by A. L. Tyler
Lyssa shook her head, and her frown deepened.
“Well…” Charlie stood up and paced back and forth. “You still stand a better chance than she does. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it.”
She opened her mouth, worry clouding her eyes. “I don’t think—”
“Kendra isn’t going to help us,” Charlie said. “She told you so. We’re on our own, unless you have a specialist on speed dial.”
“Right.” Lyssa looked at her shoes in defeat. “Blue candles, one black. All new. Morning glory vines, goat’s milk, an old knife…”
She continued to rattle off the instruments and ingredients like she did this every day, and I began to wonder how often she had been using magic in her daily life. She was so comfortable asking for things; it seemed that she knew a lot about how various components were used, and I could see where the temptation would be strong.
Gates sat down this time before Charlie threw the cat skin back on her, and I sat down to breathe and wait. Lyssa stayed standing, and then started pacing, and I realized she was repeating the spell and procedure to herself. Gates gave me an anxious look.
“Wait—” I said, standing up and stopping her. “You know what you’re doing, right?”
“Geez…Annie!” Lyssa gently pushed my hands away. “You’re good at math or whatever, right? If I told you you had to solve one particularly hard problem or I’d put a gun to your head and kill you, don’t you think you’d be a little nervous and review, just to be sure? Even if you’d done it a hundred times before?”
I stared at her. “I suck at math.”
She took a deep breath. “And technically, I’ve never summoned a demon, let alone bound one.”
Gates looked from me to Lyssa, and then back again. “Sounds like this will be an educational night for everyone, then.”
I blinked. “I don’t think we should do this.”
“You don’t have any choice,” Charlie was back, this time with a large burlap sack that had arrived at the greenhouse full of fall bulbs. He set it down and looked at Lyssa.
“We have every choice,” I said. “We could wait until Lyssa finishes the charms to protect us outside the apartment, and then find someone who’ll…”
Lyssa was already smiling sardonically and shaking her head.
“What?”
“No one is going to help us with this,” she said. “No one, Annie. When you mess with demons, you’re on your own. It’s kind of an unspoken rule about parts of the craft you dabble in at your own risk. No one is sticking out their neck for us on this one.”
She set up her summoning circle and began making preparations. She even went so far as to shower and fast, drinking only tea over the next twenty-four hours. I wished the prep time hadn’t taken so long, because as things stood, I was already so nervous that I thought I was getting an ulcer.
Even so, the time it took Lyssa to get ready gave me time to talk to Gates about things that weren’t magical in any way, and she was already planning to see if the high school would let her finish up her classes and receive her diploma in the fall. She was a good student, so I didn’t see why not, and if she had a good enough reason for disappearing, it was likely she might be able to start college in spring semester, too.
Charlie was an unexpected help after his previous idea, and helped her to come up with a plot where she had pushed a toddler out of the way of a speeding taxi, ending up in a coma, and then with amnesia in an East European hospital for some time. He promised that he could get her convincing medical records and newspaper articles, and even alter a few memories in case anyone decided to call and ask about her.
Gates smiled and shook her head. “My mom is going to kill me…”
I felt the tears well up in my eyes, and I reached over to hug her. “Yeah. I know.”
As the hours grew darker, the time for the summoning approached.
Just as dusk passed, Lyssa sat down to do her spell. Charlie stood by, and Lyssa made him promise three times over that if things went badly, he would take me and Gates somewhere safe before he came back to help her. I held Gates in my arms for the first time since she had been a cat as we stood next to the little kitchen table and watched.
And waited. And watched some more.
And…nothing happened.
After how easy it had been to call Charlie, I was beginning to think that Lyssa didn’t know what she was doing, but after her third attempt, she shook her head in dismay and looked to Charlie.
“You’re doing it right,” he said distantly. His eyes wandered. “He already has a bridge. It’s the only answer. Someone has him under protection so he can’t be called away.”
“Okay,” Lyssa said, standing up and extinguishing her candles. “What do we do about that?”
Charlie considered for a moment. “You kill the bridge.”
Lyssa glared up at him.
“I’m sorry!” He didn’t look sorry. “Whoever has him, they’re allowing him to do these things. They’re just as guilty. Unless you think you’re going to find the bridge behind Stark’s back and talk about your feelings to make him change his evil ways.”
Lyssa rolled her eyes and made a face. “Let’s start with the bridge, okay? How do we find him?”
“I have no idea.” Charlie threw out his hands. “That’s all you. Demons hide their bridges from other demons, so if you’re going to find him—or her, because I find your assumption that women can’t be evil sexist—you’re on your own.”
Lyssa grumbled to herself as she went to the stack of Kendra’s old diaries. She had taken an interest in them during her forced stay, because Kendra had never let her look at some of them before. Apparently she had known about how Kendra had hidden them around the greenhouse, but she had never been allowed to look in them, and force of habit had led her to leave them alone until the fateful day they had fallen into my hands. Now, she just considered them an asset.
