My throat began to burn and my voice grew hoarse, “And I’m your sacrifice.”
“No,” she said firmly. “If I was going to sacrifice you, I would have done it the day you were born—like I was supposed to. What Harry taught me was to accept the sacrifice I would have to make if you chose to take this route.”
I looked at Jake now. His focus was on the road, but I could tell his mind was working overtime. The muscles in his jaw were clenched and his mouth was set in a tight line.
“Oh,” I said into the phone. I was numb.
“Your future is in your hand. This is your choice, and I’ll support you in whatever you choose to do.”
“I don’t want the responsibility of this, Astra.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “You had me—it’s your decision.”
She laughed sadly. “I already made my decision. I chose to keep you.”
My eyes started to sting. “Isn’t there some sort of witchcraft you can use to stop this?”
“Not even witchcraft can stop destiny. It’s your life now, Elana,” her voice was sympathetic. “I saved you from them once. I gave you freedom. You don’t belong to them, and you don’t belong to me. Let the fates be your guide.”
It was something I’d heard my mother say many times before, yet now the sentiment took on an entirely new meaning.
The phone signal began to crackle and waver.
My voice broke. “I’m not ready!”
“Neither am I…” Static stole her words from me.
The line went dead.
I stared helplessly at Jake. “She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. It was weighted with significance.
I dropped the phone into my lap and straight ahead as we approached solid land on the other side of the bridge. “She’s a witch,” I managed. “She knew about this all along. It’s the whole reason I was born.”
“That’s usually the way,” Jake explained carefully. “Your life was orchestrated for this.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “My life sucks.”
We fell quiet.
Jake was the first to speak. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded weakly.
“You mentioned Harry Brooks?” His voice sounded strange, urgent.
“Yeah. My mum’s friend,” I mumbled in a daze. “Apparently he came to see her when I was younger—” I cut my sentence short when I saw Jake visibly deflate. His grip on the steering wheel slackened. “Do you know him?”
Jake stared into the distance. “You could say that.” He let out a tense breath. “He’s my father.”
My jaw dropped. “Harry Brooks is your father?”
He threw up one hand from the steering wheel.
I pictured Harry as I remembered him. Yes, there were similarities: the build, the features, the skin tone. The only difference was that Harry’s hair had greyed with age while Jake’s was still a warm brown.
“Harry knew I was a Light Keeper,” I murmured, trying to process the overload of information that was jumbled in my brain.
Jake seemed just as stunned as I was. “How? I mean, I can understand your mother knowing, but what’s my dad got to do with this? He couldn’t possibly have known. No one did…”
I rolled my eyes. “Wake up, Jake. People knew. My mother said Harry found her a few years ago.”
Jake’s face fell. “A few years? They’ve known for years?”
“More,” I said. “Apparently some guy came to take me away as soon as I was born. The name Rufus doesn’t ring a bell, does it?”
Jake’s hands slipped from the steering wheel and the car swerved across the narrow road. I clung to my seat while Jake regained control of the wheel.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said shakily.
“Rufus! Rufus knew? But he was the one who assigned me to this blind mission in the first place!” He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. When he spoke again, his voice was raw. “All these people knew? Rufus, your mother, my father…”
“And my father,” I added.
“Everyone except us.”
I swiveled in my seat, studying his expression intently.
“They sent me on a fool’s mission.” Jake scowled and exhaled in a quick breath. “For months I searched for you. I spent weeks watching your every move until I was certain I’d found the right one—”
I wrinkled my nose. “You watched my every move?”
He carried on, “And they knew your identity all along. All those weeks wasted. I could have been out in combat, saving lives. They lied to me.”
He seemed totally confused. As confused as I was—and that was saying something.
“Why?” he asked me. “Why would they do that?”
I held my palms skyward. “I don’t know.”
“But, why?”
“I really don’t know.”
Jake’s gaze suddenly shot to me, eyes pleading. “Tell me about my dad? Did you know him? Did he ever…” The words caught somewhere before they’d reached his mouth. They were trapped, buried beneath the surface.
“Did he ever mention you?” I finished for him.
Jake said nothing, his focus returned to the road, giving nothing away.
“Not to me,” I answered quietly. “But he’s nice, and he’s kind, and he talked to my mom about you. He must have. She said that he told her about his experiences. And his sacrifices.”
Everything began to fall into place. The loss and sacrifice that Harry had suffered—it was losing Jake.
We’d reached the end of the road we were driving along and were about to plunge into the dense forest of the High Peak.
“I guess he prepared my mom for this day,” I concluded softly. If only someone had prepared me.
Jake’s expression grew wistful. “I bet he knew I’d be the one sent to find you.” He laughed quietly to himself.
“Why is that funny?”
“It’s not. It’s just that I thought I knew it all. I thought I had my finger pressed firmly on the pulse. I couldn’t have been more deluded.”
“Don’t take it to heart. I’m sure there’s a reason why they kept this from us.”
“If there is, I’m struggling to see it. Why did they lie to me, Elana? Why?”
