“Go,” he told me. “Back to your Mom and Grams, where you’ll be safe.”
“All right,” I nodded. “Don’t get yourself killed, okay?”
I made sure to add a wry little smile to try and lighten the mood a bit.
“I’ll try my best,” Hunter chuckled back.
And then I turned around and walked away, leaving behind my family grimoire and the man who was supposed to kill me.
19
I crept back through the woods and doubted myself just about, oh, every other step. I’d want to turn around and head back, and then I’d decide that was crazy, but then I would decide it was crazy not to. The hamster wheel inside my head would just keep spinning around and around again.
“Come on, Shannon, think,” I hissed to myself. I knew I was about to launch into one of my anxiety-ridden rants, and I just wanted to hold on long enough to get out of earshot of Nemius, with his apparent super hearing.
Of course, I realized after a moment that I had no idea what his hearing range was, and the rant just started to spill out of me, as it usually did.
“He wants the grimoire to find the spell,” I snapped. “But I told him that if we both got the grimoire, we could find the spell. But he doesn’t want to do that because he’s some sort of big, macho man who doesn’t need my help, right? Wrong, Shannon. You know he doesn’t think that. He just wants to protect you. But from what, exactly? Is it weird that he wouldn’t tell me? Yeah, that was a little weird. Jesus.” I stopped and was just about to turn around when I realized I’d already made it to the edge of the forest.
And, just under a quarter of a mile away was my house, which was lit up like a Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving.
“Crap,” I whispered under my breath.
It was Herman. I just knew it. Ever since I’d figured out that Grams and that blasted cat had some strange way of communicating, I knew he’d been the one tattling on me every time I snuck out in high school.
I had two choices. Stick it out at the edge of the forest and see how long I could hold off a lecture on how I made stupid choices every day of my life, or go home and face the music.
“Wait a minute, Shannon, you are a grown woman!” I exclaimed to no one but myself.
What the heck was I so afraid of? It wasn’t like they could go and ground me anymore.
With that in mind, I marched myself right across the field that separated our house and the forest and almost went right up to the front door.
And then I thought better about it. Grown-up or not, I was still bone-tired, and I really wanted to save what I was sure would be a hefty lecture for the morning. Or, afternoon it seemed since the sun was just starting to come up over the horizon.
So I went around back and carefully opened the creaky old door. I was about to walk up the stairs in the back of the house and duck into my bedroom when a little cough caught my attention.
“Whatcha doin’?” Marcella grinned at me. The old bat looked like the picture of a cool aunt as she leaned against the far wall, arms crossed over her chest, and her bracelets dangling down from her wrists. She had one thick eyebrow raised and was staring at me with a look that was a cross between amusement and impression.
“I was just out for a walk in the woods,” I shrugged. “I do it all the time.”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded, stepping toward me and pulling something from my hair. It was a little green leaf, one that came from the foliage deep in the forest. “And how far did you go, exactly?”
“I wasn’t really paying attention,” I replied. “But I am beat! So I think I’ll just go ahead up to bed.” I turned around and headed up the stairs, waiting for Marcella to say something more.
But the witch didn’t. She just stayed there in the hallway, chuckling to herself.
All right, I was really starting to like her. If she was like this all the time, I wanted to keep her around.
My progress up the stairs was stopped, though, when my foot ran into a huge, hairy ball.
Herman.
I glared down at him at the same moment he glared at me. We were caught in a stare down, neither making a move, waiting to see what the other one would do.
“Traitor,” I hissed at him before I stepped over his fat mound and headed toward the bedroom.
Right then, the cat meowed. It was the biggest meow I’d ever heard, something akin to a lion’s roar instead of a cat sound, and it echoed through the house, rippling off the walls and making its way right to Mom’s and Grams’ ears.
“I miss having a familiar,” Marcella guffawed.
Right at that moment, Mom and Grams blasted out of Mom’s bedroom, their eyes wide and terror on their faces.
