Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

“But Laney,” said Josh. “That would be great! Don’t you see? If you’re one of us, then it means that you can’t fulfill their stupid prophecy. It would mean that you’re not the Yatah at all.”

  “You might think so,” a cracked, withered voice said from the doorway. “But you’d be wrong.”

  I looked up to where Oma Raina stood, leaning on a dark wooden cane.

  * * *

  Mason stepped up behind the old woman and helped her into the house. He got her settled into the recliner and leaned her cane next to her.

  “I said to meet us here after school,” Josh said.

  “I know. But I started thinking,” Mason said.

  “Never a good idea,” Josh muttered.

  “Shut up, man. Listen. Remember when Laney told us that she saw Bartlef’s wings?”

  Josh nodded.

  “And how she glowed when you kissed her? And how we can take her through to the ethereal plane?”

  “Of course.”

  “And then, in the bathroom, Laney started asking all these questions about when we could see each other. After you’d left, I started thinking about all those things, and suddenly it hit me.” He slapped the heel of his hand to his forehand, presumably to demonstrate the force of his realization. “Laney’s one of us! Once I figured that out, I decided that we had to get Oma Raina’s help.” He looked around the room. “Of course, it would have helped if you’d told me you already knew that she was one of us,” he added.

  “We just figured it out ourselves,” Josh said drily.

  “And we don’t even know if it’s true,” Mr. Bevington reminded the boys.

  The old woman tsk’d at him. “Should have come to me sooner,” she said. She stared around the room at us disapprovingly. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” she said, “acting like you can’t trust me. You know better.”

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t know better. I don’t know anything at all. I don’t trust you. And I don’t have any reason to.”

  “But you will,” she said. “You will.”

  “Great,” I muttered, glaring at Mason. “Now that you’ve got Yoda here on the case, I think your work is done.”

  Josh snickered. His dad frowned at both of us reprovingly.

  “As long as you’re here,” he said to Oma Raina, “we’d love your input. How does Laney being one of us mean that the prophecy doesn’t change?”

  The old woman leaned back into the chair. When she began speaking, her tone had changed. For the first time I could see her as the teacher Josh had told me she was.

  “You all know the prophecy,” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, raising my hand as if I were in class. “I don’t. Not the prophecy itself, anyway. I just kind of have the gist of it.”

  She nodded at me. “You don’t speak our language, so I don’t expect you to know it. Roughly translated, it tells us that the Yatah—the abomination, the stillbirth, the human without a soul—will come to us and bear the Dumaya—the Angel of Destruction—to save us from the encroaching spread of humanity.”

  “Got that part,” I said. “But if I’m one of you, then how can I also be the ‘human without a soul’?”

  Oma Raina raised her eyebrows and looked around the room. “Any guesses?”

  “No guesses,” I said emphatically. “Just tell us.”

  She ignored my demanding tone. “It’s in the translation,” she said. “For as long as I can remember, we have translated Yatah as human without a soul. But prophecies are tricky things. After all, how can you tell whether or not a human has a soul?”

  “That was my question,” I muttered.

  Josh’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, damn,” he said.

  “You understand, then,” said Oma Raina, nodding sagely.

  “Understand what?” I almost shouted in my frustration.

  Mr. Bevington turned to face me, speaking quickly when he saw my face. “The problem with the translation is that it’s an unsolvable riddle. How do you know if a human has a soul?” He looked around the room, stopping at the confusion that clouded Mason’s face. “It’s one of the first things we learn about the differences between us and them,” he prompted. “How do you know a human has a soul?”

  Mason’s look of confusion cleared. “Oh. Because they’re human,” he said. “And all humans have a soul.”

  Josh looked at me. I still wasn’t getting it. “So then who wouldn’t have a soul?” he asked me.

  “Someone who wasn’t actually human,” I said slowly, finally understanding. I looked at Oma Raina. “You People don’t have souls?” I asked.

  “Not as you understand them, no,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. More cryptic. My favorite. “So are you telling me that this means I am the Yatah? Because I’m human but I might be one of you, too?”

  She lifted her frail shoulders in a slight shrug. “Possibly. If you actually are one of us. And if we’re now understanding the translation correctly.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. But here’s a question: why me? Josh, you told me that a lot of the . . . fairies, the People, are part human. Let’s say I am one of you—just for the sake of argument, because I don’t actually believe it. But let’s just say I am. What makes me different from any other part-human fairy out there? What makes me the Yatah?”

  Everyone swiveled to look at Oma Raina, who nodded judiciously. “Good question,” she said. Yep. She was definitely a teacher. “But you’re missing some important information; we track births among our kind very carefully. It’s unusual—almost unheard-of—for a part-blood to be born without our knowledge. And even if it happened, the child would be unable to hide from us for long. Once he or she starts using ether, someone in the nearest enclave generally senses it.”

  “Using ether?” I asked.

  Oma Raina waved her hand through the air. “The ether. That which is all around us, in us, passing through us and into the other world. The stuff of magic. The source of the Power.”

