
I closed the door behind me as I stepped inside. Which maybe was a bad idea. I had some very dark and violent feelings toward him. But I had to do this.
He lay there still and quiet. No leering stares, no smirks, no look of violence in his eyes as he swung a fist at Nathaniel.
He was just a boy.
But that wasn’t really the case.
I touched my fingertips to his temples. I closed my eyes. And I aligned my memories with his to find them.
I planted the drugs in his mind. I made the night get blurry and dark. I made sure he blacked out just after I started running down the beach, his last memory of me screaming for him to stop.
And I planted seeds. Seeds of letting me go. Seeds of understanding that he and I would never happen. Seeds of Nathaniel being invisible to him.
That’s all I needed. For Nathaniel to be invisible to David. I just wanted David to leave him alone.
And then it was done.
I was proud of myself as I let him go and took a step away. I hadn’t killed him. I hadn’t planted thoughts of torture and massive guilt in his mind. I didn’t think I could. While I didn’t know the extent of my own abilities yet, I really didn’t think I could entirely alter a person’s being. I couldn’t make David into a nice or generous person. I couldn’t turn him around and make him friends with Nathaniel.
But I hoped the seeds would grow into something that made our lives easier.
Because even though he should go to jail for attempted murder and aggravated assault at the least, I knew he wouldn’t. He’d show back up at Alderidge on Monday for finals. He’d be back to finish his final semester after Christmas break.