by E. M. Moore
Travis
Promises made when you were younger seem so much bigger.
Back in the days when the summers never ended, and the days were just as long. When the world seemed like an infinite place, and the stars were almost touchable. When I was five, I thought I could be anything, do anything. So, I made promises. To myself, to my friends. Nothing seemed finite, so why not wish for the world, or promise the world for that matter?
Jax had been my best friend since Kindergarten. We were the only kids in the class who realized we were different. Not only that, but we were something special. Together? We were something magical.
No pun intended.
It seemed stupid now, but when I was a kid and I made that blood oath on a July afternoon that Jax and I would be brothers instead of friends, I meant it. I meant it with everything I had in me, and that oath may be the most important thing to me. More important than the Order, and on par with my feelings for Norah.
Jax and I were more than friends. We were partners in crime. Best mates, Gabe might say. I really didn’t have a word that truly summed up what we were to one another. So, did I jump in front of him and let him get away? I did.
And I would do it again.
I caught the rest of my coven staring at me every once in a while. I knew what they wanted to ask, but I also knew they wouldn’t ask it. Not yet anyway. We were back to the point where they felt I was made of glass and I was about ready to explode. I was well past that point though. I deserved everything I had coming to me. Being marked. Jax’s fury. Even the backlash that was sure to come when Jax resurfaced again.
The Order superiors had told me that whatever Jax did next was on me.
I would take that. Because I fully believed that I was the reason why he’d become this thing. Nothing would change my mind about that. Not Norah, not the rest of the guys. They would never be able to convince me otherwise because they didn’t know the two little boys lying stomach-down in the dirt across from their army men. One-by-one, they threw rock missiles over to destroy the bad guys. They didn’t know the two kids who practiced magic together even when they knew they weren’t supposed to.
They just didn’t know.
Whatever happened from here, I had hope I could turn it around. For that little kid inside of me and that little kid inside of Jax, I had to hope he wasn’t lost. He could be as mad as he wanted at me. I deserved it. But to me, Jax would never be too far gone.
I stared at the phone, then sat back to rub my neck. I knew what I had to do, but I just didn’t want to do it. Jennie barely liked me anyway. I’d let my sister down in all this too, but I didn’t want to continue to do that. She deserved to know what was going on. I picked up the cell phone, my stomach twisting in knots. Hopefully, she’d moved so far beyond Jax that the news he’d returned and had summoned a demon to get his powers back wouldn’t knock her off course. Hopefully she’d just say, “Oh. Good to know.” Best-case scenario, it wouldn’t faze her a bit. Worst-case scenario? I’d have to make another trip to Adams, Virginia, and I really didn’t want to do that.
“Fuck it,” I murmured. I pressed Jennie’s name and brought the phone to my ear. It rang a couple times and I could almost see her on the other end staring down at the screen and wondering if she should answer. I was sure she’d have some sort of smartass remark because that’s how us Shaws were. “Pick up, pick up,” I whispered.
The line clicked. “The prodigal son returns…”
“Hey,” I said, almost choking on the word.
There was a pause. The wheels were no doubt turning in her head, wondering if she should get caught up in my shit. “What is it, Travis?”
I rubbed my temple with my free hand and leaned my head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s Jax, Jen. He’s back.”
1
Gabe interlaced his fingers with mine. I looked over at him, staring into those captivating and carefree blue eyes. He’d been like the flame to my moth this past week. He felt everything as much as everyone else, but he handled it in a way that I admired. In a way that relaxed even my anxious soul. When I was with him, I could almost—almost—close my eyes and pretend that we were just some college couple walking around town, or a couple out sightseeing for the first time.
He reached over and brushed his finger over my nose. “You’re so cute when you look serious.”
I swallowed. I was with Gabe. The last thing I wanted was to be serious right now. I could reserve serious for when we were back at the Order headquarters by the wharf.
“I can’t believe you’ve been in Salem for this long and we haven’t done any of this stuff yet,” he said, trying to change the subject.
I smiled back at him, holding my tongue on what I really wanted to say. He didn’t need reminding about the stuff we’d actually been spending our time on. A cursed sorority house. Witches getting their power drained. A demonic familiar attaching itself to Liam. A warped djinn. Now, Jax, ex-coven member turned demon-friendly witch. It was just like Gabe to think that we could do all that and still let me live the tourist life too. I didn’t want to tell him that since I’d come from New Orleans and been there, done that, every tourist trap was the same to me.
He pulled me to a stop in front of Old Burying Point Cemetery. It was ancient. The stones inside looked like gnarly teeth sticking out of rotted gums. Most of the stones were so worn you couldn’t even read the names of the deceased. Like us, there were other people milling around to take in the sights. Some just walked through to get to another site, but most looked down at the various tombstones, pointing down at the dates or the names or some other random point of interest.
I had to admit, this cemetery was far different from St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans. Our ancient burial places held crypts that looked like stone monuments to the dead. It was interesting to see the differences between the north and the south.