Mumbling something about how there had to be a way to track someone by their demon, I breathed a sigh of relief and set Gates back on the floor. We were safe. For now, at least.
Just as Gates walked off into the bedroom, there came a knock at my door that made Lyssa go quiet and snap the journal in her hand shut. I was closest, so I went to the door, peering out the peep hole as I kept my hand on the knob.
I immediately opened the door.
“Vince!” I said, looking him up and down as he clutched at his bloody arm. “What happened?!”
“Annie—”
Charlie was at my side, and he put a hand out to stop Vince from entering. “No, no—he’s not coming in here.”
“What are you talking about?” I turned on him. “He’s hurt. He’s bleeding! We have to help him—”
“Annie, he’s been bitten by his roommate,” Charlie said calmly. “He’s a werewolf. If we let him in, he’s likely to kill us all when the full moon hits. Stark is trying to prevent Lyssa from completing those charms.”
Vince groaned, holding himself up against the door frame. His eyes were bloodshot and ill. “He said if I don’t come in, and stay in, he’s going to kill me… Annie, please!”
I looked at Lyssa, whose wide, scared eyes told me that Charlie wasn’t exaggerating. Then I looked at Charlie.
He gave a slight tilt of his head. “Well, at least we know who Stark’s new bridge is. Does anyone have any qualms about killing Walter the werewolf roommate now?”
Werewolves & Wisteria
Hawthorn Witches Novella #3
Copyright 2015 A.L. Tyler
Text © A.L. Tyler 2015. All rights reserved. http://addisynltyler.blogspot.com/’
Copyright: domenicogelermo / 123RF Stock Photo
Edited by Sarah Read.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination and used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
*****
*****
Chapter 1
When I was eight, I nearly died choking on a strand of spaghetti. I was sitting in a restaurant filled with my friends and family, and they laughed at me. They thought I was miming the whole time. It wasn't until I was on the floor turning blue that my mother finally picked me up and smacked me on the back.
My retainer flew out of my mouth. With it came the strands of spaghetti that had wrapped around it and created the blockage in my throat.
It was only a minute of my life. An insignificant one at that, because nothing ever came of it and we never talked about it again. There's something about being helpless in a crowd of people that stays with you, though.
And as I stood there, staring into Vince's desperate eyes as he bled all over my doorstep, I had that same feeling.
“We can’t just leave him out there!” I protested, grabbing the front of Vince’s shirt to pull him in.
Charlie’s hand was on my arm, stopping me. “Thorn, I said—”
“No one is dying to kill Stark!” I shouted. “That’s what I said!”
Lyssa was behind us, but she didn’t seem to know what to do. “Can you take him somewhere else?”
Charlie glanced back at her. “Stark will be watching. It’s unlikely I hide him well enough that he survives.”
“What about the Other Side?”
“Dream state,” Charlie said. “If I put him there, we’d better hope he doesn’t wolf out on us and lose his lucidity, or else his werewolfism will be cured by demonism. And I know how much you love demons, Lyssa.”
Gates made a frustrated noise, and I looked down. She was right by my feet.
“We can always kick him out later,” she said quickly. “Just get him in here and close the damn door before they try to throw something else through it!”
Charlie looked back at Vince with determination and a new clarity in his eyes. He grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him in, and the door slammed shut.
A moment later, Vince looked even paler beneath the bathroom lights as he hung his damaged arm into the tub. I panicked.
“Can’t you make him stop bleeding?!” I turned frantically to Charlie.
He glared at me. I fell silent.
“It would take more than you’re willing to give,” he said bitterly. A strange bundle of plant leaves had appeared in his hand, and he offered them to Vince. “That’s not a normal wound. Keep that on it, and the pain should stop soon.”
Vince grunted in effort as he took the leaves. “How soon?”
“Sooner than it would have.” Charlie turned to go back into the living room, and he closed the bathroom door behind him as he went.
Vince winced as he put the leaves on his mangled arm, and I closed my eyes as I raised a hand to the scar Stark had left on my side. There were scars and wounds that even magic couldn’t fix, and this was likely one of them.
“Annie.”
I opened my eyes again, staring into Vince’s eerily calm, gray stare.
“They’re going to kill me,” he said. “I’m going to turn into a werewolf. That’s what they’re talking about right now.”
I didn’t know if he was in shock, or wanted sympathy, or a denial, or help—I was choking in a crowd full of people. We were all choking, and no one could help us.
“I understand,” he said, with another unnerving show of confidence. “It’s okay. I understand if they have to kill me.”
I stood up, grabbed the nearest hand towel, and gave it to him so that he could wrap the leaves on to his arm tighter. Then I turned and marched into the living room.
He was being matter-of-fact about the situation, and that was nothing new. He always went to a place of cold logic when he was under stress; it had helped him get great marks on almost every test we’d had in school. He wasn’t offering to die for me because he feared what he would do when he turned into a wolf. He was doing it because he had presumably seen his roommate turn into a wolf, bite him, and then use him as a weapon in some fight he didn’t understand. He was a bomb, and logically, bombs needed to be diffused before they killed everybody.
