by T K Eldridge
I called the Commander from my SUV and filled him in on what we knew, then paused the call because Drake was calling.
“What’s the situation?” I asked Drake.
“The ferry capsized and is sinking fast. I called all the flyers I know and I’ve pulled five people out, but we’re going to need a lot of help. The temps are causing hypothermia and the rescuers are going to need dry clothes and hot drinks if they’re going to keep going. Hurry, Sin, it’s really bad.”
“Reinforcements are on the way, Drake. Be careful,” I said and disconnected with him to tell the Commander what he’d said.
“Harbor search and rescue is already on the way, I’ve been told,” the Commander said. “So I’ll have more of us on the way, mostly focused on those who can help with the rescue and recovery. Your Grams is pulling together healers, and she and Evelyn are going to be at the yacht club. Anyone that needs warming or healing, bring them there.”
“Will do, Commander. I’m almost there,” I said and disconnected that call, too. I pulled into the parking lot at the docks and saw an organized team of people putting bodies in bags, or hurrying victims into the club building.
Shifters and mythics may have accelerated healing, but they could still suffer from hypothermia and frostbite. It was difficult to tell what time it was, with the overcast skies, but I looked up when Mira shoved a cup of hot coffee into my hands and gave me a smile.
“Drink that and warm up,” Mira said. “Let someone else load the next batch of body bags.”
I brushed my dripping hair back from my face and drank half of the cup without even feeling the heat. Mira draped a towel over my head and dried my hair, then tucked it in my collar to soak up some of the water.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
“I got here about an hour after you left. I’ve already gone back and collected more supplies twice,” Mira replied.
“Have you seen Drake?” I asked her.
“Yeah, Sid just made him go take a hot shower in the locker room and put on dry clothes. His teeth were chattering constantly – and he’s a dragon, so higher body temps anyway. Your sister may be a research nerd, but she’s damned good as a healer, too.”
“We were all taught from day one,” I said. “She can do it, but her strength lies elsewhere. I’m glad she’s here, though.”
“Everyone’s here, even Grizzell. He’s got his phone strapped to his chest so he’ll hear it or feel it or whatever, but he’s here, helping pull bodies out of the harbor.”
“It’s not a rescue anymore, is it?” I asked her, knowing damned well it wasn’t at this point.
“No. The water is too cold and it’s been hours. Roisin even got a few of the merfolk to help. They dive down and pull the bodies up to the surface where the dragons and griffins scoop them up and put them on the dock. From there, they’re identified, if possible, then bagged and tagged. You’ve already filled two refrigerated containers and there are two more containers coming.”
“How many were on the ferry?”
“It was near capacity,” Mira said, her voice a whisper. “People trying to get home before the storms got worse, people trying to get to the mainland with their little ones to shelter from the storms. Nearly eight hundred people were aboard.”
“My gods,” I breathed and closed my eyes. I opened them again when Mira put a cup of hot soup in my hand and the aroma of the soup reminded me I needed fuel. Drake came and sat beside me while Sid handed him soup and coffee, and we both ate and drank in silence.
Finally, Drake set his empty cups down and scrubbed his face with his hands. “You said one of Ethan’s spirit guardians told you about this?”
“Yeah, Sir Cedric. I’ve worked with him before. He woke up Ethan and had Ethan get me. He noticed the sudden influx of souls into the Fade and knew something bad had happened.”
“If not for the coordinated efforts of all the different species and skill sets, we would have lost a lot more than three hundred people. The speed of the response and the fact we could coordinate across different groups is what saved over five hundred souls,” Drake said. “I’ve lived in a lot of different places, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Drake is right,” Grizz said as he dropped down to sit at my other side, a chunk of bread and a cup of soup in his hands. “A light fae’s guardian wakes a hybrid to call his shifter Commander and his dragon friend to spread the word, while his fae and witch family members gather healers to tend to the victims and his sylph aunt calls out the merfolk to help with the recovery. Shifters, witches, fae, and mythics are all working together here to collect the bodies and heal the injured. That has never before been done. Not like this.”
“Well, he is one of the Prophecy Twins,” Drake said and winked at Sid as she stood beside him and brushed hair out of his face.
“I will bite you if you keep that up,” Sid teased Drake, but there wasn’t a lot of laughter in it. “Sin, there are two new containers being dropped off. They need your help figuring out where to put them.”
“Thanks, sis. I’ll get on that,” I said and put my cups in the trash as I headed back out into the storm.
Chapter Nineteen
Sid
Of the seven hundred and ninety-eight souls aboard the ferry that day, two hundred and eighty-three perished. Five hundred and fifteen survived. Of the dead, nearly one hundred of them were children. To say our community was in mourning would be an understatement.
The council held an emergency meeting and appropriated funds to pay for the funerals of those that perished and the medical care of those that survived. They also fast-tracked the plans to build a series of connecting bridges from the mainland to the islands so ferries would not be the necessity they were now. All of that was well and good, but it didn’t ease the pain and loss.
And yet, the storm raged on.