Gabe gestured toward the perimeter of the cemetery after I read one of the stones at our feet. “On the other side of that iron gate is the Salem Witch Trials monument,” Gabe said, his hand squeezing mine. He kept doing that as if he thought I needed a reminder to stay in the present, and I guessed I did.
I looked past the black iron gate to a rectangular grassy area surrounded by a stone wall. “Can you take me?”
His smile grew wide, and he gave my arm a short tug. “I would literally do anything you wanted right now, baby.”
I could think of a few things I wanted to do with Gabe, and none of them involved a cemetery.
I smiled, and his deepened right alongside mine. “You’re sick,” he teased.
“Well, I wasn’t talking about doing that here,” I said, pretending to be affronted.
The truth was, I might consider it. They were dead. None of them would be complaining. On the other hand, I was brought up to respect the dead, so I probably wouldn’t. Granny would have a field day if she’d known the previous thought even entered my head.
We walked out of the peaceful cemetery and then followed the sidewalk around. It led us right to our destination. The sidewalks did that around here. A red line, also known as the Heritage Trail, led to all the popular tourist stops in Salem. If you followed the red line around the city, you’d see everything you came here to see. Of course, everywhere you looked in Salem, there was something to see. Despite what I’d thought earlier about being over the tourist traps, I really did think Salem was a beautiful city with an abundance of historic New England charm.
He pulled me to a stop in front of the walkable monument. Flat stones jutted out from a rectangular rock wall, each one depicting one of the souls Salem lost during the hysteria. My skin crawled just thinking about what this place represented. To think that witches were persecuted like that, and now, those that claimed to be witches and psychics and mediums were out and proud in a very big way around Salem. Most of these people were Wiccans, but there were real witches here too. That’s why we were here, to enforce the magical laws.
“It’s sad,” I finally said. We wal
ked around the paved perimeter and I read each of the victim’s names and the manner of their deaths on the flat rocks. The majority of them were hanged to death.
Gabe walked alongside me, his head hung low as we took in the site.
I envisioned their bodies hanging from a noose and shivered as one by one I read “Hanged” carved into the stones. I flashbacked to the Order placing the Akasha mark on Travis. Wasn’t that kind of the same thing as this? They had trials to determine their innocence the same as the Order did. I supposed the only difference was the magic in the Akasha. We were never wrong. The magic didn’t lie, just as it hadn’t when it knew Travis was truly good, despite the fact that he’d saved his friend Jax from his fate.
“Hey,” Gabe said. He pulled me toward him, sliding his hand up my cheek and into my hair. “I don’t think you’re getting the point of this little outing at all.”
I smiled up at his teasing tone. “I do get it. I just suck at it.” Here he was trying to get me to forget everything that happened for a while and no matter where I looked, I kept going back to everything we were faced with.
He dropped his head back and sighed. “Please don’t make me go back to headquarters with all the sulking. There’s so much sulking.”
I chuckled. He wasn’t lying. There was a hell of a lot of sulking going on back at the wharf headquarters. We’d chosen that over the headquarters in the woods. At least there was running water there, and I still got to be by the ocean. I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his soft lips. “Why don’t we move on to the restaurant?”
His thumb traced over my cheekbone. “Whatever my baby wants.”
“Your baby wants food, and a happy ending.”
He laughed—loudly—gathering the attention of some other tourists taking in the sights. Most of them smiled when they looked at us. Maybe we reminded them of a certain time in their lives. Maybe we just looked like two people having a good time.
When we turned to walk back toward the car, I smiled up at them, wishing we were exactly what they thought in their heads.
As we turned onto the block where we’d parked the car, Gabe pulled out the key fob and unlocked it. The car made two short beeps, and the lights flashed. He smiled at it as if he was in love.
“You really like that, don’t you?”
“Oh, you have no idea.”
He guided me toward the passenger side of the car and opened the door. The new car smell wafted up and both of us breathed in deep.
That was right. The Salem Order was driving around in a brand-new car. It was on the small side, nothing fancy, but at least it would help get more of us from point A to point B. No more having to finagle the ride situation. This, of course, after we decided to move back into Salem city limits at the old headquarters instead of Liam’s parents’ house. We thought it was safer for us there.
“I just love new gadgets,” Gabe said, beaming. He held my hand as I lowered myself into the front seat. When I pulled my feet in, he shut the door for me.
After he ran around the car and got in the other side, I turned toward him. “You better have a full report ready for Liam when we get back. You know he’s going to ask you all about the car, right down to the nitty gritty detail.”
“Oh, I’ve been working on my write-up ever since our date started.”
“Oh really?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m quite the multitasker.”
This I knew to be true in some very delicious ways.
Gabe winked and then pushed the ignition button to start the car. It came to life underneath us and Gabe looked like a kid on Christmas morning with a new toy. “I know we could’ve walked there,” he said as he put the car in Drive, “But this was much more fun.”
I had to agree with him. Even though we were closer to everything now, we used every opportunity to drive the new car around as much as we could. Even Travis liked trading in the Jeep for the smaller more economical car some of the time. The only thing Liam splurged on was the fact that it was a hybrid. We joked that not only were we here to save the residents of Salem, we were also going to save the environment while we were at it.