Vince knew that he was a bomb now. He knew the score.
But God, when I looked into his eyes, I wished he was doing it for me.
“We’re not killing him,” I said.
Charlie, Lyssa, and Gates broke off from the whispered fight they were having, cramped into the farthest corner of the living room.
“We’re not equipped to handle this,” Charlie said. “He can’t stay here.”
Lyssa and Gates didn’t say anything, and I realized the vote had already taken place.
“You can cure him,” I said stubbornly. I fixed my gaze on Charlie. “There’s a cure for everything. Get me what we need to cure him.”
“Thorn…”
“There’s a cure,” I repeated. “There’s a cure for everything.”
“There’s no cure.”
“There’s a cure for everything!” I shouted in dismay.
If Charlie could bring me back from being a demon, then surely werewolves were a small matter. I wanted him to snap his fingers and fix it. It never should have happened. Vince wasn’t even a part of this.
Charlie had me by the shoulders, and I thought he was going to shake me, but instead he directed me to the couch and forced me to sit.
“He is a ticking bomb—”
“Slow down time in the bathroom,” I said miserably. “You can keep him in a sort of stasis until we—”
“No.” Charlie shook his head, frowning. “Thorn… Not just because I don’t believe in a cure. I’ve been at this a long time and I would know. I would tell you if there was even a rumor or a theory. There is no cure. I can’t slow down time for him because werewolf hide is impervious to just about everything I can do. Same reason I can’t just heal his wounds, and it’s why warlocks hunt them for their skin. The gloves are good for handling certain objects you wouldn’t want to touch otherwise, and I’ve seen some impressive armor—”
“Please stop.” I felt like I was going to faint. The thought of making anything out of human skin was disgusting. “I don’t understand. You can kill him, but you can’t help him?”
He looked at Lyssa before he answered. She turned away.
“There’s nothing magical about a knife in the heart,” he said. “Does what you’d think it would.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “There has to be another way.”
The bathroom door creaked, and we all looked over to see Vince. His complexion was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“When someone has a moment,” he said wryly. “I would really like some things explained.”
Lyssa’s mouth opened a little, and then she firmly set her jaw and rummaged in the kitchen before returning with an armful of herb jars and hand towels. She laid a hand on Vince’s shoulder to turn him back into the bathroom before shaking her head at Charlie.
“Find a way to make this work.”
Charlie stared after her before turning his gaze back on me. Gates jumped up beside me on the couch, swishing her feline tail.
“He can be stabbed by a knife,” she mused. “Any knife? Even a knife you conjure? I mean, the knife can have magical origins, it just won’t have any magical effect on him?”
I looked down at her, hoping she had a point coming, and then back at Charlie.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “I know where you’re going with this.”
“Why not just make him a cage?” Gates finished.
I felt hope spring up inside me, but the look on Charlie’s face wasn’t encouraging.
“Because it would be cruel,” he said.
“You were just talking about turning him into gloves,” I said flatly. “A cage is cruel?”
“For a wild animal? Yes, Thorn. A cage is cruel, and it won’t solve anyone’s problems. The animal is likely to get frustrated
if we contain it too long, and that means one half will start fighting the other, and we may not like the outcome of that.”
I bit my lip, considering our lack of options. “Do it. If it gets us through one full moon, we’ll have another month to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” he said in exasperation. “Your boyfriend is screwed, Thorn. I’m sorry it happened. I’m happy you had the opportunity to say goodbye, because Stark could have just sent us body parts instead. He’s done it before.”
Lyssa slipped back out of the bathroom, and I heard the shower turn on just before she closed the door.
“He’s going to need clean clothes,” she said quietly. “And you might want to lower your voices, because he could hear you. That bite is bad.”
“Is it healed yet?” Charlie asked.
Lyssa shrugged. “No. I doubt it would ever heal right.”
“It will,” Charlie dragged a hand over his face. “It should have healed by now, but I guess Walter went shallow to make it last longer. He’s more pathetic this way. It appeals to your sympathy.”
“That’s shallow?” Lyssa raised her eyebrows.
“Did he say anything about the cage idea?” I asked, still hopeful.
Lyssa looked at me and made a face, crossing her arms. “Annie, I don’t know a ton about werewolves, but I do know that the calmer ones—if you can call them that—like to roam. Cruel is the right word here. It would be better to kill him. And frankly, when the moon hits, he won’t be Vince anymore. He’ll just be the wolf, and he’ll be just as ready to kill us. Probably more so if we keep him locked up in this apartment.”
“Cage him,” Gates said again. “He can handle it. He took the ACT on day two of the flu and still managed to kick Annie’s ass.”
“He didn’t kick my ass. We got the same score,” I said quietly. “But I agree. When we find a solution, he’ll thank us.”
Lyssa looked to Charlie, but he raised his hands.