Rows and rows of cages stacked on top of each other like moving boxes. White rats with red eyes ran on spinning wheels or alternately huddled together in straw nests. In the corner of the room was a metal-topped examination table. An old man Logan didn’t recognize, frail like Jacob, but with no noticeable magic energy, was strapped to it. Oddly, his eyes looked more hungry than frightened, as he stared down at a rat strapped to a steel tray next to him.
Jacob’s crony poured a liquid substance into an IV drip. The cord ran from the old man’s veins to the rat’s tail.
Logan watched in horror as a beeping machine pumped, and the rat aged backwards, like a time lapse series of photographs. The creature grew younger and younger until it possessed the wrinkled, nearly translucent pink skin of a newborn. Then, just as quickly, the process reversed; the rat regenerated into a full-grown adult, fat and thick with fur, before deteriorating into a skeletal, desiccated thing. Like a rapidly deflating toy, it twisted unnaturally to its side, and then seized with a final jerky gasp before lying still.
What…the…?
Jacob cursed, chastising the lab tech. Clearly that wasn’t the result he was after. The lab tech apologized profusely as he pulled a white sheet over the old man’s body. Shriveled up toes stuck out from the sheet. Jacob’s experiment had killed him, too.
A lot of weird crap went down here, sure, but murder? Jacob experimented on rats? And who was that old guy anyway? A human? A prisoner? He hadn’t looked too keen on escape—wasn’t hollering for help or anything—so maybe he was agreeable to having his fluids intermixed with a rat’s? Unlikely.
Sensing dark energy approaching, Logan jumped back from the keyhole.
He slumped down on the cot as if he was resting. He had mostly recovered, but that didn’t mean he wanted Jacob to know. His father would be much easier on him if he thought he was already beaten down.
Almost as quickly as that poor rat completed its lifecycle, Logan cleared his mind of Lily, his dream memories, and what he’d just seen.
“You’re awake, I see.”
Since playing dumb sometimes worked, Logan decided to go that route. “What happened?” He rubbed his eyes. “Where am I?”
“Someplace safe. I need to protect you from the witch; prevent any further…incidents before the Gleaning.”
“I don’t need protection from her.”
Jacob sighed, and a cloud of black soot exhaled with his breath.
“You are special, Logan, and thus more vulnerable than your brothers. You understand that, right?”
Logan chose to remain silent, which caused Jacob to sigh again. Logan coughed through the volcanic ash.
“The way you’re feeling now—that loyalty you feel for her? The urge to protect her? It is all a result of her enchantment. She cast a spell on you, son. This is why you feel the way you do.”
When Logan still didn’t respond, Jacob pushed further. Logan could see he was digging deep to find restraint, to not unleash rage on Logan before the Gleaning. “You gave her an opening, boy. A chink in your armor. If you are chosen to fight this witch, will you show her mercy, like a lovesick fool? Or will you stand your ground and drain her dry?”
“It’s against the Congression’s rules to drain our opponents.”
He sneered. “Damn their rules. Do you like to see me this way? Old before my time? Suffering? This will be your fate, too, son, sooner than I’d like to admit. We have no choice. The Seven Sisters’ curse left us nothing but enough strength to glean our youth back in this fashion. It may seem barbaric to you, but we are only taking back what was stolen from us. And believe me, they will be doing the same to you. The witches are after one thing and one thing only: your powers. Protect yourself, boy, protect our future. Win this for us.” He paused in the doorway, holding it open for Logan. “Come on, now. You’ve done sufficient penance, and you need to wash up before breakfast. You smell like a diseased garden.”
See All The Trouble You Started?
Lily
“Hey you. I didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”
It was the best I’d slept in ages. One of those deep, utterly comfortable sleeps you never want to wake up from. And now this voice lured me back into consciousness. This deep, sexy, familiar voice. My eyes flew open and saw a blurry but familiar mess of hair hanging over those blue eyes. I blinked. “Logan? How can you be here?”
“You came to my rescue, remember?” he said in a flirty voice.
“I did?” My foggy head wanted to argue that detail, but here I was lying in his arms, my cheek against his smooth, toned chest, my white sheet tangled loosely around our bare linked ankles.
Bare. Linked. Ankles.
“Am I? Did we?”
Smiling shyly, he traced the outline of my jaw, tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “You’re beautiful.”
“I’m naked.”
He smiled wider.
I blinked. “I’m naked in my mother’s house.”
His eyes ran down my body. “No you aren’t. This is our house.”
“It is?”
“I’m the Rognaithe, remember? Our covens are at peace. We have our full powers back. Come on, I’ll show you.”
He pulled on a pair of jeans, and stood next to my window while I threw on a tank top and boxer shorts. He reached out his hand, and I clasped his tightly. There we stood on the windowsill together.
“Remember you wanted to fly? Well, fly.”
