But Lila had also been clear that Izzy would have to tear a piece of someone’s life force off for herself to make that work, so I had, maybe foolishly, volunteered myself. And it hurt. It felt like someone had taken hot daggers and pierced my very soul. I’m not even being dramatic—I had done enough soul magic to know when my soul was being affected, and let me tell you: goblin magic left me feeling violated, torn apart from the inside.
But this? This was something else entirely. This was a dozen goblins, all at once, not just snatching pieces of my soul but trying to tear it to shreds. I felt like they were trying to reduce me to rubble so that they could go back through the pieces and pilfer whatever was left of me for themselves.
I felt my knees hit the ground, and I desperately tried to reach out for help. The earth had always responded to me better than anything else, as if living in the dirt for so long had endeared me to it. But as soon as I tried to reach out, my soul was exposed, and everything hurt even more. I quickly withdrew my plea, trying instead to do the mental equivalent of tucking into a ball and covering my head.
I also did that physically, by the way.
I felt a foot in the small of my back but no long claws, and some of the searing sensation lifted. I could hear, as if from far away, someone saying, “Leave her alone,” but I was so focused on trying to keep myself together that it took me far too long to recognize that voice as Aaron’s.
When I did realize it, I couldn’t help but smile, even for as much as everything else hurt. At least that answered my question about whether goblins would go after humans. Five witches were too tempting a treat, but Aaron was just another non-magical being, not worth the goblins’ time and effort when they had so many tasty witches to choose from.
Aaron tore another few goblins away from me, and I heard the sharp rapport of gunfire before I finally felt steady enough to look up and see what was happening.
And boy, was it a sight to see.
I had known that Aaron and Izzy had been working together, training together, trying to find ways that they could contribute to the larger fight even when they didn’t have any magic of their own. But it was one thing to know that and another thing entirely to see the two of them in action.
Watching Aaron and Izzy wasn’t quite like watching Elaine and Andrew, who had decades of experience under their belts and who knew each other’s styles so implicitly that they didn’t need words. But I could see the beginnings of that same graceful, easy teamwork in my two friends.
As I watched, Izzy threw out an arm to point at a goblin gearing up to rush Tony—who was, like me, on his hands and knees and had long gashes and bite marks all over his skin. Aaron didn’t hesitate to spin, following Izzy’s pointing finger, and shoot the goblin before he pointed out another target for Izzy, who had a better angle from which to shoot it. I could hear, almost through a tunnel, that they were calling out to each other, working up a good rhythm of call and response, but I was still reeling from the attack and couldn’t quite make out the specific words.
I couldn’t help being proud of my friends as I watched them go to town. I had been worried about taking them into the field, especially after the kidnapping fiasco with my half-brother and my father. But now, I could see what my friends were capable of.
I smiled to myself. See, Dad? They’re more than liabilities. I told you my family wasn’t a weakness.
I pulled my attention away from the amazing job Aaron and Izzy were doing together to push myself from my hands and knees to a more upright kneeling position, though even that had my vision swimming, and I put an arm out to steady myself.
What I wasn’t expecting, then, was to feel someone’s hands on my arm. I panicked at first, thinking it might be another goblin, but when I didn’t feel claws, I glanced over to see a woman who looked to be in about her late forties. Her dark hair was streaked with gray, and her deep brown skin was lined with the kinds of wrinkles that said the warm, reassuring smile she gave me was a constant—the kinds that crinkled the edges of her eyes and lined the dimples in her cheeks.
“Don’t worry,” she said, one hand on my back in between my shoulder blades to steady me as I swayed. “We deal with this kind of thing all the time.”
I frowned at her. “We?”
She smiled lightly at that and gestured with one hand, and I followed her gaze to see that several other people seemed to have melted out of the trees to engage the goblins, all of them wielding either guns or daggers like Santo’s.
As I watched, one of the newcomers bent down by Santo to pull him to his feet and check him for injuries, while a few others took up positions around Andrew and Elaine, fighting back the horde and tending to my friends. The fighters didn’t even have to speak to each other; everyone there simply seemed to know what their job was and performed it admirably and efficiently.
“Let’s get you out of here,” the woman next to me said, pulling me to my feet. Without the goblins tearing at me, I felt stronger and steadier, but I still swayed slightly before righting myself with a hand on her shoulder. She gave me a sympathetic look and kept her shoulder under my arm as she led the way deeper into the jungle. “First time dealing with goblins?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted, looking over my shoulder to see that the goblins were retreating now—they even looked scared of the new group. I wondered if that meant these fighters were a regular thorn in the goblins’ side—or vice versa.
“Never that many, right?” The woman let out a dark sort of laugh. “It’s overwhelming the first time you face an army of them, but you have to remember they’re desperate to survive. Make them fight for every scrap of magic, and they’ll look for easier targets.” The woman let out a breath that moved her shoulders beneath my arm. “Are you alright?”
