Ash and Ember: Book 2 of the Scorched Trilogy

by Lizzy Prince

  “There is risk involved either way. If we leave your magic bound, Hattie can’t access it. But, as we’ve seen…” Munro’s nostrils flared, and his jaws clenched, “She’s not above using others to force you to release your magic.”

  I stared at him, seeing the pain and betrayal of what Hattie had done to him eating away at him like a disease. He rubbed his hand over his face, the motion making a dull rasping sound.

  “At least if we release your magic, you’ll be able to protect yourself. Maybe we’ll even be able to stop her from hurting more people.”

  Eyes were shifting back and forth between me and Munro while everyone watched on quietly. Pressing my lips together, I bit down, needing a little pain to reorient myself, like a pinch to make sure I wasn’t dreaming this whole thing. Or more aptly like I was trapped in a nightmare.

  Chapter 8

  “I want to go talk to her,” I said to the room and could see worried looks on all of their faces.

  It was Mari who eventually responded, “Okay. I’ll go in with you.”

  I almost told her that she didn’t need to, but I stopped myself. Maybe she did need to. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to control my own actions and maybe Mari needed to hear Hattie’s answers too. Maybe Hattie would be able to use her powers and hurt me while I was in there. Who the hell knew.

  Mari shook her head gently, understanding my fears. “I’ll just be there for moral support. We placed a spell on the rope that is binding her. She can’t do magic while she’s contained.”

  “Okay then. Let’s go.” I stood abruptly, my movements stiff and wooden. There was a desperate need moldering inside of me to demand answers from her but the fear of what I might find out was also terrifying. This woman had been my mother’s best friend. How did they go from that to where we were today?

  I caught Munro’s worried look out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t have the emotional energy to reassure anyone right then. My focus was on moving one foot in front of the other. When we got to the door, Mari opened it, and I heard Lola before I saw her.

  “Oh, thank God. She keeps staring at me like she wants to rip my head off.” Her voice trailed off as she saw me through the open door, and her eyes roamed over me assessing and dismissing me within a blink. She raised her brows and brushed past us. “She’s all yours.”

  I stepped into the room with more authority than I felt and would have been impressed at my ability to fake confidence if I wasn’t sweating like a sinner in church. Hattie was sitting in a hard-backed wooden chair that matched the one in Munro’s bedroom. Her hands were tied behind her back with her feet bound and tied to the chair. Someone must have thrown her to the ground when they’d fought her at the crash site because her clothes were dirty and torn. Her hair was half unfurled from her chignon making her look like a housewife on acid. But her eyes were steady and sane, and that was what scared me the most. After all of the things she’d done, for her to sit there and stare at me like she’d done nothing wrong—I didn’t know how to process that.

  “I’m not really in the headspace to have a session right now, Annie.”

  Her voice was subtly sarcastic as if I’d come in with the intention of discussing my feelings. All it did was serve as a reminder that she’d stolen my fears and hopes and hurt over the last two years, by pretending she’d been there to help me. It only made me want to add another layer to the icy wall that protected my heart.

  “Well, I think it’s safe to say I’m done with therapy for now. It’s time for you and me to have a Q&A session instead.”

  Hattie tilted her head, searching my face and nodding as if she found the answer she was looking for there. “Yes. You’re right. I think it’s time we had a frank discussion.”

  Mari had crossed the room to sit in a chair tucked away in one of the corners. It allowed me as much autonomy as possible in the confined space while still offering the support of her presence. The den wasn’t large, but there was enough room for a large ornate cherry wood desk and winged-backed chair covered in a fussy floral print that must have been original to the house. The walls were covered with book-laden shelves and a musty smell that reminded me of the library. There was an ornate Persian rug covering most of the hardwood floor and a small couch that sat under a window on the left side of the room. Hattie sat in her chair primmer than should have been possible in our situation, directly across from the couch.

  I sat on the edge of the couch, grateful for the small bit of sunlight that filtered in from the window, which was shining warmth down on part of my arm and leg. I glanced at Mari, and she gave me an encouraging smile to show she was there to support me, even if she didn’t speak. That smile was enough to fortify me as I turned back to Hattie, looking her directly in the eyes.

  “Why did you kill my parents?” No sense in lobbing softballs.

  Hattie sighed as if disappointed that this was my first question. Well, fuck her.

  “Your dad was just collateral damage,” she said as if she’d accidentally stepped on a flower in the garden while out trimming bushes. Not like she’d taken someone’s life. Anger roared inside me and I felt the burn as blood rushed to my face.

  “He was a person,” I snarled at her. “He was one of my people. He was kind and open and loving. Don’t talk about him like he was a piece of garbage.” My voice rose with my rage, and I fought to keep a rein on my temper.

  Hattie pursed her lips as if displeased with my show of emotion and continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  “Did they tell you that your mom and I were best friends?” she asked evenly, nodding her head in the direction of Mari. But I knew she meant all of them. Mari, Ryan, Munro.

  “Yes,” I replied just as evenly, and she smiled as though she approved. But it was brittle and I could see through her faltering exterior.