I don’t remember telling him I dreamt of flying, but without a second of reservation, I stepped off the ledge. Together we floated from one treetop to the next. From one rooftop to another. Clutching hands, we breezed over the white-capped waves, our chests dipping in smooth salt water. We plunged under, reveling in our shared secrets; and then something strange happened. I couldn’t Breathe; I knew that if I tried, my lungs would fill with water. When he saw the alarm in my eyes, Logan held his amulet to my mouth. When that didn’t work, he reached for my own amulet, but it was gone. Just as salt water threatened to consume me, I woke up again. This time for reals.
I looked around the room, clutching Logan’s warm amulet in my palm. The dream meant nothing, I told myself. It was just anxiety about the Gleaning. My racing heart calmed as I remembered the way he healed me last night with his magic. Soon I was filled with this overwhelming sense of security—as long as Logan and I were together, we were unstoppable.
With a bounce in my step, I popped out of bed and got dressed. I was brushing out my freshly conditioned hair, when I rounded the corner to check my clock and heard a flapping noise like a bird struggling to fly. There, sitting next to my clock, was a glowing book, its pages flipping like wings. Grandma Rose’s journal. The pages stopped flapping, and handwritten ink appeared on a blank page.
His driver picked me up in a carriage dark as night. Its presence chilled my spine like frozen rain. I walked carefully down the icy path, snow crunching under my ill-fitting shoes. I didn’t have to glance over my shoulder to know mother was peering at me through the curtains, watching expectantly.
Through the window of the carriage, I could see his silhouette.
He wore a velvet top hat, and his dark hair was pulled back in a thin black leather strap. My heart fluttered at the sight of him, this mysterious escort.
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When the driver opened the door and waved me inside, my escort glanced up for only a second, a small sardonic smile playing on the corners of his mouth. I was immediately self-conscious that I’d bec
ome the butt of a private joke. After smoothing my heavy skirts beneath me, I entered the cab without the aid of his hand, and sat on the plush leather seat to his right.
When he greeted me, his voice was low but much like his lips, it curled at the edge, as if he might be disguising a friendlier voice behind this purposeful gruffness.
Suddenly, I was aware of my inadequacies. He was surely judging me. And why shouldn’t he? A boy of stature and wealth escorting me, the daughter of a seamstress, to a ball?
Perhaps, with these ill manners, he is not my intended companion after all? Perhaps he is only a stable boy and my real escort is tied up in a stall full of horse droppings waiting to be rescued.
As if hearing my thoughts, he smiled wider, the polite smile of a gentleman greeting a lady, a tiny dimple curved into his cheek.
“That’s better,” I said out loud.
But his eyes didn’t match his smile. They were hard; even in the dark, I noted the ice shivering on the surface of the blue. Not blue, really. An almost lavender, if that could in fact be a true color for eyes. The violet irises were iridescent, translucent almost, and polished like the ribbon of his top hat, like the crystals that hung over Mother’s bed frame, dancing in the light.
In comparison, the sleeves of my dress felt crumpled and tight. My skirts so thick they felt foreign.
Whereas this boy, with his broad nose and full lips, seemed so comfortable in the fitted black tuxedo, he wore with the precision of a fine painting in a custom frame. A puffy silver tie was pulled tight around his collar. I believed it to be an ascot, but didn’t want to shame myself by asking. Yet there he sat with an air of casual grace that was something akin to boredom; I guessed there were few things left in the world that held excitement or novelty for him.
The boy leaned forward and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, cupping his palm over the end to light it. He leaned back and inhaled slowly, studying me with those strange eyes. When he exhaled, I watched the smoke circles expand and diffuse into darkness until a gauzy haze settled in the air between us.
“These carriages are abominably cold, especially in the dead of winter,” he said. His tongue ran over his lower lip as if it was mopping up a spot of ash.
Had he noticed me shivering in my dress? I did my best not to show it. If only I wasn’t so willow-thin, I wouldn’t chill so easily. That’s what mother was always saying, as she spread more butter, poured more milk, and piled more bread. “Eat, Rose, eat.”
“You don’t care for the cold?” I asked, my voice wavering. They were the first words I’d spoken since the initial greeting, and what a witty choice they were, I groaned. He glanced out the window, where frost crawled across the glass like spider webs.
But he answered sincerely. “I prefer the heat of the summer months.”
I nodded. I did, too, which was odd. Mother always preferred the cold. Most of our family did. But I froze in the winter. Couldn’t wait for the first buds of spring to cut through the frozen dirt and gift me their perfumed wisps of summer hope.
The boy gestured for me to sit across from him. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with my jeweled pocket book clutch that mother had borrowed, so I hung onto it on my lap as I made the awkward jump from the seat to his left to the one across.
But instead of asking me the same question, which would have been the polite thing to do, the boy looked down at his shoes, and I didn’t get to say the line about the spring and the flowers as I’d hoped. I didn’t know what to do next, so I looked at his shoes, too. Like everything, his were polished to perfection, and shone brightly in the moonlight streaming through the window.
Again, the fierce agony of inadequacy coursed through what little vanity I managed to possess.
I felt entirely out of my element.
Yet I did not want to get out of that carriage. I’d always longed to go to a magical ball. They were out of the question for a poor, human girl like me, so when an invitation appeared on my pillow, with golden cursive and my name, Miss Rose Garrett, I ran downstairs to show mother. How thrilled I was! I riddled mother with questions about my escort. But she knew nothing more than I. We just knew he’d be of a magic sort as they were the only ones with permission to go to the ball.