“I think so.” I straightened up and would have removed my arm, but she was still moving ahead at a steady pace that wouldn’t let me pause to get my bearings. And since she seemed determined to help me limp along at that pace, I simply focused on keeping up. “Thanks, um . . . sorry; I didn’t catch your name.”
“Theresa,” the woman said. “I would have introduced myself, but we had more important things to take care of,” she added, this time with a playful smile. “And you must be Michelle. Tony told me you were coming. Santo was supposed to take you the safe route, but the goblins recently moved camp; sorry about that.”
I shook my head at that. “Typical,” I said. “Everyone I meet in this business wants to make a dramatic entrance; why should you be any different?”
Theresa laughed out loud. “Fair enough,” she said. “Let’s get you and your friends safe, and then we can compare notes, shall we?”
“Fair enough,” I agreed.
Chapter 4: A Real, Live Future Seeker
There was no way we would have been able to find Theresa’s hideout without someone on the inside showing it to us; it was too well-hidden by an illusion spell.
Now, I’m pretty good at illusion spells. When Aaron and I were living on the streets together, before I found the Rendezvous, back when I had no memory of anything but my name, I would often use illusions to stage a little shoplifting so we could get our hands on food and clothing. And I was a good enough mental witch that I could usually see through illusions or mental and emotional intrusions. At the very least, I could usually tell when something was off, even if I couldn’t pinpoint the full extent of an illusion. So when I say I didn’t see this illusion coming, it’s a serious testament to how powerful it was.
Something that big should have at least left some kind of ripple in the air, some kind of feeling that my subconscious would pick up on even if my conscious mind couldn’t figure it out. But instead, I had absolutely no warning as we walked through the undergrowth of the forest into Theresa’s hideout. One moment, we were deep in green, and the next, we were in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by houses on stilts.
I blinked and looked around. Whatever I had expected, this wasn’t it. The houses were pristine
, even modern. I could see lines of power from a hydraulic generator using the river to power the neighborhood, and I even saw a few people wandering around with ear buds, bobbing their heads along to whatever music they had there. Aside from the obvious changes made for living in the rainforest, like the stilts and the generator, this could have been any other human neighborhood in any of the cities that Aaron and I had been through on the road together.
So, yeah, it took me aback, and I stopped all forward motion as I stared. The surprise of the illusion spell and the very human setting left me floundering for anything to say. I didn’t know what to think!
I think the pieces of human technology were what surprised me the most. In all my time in the Rendezvous, I’d become very aware of how separate the human and magical worlds were. A few witches, like my friend Gerald, even resented humans for killing off Halfsies and, in their view, forcing the separation between humans and witches. So no one in the Rendezvous would have been comfortable enough to walk around with headphones—at least, not when I first met them. Now, after spending plenty of time with Aaron and listening to his stories, there might have been a few willing to mix and mingle with humans. But not to this extent.
“This is . . . different,” I said, but even that seemed woefully inadequate to cover what I was feeling.
“What were you expecting?” Theresa asked, a twinkle in her eye as she led me along by the arm. “Just because we’re hiding from the king doesn’t mean we have to live in the dirt like the Rendezvous does.”
“I guess I didn’t consider that there was another option,” I said, trying to shake off the shock as we got to the base of one house and she gestured for me to climb up the ladder with her.
“It’s not your fault,” Theresa said with a laugh. “And it’s not the Rendezvous’s fault either, to be honest. It’s hard to establish permanency when you’re constantly giving away your own position with missions and fighting and spies. Here, our only focus is on making our hideaway comfortable until the war is over and we don’t have to stay hidden.”
“I can see that,” I said, shaking my head—and falling silent once more as I stepped inside to see that Teresa’s little house had every modern human convenience inside, from a fridge to a television and a stack of movies. “Wow.”
“Yeah, but there’s ‘not living in the dirt,’ and then there’s living like humans,” Aaron pointed out as the rest of the group arrived—just in time to hear Theresa’s explanation. He shook his head as he looked around the place. “And you’ve definitely crossed that line.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Theresa asked, one eyebrow raised. “Humanity has so many amazing inventions; why wouldn’t we use them?”
“Yeah, that’s what I kept telling people in the Rendezvous, but I sort of get this blank look?” Aaron gave an approximation of exactly the expression he kept getting from people before he shrugged both shoulders up. “So, I stopped trying to convince them. Nice to see it’s localized stupidity.”
Theresa smirked at that, though it was a newcomer who actually responded to Aaron with a quiet, gentle voice breaking into the conversation to say, “Your influence has already affected them.”
When I turned to see who spoke, I realized immediately that this had to be Theresa’s sister. The two of them looked so much alike—except for the fact that Theresa had far more gray in her hair and kept it long and curly, while her sister looked about a decade younger with short-cropped hair and fewer smile lines and wrinkles.
“This is Tara,” Theresa said, crossing the room in a few long strides to put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, almost protectively. It was a strange move among friends, I thought—until I saw the way Elaine had her eyes narrowed and her hands in fists at her sides.
