by E. M. Moore
She completely ignored Travis and stared at me. “Who are you?”
Randy pushed forward. “A friend.”
The girl, Jules, gave him a withering look. We were losing this battle fast. Liam would’ve been the one to reassure this lady, but he wasn’t going to do that now. He might’ve even started the gas on the fire. I stepped forward. “I am a friend. The truth is,” I told her, “We found you around a foul smell that translates to evil magic. That’s why we had to mark you.”
She hissed in a breath and stared at Travis. “You already marked me?”
He peeked over at me, his head dropping to the side.
Oh shit. She didn’t know that part yet. I shrugged. I hadn’t realized they didn’t tell her. Why would they not tell her?
“It’s no big deal,” I told her, mimicking what they all said to me earlier. “If there’s nothing bad about you, you’ll continue on your way. If you’re doing something bad, you’ll pay, so if you always strive to be good, we shouldn’t have a problem here.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Jules snapped. She turned toward Travis, her shoulders moving up and down with every deep breath she took. “I mean, you even marked your own sister! What the hell, Travis?”
His face blanched, and he staggered back a step.
Okay. She’d gone over the line now. I walked up to her and crouched down. “He’s just doing his job, Jules. Now we’re going to do ours. Like I just explained to you—nicely—if you’re not bad, you have nothing to worry about and you can leave right away.” I leaned toward her. “And really, we’d prefer if you left right away if you’re going to act like that.” I rose to my feet and turned toward Travis. “Alright, let’s do this. I guess stopping to get supplies wasn’t necessary.” Not that I’d help her with how she was being now, anyway. The anger that coursed through her brought back some life to her body and she was completely flushed with anger. She no longer held the decaying look but was sporting a major bitch face.
I moved to my stone bench, and the others did the same. The pentagram in the middle glowed white as we sat there staring at Jules. She stayed where she was, her gaze flitting to all of us in turn. As I stared back, it was as if her physical body gave way and I could see straight through to her soul. She glowed white, a pink aura around the edges, but she was pure. Inherently, I knew that if we’d got someone like Dupre into the pentagram, it would’ve been a different story. I could imagine scenes of death and chaos, and a black soul like a bottomless pit of tragedies.
Travis stood, and the magic stripped away, leaving my hair standing on end. As I watched, the mark on her forehead faded into nothing. It just disappeared right in front of us. The Akasha had done just what they said it would do. “You’re good, Jules. You have to know I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just doing what I have to do, whether you like it or not. The Akasha doesn’t lie, and it didn’t lie in your case either. I want to know, though, you’re sure you don’t remember anything? Because there was something going on in your house. Something evil.”
Jules stood on shaky legs. Travis reached out to steady her, but she shied away, her hands coming over her chest. Her voice was much softer now when she spoke. “I told you I don’t remember a thing. It’s almost like I blacked out. I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck, and there you guys were all staring at me.”
I walked toward her, hoping a woman-to-woman talk might calm her down even further. “I was there, too,” I told her. “There was something in your house. I wouldn’t go back there if I were you.” I pulled out the vials from my pocket and held them out. “I stopped by my shop to pick these up. I was going to try to heal you, but it looks as if your color is already returning. Do you want any of this?” I held the vials out to her, basic herbs that any witch would know.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Okay. Do you have any place to go besides your house? We want you to be safe until we can figure out what’s going on. Your house definitely isn’t that right now since we don’t know what did something to you, and we don’t even know what they did to you.”
“You mean if something got done to me?” She headed for the stairs. “I want to go home.”
Travis threw Gabe the keys. “You mind?”
Gabe plucked them out of the air. “No problem.”
Before they got too far, Travis cleared his throat and then pointed at his head. He then motioned toward me. It dawned on me what he was trying to say. Jules now knew I was part of the order. Travis was asking Gabe to wipe her memory of that fact.
Gabe nodded.
Jules stomped up the steps and Gabe followed, raising his eyebrows at us as we watched them leave. I tugged on his hand before he disappeared. “Please don’t take her home. Tell her you’ll take her any place but there.”
He gave me a small salute. “You got it, Baby.” He kissed my forehead and jogged all the way up the steps. I turned, addressing the rest of us. “Well, that could’ve gone better.”
Travis ran a hand through his hair and swore. Liam looked bored, and Randy and I shared a confused glance.
“Have you guys ever marked someone before who didn’t turn out bad?”
“Yes,” Travis said, his lips thin. “But it’s usually when we have several people and we know it’s one of them, and it turns out to be one and not the other. We don’t have another person,” he said, turning around in a circle and motioning toward the pretty much empty room besides the rest of us.
“She wasn’t the one who did something bad, which means someone did something bad to her,” Randy said.
That much was clear. But we didn’t know who, and we didn’t know what. “She didn’t seem like she believed us,” I said, trying to tread very carefully before Travis spiraled even further down.
Liam smirked. “People didn’t like it when Travis accidentally took all of his sister’s powers. They especially didn’t like it when they found out one of us was found bad, too. I mean, we’re supposed to be the good guys.”
