“What?” Joel cut him off. “Changed her against her will? Sold out your brothers? Your blood? Me, Evan, Ainsley, Pippin . . . we were prepared to be your family.”
“They were never my family,” Kaden said, bristling. But whether his tone disguised anger or anguish, Joel couldn’t tell. “Me and you, we can still be brothers. You can come with me, we can take over the Fallows coven, together. You’re my family.”
Joel bowed his head. “You were my brother. You still are, and you always will be.” His voice hardened. “But now I’ll never be your family. I don’t want to be.”
His focus moved back to the girls, who stood facing each other, neither backing down and neither the person they had been just hours earlier. As he watched them, a feeling of pain burned deep in his chest. Remorse for what he had done—what they had both done.
He had to do something, anything to stop this.
“I have to go to Maggie,” he decided, rising to his feet.
“Wait!” Kaden moved to pull him back down. Whatever coldness had been in his voice just moments ago was gone. “Don’t do this, Joel. She’ll kill you. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Joel pursed his lips. “She’ll know me,” he said. “I know she will.” As he straightened, he shot one last look at Kaden. “Go,” he said. “Leave Blackheath. Do that one thing for us. As my brother, please just leave.”
Kaden swallowed hard.
Joel gave him one final nod, then took off towards the girls. As he ran, he felt a speck of something wet land on his cheek. He looked towards the boundary wall and saw Evangeline, her arms raised high as she summoned dark clouds around her. Evan, Maximus, and Charlie looked on in fear.
Rain, Joel realised. He turned back to Maggie and Isla, who were facing each other from either side of the apple grove. Ms Joy was still positioned staunchly on the path between them, her clothes rippling in the wind.
Wind, fire, and now rain. A chill ran down Joel’s spine. The storm is coming.
Amid the gathering rain clouds, the moon was bold in the sky. It looked otherworldly as it reflected the red of the flames.
Red for the blood spill, Joel thought with a grimace.
From the pathway, Ms Joy caught his eye and she nodded towards something in the orchard. He followed her gaze. The apple tree.
At once he understood.
As he made for the tree, the gale tossed him from side to side and the smoke stung his eyes so much that he could barely see. He tripped and felt his ribs crack as his body was thrown into the tree trunk by the windstorm. He gripped the rough trunk, the bark digging into his palms.
The branches began to sway wildly above him.
“Maggie,” he called, his voice captured by the wind. “Maggie, please hear me. I won’t leave you.”
Maggie turned to him then, her expression empty and her eyes unfocused. Her violet eyes, he realised with a start. And they were looking at him, unrecognising.
Oh, hell, thought Joel.
The storm had come.
His heart began to race as he saw Isla back away, retreating towards Kaden who cowered in the shadows. Evidently Maggie was no threat anymore. She wasn’t after Kaden now—she was coming for Joel.
Suddenly he felt a hand grip his shoulder from behind. He didn’t need to turn around, he already knew who it was.
“And then the storm came,” Joel murmured.
“But it didn’t matter, because they were safe,” Evan spoke quietly. “They had each other.”
“They had everything,” Joel finished.
Evan squeezed his shoulder. “And they always will.”
MAGGIE BLINKED. SHE was seeing something . . . something familiar. But what was it?
A tree, she realised.
She knew that tree.
“Joel,” she whispered.
He was there, at the tree. Their tree. And he was speaking to her.
She closed her eyes, trying to listen.
Straining, she finally heard what he was saying to her. But it wasn’t words he was speaking now. No, these were words that had been spoken a long time ago. A memory. A recollection from a day that was hot and still. A day that smelled of freshly cut grass.
Joel was twelve years old, sitting on the grass and leaning back against their tree with his eyes closed. She was there, too, her narrow twelve-year-old frame warming in the summer sun. She was leaning against the other side of the trunk, her hands splayed out at her sides and her fingers twining through the grass.
“Do you like me today, Maggie?” he was saying, his voice teasing.
“Hmm,” she mused, pretending to think it over as she tugged at the blades of grass. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know at sunset.”
Joel peered at her from around the tree trunk. “I’ll never make it to sunset without messing up,” he said matter-of-factly.
Maggie snorted. “Then we may as well write off today.”
He grinned and flicked a blade of grass at her. “So you don’t like me today?”
Maggie swatted him away. “Get back over to your side, weirdo.”
Joel retreated to the other side of the trunk.
After a beat, Maggie spoke again. “I’ve decided,” she said, “that I do like you today.”
“Good,” Joel replied from the other side of the tree. “Because I like you today, too.”
“I like you every day, actually,” Maggie told him, smiling to herself.
“I like you every day, too.”
“Even when I’m mad at you?” she challenged. “Which is pretty much always, FYI.”
“Especially when you’re mad at me.”
“Weirdo,” she muttered again.