  “Your mom was two months older than me, and I always looked up to her.” Hattie shifted a bit in her seat, the ropes creaking with her movement, as if the thought made her uncomfortable.

  “We grew up knowing that we both had magic. Our families had been friends for a long time. And while we didn’t have to keep it secret from each other, we had to keep it secret from everyone else.” A flash of anger reflected in her eyes before she got control of it and fixed her icy facade back in place.

  “It upset Caroline more than me. She was fascinated with trying to learn more about our magic. She would dig through both of our parents’ old books hoping to come across some history of the family and our magic.”

  The mention of my mom’s tenacity had me tensing. She had been unrelenting when it came to learning of all kinds. Once she’d become obsessed with Napoleon and for months on end she’d read every book she could get her hands on. She had randomly recited dry facts over dinner and anytime we’d been driving somewhere until my dad and I had begged her to stop. It held true with what I knew of her. She had been a teacher and had been ferocious about knowledge, but not in the way that Hattie was painting her.

  “She found a book of spells for boring things like enhancing crops and bringing on rain. She insisted we try them out, and we quickly went through the whole book. Our garden was incredible that year.” She laughed as if the memory was a fond one, and it made my heart trip and skip a beat as confusion battered my brain. She sounded like she was reminiscing about an old friend, but this was an old friend she had murdered. How do you reconcile those two facts?

  Her smile drooped into a frown, and her eyes stared off unseeing as she continued, “We left for college the next year, and your mom was determined to find more books about magic. It became an obsession for her. She’d stop in every used book store we came across and even searched online, clunky as it was back then.”

  “When I met Dermott, I lost interest in her pursuit. I didn’t care if I had more magic, I was happy with him.”

  Mari’s chair creaked as she shifted in the corner, and I could tell there was something she wanted to interject. But she just frowned and crossed her arms remaining
a silent observer. Her jaw was clenched though, and I could tell she was fighting the need to speak out.

  Hattie either didn’t notice or just plain ignored her as she continued.

  “Caroline came to me with a spell to enhance our magic. Dermott and I had married, and Munro was already a few years old. She needed my help because the spell required more magic then she had on her own.”

  Hattie trailed off, and I could tell she was lost in her memories. The picture she was painting of my mom was so different from the woman I’d known. Her words were describing my mom as if she were an obsessed magical addict. The woman I’d known was kind and giving and generous to everyone she met. She’d taught kindergarten and had more patience than anyone I’d ever met. How could these be the same people?

  “I agreed to help her because she begged me. She was my oldest friend.” Hattie shrugged like that was all it would have required to do bad things. And in a messed up way I kind of understood. What wouldn’t I do for Maggie?

  “Why did she need the extra magic?” My voice was hoarse like I hadn’t used it in a while, and Hattie jolted when she heard it. She looked at me in surprise, and I got the impression that she’d forgotten anyone else was in the room.

  “I don’t know. She never told me.” Her eyes narrowed as anger moved over her like a dark cloud. “I helped her and paid the ultimate price. I didn’t realize that in helping her, I would have to sacrifice Dermott, but that was the price the magic required.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, feeling breathless. Had my mother known that the spell would lead to the death of Munro’s father?

  “In order to activate the spell, I had to take his heart. To get his magic,” she said this so matter of fact that any sliver of pity I may have felt disappeared, just like that. Whatever way Hattie tried to spin it in her memory, she had sacrificed someone she loved for power. Plain and simple.

  Hattie’s eyes no longer looked sane, but rolled over the room, darting from corner to corner as if trying to find a solid object to focus on but failing. Something was not adding up with her story. Anxious, I stood up and moved behind the desk and shook out my hands. I’d been clenching my fists so tightly that little crescent marks from my nails had imprinted onto my palms.

  Turning to face the corner of the room, I stared at the bookshelves and the faded gold and silver titles that ran down the spines of the books. I trailed the tips of my fingers over the bindings, brushing over the books like they were little mountains. Bumping up and down where some of the books stuck out farther than others. I didn’t bother turning around as I asked my next question.

  “You’re saying the magic forced you to kill Munro’s dad?” I asked softly. I knew what it felt like to lose someone you loved. It wasn’t necessarily that I had sympathy for Hattie, but rather that I had empathy because I knew the pain of loss.

  “It was her. Your mother,” Hattie spat out the word like it was rotten in her mouth, and I stilled my trailing fingers but kept my back to her.

  “The spell forced us to sacrifice something we loved,” Hattie shouted, and I turned to find her face a blotchy red. Her hair had unraveled even more, and the flyaway pieces were wild around her head.

  “What did my mother sacrifice?” I asked, my voice tight in my throat.

  “She didn’t. She abandoned her magic when she found out that was the price to pay.” Spittle flew from her mouth, and I felt the first real thrum of fear since walking into the room.

  Gone was the sane-eyed woman who’d greeted me when we’d entered the room. In her place was someone unhinged, a crazy mess of a woman who’d been the arbitrator of her own demise. Despite the story she told.

  “All those times when you had me in your office, why didn’t you take my magic? I didn’t even know I had it.”