She seemed both excited and nervous and…frightened by the prospect, but in the end, she let me go. She didn’t have another choice; when you were invited, you went.
But now, I thought how odd it was to be so entranced by someone who’d rather look at his own shoe buckles than look into his evening companion’s eyes.
We sat there in chilly silence for what seemed like hours, but could only have been minutes, when, abruptly, the driver, a scruffy looking fellow with strange buggy eyes, peeked through the door and asked if we’d like to take the scenic route. My terse companion replied, “I like the way the fields look at night.” The driver responded swiftly with the snap of his whip across the beasts’ backs. I felt the sting, too, as the horses neighed and bucked into the crisp ink air.
I was jerked back into my seat as the mighty hooves pounded on the frozen dirt road, and the carriage took off once again into the night.
“You alright there, Rose?”
“Yes, thank you. Just a swift rush I hadn’t anticipated.”
The boy watched me from under thick dark lashes as we bounced along. When I could no longer bear looking away, I caught his eye and his amethyst eyes flashed so briefly I thought I might have imagined it. But I knew I hadn’t. He was a warlock after all. He was capable of much more than that. Why had he chosen this scenic route? Why would he spend more time alone with me when he seemed to care not a bit about getting to know me? Or, shivers ran down my spine, was he planning something dangerous? I’d heard rumors that warlocks weren’t as kind and righteous as they appeared; that they manipulated the witches who loved them with their charms.
I’d hoped the rumors weren’t true, but this boy had a darkness about him that was both seductive and frightening.
I smiled agreeably, trying to even out the energy. His brow furrowed as his curious eyes tried to sum me up, too.
Everyone knew warlocks were only to court witches, and I, though I practiced small oddities, was certainly no witch.
I imagined he was as curious as I was about the meaning of tonight’s arrangement.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning from the window, “I do not know your name.”
I flushed, ashamed. “But you wrote it on my invitation?”
“Ah, yes.” He lied. “Right, it’s…”
“Rose,” I said. This strange creature possessed an air of authority that I’d never observed in a boy his age, a boy who couldn’t be much older than I was, much more than sixteen.
The carriage rambled on through a dark and barren wood. We rode in silence. He stared at me for a moment, before looking back out the window. I suspected these were the fields he wanted to see. The corn reflecting in the moonlight did create a pretty picture.
“And you are William Gavin Jefferson the Third.”
“Ah, you did your homework.”
“It, too, was on the invitation,” I smiled shyly. “And besides, my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house with a nameless boy in a strange carriage now would she?”
“Wouldn’t she?” He looked me straight on.
He knew as well as I did. She didn’t have a choice.
“Though knowing my name isn’t exactly to know me.”
“Well, the Jeffersons are well known and proper and I suppose she felt that was enough.”
“I suppose,” he repeated, as if he didn’t agree. “It’s nice to meet you, Rose.” He took my hand in his left and shook it gently, the proper meeting of a gentlemen. My stomach burst into a fit of butterflies as he lifted it to his lips, but then lurched when, instead of pressing his red mouth to my hand, he froze. His handsome face twisted into disgust. “These gloves won’t do” He frowned.
Shame blushed my cheeks. “Why?”
“This mark here?�
� he said, turning my hand over in his palm. “It is stained. A lady should never wear stained gloves.”
I wrinkled my nose and brought my hand closer to my eyes. I saw nothing but pure white, and I had excellent vision. The eyes of a hawk, mother was always saying. “Have Rose find the thimble, she has the eyes of a hawk.” If nothing else, I was secure about my eyesight. Besides, Mother spent so much time bleaching and preparing my gloves. Everything I wore might be hideously uncomfortable, but it was perfectly clean right down to my shoes. My gloves were snow white.
“They are lily white,” I said. “You are blind as a bat.”
He laughed suddenly, and then stifled it, not wanting me to feel I’d made an impression.
“Look closer,” he insisted, “there’s a yellowish tint on the index finger.”
“Pardon me!” I said. “There most certainly is not!”
His dark eyebrow rose along with my voice as if I amused him. “There is, if you look closer.”
“But it is so dark in here!” I protested.
“I have a feeling you can See if you try, sweet Rose.”
Sweet Rose.
I detected a note of what my mother calls sarcasm in his tone.
I was not amused.
I focused my eyes on the glove.
Sure enough. White blurred into…gold.
Gold dust glittered across the fabric.
He was right!
Mother. This had to have been her work. What was this all about?
“You see it now. The dust,” he said.
“Perhaps it’s gold powder is all,” I said. “Mother had a wonderful time fussing over me this evening,” I said, and then let my voice trail off, embarrassed at my girly confession.
I frowned and tried to get rid of the bothersome stain. Blowing on it didn’t help. Rubbing it didn’t either. In fact, it only made it worse. Smeared gold across my princess-white gloves!
The Gleaning, Spellspinners Series #2 (The Spellspinners of Melas County) Page 7