“Oh, thank heavens, you’re alive!” Grams gasped. She trotted over to squeeze me in a tight hug, then leaned back and narrowed her eyes before she smacked me square on the back of my head. “What on earth were you thinking, Shannon McCarthy?”
“Ow,” I gasped, rubbing at the spot. “That was unnecessary, number one. And, two, I thought that an evil fae stole our family’s grimoire, so it seemed like a pretty bad move to just wait here and let him have it.”
“We weren’t just waiting, though,” Mom sighed. “We were coming up with a plan.”
“No, we weren’t,” I replied seriously. “Look, I get it, this is new territory for you guys. It’s new for me, too. But we can’t just sit here and wait for a magically perfect plan to come along. We have to act. And you two weren’t willing to. So, I did it on my own.”
“The kid’s right,” Marcella announced, coming up the stairs behind me and resting a hand proudly on my shoulder. “Come on, Adora, you’ve got to admit that you’ve gotten a little…soft in your old age.”
“Soft?” I raised an eyebrow. “This is what soft looks like?”
“On your Grams? Yeah.” Marcella laughed. “She used to fight demons and fae with the best of ‘em. But Portland’s changed her. Actually, the whole world has changed. We’re not in constant battle anymore.”
“You may be right,” Grams sighed. “The thought of a fight just makes my stomach turn over.”
“Well, I for one would be all for it if I thought we were on equal grounds,” Mom announced. “But come on, Shannon, you gotta admit that we’re not. Your magic isn’t even working properly yet.”
“Actually, it is,” I grinned. And then I lifted my hand and called up those little sparks of electricity that had been dancing just under my skin for the last few hours.
Mom’s and Grams’ eyes went wide. Behind me, Marcella shrieked.
“Well, would you look at that!” The witch gasped. “The girl’s got fae magic. It’s just jumping out!”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I chuckled.
“Wait.” Mom narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “How’d you get it to start working again?”
“About that,” I sighed, steeling myself for what I was about to tell them. Hunter wasn’t exactly a crowd favorite around here. “As it turns out, Hunter didn’t disappear for good.”
“Hunter?” Marcella asked. “You mean that boy who tried to kill you?”
“I mean, he’s at least sixty years old, but yeah,” I responded.
“Honey, once you hit two hundred, anyone under a hundred and fifty starts to seem like a baby.”
“Huh,” I nodded, wondering briefly if I’d feel the same. “Well, anyway, yes, that Hunter is the same one I’m talking about. He’s trying not to kill me, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Grams demanded, narrowing her wrinkled, green eyes.
I pushed a red curl off of my forehead and sucked in a breath, readying myself to fill them in.
“The Council compelled Hunter to kill me,” I explained. Gasps of shock erupted from the three, but I quickly barreled over them and kept speaking, “But he doesn’t want to do it, okay? He wants to figure out a way to break his bond with the Council. Supposedly, there’s a spell in our grimoire that can help him do that. Do you guys know it?�
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Silence fell over us as Mom shook her head. But Grams folded her hands together in thought, gazing off over my head as she tried to remember.
“It’s possible,” she finally said. “Some of those spells are so ancient I don’t even know what they say or do. There are even some written in Elvish. It could be one of those.”
“See!” I said. “Hunter’s not that bad after all!”
“Well, if he’s on our side, how come he didn’t get the grimoire and come back here with you?” Mom demanded.
Darn.
I knew that question would be coming, and I still didn’t know how to handle it.
“The fae are too powerful,” I finally said.
It wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t even half the truth. But I didn’t want to try to explain to a group of witches why we had to let the fae have our grimoire for a little while longer.
And I certainly didn’t want them to start to worry about what Elrind’s plans were.
“All right, fair enough,” Mom shrugged. “So then what’s the plan? How does he want to go about getting our most-prized family possession back? Not to mention a book with enough power to cause mass destruction.”
