by A. L. Tyler
“But you should have helped her—”
“Thorn.” He gave a crooked smile. “I just brought you back from the dead. Quite literally. And that was your decision—your logic—because I know you chose to save the dying girl over the ailing friend. You will always save the dying girl. Show some gratitude.”
I blinked. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said dismissively. “Don’t tell your sister, or any other witch. It will label you tainted for the rest of your days, and they don’t need to know. Even not knowing, the stress damn near killed Lyssa.”
“But…” I stammered, looking over at my sister, frozen in time as we debated her better qualities. “She would understand. I was a demon, but now I’m me again. It’s me, after all. She’s my sister.”
“And you know how she feels about demons,” Charlie said. His eyes turned sad as he recounted the things she had said early in their acquaintance. “Demons are too powerful for their own good, and they need to be enslaved. Being touched by that power carries a heavy stigma in certain circles, and I didn’t expect you to know. I think she would care about this, and not telling her is doing you both a favor.”
I nodded, taking another deep breath. “Thank you.”
He nodded with me, and Gates resumed her affectionate bumping, mumbling something about how she didn’t know what she would have done without me, because Charlie didn’t scoop the box nearly often enough. I carelessly trailed a hand down her back, and then stopped, looking back up at Charlie.
“You were in love with her,” I said suddenly, remembering what Stark had told me. “I’m so sorry.”
Lyssa looked shocked for a moment. Charlie did, too, but then he shattered into a shower of glittering sparks and was gone.
“Who?” Gates asked, looking up at me. “The old woman?”
~~~~~~~~~
I stayed in bed for another day to appease Lyssa, and Gates stayed nearby the whole time. She was quieter than usual, and it unnerved me. Somehow I thought she was slowly becoming more cat-like, and I feared she was losing what little of her humanity she had retained. Lyssa assured me it wasn’t the case, because the curse that had been laid on her affected her form only, and not her mind. Gates was just shaken by my near-demon experience, and it had changed her.
Somehow, that made it worse.
She was much more solemn than I had ever remembered her, quietly reading Kendra’s old spell books and eating her meals in silence and away from us when she could. It wasn’t like my loud-mouthed friend to be so withdrawn.
When I finally got up to take a shower, I had an ugly shock when I stripped down and saw the scar down my side. I winced at the memory of being dragged to the Other Side like a rag doll as I trailed my fingers over the twisted flesh between my ribs and down to my hip. It was jagged and melted, and four heavy dimples in the pink scar showed where a massive claw, like a bird of prey’s talon, had gripped me too tightly before tearing me from the physical world.
I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that the wound would never heal right. The skin had already reformed, and it was misshapen. Stark had made sure I would never forget our meeting, or his exact sentiments toward any witch that bore the name Hawthorn.
By the third day, when Lyssa hadn’t left the apartment, I asked if she was ever going to get home, because Josh and Rosemary surely missed her by now. With a stoic expression that was haunted by a few stray tears, she had calmly explained what had happened in the month that I had been away from my body.
Lyssa had become suspicious of my prolonged absence when I didn’t come back to work, but she hadn’t worried because she’d sent me on the errand to collect her supplies. All the same, she had stopped by my apartment before going home to check in with Gates and make sure she was fed. When I didn’t return the next day, Gates had called her for help. Lyssa wasn’t able to summon me, and Charlie would have known if something more common had befallen me, but neither of us showed up.
As time went on, they feared the worst.
It had taken Charlie nearly a week to lose Stark in the Other Side and then find me. When he brought me back, I was frozen by his magic, and so near death that he feared I might not survive. He and Lyssa had done a series of spells to restore me, all the time lying to friends and family and saying that I had contracted mono or had gone on an unplanned vacation. Lyssa hadn’t wanted to worry our dad unless the worst happened…but it hadn’t.