But if Tara had noticed Elaine’s body language, she didn’t give us any indication. Instead, she smiled sedately, looking around the group of us before Theresa nudged her toward a seat in the living room. Her gaze seemed to drift as Theresa led her before she found Aaron again and smiled. “You are The Bridge, and your friend is The Balance; do not sell yourself short or stop telling the witches around you what your world has to give.”
Aaron frowned and looked like he wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so Theresa stepped in with a sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My sister is a Future Seeker; she isn’t great with staying in the present or holding conversation.”
“That’s alright,” Aaron said, obviously gathering his smile to give to the sisters. “I didn’t even know I had a name in the Future Seeker community.”
“Of course you do,” Tara said, though her gaze had started to drift again. “Such a time of transition. So many players in the game. . . .”
I couldn’t help but frown as I watched her float away from her own sentence. I knew because I had Lila in my head that Future Seekers had their lives more or less completely taken over by Time, so they didn’t experience life the same way the rest of the world did. But watching Tara now, I got to see the full extent of what that meant in a way I simply hadn’t seen with Lila, who had been freed from Time by the time we crossed paths so she could die as herself and not as a servant to the great, unknowable temporal force.
Tara never seemed to focus on one person for too long, her gaze roaming and her expression changing seemingly at random—though I knew from experience it had to be in response to whatever she saw in the future or past at any given time. In that regard, she wasn’t so different from me and my inability to school my expression while Lila and I talked in my mind.
It’s like she isn’t allowed to be herself, I thought. How can she live like this?
I wasn’t surprised when Lila chimed in—especially when I had practically been inviting her to do so, obviously concerned and confused at seeing a Future Seeker at the height of her power. It’s not so bad, Lila promised. I actually enjoyed being part of Time. Sure, that kind of life makes it hard to connect with the rest of the world sometimes, but Time can be a gentle friend to those of us who understand it and answer its call.
Lila, you give up your lives and your selves for this.
Because we believe in it, Lila explained, her tone gentle and patient, as if she’d expected this reaction. And considering she lived in my mind, she probably had. We believe that there are some things the world needs to be warned about and that there are some things that are too good for the world to let pass them by. So we agree to alert others to the ways that lie in the future that lead to happiness instead of misery. She paused. Or, at least, we try to warn the world to help them prevent misery from overtaking everything.
There’s got to be a better way to do that.
Lila paused, and I couldn’t help feeling jealous. After all, Lila could see into my mind and read my entire train of thought in a conversation, but she could keep her thoughts to herself and pick and choose what she wanted to tell me.
I mean, I knew this arrangement was better for my long-term mental health, because it meant I had one train of thought going on at all times in my head, with only occasional interruptions. But there were times, like this one, that I definitely felt like I’d gotten the short end of this particular mental deal.
Finally, Lila arranged her thoughts, and she spoke slowly and clearly when she did break her silence to respond to me. There is, she said. But it hasn’t happened yet.
I wasn’t sure how to react to that, all things considered. On the one hand, I took some small comfort in knowing that Future Seekers weren’t going to be used up like that forever—but on the other hand, knowing that things would change didn’t excuse the lack of change now.
I glanced up and saw that Tara had come to sit next to me, and I gave her a tight smile. And then, as so often happened, my mouth moved faster than my brain.
“You can’t be happy like this.”
Obviously, it wasn’t the most diplomatic thing I’ve ever said, but Tara didn’t look the least bit bothered. Instead, she tipped her head to the side and gave me her whole foc
us. “I didn’t realize I would be a target of your curiosity, but of course, you’ve had that for centuries. An urge to challenge the status quo, to break the rules and see what happens, to stretch your powers until you get caught. It made you such a powerful witch once, long ago and also very soon.” Her eyes, dark brown and deep as Time itself, found mine and seemed to search my soul. “I’m sorry,” she added, “about what I told your father. What he thinks it means.”
I blinked at her for a long moment. What the heck was I supposed to say in response to that? Where should I even start? The weird tenses? The assessment of power that felt way off base from my own experience struggling to keep up?
The most pressing issue, though, had to be this: “What did you tell my father?”
“The future,” Tara said simply, her gaze drifting away from mine again, though she didn’t seem to have a clear reference point. “I know you wonder about my role. You want to change the ways of Time.”
I shook my head. She was, in a way, answering my earlier statement about her happiness. And I did want to talk about that. But I had more pressing things to ask about!
Then again, maybe that was part of dealing with Future Seekers; maybe they did things out of order. How could I know what the etiquette was when the only Future Seeker I’d met had lost Time’s influence by the time we joined minds?
Tara seemed completely unperturbed by my reaction, serenely speaking to me without looking my way. “Time whispers to me. She tells me what will always be and what cannot be changed as well as what may be and what must not be. Some Future Seekers speak of Time as a master, and they themselves are slaves. That is sometimes true. But I am not the slave of time, and she does not dictate my every move. I do not know if it will rain tomorrow. I do not know what relationships I will form. I do not allow Time to impede my love for my sister or her family.” She smiled sadly. “But I know that is hard to see.”
Sister Seeker Page 4