Chapter 11
Ava wandered around her store. The product was gone—she’d have to replace all of it—but the structure was once again solid, and it looked as it usually did, as though nothing had happened at all. Lawson and Elijah had set things right. As though the tsunami had never even happened.
Except, of course, it had. She might have to start drinking more chamomile tea to manage all the things that kept happening to her.
As if on cue, her mother, Lila, arrived at the door. They hadn’t spoken since Ava dropped the bomb about Lawson, and she didn’t even know if her mother knew she’d been in the disaster.
“Well,” Lila spoke as she entered, “I understand from Zoe that you were nearly killed. Would have been nice to hear from you myself.”
Ava rubbed her eyes. It had been two days since everything turned sideways with the wave, and Ava had spent most of it sleeping. Lawson hadn’t returned, as far as Ava knew—she might have slept through it—and now she was finally able to face her store again.
The slight headache she still had between her eyes lowered her patience. “Mom, it didn’t occur to me to call in between all the vomiting and surviving I was doing.”
“Zoe also tells me that Lawson person saved your life.”
Ava sighed. “Call him that again, and this conversation is over. The fact he saved my life should at least warrant him an increment of respect.”
Her mother held out her hands. “Okay, I didn’t come to fight. I wanted to look at you with my own eyes and see that you were fine. And also to take you to lunch because you’ve been having such an abysmal time lately. May I? Soup? Salad? Something bad for you?”
The idea seemed a lot nicer than cataloging all the things in her store she needed to reorder, which was everything. She and her mother used to do things like this all the time. When they’d been planning her wedding to Mitchell, it had been a regular thing. Then everything had simply stopped.
“Sure, let’s have lunch.” The shop wasn’t open and wouldn’t be for a few more days at least. She followed her mother from the store, took her arm and let her mom float them down many blocks to a place Ava hadn’t been before.
That didn’t surprise Ava in the least. Lila always knew the trendiest places before they were trendy. Sure enough, in the room was everyone who was everybody. At least within their world. As Lawson had pointed out, most people didn’t care one bit about the ladies sitting around lunching within the walls of Chloe.
The atmosphere hushed in the way it always did whenever her mother entered a room. Everyone looked to see what Lila Blakely wore and who Ava was. Ava knew the drill. They’d quickly identify Ava as the weird, wrapped-in-drama daughter and move on.
They were seated at a table near the window and after two glasses filled with water appeared before them, Lila leaned forward. “I must say that you look wonderful. Considering.”
“Um, thanks.” Ava personally thought when she looked in the mirror that she appeared pale. But if her mother thought she looked presentable, that would be good enough. “How are things?”
Her mother waved her hand in the air. “Oh, you know. Fine. The Foundation is doing fine.” Ava wasn’t sure exactly what that was currently. Her mother ran five or six at last count. But Ava nodded and listened, trying hard not to pay attention to what the others were doing in the restaurant, what they were saying and…
A man floated down the aisle toward them, stopping in front of their table. This was highly unusual. Trendy restaurants didn’t use servers anymore, and they’d already presented the water with the typical spell. Why had someone shown up now? He was a tall man, brown hair, blue eyes, and he was wearing expensive clothing—the kind Monica made. Ava swallowed. One thing she could say was that since Lawson came into her life, Ava wasn’t stalking Monica’s clothing line anymore.
Monica had a certain way that she hemmed men’s pants so they wore a little longer around the ankle. Well, Ava didn’t suppose Monica hemmed. Her clothing spells were exact.
“Hello, Mrs. Blakely.”
Lila nodded, smiling brightly at the man. “Jeb, is so lovely to see you again. Have you met my daughter? Ava? Ava, Jeb owns this restaurant, and he’s a chef. Did you know that he does some of the cooking using his hands?”
Ava cleared her throat. How on Earth was she to know any of that? Up until a few minutes earlier, she hadn’t known that Chloe the restaurant even existed. Why would she know anything about how he cooked his food?