At the moment, I didn’t even want to know why the grimoire could cause mass destruction, so I decided just to save it for a later date.
“The four of us need to band together,” I told her. “If we all go and confront the fae, I think we can at least hold him off long enough to get the grimoire back. But there’s only one tiny little problem. Elrind put some sort of spell on it. The moment it’s more than a few feet away from him, she’ll know.”
“I most certainly do not want to deal with her again!” Grams announced indignantly as if I were asking to face off with the pale fae woman once more.
“I think I’ve got something that can help,” Marcella responded. “Most tracking spells just need a little bit of the person to fake them out. Say…a horn?”
Gross. I knew exactly what Marcella was getting at, and the very thought disgusted me. “I think I’ll leave that part up to you,” I told her.
“Fair enough,” she shrugged.
“So, are we in agreement?” I asked the group.
“Oh, yes,” Marcella laughed gleefully, rubbing her hands together like some sort of mad scientist.
Mom sighed, rolling her eyes up toward the ceiling. “Yes. Let’s kick some fae ass! And maybe get Shannon a piece of some hunter ass.”
“This is not a date, Mom,” I reminded her before I turned to my grandmother. “Grams?”
The old woman looked around the circle, leveling each one of us with a serious gaze.
“I’m in,” she finally said. “But if I wind up dead from this, I just want you all to know that I will be haunting you for the rest of your life. Which, for you, Shannon, will be a very long time.”
The very thought of Grams or Mom dying in this almost made me rescind my offer. But I knew there was something bigger at play here.
I didn’t just need the grimoire back to help Hunter. I needed it to help myself. And, quite possibly, the rest of the world.
20
Ten minutes later, we’d grabbed some of Grams's favorite charms, a few of her silver daggers, and all of our courage, and were traipsing out toward the woods, following the same path I’d taken only a few hours before.
This time, though, I wasn’t alone. And I suddenly had this settled, calm feeling.
We could do this. Step one. Get the grimoire back.
And then tomorrow, we could deal with step two.
I took them back through the woods to where Nemius still had his campfire going. Mom spelled our footsteps to keep them silent as we approached, so we didn’t have to worry about being quiet.
Nemius was sitting on the log, but this time, he wasn’t poking his fire with a big, long stick. Instead, he had the grimoire splayed open on his lap, and he was happily flipping through its brown pages and chomping on another squirrel leg. For a guy who claimed to hate squirrel meat, he sure ate a lot of them.
“That dirty fae is getting grease all over my grimoire,” Grams hissed angrily.
“There’s Hunter,” Mom murmured.
He was on a log on the opposite side of the fire, casting surreptitious glances around him and trying to look the slightest bit interested in what Nemius was saying.
“You know, they’ve got a spell to cure boils?” the fae asked. “Could have been helpful fifty years ago. I had the worst case of them.”
“Fascinating,” Hunter grumbled, though it was clear he didn’t think it was fascinating at all.
“All right, I’ve had enough of this,” Marcella gagged at the thought of boils. “Incindie.”
Suddenly, a tiny ball of fire leaped into her hands, burning bright enough to catch Nemius’s and Hunter’s attention. Both of them whipped around, staring at us in shock at our silent approach.
Without warning, Marcella launched the fireball straight at the fae’s head. He ducked, and it just barely missed him, only singing a little bit of his shiny skin.
“Ow! Stupid witch!” he cried indignantly.
Hunter’s eyes locked onto mine, and I saw a mixture of both disappointment and gratitude in them. He might have thought he could do this alone, but we both knew he needed some backup. And I was able to provide that.
“Who are you?” Nemius gasped, leaping from his log and tossing the grimoire to the ground like it was nothing more than a dirty paper towel.
“You have got to learn to be more careful with other people’s things,” Mom groaned before she threw out her hand. “Veni!”
Suddenly, the book zipped into the air and made a beeline straight for Mom’s hand.