“Hey!” he chided. “I’m right here!”
Joel’s fingertips reached for hers, and when they touched, a spark moved through her.
Now, amid the wind and flames and spattering of raindrops, she opened her eyes and saw him. He was on the ground, at their tree, just where they had been in her memory. But he wasn’t twelve anymore. He was seventeen, bruised and breathless, with his shirt torn and blood smeared across his brow.
And he was calling to her.
She staggered towards him.
“Joel,” she whispered.
When she reached their tree, she dropped to the ground.
His fingertips reached for hers and that spark moved through her again, welcoming her home. And then the thunder cracked, the clouds burst open and rain poured over them.
Through it all, Joel held her close.
“I won’t leave you,” he promised her. “I’m right here.”
MAGGIE OPENED HER lavender eyes wide to the forest and drank in the life around her. She saw colours so clearly now: the rich greens, the vibrant yellows, the soft pinks. Winter had passed and spring was here. She stepped over a tree root and its tender leaves fluttered to greet her.
Joel was walking beside her, hyper-attentive, almost as if he was waiting for her to crumble. But she wouldn’t. She was strong now, and getting stronger every day. No longer did her legs wobble as she walked. No longer did she blink in the kitchen, then open her eyes a millisecond later to find herself outside in her pyjamas, about to fall onto the damp grass if Joel hadn’t been on hand, jogging through the door just in time to catch her.
She could talk again, clearly and quickly, just as she had done before. She was even ready to go back to school. She couldn’t wait to be bored in Maths class, and to gossip with Blonde Lauren and Hilary about Sleazy Dale and his sleazy ways. She was ready to get on with life.
Naturally, the whole town knew that something had gone down in the storm that winter night. Many had seen Isla and Maggie arguing first-hand, but almost everyone believed Ms Joy’s story about an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring and an improperly fixed drainage pipe. As for the rest, well, who could be sure what they’d actually seen through the disorienting haze of smoke and flame?
What nobody could deny was that Isla had skipped town with Kaden Fa
llows. Of course, the one thing that nobody knew was that both girls had died that night, too. That they’d been resurrected and now they were . . .
What were they, exactly?
Maggie felt the same, but she wasn’t the same. She was the air that surrounded her, the whisper in the breeze, the rush of a gale. And, to top it all off, she now had the ability to project herself from one place to another—even if it was accidental, which it nearly always was.
“Maggie,” Joel called to her now, trailing behind her as she weaved through the lush firs.
“Mmm?” she murmured without looking back.
“How are you feeling?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, Joel,” she said as she sat down on a patch of grass and lay back to soak in the sunshine.
It wasn’t his fault, but still he felt guilty—she knew he did. He’d barely left her side since the night it had happened. And when he did leave her for a moment, she’d hear him deliver instructions to his brothers or parents.
“Go sit with Maggie,” he’d say. “I don’t want her to be alone.”
To which Maggie would yell, “I’m fine, Joel! Go take a shower!”
Evangeline, who was living in the mansion with Maximus and her four boys now that Jefferson no longer had a hold over her, would shoot Maggie a sympathetic look at such times—for of course Evangeline was the only one who could truly relate to her particular circumstances.
But, overall, Maggie really was fine.
As for Isla, Maggie missed her more than she could ever tell Joel, but she knew he knew anyway. It was strange, but she was sure she could sometimes feel Isla’s presence out there, a tiny flame flickering just beyond her reach. Maybe it was delirium, or maybe it was real. Maybe they’d been connected through the events of that fateful evening, like two halves of a whole. Or, more accurately, perhaps they were two quarters.
After all, they were elements, weren’t they? Isla was fire, Maggie wind, Evangeline water. But as a rule there were four elements, not just three. She sometimes wondered who their earth might be—who would complete their storm. She was pretty sure that person was out there, for she sometimes felt another presence, too. A tremor building beneath the ground as she walked along a path or knelt in a meadow.
Or maybe it’s just my own heartbeat I’m feeling, she thought as Joel lay down on the soft grass beside her and squeezed her hand.
Maybe I’m already complete.
MORE BY
Blackheath
Evanescent
How I Found You
Secrets in Phoenix
The Witches of the Glass Castle
The Witches of the Glass Castle: Uprising
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HUGE THANKS TO Ben and everyone at OfTomes Publishing for bringing this book to life. Also to Elizabeth, for seven years of editing!
Thank you to my family and friends: Lepores, Nelsons, Carters, Saunders,and particularly my parents and James for listening to so much ‘book talk’
Thanks to the online book community, you have been incredible and I’m so grateful for your support over the years. Special thanks to Jaspreet and her wonderful family.
And a very big thanks to YOU, for reading!
Love,
Gabriella xxx
Blackheath Resurrection (The Blackheath Witches Book 2) Page 22