I couldn’t resist a tiny smile. “Ha,” I teased gently. “You called me Elana.” In all the time we’d spent together, he’d never done that before.
Despite his mood, he grinned sheepishly. “I meant Witch.”
Oddly enough, the comment made us both laugh—which was a small relief after the weighted revelations of the phone conversation.
I smiled down at my hands. “I wish I had the answers,” I said with a sigh. “But I’m as lost as you are.”
“They’ve made us look like chumps.”
“No change for you, then.” I grinned and prodded his shoulder.
“Ha, ha,” he said dryly.
I nudged him. “If it’ll cheer you up, then just this once, I’ll call you Shadow.”
He thought about it. “Nah,” he said at last. “Just this once, you can call me Jake.”
Driving through the forest that enclosed the High Peak seemed like a near impossible feat. But Jake managed it—well, just about. Avoiding the obstructing trees took a whole lot of concentration and extreme slowness on his part, though.
We’d traveled a few hours since the bridge, and had spent most of this leg of the journey numbed from the revelations of the phone call. We were still a little while from the top, but we were already in deep isolation. The higher we rose, the mistier it became; it was now difficult to see more than a few feet beyond the windshield. The air must have been getting thinner, too, because every so often Jake would draw in a deep lungful of oxygen. I was fine, unaltered.
That good old Light Keeper blood. I couldn’t help but feel a little jaded, and now certain that this was something I could blame my absentee father for. Damn Moonbeam, or whatever my old man’s name was! Why had he saddled me with
such a sucky bloodline?
“We’re getting close,” Jake told me. Or warned me, perhaps.
“Right.”
“And it’s not even sunset,” he added. “We made it with hours to spare.”
I folded my arms. “Oh, whoopee.”
He cast me a weak smile. “Sorry.”
“So what’s next for you after this?” I asked, feigning nonchalance.
Jake shifted gear and ploughed on through the bracken and undergrowth. “What’s next? Go back to hunting demons, I suppose. Back to simpler times.” He glanced at me, probably waiting for me to retort, or to at least crack a smile. I didn’t do either.
I pretended to be absorbed in the immaculate stitching on my leather upholstered seat. “Will you leave right away? Once we reach the peak, I mean.”
“N-no,” he stumbled over his wording. “Not right away. I’ll help you get settled.” He took another wheezy breath.
I flinched. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just, you know, the air’s not designed for people like me.” He attempted a smile, but it looked more like a grimace.
I gazed out at the puffs of silver cloud drifting by before they evaporated into the air. The evergreens swept along beside us, vibrant and gleaming with dew.
Jake kept going, sure of himself despite the lack of a clear path.
We made small talk, evading the big topics, until eventually we reached the highest part of the mountain and a clearing came into view. The trees were fewer and the ground seemed flatter here. I noticed a vegetable patch—soon to be my food supply, I guessed—and, a little way away, a few headstones in a graveyard plot. Heavy fog swirled around the stone slabs.
“There’s a graveyard up here?” I said, surprised. “Why? Who would—?”
Oh. Of course. The graves of the only people who’d lived here. The plot where I too would have the misfortune of laying to rest one day.
How depressingly morbid.
Jake cleared his throat. “There are graveyards everywhere.”
I laced my fingers together as we drove a little further. Soon we came upon a tall, chimney-shaped stone building that stood proud amongst a cluster of trees.
The car rolled to a stop and Jake turned to face me. He inhaled—partly from nerves, I suspected, and partly from a general lack of air.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you need some time?”
“Anther sixty to seventy years would be nice.”
“Would you settle for five?”
“Years?” I asked hopefully.
“Minutes.”
I groaned. “Let’s just get this over with.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and stepped outside. Jake followed.
The breeze was cool and damp, and the ground beneath my feet was spongy with rich soil and emerald grass. It was serene and peaceful. Too peaceful for my liking.
Standing before the stone building, I felt Jake’s hand entwine with mine. He squeezed my fingers.
Together, hand in hand, we walked forward.
Chapter Thirteen
The Owl Keeper
We stood before a black iron door set in the stone building’s wall. Jake pulled on the handle and opened it with a heavy lurch.
With our hands still fused together, we stepped inside. The entry hall was dark and hollow. Flames flickered from brass candlesticks on the wall, pooling patches of light at intervals along the corridor. I could see wood-paneled doors leading off the passage, and at the far end, an iron spiral staircase disappeared into the upper reaches of the cylinder tower. It was dark, cold, and forsaken, as though no life existed there. The only sound I could hear was the thrum of a ticking clock somewhere within the walls.
I allowed Jake to take the lead, guiding me along the corridor and through the first door we came to. Candles burned in the windowless room, but it was empty apart from an old rocking chair and an ornamental owl figurine on the mantelpiece of a boarded-up fireplace.
I squeezed Jake’s hand a little tighter.
It was strange. Although the house had seemed narrow from the outside, inside it was vast and expansive, defying all laws of physics. In the long passageway, gold-framed oil paintings hung from the stone walls, interspersed between the wavering candles. The eyes of the portrait subjects stared down at us, stern and condemning. I looked at each one as we passed, judging them as much as they were judging me.