  She laughed and appeared truly mad as she looked at me with annoyance.

  “Because your mother bound it with her magic. All of her magic.” She sneered as if disgusted by my mother’s actions. But I didn’t understand what she meant.

  Mari was shifting again in her chair, and my eyes darted to her. The expression she wore was one of pain and sorrow. There were tears pooling in her eyes, and when she blinked they slid down her face in slow rivers.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” Hattie snapped. “That when I ate her heart, there wasn’t any magic left. She’d thrown it all away to bind your magic.”

  Hattie narrowed her eyes at me, and an evil smile curled the corner of her lips. “I don’t even care anymore.” She laughed, and the sound was fractured and frightening, sending a bolt of fear down my spine.

  Once the laughter was out of her system, her face fell into a mask of hatred. “If I can’t have your magic, I’ll just take the retribution. You and everyone associated with your family will pay the price of your mother’s sins.”

  I immediately understood what she was saying. She was outright telling me that Mari and I would be on the receiving end of that retribution. I didn’t even realize I’d backed up until the edge of the shelves pressed into my shoulders and lower back. It felt like baiting a tiger, but I had to know.

  “Why didn’t you just walk away?”

  She laughed, appearing stunned by the question. Her face pinching in confusion and exasperation.

  “You don’t just walk away from that kind of magic. It’s an infection that spreads through every cell of your body until you’ll die without an infusion of new magic.”

  I stared at her because her eyes were wild and unfocused like an addict, a junkie who’d been too long without a fix. Her words were making me sick, and I’d heard enough from her for today. I moved toward the door, and she started to struggle against her bonds in earnest. Pausing at the door, I turned to look at her, making sure she was focused on me before I spoke.

  “My mother walked away.” I left the room, letting the door swing close on Hattie’s irate shrieks.

  Chapter 9

  When I got back out into the living room, everyone was still sitting in the same seats except Lola and Theo who were in the kitchen—bickering by the sound of things. Maggie shot up when she saw me and hurried over, taking in my red face and tight shoulders.

  “Do I need to cut a bitch?” she asked just so I could hear, effectively dousing the tension and causing me to bark out a laugh.

  “Can I keep you on retainer?”

  “You know it. Just remember my fees go up the longer you wait to book.”

  I released a weary sigh. “I need to talk to Munro. Do you want to wait here, or do you want us to drop you off at home?”

  Maggie searched my face and frowned, apparently not liking the idea of separating.

  “You sure you don’t want to just come home too?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  She gnawed on her lips nervously before she responded as if debating whether it was worth starting a fight over. But she looked tired, and I knew she probably wanted to go over to Sam’s and cry on his shoulder and that must have been enough to push her in that direction.

  “Okay, fine. But I’m not happy about it.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Jerk,” she replied as she tried to kick me behind my knee, so my leg gave out, causing me to laugh again. Once I was standing upright again and Maggie was behaving, I turned toward the waiting faces in the living room.

  “Munro, can you give Maggie a ride home?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, but his eyes shifted toward the den as if he was dying to find out what had happened in there. I’m sure he had questions about things too.

  “If it’s okay. I’ll come with.” I left it at that with everyone else listening so intently. Even the arguing in the kitchen had ceased, and I imagined Lola and Theo craning their necks to peer around the corner.

  “Of course,” Munro said as he headed toward the door, grabbing his truck keys from the small table that sat in the front entry.

  He opened the front closet
and pulled out two heavy coats for us to wear since our outer layers had been shredded and littered with glass in the crash. I murmured thanks and put on the wool-lined plaid coat, drowning in both the smell of Munro and the size of the coat.

  We dropped Maggie off with the promise of calling as soon as I knew what we were planning. Sara was out of town on a flight, and Maggie had already called Sam to come over so she wouldn’t be alone. Once we pulled away from the house, Munro and I rode in silence. Neither one of us willing to break the small peace that had settled between us, but I knew it couldn't last.

  Munro was driving aimlessly through town. The December days were so short that the sun had already set. The haloed flares from oncoming traffic and the streetlamps were beginning to give me a headache. This day had been both incredibly long and yet somehow had still sped by. It felt like I’d woken up days ago rather than just that morning. We’d traveled halfway across the country and back and now I was about to ask Munro to do something else crazy.

  Muttering words I never thought would come from my mouth, I said in one long breath, “I want to break into Hattie’s office.”

  Munro stiffened in his seat, and I practically heard the thoughts ticking away in his head. We sat at a stoplight waiting for it to turn from red to green, neither of us speaking as we sat there.

  “Okay.” He drew out the word almost as if he was asking a question.

  “So that’s a yes?” I confirmed, and he turned his head to watch me, looking surprised. He blinked slowly before he turned his head back to traffic.

  “I guess? Do you actually know how to pick a lock?”

  Shit. “No, but I was hoping maybe you would know,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders.

  “Why would I know how to pick a lock?” he asked, bemused.

  “I don’t know!” There was an embarrassing note of panic in my voice. “Can you use your magic or something?”