“Jeb, Ava owns Pure Luck. Her moisturizers are divine.”
Jeb spoke, which was good because Ava couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. “Ava, it is so lovely to meet you. Your mother tells me the most wonderful things.”
A light went off in Ava’s head. They weren’t just having lunch. Her mother hadn’t picked Chloe because of the new trend or the good food. She’d picked it because of Chef Jeb standing in front of her. This whole thing had been orchestrated so she could meet Jeb.
Ava sat back in her seat. She could put up with this, but it would kill something inside of her to do so. “Mother. What have you done?”
Her mother fake giggled. “Now, darling what do you mean?”
Ava pointed at her. “Don’t do that. I know what’s going on here and Jeb does, too. I’m sorry Jeb. I would have loved to have eaten here, but now I’m going to have to leave. My mother thought I wouldn’t make a scene in public because I have a history of cowering when other people are around. She apparently didn’t tell you that I’m in a committed relationship. With an Enforcer.” Jeb paled a bit, and Ava felt bad for the dig; it had been more for her mother than anything else. “Who just saved my life.” Ava stood, turning her attention entirely to her mother. “I’m not dead or being held captive because of that man. Elijah came from a different social status and you never pulled this with Zoe.”
Lila pointed at Ava’s seat. She spoke through clenched teeth. “Sit down. Your sister could do as she liked. She doesn’t have your special circumstances.”
Ava shook her head. “If you do this again, you’ll never see me again. Do you understand?”
With that spoken at a lower tone, she left her mother sitting there in the restaurant, all eyes on her back. At some point, even she—the worst witch in witching school, the constant worry to her family—got to say no more.
She had to walk all the way back to her store and when she arrived there, bypassed the entrance and got into her car instead. Her pulse was in her ears. It was one thing for Ava to have her own worries about her future relationship with Lawson. It was another thing for her mother to sabotage it before it even began.
Ava drummed her fingers on the steering wheel the whole way to Lawson’s strange warehouse where she could talk and he’d hear her. Among other things, she wanted to talk to him about this place. How and why had he chosen it for this purpose? Why had he seemed so unbothered when they’d visited that woman who turned out to be a witch and she was married to a human? Did that happen a lot more than people knew?
How did he keep finding her?
She climbed out of the car and marched inside. The instinct to flee wasn’t there, and she just started talking.
“Hi. Hope you’re well and safe. Um, I just made a scene. My mother tried to set me up without my consent. Brought me to a restaurant so I could meet the chef. Lest you hear about it, I didn’t want you to think I knew. That’s all. Not sure why I ran over to tell you. I feel a little foolish now. Have a great day.”
She turned on her heel and left. Next time she got the urge to drive over here just to talk, she was going to do something else instead. If she and Lawson were to have a relationship, she couldn’t let it be between herself and the walls of the strange warehouse he spelled. Most women didn’t have these problems with their new boyfriends. She didn’t think. Not dating for all of those years left her at a deficit in terms of knowing how these things exactly went.
Ava pulled the car back to her store to find a man she didn’t recognize standing
outside of it. Did he want something? The big Not Open For Business sign on the door should have alerted him that she wasn’t currently selling things. Ava approached him slowly. He didn’t look dangerous, but she’d been strapped to a table days before, and she knew she couldn’t be too cautious. Madmen and strange waves could show up at any time.
He was a smaller man, coming in only a few inches above her own short stature. He had gray hair around his ears and was otherwise completely bald. He wore a blazer with dark pants and a red shirt over his white collared dress shirt. Overall, the impression he gave was wrinkled.
“Ms. Blakely.”
She nodded at him. “I’m afraid we’re not open. The store got hit pretty badly during that tsunami. I’m still getting things back together.” And trying to find her footing, but she wouldn’t tell this stranger that.
“Yes.” He nodded. “I realize this is an unusual way to approach you. But I’m told you don’t deal in magic so I couldn’t send you an introduction the normal ways.”