And then, in a particularly dim stretch of the corridor, I found myself quite suddenly face to face with a pair of real eyes.
I let out a gasp and stumbled backwards into Jake.
“Hey, watch it, Witch,” he said.
I pointed. “Jake, look!”
The eyes blinked. The woman whom they belonged to was standing motionless, showing no reaction whatsoever. She seemed not at all startled by our presence. She continued to stare at us, her grim old face unmoving, her long silver hair matted and wild.
“Hello,” Jake floundered. “I…uh…I have your successor.” He elbowed me forward. I promptly shuffled back again.
She slowly crooked her neck to examine me more closely.
“Follow me,” she eventually croaked, then scuttled off towards the spiral staircase.
Jake and I exchanged a hesitant glance.
“Follow her,” Jake mouthed. He gave me another little shove.
“She was speaking to us both,” I hissed, tugging on his arm.
And so we followed her. Up we went, clomping higher and higher along the iron steps until we reached the top. Here, the stairs opened out onto one large room. There were windows in this part of the tower. In fact, the huge domed ceiling was made entirely of glass, creating a vista to the open sky and the misted forest below.
I took in the view, awed by the rolling hills and blanket of calm covering them. So awed, in fact, that it took me another minute or two to spot the second noteworthy feature in the room.
Owls.
Lots of them. Stone owls, stuffed owls, wood whittled owls, owls that looked remarkably like real owls... It was like a shrine, and they were all scrutinizing me with their beady owl eyes.
I shivered.
“Owls,” Jake muttered into my ear.
“I know,” I agreed.
The woman beckoned us towards the center of the room, and it was only then that I realized I’d been glued to the spot like a deer in the headlights. On her command, we ventured further.
It was quite pleasant, really—well, in comparison to downstairs, anyway. The floor was wood planked, adorned with a woven rug and a few mismatched chairs. The old woman sat down stiffly in one of the chairs. We followed her lead, sitting rigidly in wooden chairs opposite her.
Her unblinking gaze bore into us. In fact, she herself was remarkably owl-like, with wide prying eyes and a beaky nose.
The silence began to feel deafening.
Jake shifted in his chair. “Sorry we took so long,” he said, licking his lips. “I’m glad you...uh…stuck around.”
How tactful.
“It is nearly time,” the woman twittered. She hooked a bony finger towards me. “You,” she breathed.
I gulped. Me?
“You are the one,” she prophesied in a trance-like drone. “You are the next in the bloodline. You will take over the watchtower.”
“Yes, she is the new Light Keeper,” Jake confirmed. He’d changed his voice to match hers, speaking mysteriously and ominously.
I rolled my eyes at him.
The old Light Keeper cast a curious look to her owl figures, then spoke again. “The changeover will happen tonight,” she confirmed. “You will be bound to the tower and I will be released.”
My heart began to race. That didn’t sound good.
“You will be reborn into the powers of the Light Keeper,” she recited. “You will blossom while I wither.”
Jake and I swapped a look.
“The changeover will set you free?” Jake asked her, still using his ominous voice.
; “The changeover of one power source to another,” she explained, blinking at us through her saucer-shaped eyes. “I am weak. The power is failing me. I’m ready to relinquish it to another, so it may regain full strength. The ceremony will take place at nightfall.”
Her joints creaked as she rose to her feet and hobbled towards one of the expansive windows.
“The gateways are unlocking, and the demons smell a change.” She tasted the air and looked at us hauntingly. “They are murderers!”
I jumped in my seat, startled. I couldn’t help but notice that Jake jolted too, ominous voice and all.
She stopped at a stone pillar that sprouted from the floor like a granite stump. On its top was what appeared to be a large black rock; its flat faces were silky smooth and gleaming. When I looked around, I noticed three other pillars spread evenly throughout the circular room. Each pillar had a rock on top of it.
The old Light Keeper lifted the rock nearest to her and out shot a beam of golden light. The light looped around the room, connecting each of the rocks at the four points and enclosing us within its boundaries. The light hummed and fractured slightly. The old woman set the rock down again and the beam of light disappeared.
“The gateway is weakening,” she said, flapping her elbows. Or ruffling her feathers—I wasn’t sure. “The light is wavering. It is time for the Keeper’s power to change hands.”
Oh, God. This was where I came in. Suddenly all I wanted to do was run. How had I let it get this far? When I’d agreed to this, hadn’t I intended to just hear Jake out?
“What does the changeover involve?” Jake voiced the questions I couldn’t seem to.
“Our energies will merge and she will surrender herself to the power,” the old woman murmured. “It will leave me and flow through her until it consumes her…”
Oh God oh God oh God...
“She will be bound to the watchtower, protecting the gateway until her time reaches an end.”
My stomach heaved.
“No one will find her,” the woman chanted on. “No one will see her. She does not stray. She does not exist.”
My heart was pounding inside my chest. “But I can have visitors, can’t I?” After all, Jake was here. Sure, his breathing was a little strained—okay, a lot strained—but he was a far cry from being suffocated. Yet.
The Light Keeper Page 17