Lyssa didn’t know, and for once didn’t care, how Charlie had done it. He had brought me back, and I held my tongue about what he had said to me. I had become a demon for a short while, but he had managed to put me back in a human body. I was human, and alive, and that was all that Lyssa needed to know.
Charlie had told them what he knew about my encounter with Stark, and Lyssa had immediately freaked out and put a protection spell on Rosemary and Josh. She sent them away to live with Josh’s parents until she could get the lay of the land with Stark, and hadn’t seen or heard from them since.
They hadn’t seen or heard from Stark, either. They didn’t know how he had found me, or how he had left the Other Side. It didn’t seem conceivable that he could have done it without being summoned, because Kendra had made him as a new demon. No one knew his name, and even if they did, any half-decent sorcerer would have bound him, so the fashion of his summoning remained a mystery.
So the three of us sat, like rats trapped in a hole, inside the protections that Lyssa and Charlie had laid around my apartment. Lyssa was working on creating charms to protect us so that we could leave, but the work had to be completed on the full moon in two weeks.
She was going to be done just in time for me to make it to classes. I was beginning to question if college was really a viable option for my future, but Lyssa insisted.
“You’re going,” she said, wielding a wooden spoon at me as she mixed up yet another meal of pasta and canned sauce. “I did not estrange myself from my family and commit to gaining ten pounds in a month via spaghetti for you to drop out of school and run off to the warlock circus.”
Pasta was one of the few foods she had thought to bring with her for our lock-in, because it was easy enough to make and nonperishable. We had all been hoping that Charlie would come back sooner than later, and maybe bring some cheeseburgers with him, but he didn’t. It had been a week, and my emotions had run the gamut from severe depression to a fiery anger.
I knew I must have embarrassed him when I brought up his relationship with Kendra, but running off had just been immature. I had worried when he hadn’t come back, but then I had realized that I was his bridge. Even when we were apart, there was a part of us that was still connected, and somehow I didn’t feel like he had met a gruesome end at Stark’s sparky fingertips. He was sulking somewhere, and we were stuck and hungry, and he wasn’t coming back because I had embarrassed him.
I had taken to the quiet moments when Lyssa was cooking in the kitchen and Gates was staring aimlessly out the window, going to my bedroom and talking quietly to myself, or maybe to him, if he was listening. I apologized, and I cried, and I asked him to come back. I said I understood why he had instantly been defensive when we had met, and I said I understood if he never wanted to see any of us again. Then I took it all back and I railed against him for abandoning us. I gritted my teeth and cursed him for being a coward now and in every moment he hadn’t just told me the truth. I accused him, and berated him, and begged him.
And when I had nothing left to say, I went to the window with Gates and stared out. Neither of us said anything, and at first, I had wondered what she was looking at. But then I saw them.
There were kids—new adults—just out of their parents’ homes for the first time. The rich ones drove fancy new cars that I was sure would be dinged and damaged in the dumbest of new driver ways in the next few weeks. The rest drove used cars, or bikes, and the old used furniture arrived in droves to decorate their dorms on campus down the street.
And they all looked so excit
ed.
This was a moment that both of us had talked about without end back in January. We had talked about getting an apartment together, and staying up all night with energy drinks while watching old science fiction horror movie reruns, and filming mock episodes of Kitchen Master International, where our ingredient of the week would always be noodles, because we were poor college students who couldn’t afford a real, nutritious meal.
And here we were, sharing an apartment and staying up all night terrified. We had only noodles to eat. It was exactly what we had wanted, but the dream had shattered.
We weren’t starry-eyed kids anymore.
As I laid myself down to sleep that night, Gates quietly jumped onto my bed and curled up under my arm. She was starting to feel bony; the pasta was taking a faster toll on her carnivore’s body, and she was sick of the indigestion that came with eating it, so she skipped meals as often as not.
I thought about how Charlie had come back to me the first time, just as I had fallen asleep, and I wondered if he would do it again. He did have a flair for the dramatic.