Ava shook her head. “I don’t not deal in magic. I’m magic-less. So, yes, I wouldn’t have heard your voice in the room and accepted your greeting. I wish I could have. How can I help you, sir?”
“Oh, my apologies, I didn’t understand.” He bowed slightly. “My name is Lachlan Steinbach. I’m a Healer at the Prestige Institute. I used to work elsewhere, but now I’m there. Elmer, who you recently became acquainted with, was my patient before he escaped the first time. Now, he’s back with me.”
Ava rubbed her arms, cold traveling over her body. She’d hoped not to hear that name again any time soon. “Well, I hope you can keep him in this time. On one hand, he saved my life. On the other, he had me tied to a table in a shed. I have mixed feelings about him.”
“He’s never been violent. I mean never before. That’s why when he got out we looked for him, but also felt okay about him vanishing. He would never hurt anyone. We can’t make sense of him. The things he said, the things he did, none of it makes any sense to us.”
She cleared her throat. “Why are you telling me this?”
“He keeps talking about you. How you are like him.”
Ava opened the door to her shop, and Lachlan followed her inside. “I don’t have power. So, unless he can do nothing, he is not like me nor I like him.”
“Would you come see him?”
Ava stopped moving. The air in the shop seemed to still. “Why would I? Why would you want that?”
“I’d like to see you with him, see what he says. You’d be under my protection the whole time. He couldn’t hurt you, although I don’t believe he wants to. I think he thinks you can help each other. I realize this is highly unlikely that you will come. I knew even approaching you, I’ve risked having my funding ripped away.”
She shook her head. “Why would that happen?”
“Well,” he said, adjusting his tie, “because of your family.”
The image of her mother’s face when she stormed out of the restaurant passed through her mind. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that, actually. I’m not going to go around tattling that you’re here, and even if I did… Well, I don’t see eye-to-eye with my family most days.”
“That’s a relief. Look, there’s no reason for you to want to help except that maybe you’ll want to do the right thing. In our society, when people aren’t well, we get rid of them. The humans do to an extent, but not as much as we do, as though they don’t exist. I didn’t know that you couldn’t do any magic, but now that I do, perhaps you understand what it is to be disenfranchised. So few of them can be truly helped because we put no time or resources into helping them.” He shook his head, his gaze far away. “I’m a stranger asking you to help me help a stranger.”
She cleared her throat. “A stranger who happened to save my life. Before he tied me up.”
“He says that he tied you up so that you wouldn’t hurt yourself when you came to. Elmer is not violent. He’s confused.”
Ava sighed. There was nothing she could have said that would have motivated her more to help. “I’m not sure what I can do, but if you think that seeing me with Elmer will somehow help him, then I suppose I’m game to help.”
The only thing she had left to do otherwise was order supplies. It could wait twenty-four more hours.
The Prestige Institute was bigger than she’d imagined in the hours it took her to get there. Lachlan had wanted to transport her, but she didn’t know the man from anywhere. She wasn’t going with him. If she could arrive at Prestige on her own and walk through the doors, then she’d believe it could be safe.
As it turned out, Lachlan had to fly hours to get to her so he’d gotten on his way. She’d collected some food and followed, but on the train instead. It wasn’t easy for humans to get to Prestige; it wasn’t meant to be, since it was where they locked up the magically unwell. Some of the people could be dangerous.
She’d listened to the sounds of the train, eventually arriving at her location where Elmer’s doctor had sent a car to pick her up. It was too late to go to Prestige that evening so he’d put her up in a hotel nearby. The whole thing had happened so smoothly she’d hardly had time to think about any of it before her head hit the pillow hundreds of miles away from where she’d expected to be that evening.
Eventually, the sounds of a new place woke her up. She crossed to the window of the hotel room. It was small but clean and seemed to use all the space in an organized way that made the room seem bigger than it was.