He snorted, and Travis glared at him. His eyes narrowed, and he stared at Liam menacingly. “You think that’s funny?”
Liam met his stare with a nasty one of his own. “Do I think it’s funny that one of us, an Enforcer, who is supposed to be the purest of them all, was found to be bad? I mean, yeah. If it’s not funny, it’s ironic.”
Travis moved forward, his steps like sledgehammers as he moved forward. Randy stepped in front of Liam while I intercepted Travis. “Seriously?” I said, whispering. “Wasn’t it you who told me that the familiar is affecting him? Give him a break, would you?”
Travis’s green eyes locked on mine and then looked away.
We were all trying to coddle Liam, but I agreed, he’d gone too far with that remark. Especially in front of Travis, who’d probably never get over the fact he’d accidentally stripped his own sister. That was a low blow.
I took a big breath and released it. That could’ve escalated into something bad. Since Liam wasn’t feeling much like Liam, I was going to have to play the common-sense part in all this. “Here’s what we know so far,” I said. “We know that Jules smelled like negative magic, but she’s not bad herself. So, we can only conclude that she had a negative spell done near or around her, or perhaps to her. If it was done to her that would explain how she looked like she was practically dead when we saw her. Sunken in eyes, limp hair, so pale she was practically gray. She looked like she was strung out.” I peeked toward Randy. She looked like one of those magic users at Ren’s place. Like a magic junkie. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve asked her if she knew him. “We can look in the books for things that leave their victims like that. That’s what we did for the poor people we found dead.”
Travis nodded. “It’s a start.”
“You said you know her? What can you tell us about her? Is she the type to get mixed up in something bad?”
Travis stared at the ceiling, his jaw working. “I’m not the best judge of character, Norah. That much mus
t be abundantly clear to you right now.”
“We all missed the signs, man,” Randy said. “We’ve told you that again and again. You can’t just keep the blame for yourself.” Randy scratched his jaw and turned toward me. “We all know her. She’s a good person, a good witch.”
“Is she an…” I peeked at Travis and then back at Randy. “…an over-user?”
“No,” Randy said. “Nothing like that.”
Well, there went that theory. Though, I wasn’t sure what I was even trying to prove. Ren’s magical whore den didn’t reek of bad magic. Why would the two even be related except for the look on the poor girls?
Liam, who’d been too quiet through all this, coughed. He coughed again and then started to choke. Eyes wide, he stood from the stone bench. “…air…”
I went to run up after him, but he was already up the stairs, the door closed behind him. Randy put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll go after him. I don’t think you should be alone with him right now, Norah. He’s not himself.”
Randy took the stone steps two at a time. A rush of air went through the cavern when the door opened, sending a chill through me.
“It’s weird,” Travis said. “He has to be somewhat himself because we wouldn’t have been able to perform the Akasha ritual if we didn’t have five members. I was worried the familiar might somehow block his Enforcer powers, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“Well, that’s good then,” I said. It wasn’t enough for me though. I wanted Liam all the way back.
“Yeah,” Travis said. “Except, it doesn’t explain why he’s being such a dick.”
If we were on better terms, I would’ve gone up to him and given him a hug. Instead, I just stood there. “Sorry he said that to you.”
Travis looked up, and we just stared at one another. This was happening far too often lately. It was as if we were trying to figure out what made the other tick.
10
Edgy. That’s what I’d call how everyone was acting. After reading through some Order books the night before and finding nothing, I went to bed. When I woke up, no one was speaking to anyone. Randy was already gone. Gabe acted like he needed a morning just to sleep in, or sleep all day possibly, with the look of the shadows under his eyes. Liam was ignoring me, and Travis, too, seemed stuck in his own head.
The ride into Salem was quiet. They wordlessly dropped me off at the shop, Gabe asleep in the backseat with me. I only had a moment to lean him against the cushion instead of my shoulder, so I could get out of the Jeep without waking him. Now that I was at the shop, the tension I’d been feeling at the house and in the Jeep was more pronounced. My nerves were frayed, and I was restless at the same time. Every time a customer came in and the bell over the door rang, I nearly jumped off the stool. I’d even taken to doing a Google search about how to rid someone of demonic familiars. There were actual websites out there, but none of them seemed like they knew what they were talking about. Which I shouldn’t find that odd because most people didn’t really think that things like familiars existed.
I’d even regressed to searching how to do an exorcism. That’s how bad things were in my head. I wouldn’t quite call it possession, but it was evident Liam wasn’t himself.
I rang up customers, smiling when I needed to, and showing them different things in the shop when they asked, but for the most part, I, too, was caught up in my own head with everything going on. I tried not to wish Granny would visit me again. Every time she did come, I had another question to ask her. If I asked too many, she was going to start thinking I couldn’t take being alive without her. That part wasn’t true. I just wished I’d asked her so much more when she was alive. When she had been around, though, I didn’t care about magic all that much. I even hated it a little. I hated the fact that it made me different from everyone else. It was stupid, but it was true.