Gates stayed by my side while Lyssa slept alone on the couch. I went to sleep that night without seeing him, and dreamed that I was walking alone in his castle in the Other Side, shouting his name as I went down the corridors looking for him.
Then I awoke to the smell of bacon.
Chapter 10
I flew out of the bed, and Gates hissed and almost didn’t land on her feet. I threw the door open and stepped out. She was right on my heels, and we both stopped when we saw him sitting at the table in men’s pajamas and eating a plate of eggs and toast. Lyssa was sitting across from him, looking hung over and aged ten years, clutching a warm cup of coffee.
When she saw me, she took a deep breath and sighed, frowning at the front door.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve been around,” he said, looking unhappy. “I was told that I was unwelcome, and not to contact you anymore.”
“You were told,” Lyssa said with a glare, “That we didn’t need help from a liar. If you’re going to do this, then out with it. Tell her what you did. What you’re still doing.”
Confused, I looked from Lyssa to Charlie.
“I have no idea what she’s talking about,” he said, taking another bite of eggs.
Lyssa cocked her head, disgusted. “You’re a good man, Charlie. This is low. Too low for you, even after what Kendra did.”
I looked back to Lyssa. Of all the words she had used to describe demons, and Charlie specifically, “good” wasn’t one of them.
“What’s he done that’s so good?” I asked her.
“He saved your life,” she said without hesitation. “He had a hand in dad and Janet getting together. He banished one of the worst tyrants history has ever known, and Kendra always said he was good. I believed her, but I’m done covering for you. Tell her the truth, Charlie, because you know you can’t hold onto this forever. You’ll break her heart when you disappear. You’ll break both of their hearts.”
Charlie was frowning as he avoided my gaze. Gates was apparently ignoring our conversation, because she had made for the plate of bacon in the kitchen and was stuffing her face.
“Charlie?” I asked hesitantly.
“The curse he put on Gates isn’t something that can be broken,” Lyssa said in the face of his continued silence. “It’s permanent, and he knows it, and he’s been using it to bribe you all along.”
Gates stopped eating. Her eyes flashed to Charlie first, and then to me.
“Charlie?” I asked, this time quieter.
He looked up at me, wearing his guilt all over his face. “It was the first step in my spell, Thorn. I started as a witch’s familiar, and I’ve carried that form since the beginning. As much as I needed human things to bridge the gap back to humanity, I needed to shed my demonic skin. That skin.” He nodded at Gates. “Someone has to wear it for me to succeed. If I take it back, I will lose all of the work I’ve done so far.”
I was stunned. I leaned back against the wall to keep from falling over. “You were just going to leave her that way forever?”
“Yes,” Lyssa said in accusation.
“No,” Charlie said, shaking his head. He took a hard look from Lyssa, and back-pedaled a little. “I mean, yes, initially, when you were just the unwitting kid sister Hawthorn and she was the loud-mouthed punk. But I think we’ve all grown as people. I had decided to find a more deserving candidate, if I could…”
“If you could?” I asked.
“When I could,” he quickly amended. “All of the stuff about the spell work tiring me is true. It must look like I can move the universe effortlessly to you, but some spells, and this one in particular, takes a momentous amount of effort to pull off.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, stunned.
Lyssa gave me a pitying look. “You should, Anise. A demon becoming a human… it’s unnatural. It breaks the laws of nature, and science, and everything else, because such a creature shouldn’t exist. Demons belong on the Other Side. Not as some sort of former demon… thing, living amongst us.”
Charlie gave me a heavy look, and I swallowed. Right then, Lyssa was talking about me. And she had called me a thing, just for having passed through demonhood and back again.
But I didn’t hesitate when I answered, because even though I was livid with him right then, I never questioned if he was going to out me. He had given me a memory, and it had worked, because we were friends.
“I’m going to keep helping him,” I said resolutely. Gates gave a hiss that was followed by a growl, and I shook my head. “He’s suffering. He wants to end it. I’m going to help him.”