  I nodded, even though I wasn’t entirely certain what she meant.

  “The child is then brought into the enclave for teaching,” she continued.

  “Unless, for some reason, he or she didn’t show Power as a young child,” Mr. Bevington said.

  Oma Raina nodded. “Indeed. In that case, it would be difficult for anyone to sense the child. But it would be no worry, as a child who has not evinced Power by the age of two or three is unlikely to do so, and could thus remain ignorant of his parentage.”

  “But what if the Power came late?” I asked.

  They all stared at me.

  “That just doesn’t happen,” Josh said.

  Oma Raina shook her head. “Ah. But I think perhaps it has.” She smiled at me, and I realized that she was missing a tooth along one side of her mouth. I shook myself, suddenly aware that I had been lulled into acceptance by the familiar tenor of an exchange between a teacher and a student.

  Or perhaps by something more? A subtle glamour, shading my attitude toward the old woman?

  I shuddered at the thought and took a deep breath, mentally shaking off whatever was affecting me.

  “What makes the rest of you think we can trust this old hag?” I asked. No one answered me—they all just stared at me. “That’s what I thought,” I said. “You don’t have any more reason to trust her than I do.” I shook my head.

  “We have to trust someone,” Josh finally said.

  I raised my eyebrows, wishing again that I had Ally’s trick of lifting only the one. “Why? What if she’s in on it with Bartlef? Or Biet?” I shook my head and stood up. “I need to go home,” I said. “I need to think about all this.”

  “Wait,” Mason said. “I brought Oma Raina over for another reason, too. If you are one of us, she’s the only one powerful enough to hide you from the others.”

  The old woman nodded. “Come here, girl,” she said.

  I looked at her suspiciously.

  “I’m not going to bite you,” she said crossly.


  “Are you going to put some sort of whammy on me? Like the one a minute ago?”

  She cackled. “Very good. I wondered if you’d notice.”

  Josh and his father glanced at each other with matching expressions of surprise. Huh. Guess they hadn’t noticed the glamour. I filed the information away in the you-might-be-a-demon-if category.

  Oma Raina gestured toward me again. “Yes. A glamour to hide your true nature from the others.”

  “What if I’m not one of you?”

  “Then that shall be hidden as well.” She took my hand as I drew near and grasped it for just a moment. I felt a tingle run up my arm, and then it went numb for a second.

  “There,” the old woman said. “You are hidden.”

  I looked down at my skin. It wasn’t glowing anymore. “How long will this hold?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Until I remove it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you remove it yourself. If you find need to do so—and are able.”

  I swallowed, hoping that her words were not prophetic. I’d had about as much prophecy as I could take for one day.

  Chapter 18

  Mom was at her computer when I walked into the house. “Hey, honey,” she said a bit distractedly. “You’re home early, aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t feel well,” I said. “I got sick, so I came home.”

  “Got sick how?” she asked, her attention now focused on me.

  “Like a stomach bug or something,” I said. “I’m just going to go lie down, I think.”

  She gestured to me to come toward her. “Lean over,” she said, and put her lips to my forehead. “You have a little bit of a fever. I’ll get you some Advil.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Unexpectedly, my eyes filled up with tears. I turned quickly so she wouldn’t see them. The last thing I needed was Mom figuring out that there was more wrong with me than a minor illness.

  I spent the rest of the day huddled in my bed with the covers drawn up under my chin. It was the best day I’d had since moving to Fairy, I decided, even if I did have a fever that made my joints ache. Maybe I could figure out a way to just stay right where I was until graduation day.

  I sighed. If the fever didn’t abate today, I might get one or two more days’ respite, but after that, I was going to have to go back to school and face what my life had become. What, quite possibly, I had become.

  I buried my head under the comforter and tried to sleep.

  Through my nap-induced haze, I heard Kayla come in from school and recognized the sound of raised voices—Kayla’s and John’s, then Mom’s. I ignored it and drifted off again.

  Some time later I woke to find Mom sitting on the edge of my bed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “You feeling any better?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I murmured.

  “You’d tell me if something bad happened to you, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

  I struggled to sit up. “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.” I rolled over so that my back was to her as she pulled the covers up around me, but I was wide awake now, remembering snatches of the fight I’d overheard earlier. I was almost certain Kayla had told them the rumors she’d heard.

  I was glad Mom wasn’t pursuing it. I needed time to figure out how to deal with her in all this. I could always get Mr. Bevington to do his mind-trick on her, but it seemed wrong—much worse than screwing up John’s memory, I guess because I really believed that Mom had my best interests at heart. I didn’t trust John as much.

  I debated the pros and cons for a long time without really deciding anything—which was a decision in its own right, I suppose.

  By the next morning, I felt well enough to go to school. At least, I felt physically well enough. I didn’t relish the thought of dealing with the rumors again.

  Kayla didn’t speak to me at all on the ride to school—not that I was exactly feeling conversational myself—and we went our separate ways as soon as we got to campus in what was beginning to feel like a routine.