She stared out the window as the sun rose. Half of her expected Lawson to appear. He’d said he would always find her. But maybe his efforts to catch the hexer had finally paid off. She couldn’t expect him to simply keep popping in and out of her life just because she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
After a quick breakfast, served by a woman who didn’t speak English, she set out to walk half a mile to the Institute. By the time she made it there—most of it uphill—she hoped she didn’t stink from the sweat making her glisten. It would have been a good time to see if the new deodorant she sold worked as well as she thought it did except she didn’t have any post-tsunami.
Not being in town, she didn’t know if there was any news on that or not. Who would have sent that particular spell, and what was up with the weather in general?
And how in all that was good in the universe had she ended up at a place she’d never imagined visiting in her life? Although, perhaps she should have. If her parents had been anything other than Blakelys, she might have been locked away for having something so wrong it couldn’t be fixed.
“Thank you for coming.” Elmer’s doctor wasn’t chatty, but she appreciated the efficiency with which he brought her through the residence.
Ava liked the look of the place. She’d expected it to look more like a human hospital. Instead, it was a big house with lots of rooms—more than she’d ever seen—and that was saying something since some of the richest witches lived on huge estates. Who was paying for this?
The doctor eyed her sideways. “Don’t be angry. I’m somewhat psychic. I can hear your thoughts in here. The place is particularly spelled to give those of us with that ability a fighting chance to help the residents. To answer your question, a family with the name of Maxwell has funded this place for the last five years. Their eldest daughter is a resident here. We take good care of our patients. I have the privilege of bringing in whomever I like. When I heard Elmer had been found and brought back to confinement, I had him moved here.”
That sounded lovely. She didn’t know the Maxwell family, but if they were this wealthy, then she could all but guarantee her parents did.
And Ava would be watching her own thoughts very closely. The doctor seemed nice, but she’d rather he didn’t walk around in her head unescorted hearing everything she thought.
Elmer wasn’t locked up but paced a bedroom, staring outside. He jumped when they walked into the room. In a pair of plaid pants and a white t-shirt, he looked less frightening than he ha
d in the shed. Also, someone had trimmed his hair and shaved his face. He looked shrunken or maybe it was simply that she wasn’t near death and she wasn’t strapped to a table.
He jumped toward her and then stopped. The doctor shook his head. “Not close to her, Elmer.”
The doctor must have spelled him backward because Elmer winced as though he’d been struck though no one had touched him.
“Okay. You have to tell him, Ava. You have to tell him what we hear so he understands I’m not crazy.”
She swallowed. “I know you want me to know what you’re talking about, but I don’t. I really came because I wanted to thank you. I wanted to say that I know you saved my life. Thank you.”
“That’s the thing.” He wrung his hands. “I know because the earth told me how to save you. It spoke to me as it always does. As it does to you. It told me it speaks to you. That you can hear it, too. So I mixed things I didn’t know what they were, and I saved you. The earth speaks to me.”
Witches didn’t hear voices. They certainly didn’t hear the earth speaking even as connected as some were to nature. “I appreciate more than you can know that you saved me. But I can’t lie to you. I don’t know.”
He sunk to the floor, rocking back and forth. “You do. You do. You do.”
She stepped back. “I am sorry.”
Her heart broke for this man she had been so afraid of just days before. He was sick and alone. He’d believed she was like him, and he’d saved her life. Ava had little to offer anyone, but if she could, she would help Elmer.
“What does he need?”
The doctor gave her a small smile. “I hoped that he had a reason, that he did indeed have something he connected to. I’m sorry. It was false hope. You came all this way.”
“I got to thank him.” That was something.
“Thank you, Ava Blakely.”
She’d never understood why everyone insisted on using her last name. The doctor shook his head. “It just seemed a natural thing to do.”
Yes, she needed to go. She didn’t want to be somewhere where everything she thought could play right into that man’s mind. Ava threw a glance at Elmer. She doubted she would ever see him again.
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