For myself, I was exhausted. I didn’t sleep well with the wind constantly blowing. Trees continued to come down and one had crashed into the side of the house, throwing off a few shingles and tearing up a gutter, but minimal damage. Drake and a few friends came out with chainsaws and chopped up the downed trees and gathered up the fallen branches into neat piles to the side of our back patio. We brought in a lot of the already seasoned wood to stack near the wood stove, since the power had gone out more than once and while the generator was great for some things, it got cold fast. I found myself curled in a chair near the stove, the heat a comfort, while I wore a noise-canceling headset to shut out the sound of the storm. I worked on my laptop from home since I wasn’t essential personnel, but Drake had to go in. He was partnered with Tasha or Ian, since Grizz had taken some of his leave to be with Glenda.
I finished up my work for the day and pulled the Fortin Grimoire out of its box. I lay it on my lap desk and continued my search. The end of the book was close and I had yet to find the spell to summon the Creators, if it was even in here. Oak had opened the Archives for about a week, then closed them again when the storms picked up. No point in leaving it open when there was a chance of flooding. So, this was my last place to look unless I could talk Oak into letting me in through the portal – and letting me out again later.
Three pages from the end of the book, I found it. ‘A spell to reach out through time’ it said at the top, but when I read the first few lines, I realized it was calling on the Creators to come forth. “Yes!” I yelled into the empty house, then laughed at myself. I pulled off the headset and called Sin.
“I found the spell to summon the Creators,” I nearly shouted into the phone.
“You are awesome,” Sin said. “Was it in the Fortin Grimoire?”
“It was. Three pages from the last written page. It’s entitled ‘A spell to reach out through time’, but when I started to read it, I saw that it was calling on the Creators to come forth and present themselves. I think we need to do this together. When are you available?”
“Do we need a sacred circle?”
I looked over the spell. “No, it doesn’t say we do, but I’d rather do it in Grams’ garden. She’s got a gazebo with a protection circle, so we’ll be outside, but somewhat sheltered and still protected.”
“I can do it tomorrow, I’ve got a timed exam to do tonight. What phase of the moon is it? Will we be okay doing it then?”
“We’re three days from full, so it counts as the power of the full moon. It’ll be a good time,” I told him. “I’ll bring everything we need, but you’ll need your own blade. We have to cut at the same time and put drops of blood in the circle.”
“Roger that. Love you, Sis. Good job. I’ll see you at Grams tomorrow around seven.”
“Love you, too. Good luck on the exam.”
With the call ended, I leaned back and read the spell again, then got to my feet and started to gather what we’d need. Some of it I could get from Grams tomorrow, but some I had here, so I got a bag of things together, then meticulously copied the spell onto clean paper and put the grimoire away.
Once that was done, I sat down with a notebook and made a list of the questions I needed answered. In the heat of the moment, I might forget something important, and I didn’t want to have to do this spell twice. Among the papers Everly Rosemont had given me, were various theories about what the so-called blessing from the Creators really gave us. One of the things was actual immortality. This was not something to take lightly, so before the ferry accident, I had stopped by Sin’s and sat up in his office to talk about what the professor had shared.
“One of the things Dr. Rosemont shared was that true immortality is supposedly part of the Creator’s Blessing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s something I want,” I said to Sin as we sat on the love seat and sipped the coffee I’d brought.
“Why not?” Sin asked.
“Would you want to live so long that you saw every person you ever loved or cared about, turned to dust? We already outlive so many of our friends and loved ones – why make it a forever thing?”
“Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. The idea of seeing any of my children die, or their children? Mira? You? That’s not on my bucket list,” Sin said.
“I didn’t understand just how much Grampa Walsh lost, until I loved Drake,” I said. “He lost his wife, his daughter, her husband, his grandchild – his best friend Marcel. I mean, think about it, that’d be like you losing Mira, Reina, her baby, her husband, and Bastien.”
Sin shuddered and took a sip of his coffee. “I can’t wrap my head around that kind of loss. Yeah, no. I don’t want eternal immortality either. Imagine how exhausting it would be?”
“Nope,” I shook my head. “Not even going to do that to myself. I just know it’s not something I want, and it’s definitely not something I want forced on me without any discussion. I think that’s what has me the most pissed off about all of this. No one asked us if we wanted to be the Prophecy Twins. No one gave us a choice.”
“What’s that quote? Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them?”
“Yeah, Shakespeare. Only we were born with the greatness thrust upon us and we have managed to achieve good lives in spite of all of it,” I said.
“Well, if you ever find that spell, I vote we tell them we don’t want immortality, or their manipulative magics. We have enough to work with that can serve our community, we don’t need more,” Sin said.
“I am behind that, one hundred percent.”
* * *
With that conversation in mind, I made my list and texted a copy of it to Sin for him to add to if he wanted. Then I went to put together a pot of soup that could simmer on the wood stove until it was time for dinner. I felt lighter, knowing I had finally found the spell that would get us some answers, and get the burden of this manipulating magic off of my back.
The trick was going to be getting that little turdmuffin Orion to do what we asked.