When you thought about it, Jax was just like pollution. Everything he touched, he damaged. It might not show right away, but it was there. Inside him, there was a demon like a living cancer. He thought the demon gave him powers, and I guessed it did, but it was nothing like the effect it was taking on him personally. Once he got everything he wanted, he’d never be the same again.
Most of us realized that. Jax still didn’t. Or he didn’t care.
Which was much, much worse.
It turned out, we could’ve walked to the restaurant too. But in a life where there was so much to worry about, why not splurge now and then?
We were seated right away. As I eyed the old-world charm in the place, Gabe eyed the menu. When the waitress came with our drink orders, I had to ask for another few minutes with the menu since I hadn’t even looked at it yet.
Gabe sipped his water and then stared as I read. After making my decision, I put the menu back down. He held his hand out to me. “I thoroughly enjoyed doing this with you today. It was great to get a break from soccer and just come spend time with you without staring at the other mopey faces in the room.”
Gabe looked away, his jaw clenching. He wasn’t the type that enjoyed all the sad bitterness going around. Travis was back to his usual moody self. I couldn’t blame him. He’d done something he thought was right, and the Order wasn’t going to let him forget that it was wrong.
Gabe ran his finger over my bare wrist. “You better make yourself a bracelet soon, Norah. I don’t like thinking that you’re unprotected.”
I stared down at the blue all-seeing-eye bracelet I’d made for him. Making the all-seeing-eye bracelet wasn’t the problem. It was figuring out what stones to use for mine. I wanted to get stones that represented all my guys. Somehow, I thought it would tie us even more together, and Lord knew we needed that more than ever right about now. “I will,” I told him.
“Maybe we can take a look at a couple of shops before we head back,” he offered.
Was it wrong that a shopping trip sounded like a good idea? And it wasn’t just because I wanted to get the all-seeing-eye bracelet made for myself. A lot of it was wanting to run from everything that was going on too. I didn’t want to run away from my guys, but just everything around us. All the stress we found us under.
Gabe’s phone buzzed on the table. He tilted the screen up to look at it and then put it down again. I lifted myself off the seat to see it. It was still ringing, vibrating on the table in quick bursts. The name Liam ran across the screen. “You going to get that?” I asked.
“Do I have to?”
“No,” I told him honestly. It sounded mean, but it wasn’t meant to be. We weren’t trying to ignore the others, we were just trying to find that little bit of normal. “But you better,” I told him.
He was already reaching for it on the table. I knew he would. “Hey, mate. What’s up?”
Gabe nodded into the phone. Behind him, a man stood from a table near the front of the room and threw his napkin back down onto it. The woman and two kids he was with stared up at him and the littlest one started crying.
His voice rose. Even from here, I could hear his harsh words as he raged about how difficult it was to even go out to eat with all of them. I bit my lip, unsure of what to do.
I heard Gabe say, “Yeah, we won’t be gone too long. See you soon.” He hung up the phone and then twisted around to see the commotion that had started.
The guy was red in the face now, his fists clenched at his sides. The woman reached out and squeezed his forearm and he stopped midsentence, staring at her with a lost look. Afterward, I watched as he took a few cooling breaths and then sat back down.
“Wow. He was pretty upset,” Gabe said. He turned around but kept shooting glances back at the table.
I watched as they continued with
their meal, the father acting as if nothing had happened. It was like the top had blown off and then he was able to piece everything back together inside, so he could go back to normal.
I understood that sentiment. Not that it was fair for those around him, even us, interrupting our nice, quiet meals with his blow up, but we didn’t know what kind of life he led. Maybe he was the CEO of a company with a lot of stress. Maybe he owned a company that was just about to go under. Maybe with the two kids on top of all that, he hadn’t been able to get a full night sleep in a year.
I would definitely break under all that stress. I turned back to Gabe. “We need to have a talk with everyone.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
I could tell already he thought I was insane. He turned around in his seat looking for the waitress. I covered his hand, bringing his attention back to me. “No, I mean it. We just need to get everything out there, so we can go back to normal.”
“Normal?” His lips slid into a grin as if he thought my last sentence was absolutely insane.
I shrugged. “You know what I mean. Normal for us. For Christ’s sakes, Liam just called and part of me didn’t even want you to answer it because I didn’t want to get pulled out of this moment. Who does that? I love Liam.”
“Things are just a bit off right now, Love.” Gabe covered my hand with his other. “It’s not your fault. You’re allowed some carefree moments like this.”
“But it is my fault,” I said. “Not what’s happening but letting it get as far as it has. That’s all our faults. We’re living in the headquarters like we’re just roommates, moping around from one thing to the next.”
“We’re just all dealing with the Jax thing differently.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “We shouldn’t be dealing with it differently or separately. We’re a team, we’re a coven,” I said, whispering the last part. “We need to be in this together.” I didn’t know why but ever since Travis moved in front of Jax, I’d felt separated from all of them. I was still connected to them each individually, but maybe there was just something about what he did or having to place the Akasha mark on him. In a way, it blew up what we had until we were all just separate pieces trying to make things work again. “We need to go home.”