  To my surprise, the whispers that followed me as I walked down the hall were also beginning to feel routine. I just held my head up and ignored them. I would like to get Mr. Bevington to do a mind-wipe on the whole school, I thought. Of course, that would have defeated the whole purpose of our love-triangle charade; I knew a campus-wide memory reset had to remain an unrealized fantasy. But thinking about it in great detail—imagining how I might be able to start over, avoiding fairies and demons altogether—got me through geometry that morning.

  When I walked out of the class, Mason was leaning against the wall and smiling at me.

  “Ready to run the gauntlet?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I said. It was perhaps not my wittiest retort ever, but I deserved some slack—after all, I’d been ill.

  Mason just smiled. “I thought I’d walk you to class, maybe shield you from some of the fallout from the rumors.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not sure being seen with you is going to help my reputation all that much.”

  “Too late,” he said. “Your reputation’s trashed.”

  I froze and stared at him, my eyes huge. “I can’t believe you just said that!”

  He turned his blinding grin on me. “Really?” he asked. “Oh, well. I can’t take the word of a slut like you seriously.”

  I hit him on the shoulder with my geometry book. “You bastard,” I said loudly enough for people to turn and look at us.

  Mason just grinned wider. “Tramp.”

  I hit him again. Harder. “Fairy,” I hissed.

  “Trollop.” He leaned in close and waggled his finger at me. “Next, you should try calling me homo. But not ‘sapiens’. Homo demonicus,” he whispered. His smile danced brightly in his eyes.

  And suddenly I was laughing harder than I’d laughed in days. I leaned my back against the wall and gasped for breath, sliding down to a squatting position on the floor.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I finally managed. “That’s not a real classification, is it?”

  “Hell if I know,” he said, tugging at my arm to pull me upright. “So to speak. Get it? Hell?”

  I groaned. “That’s just awful, Mase.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to class.”

  I was still smiling when we got to the classroom. Mason reached out and squeezed my hand before heading off to his own class. Josh was staring at me from his seat, but his gaze was neutral and flat.

  “Hey, Laney,” he said. His tone matched his stare.

  “Hey, Josh.” I tried to match his nonchalance.

  Ally looked back and forth between the two of us, avidly soaking up every nuance she thought she saw. I decided right then that I really did not like her very much.

  Lunch was an ordeal. Ally and Natalie sat together and whispered through the entire hour. Scott sat next to Natalie, as always. Sarah sat next to me, but we didn’t talk much. Andrew huddled between the two groups, looking miserable. As far as I could tell, Sarah was the only one who might be trying to think the best of me.

  At least, that’s what I thought until we got to history class. Then she leaned over and whispered, “So what’s really going on?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “What are you doing with Josh and Mason?”

  I felt my cheeks flame. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m the one who showed you what they were doing in the first place. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  I shook my head. “Sarah, really, it’s nothing. I’m just . . .” I paused for a long moment. “Just dating them.”

  “Really?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Really.”

  She threw herself back into her seat with a thump and crossed her arms. She spent the rest of the class period glaring at me.

  And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the week. Josh and Mason
took turns walking me places. Everyone else avoided me. I stopped eating lunch with Andrew and his friends. Instead, I sat on the bench outside the gym every day and ate my brown-bag lunch as quickly as possible, wishing that either Josh or Mason shared a lunch period with me. In the afternoons, Mason and I sold ads. And every day when he dropped me off, he gave me a long, slow kiss that made my toes curl and left me breathless.

  But he never kissed me unless we were somewhere Kayla would see us.

  Mom left to go on her next trip—this one would take almost two weeks—but before she left, she sat down with me and John and gave us each a typed sheet. It had a list of rules on it: when I should be home, what I was allowed to do, and what chores I was expected to do around the house. And at the bottom of it was a statement that any punishment John might want to hand out (like, say, grounding) would go through Mom first. Then she made us sign it. John actually grumbled about it more than I did. I hadn’t been thrilled with the idea originally, but I liked that she had taken my complaints about John’s heavy-handedness seriously.

  Like I said, Mom might be an airhead sometimes, but there are some things she’s really good about.

  So at least my home life seemed less likely to blow up. Kayla and John did have a fight because her curfew was earlier than mine. I retreated to my room for that one. Not surprisingly, Kayla got her way in the end.

  And I managed to go all week without seeing either Bartlef or Biet.

  On Thursday, Sarah tracked me down at lunch and sat on the bench next to me. She pulled out her own sack lunch and starting eating it.

  “Listen,” she finally said. “I’m really sorry about bugging you so much about Josh and Mason.”

  I murmured noncommittally.

  “It’s just that I really, really wanted to find out what happened to Quentin.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “Can we start over?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She held out her hand to me. “Hi,” she said. “My name’s Sarah. I know you don’t know many people other than Josh and Mason yet, so I thought I’d introduce myself.”

  I smiled and held out my hand to clasp hers. “Hi, Sarah. I’m Laney.”