I wasn’t holding my breath on that score.
Chapter Twenty
Sin
Sid and I had draped a tarp around the sides of the gazebo and staked it down to cut some of the wind, but it snapped and popped so loud, we still had to shout to be heard. A cinder block acted as our table in the center of the circle, and we put the chalice, our blades, and a small candle in a big jar to try and keep it lit for the spell.
We held hands and as our eyes met, we started to speak. The power surged almost instantly and it caused us both to sway, but our hands gripped tight and we held each other up. My left in her left hand and we both held our blades in our right, then made a small cut on our left hands and held them over the chalice.
“By our blood, we call the Creators now!”
Our bodies shook and then there was a shift that made our ears pop, and Orion found himself seated outside our protective circle, on the gazebo bench.
“Well, aren’t you two just full of surprises?” Orion said.
“We need answers,” Sid said. “And we summoned you to get those answers.”
“And if I’m not interested in giving them?” Orion asked.
“Then you’re stuck inside the spirit trap,” I said and pointed upwards. I had painted a spirit trap on the ceiling – and that’s where he’d appeared. It was a lucky shot – and it paid off.
Orion tried to step away, but he couldn’t, so he sat down and sighed. “Fine, if you’ve gone to this much trouble, I can answer a few questions.”
“Did you give us true immortality?” Sid asked.
“I did. I also gave you the power to achieve whatever you put your energy into,” Orion said.
“We would like both of those blessings removed, please,” I said.
“Why on earth would you want me to do that?” Orion asked.
“We don’t want to be immortal – and watch everyone we love and care for, die and turn to dust. We’ll have more than enough loss to deal with over the extended lifetimes we were born with,” Sid said.
“I can’t imagine that our sanity would be very secure if we had to see that happen over and over and over again,” I said.
“Also, what you think the ‘achieving what we put energy into’ blessing is, it is not a good thing. It takes away others’ free will and is highly manipulative. I accidentally used it and I still feel dirty because of it. I am afraid to do any of my magic now, in case that little boost comes out and twists things,” Sid said.
“Oh,” Orion said and looked thoughtful. “That’s not how we intended those blessings to work. I can see how that might be an issue.”
“Please, we can serve our community well enough with the gifts we were born holding. We don’t need any others,” I said.
“We don’t wish to be considered ungrateful, but those blessings do not serve us well at all,” Sid said.
“I will remove them,” Orion said and clapped his hands together.
Luckily, this time we didn’t pass out, because we weren’t done with him. “Thank you,” I said. “Now please tell us what the prophecy is really speaking to?”
“What do you mean?” Orion asked.
“In the prophecy, it says ‘to save us in this fragile hour’. Was that the ferry accident? Or is there something worse?” Sid asked.
“The ferry accident was most unfortunate, and you and yours acted in ways never before seen among the supernatural community – but no, that was not the hour we spoke of. There is more to come, but it will come soon. You will both need to hold tight and pull everyone together as you did with the ferry situation, or the community you’ve built here will be wiped from the face of the earth,” Orion said.
“Not very encouraging, Orion,” Sid said. “Can’t you give us any more information?”
“All I can say is that it will happen within a week’s time, and you have already done more than expected. If you continue to prepare and act when it all comes together, you and yours should be able to survive it all.” He floated up from his seat and reached out a hand to wipe part of the pain
t away from the spirit trap, then with another ‘pop’, he was gone.
We released our hands, closed the circle, and cleaned up our stuff. We waited until we’d got back into my SUV before I spoke. “Bubba Burgers?” I asked.
“Gods, yes. Please,” Sid replied.
We sat in our favorite booth, ordered our usual meals, and simply ate and drank in silence for the first twenty minutes.
“It’s times like this, I wish Bubba’s served booze,” Sid said.
“I agree,” I replied. “Because I don’t know how to process the fact that something worse is coming. How do we tell everyone we love to prepare for…what?”
“I guess we just tell them what Orion said and let them know we’re as clueless as they are,” Sid said. “They all know we were going to do the spell today, so I’m sure they’re expecting some kind of information, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t think this is exactly what they thought we’d be telling them, though,” I said.
“Me neither.”
I dropped Sid off at her place, then headed to mine. With their move to the mountain house, we were back to living a little closer together – she was more in the middle between the farm and the coast, and I was on the coast. I parked in the garage and decided to unload the spellcasting stuff later. Right now, I wanted a beer and a chance to talk this out with Mira.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge, then headed through the hall to Mom and Dad’s place. The twins were in the playroom while Mom and Mira worked in what we jokingly called ‘the lab’. The old conservatory used to be a walled off room by itself, but when my folks had updated the Estate, they opened a few rooms up and made a kitchen and family room space with the conservatory off to the side. The playroom was through a set of double doors off the family room, so while the ladies were working in the lab, they could see what the little ones were doing. Shelves, cabinets, and rolling island worktops filled the area. A set of glass folding doors could close it off from the rest of the house, but they were rarely used now that the kids were old enough to know better.