A tug started in my stomach. I leaned over the counter to brace myself for the cramps, but they never came. The bell over the door rang. I looked up to find Randy walking toward me. My body hummed in happiness and I sighed in relief. I didn’t wait until he made his way to me. I walked around the counter and threw my arms around him, meeting him in the middle of the store. “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked, rubbing circles into my back.
“Everything’s going to shit, and we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t have Liam, and Gabe’s tired as fuck. And Travis…well, Travis is being Travis.”
His chest vibrated, and I looked up to find him holding back a laugh. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Sorry,” he said, biting down on his lower lip.
“It’s not funny, Randy.”
“It’s actually not funny. Not at all. It’s just that you kind of word vomited that all out there really fast. And Travis is being Travis. I don’t know what to tell you about that. You two are going to have to figure it out.” He paused, smiling once again without fear that I’d yell at him again. “I do have some good news though.”
“You do?”
“Ren called me. He wants to meet. Do you think you can close up the shop for lunch?”
I was already grabbing my keys from behind the counter. “Let’s go.”
I locked up behind us, and Randy and I walked toward his bike. Riding with him was beginning to seem like second nature now. The vibration of the engine underneath us, the wind roaring past my ears, the feel of his firm muscles on the insides of my forearms. It took me away from my problems as a new hope started in my chest. If Ren had the book, we could figure out how to get rid of this familiar tonight. That would move one puzzle piece back into place and then we could work on what the hell had happened to Jules, and possibly even Anna. With Liam himself that would go much smoother.
We stopped outside Ren’s house, which looked even more like a dump in the daylight than it did when we came by here at night. We dodged trash in the yard, and then Randy used his huge hand to knock on the door. A different girl answered this time, but she had the same lost look, the same sunken face and sallow appearance. Despite that she had a different hair color, she could’ve been the same girl from the other night.
“Bring them in here,” a voice called out.
We followed the stumbling girl through the house and stopped once again in the living room where Ren was perched in the same exact spot, and in the same exact clothes he’d worn the other day. “Did you even leave the house to look for the damn book?” I asked, gesturing toward his smelly ass.
His head reared back, his eyebrows raising. I motioned toward his clothes. He took his collar away and brought it up to his nose before sniffing. His nose crinkled, and he dropped the shirt. “Babe,” he said to the girl who’d plopped down next to him. “Get me a shirt.”
She got up, doing as he asked. She walked out of the room and I sneered at him. “Do you even know her name?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you’re just using them,” I seethed. I hated that she’d just stood and went to go get him a shirt just like that, just because he told her to. He didn’t even ask for crying out loud.
He opened his hands out wide. “What do you think they’re doing to me?” I pressed my lips together. He nodded and smiled as if he’d won. “We’re both doing the same thing to one another.”
“The book,” Randy snapped. “What did you find out?”
The girl walked back into the room and handed the shirt off to Ren. Ren whipped his previous shirt off right there in front of us and I looked away. He was nothing to Randy, or even Liam and Gabe. A new shirt also wasn’t going to help the odor in this place. He needed a shower, and the whole house needed a top to bottom cleaning.
“Do you have it?” Randy asked, not even waiting for him to do any basic grooming. His patience was wearing as thin as mine.
“I don’t have it.”
Randy and I both took a step forward, and Randy nearly growled.
Ren held his hands up. “But I know who does. Jesus, you two are slightly more on edge than yo
u were the other day.”
“You have no fucking idea,” I said, shaking my head.
“Alright, alright,” Ren said, his hands still in the air. “I won’t mess around with you. The Reid’s have it.”
“The Reid’s?” Randy asked, recognition coating his words.
“Yeah, you know. That posh witch family from Boston that’s about as crooked as the mob. But they’re old blood, you see, so nobody gives them hell for it. Word is, Mr. Reid has a bit of a titillation for the black magic, acquires things like the book I was told about. I asked around and was told he purchased it off a rogue witch for his personal use.”
“And you can’t get it for us?”
“You see who I am?” Ren asked, looking around his dump of a place. “I’m a peon. Reid isn’t even going to see me. I won’t even get past his front gates. Believe me, I’ve tried. But someone like you, he might see. It might cost you though.”
“We need that book,” Randy said, his forearms bulging as his hands turned to fists.
His eyes started getting that look in them again, and Ren dropped his nonchalant attitude. “Listen, that’s all I know. Reid has it. I don’t know if you can get it, but that’s who has it. You certainly aren’t going to get it here, or by doing anything to me or to my business.”
“You’re sure this guy has it?” I asked, praying he wasn’t leading us astray. He’d be stupid if he did because we knew where to find him, and he seemed genuinely afraid of what Randy might do to him.
“One-hundred percent. I know one of his guards.”
“Guards?”
Ren shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s got in there, but he’s got the place locked down tight. He is a rich son of a bitch so that might be all it is. Listen, that’s all I know.”
Randy took my hand. “Fine. If you hear anything—”
“Yeah,” Ren said, finishing for him. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
Randy pulled on my hand and we walked from the house.