“And what about my suffering?” Gates said through a snarl.
I nodded, and Charlie’s exhausted eyes met my gaze.
“What can you do?” I asked quietly, almost begging.
He took a deep breath, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say nothing. When he spoke, my knees nearly gave out in gratitude.
“I can share it with her,” he said, giving Gates a guilty glance. “I can’t take it away completely with Stark out there. I can’t protect you while I’m a cat, but someone must wear that skin now that the process is started. I can share it with you. Until we find someone else to take that form, that’s what I can do.”
He snapped his fingers, and Gates was Gates again. Where Charlie had sat, there was a sleek, black cat staring at me as I ran to hug my friend. Somehow, his green cat eyes held more emotion than any other cat eyes I had ever seen, and he was devastated.
Gates was mumbling something too incoherent for me to understand, but I caught the last part about how she had been dying to take a shower for weeks, and so I let her go. She went to the bathroom, wiping tears from her face, and as my eyes followed her they passed over Lyssa. She was stunned.
Charlie turned to face her. “Well?”
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Lyssa scoffed, wide-eyed and shaking her head.
“You owe me an explanation,” Charlie said. “A deal is a deal.”
“A deal?” I said, finally collapsing into a chair. “Didn’t you give me all that crap for making a deal with a demon?”
“She knew what I’d done,” Charlie accused. “She knew all along. It’s why she didn’t want to give up her hair, because she knew I was trying to become human. And I want to know how she knew.”
Lyssa glowered down at him. “I knew the signs to look for. Kendra wrote it in one of her books.”
“Kendra didn’t write it down,” he said, folding his ears back. “Witches don’t record dangerous knowledge like that, and a warlock wouldn’t be willing to share it. A freed slave is no use to them.”
Lyssa gave him another look, frowning deep, but this time she looked more sad than angry.
“You’ve known about me and her all along, haven’t you?” he asked. “She’s the only one I ever discussed it with. Not even Stark knew.”
“She talked about me with you? And told you not to trust me? That can’t be, because you keep calling me a good man…”
Lyssa raised her eyebrows, shaking her head, and looked away. “Please, stop.”
Charlie suddenly raised his chin, tilting his head a little. The shower came on, and his eyes lit up.
“She told you not to tell me something,” he said finally. Lyssa took a deep breath, and refused to make eye contact. “She told you not to tell me anything, just to be sure.”
Lyssa didn’t say anything. She didn’t move a muscle, but Charlie seemed to have his answer. He got up from the table and padded to the window. I looked from Lyssa to Charlie, but neither of them spoke.
“Could someone please explain?” I asked, wishing I knew a little more about the use of magic than I did.
“There are curses, Thorn, that only take effect when the intended target learns of them,” Charlie said, still staring out the window. “And I will ask Lyssa not to share whatever she knows with anyone else, because this knowledge truly is a dangerous thing. It could get me killed. And if I’m right, that’s the reason Kendra banished me. She had a talent for laying protections on those who didn’t know any better, as long as they remained not knowing any better. She put one on her brother just after that car accident. We made plans to get as far away from all of you as possible so that Stark couldn’t use you as leverage. And then she banished me, and I could never figure out why. I assumed that she was done with me after I took Stark away.”
“We’re going to have to put a bell on you, Charlie,” Lyssa said distantly.
He turned around to stare at her. If he had been human, he probably would have flipped her the bird.
“Annie is going to have questions. Annie, tell him we need a bell.”
I cocked my head at her, unsure how to respond. “You don’t think that’s a little… I don’t even know what that is. You feel like you need to put a bell on him?”
But Charlie took her side. “She’s right, Thorn. She means I need to announce my presence so that I don’t accidentally overhear anything I shouldn’t. When I’m bound as a familiar, you must ask me directly. I can’t do anything unless you ask me to.”