But the fae was quicker than we expected. He threw up a hand and smacked the book from the air, breaking Mom’s spell and sending it to the ground once more.
“The dragonfly wings are going to be so broken when we get it back,” Grams groaned.
Hunter leaped into action. He jumped across the campfire and landed on the fae’s back, grabbing him in a chokehold.
“Use your magic!” I shrieked at him.
Nemius thrashed around, sending Hunter through the flickering flames over and over again. His plaid shirt was on fire, and I dashed forward without thinking, throwing out my arm. All I wanted was to put out the flame roaring across Hunter’s back.
A bright-blue gush of water rushed out of my hand, coming down from the top of my arm like an ocean wave, and sprayed Hunter’s back like a fire hydrant spout.
“Oh my Lord!” Marcella gasped behind me.
“Hunter, your magic!” I screamed again as the gush of water stopped on its own, the same way it had started. I had no idea what I could or should do next.
“I can’t,” Hunter growled.
Nemius backpedaled and slammed Hunter against a tree, but the man kept his grip firm.
“That’s how the Council tracks me.”
“Don’t use your magic!” I ordered quickly. The very thought of the Council tracking us sent ice water down my veins.
On my right, Mom and Grams were headed for the book, while Marcella was trying to get a clear shot at the fae so she could throw her fireball right in his face. The moment Mom and Grams laid hands on the grimoire, they looked up gleefully, ready to turn and run.
“Four feet!” I screamed, pointing at Nemius, who was nearly four feet away from the book.
“Crap!” Mom gasped. She clutched the book to her chest and rushed forward to get herself safely inside the four-foot circle.
“Terminae!” Grams exclaimed.
Red dust shot from her hand and circled Mom, Nemius, and Hunter, by default. It twisted around them, creating a four-foot radius.
“What is that?” Nemius growled. He finally managed to toss Hunter from his back, sending the man flying out of the circle, where he thumped down on the ground.
But when Nemius tried to follow, he was stopped right at the red border of the circle. A smile spread ac
ross Mom’s face.
“Four feet,” she told him proudly. “We know about Elrind’s little trick.”
Nemius rounded on Mom, seething, with his hands up. They started to glow a bright blue color, shaking with the power of his magic. I saw Mom’s eyes go wide with terror, but I didn’t give the fae a second more to hurt her.
“No!” I shouted.
Again, everything within me moved on instinct. White energy burst forth, wrapping Nemius’s hands up tight, like a rope, and effectively cutting off the bright blue glow before he could do anything to hurt my mom.
But he was strong. I could feel him railing against the power, trying to get free from me and the circle Grams had created.
“Marcella, get a horn!” Grams order.
Instantly, Marcella put out the little flame in her hand and pulled a silver dagger free. Nemius’s eyes went wide when he saw the weapon, but, to his credit, he didn’t let any more fear creep up on him.
“If you kill me, you’ll never know her whole plan,” he told us, his voice dark and sinister.
Marcella glanced over at me as she approached Nemius, and I could tell by her expression that she was waiting for my approval.
But I didn’t want to give it just yet. If Nemius feared for his life, maybe he’d give us some valuable information.
“What’s her plan?” I demanded. “Tell us, and we’ll let you live.”
Mom furrowed her brow as she looked over at me, but I couldn’t tell whether or not she actually wanted the fae to live. She didn’t say a word, though, and just clutched the grimoire tighter to her chest.
“How can I trust a halfling?” Nemius sneered. “You’re not even supposed to exist.”
“Which is why Elrind is so interested in me, right?” I asked. “What does she want? A war between worlds? Power? What? They always want something.”
Even if Nemius hadn’t said a word, his face would have given the truth away. He pulled his lips together and shook his head just the slightest bit.
“You think too small,” he sneered. “Like a witch. A human.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I snapped, hating with everything in me the way he treated that like it was less than.
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