“Okay, easy.” He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze and brought his lips to her ear to whisper, “We’re all good.”
She glanced at her shaking hands. The bandages on her wrists had been shredded when she’d broken through the warded box that had held her captive. A few streaks of blue lines flared up her forearms beneath the tattered bandages, then disappeared. “I have no idea what I just did.”
“I think the only thing that matters right now is that you did it. And we can get going, yeah?”
Lily stared at the dozen bodies strewn around her, the cars, and the rolled van a little beyond the carnage. “I did all this.”
“You did what you had to do, Lil. That’s it. Come on. We need to keep going.”
“Are they…”
He sighed. “I don’t know. We have to go. Half of them came from the city. There might not be a tracker on you anymore, but there are probably more of these people and they’re bound to know something’s wrong.” He glanced over his shoulder at the highway far behind them and the tops of a few cars glinting in the sun as they passed. “Not to mention whatever authorities are gonna respond to a number of cars that took a detour off the highway. Come on.” He pulled her gently by the shoulders toward the Winnie.
A groan rose from the rolled van, and the driver, although hanging upside-down by his seatbelt, raised a hand and conjured a ball of purple flickering light. “You—”
Lily turned toward him and pointed. A burst of black smoke streaked from her fingertip and struck the frame of the van to spin it sideways in the dirt. The driver’s spell launched out over the desert sand and disappeared.
Romeo cleared his throat and guided her back toward the RV. “Okay, you’re throwing tiny pieces of your black-cloud spell now, and I’m totally naked. We need to regroup.”
They reached the Winnie’s side door, which was dented and buckled a little where she had hit it with her compulsion spell to prevent it from rolling like the van. With a grunt, Romeo fiddled with the handle and finally jerked the door open.
“I can fix that,” she muttered.
“Yep. Later. Right now, we’re leaving.” He helped her up the steps into the RV and kept a hand on her back as she walked slowly to the front. “All right. Sit and rest. I got it from here.”
She felt like she almost melted into the passenger seat, barely aware of her own hands as they caught the seatbelt to strap herself in. Romeo tugged his jeans on, zipped them, and didn’t bother with a shirt.
“Can you still see that yellow light?” He slumped into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and shoved the gearshift into drive. Lily had only enough energy to point slightly to their right, her finger following the blazing line of the light leading her directly to her mom’s last clue. “Got it. You know what? You’re getting much better at navigating.” With a smile, he stretched all the way over the center console, patted her thigh, looked at her, and realized she wasn’t in a place for jokes or probably any talking at all right now. Rather than even attempt it, he simply gave her leg a little squeeze and steered them back on course as much as he could guess.
Lily’s arm dropped into her lap, and despite the fact that the brilliant light of the beam showing her the way still flared behind her eyelids, she finally drifted off to sleep.
Twenty-Eight
Lily was convinced she smelled smoke. She almost ignored it and wanted nothing more than to slide back into sleep again. Romeo’s mumbled curse and heaving sigh told her something was wrong. Her eyes opened and she squinted against the blaze of the yellow beam before she turned her head toward him. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought we had enough gas.” He removed his hands from the steering wheel and turned to look at her as the Winnie rolled to a stop in the middle of open ground. “We’re like…I don’t know. Ten miles from the road I tried to get us to.”
“Oh.” She looked out over the dunes stretching into the distance and wrinkled her nose. “Ten miles isn’t that far.”
“To walk? Maybe not. But we can’t simply leave the Winnie here. And I’m not leaving you alone.”
She smirked. “Who said I’d be the one to stay here?”
He lowered his head warningly and looked at her from beneath a stern brown. “No.”
“So leave her in nuetral and we’ll push.”
“You wanna push an RV ten miles across the desert? Which I’m fairly sure is the Sahara Desert. Or at least it’s about to be.”
Lily folded her arms and smiled, although it felt tight and tired and not quite as playful as she wanted. “You have super-werewolf strength. I’ll be a little gentler with the physical compulsion spells. We can take turns.”
He stared at her in disbelief for a few moments, then snorted and shook his head. “How do you always make crazy ideas sound completely normal?”
“I think crazy situations might be our new normal.” She leaned back in the passenger seat. “So they call for crazy ideas. Which actually makes them good ideas, by the way.”
“It’s weird that it actually makes sense, Lil.”
“You should also be used to weird by now.” Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and tried not to think about whatever might be happening only a few miles off the highway with the crashed cars and the Black Heron society members they’d literally left in the dust.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh?” Her eyes flew open again, and she found way more concern on Romeo’s face than she’d expected. “I’m fine. Really. I’m still tired and a little…shaken, maybe. Or it might be some kinda weird side effect of literally breaking through a ward with my arms.” She glanced at the frayed bandages that hung from her wrists and started to peel them off. “These are basically useless now.”
“All right. Why don’t you get behind the wheel, and I’ll start pushing.”
“Sure.”
She left a pile of tattered Ace bandages on the passenger seat when she climbed over the center console and took the wheel. Romeo looked at her from outside the driver-side door and he took her ankle gently to give it a little squeeze. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“I will.”
“I mean it. Even if you only feeling dizzy or something hurts. Or if anything else shows up that you weren’t expecting.”
“The Black Heron knows we’re coming.” She leaned toward him and patted his hand around her ankle. “I don’t know if they’re gonna try anything else with my mom again so soon. Not now that they know how close we are—which is hopefully very close. But I promise, if I feel anything else, I’ll tell you. That doesn’t mean I get to slip out of Winnie-pushing duty, though. You don’t get to claim all the credit for getting us back on a road somewhere.”
For a few seconds, he looked like he’d completely zoned out and hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Then he slid his hand off her ankle, chuckled, and shook his head. “Literally nothing stops you, huh?”
She shrugged quickly and smirked. “Okay, I get slowed down sometimes, yeah. But stop me? Not so far.”
“Okay.” Romeo ran a hand through his curls and stepped back. “I’ll keep going until you tell me something’s up or I get tired enough to change places.”
Lily gave him a thumbs-up, and he closed the door, laughing. She waited for him to make his way behind the Winnebago to start pushing and watched him in the side mirror. He still only wore his jeans and boots, and she suddenly wished she had a way to watch him push the RV shirtless across Libya. The thought made her snort.
“Yeah, and then I wouldn’t pay attention to anything else. Right now, Lily, follow the light. The bright, never-ending, super-annoying light stretching on forever.” She scowled at the beam that continued to blaze from her torso and cutting a straight line through who knew what else lay ahead of them.
Slowly, the RV rolled forward and only picked up a little speed.
The young witch did not intend to mess with their momentum by calling out to see if Romeo wanted to change places after forty minutes. “I
think I underestimated him. He’s gotta be getting tired.” Lily glanced in the side mirror for the millionth time in those forty minutes but of course, didn’t see anything but the side of the RV and the endless expanse of rolling sand in every direction. “And I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this bored.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and finally dropped her hands into her lap. There wasn’t anything new to look at, no scenery, and not even someone to talk to about how dull this trip had suddenly become. She glanced at the cup holder in the center console, but it was empty. “Where—” A hasty search revealed that Romeo’s phone had fallen at some point between the center console and the driver’s seat. She saw the corner of it glinting at her from where it had slid.
With a sigh, she felt for the lever beneath the seat to move it back so she could get his phone. Habit made her look up again quickly as if they were driving down a road and she was trying to multitask and not crash them into anything. “What am I doing? We’re going like three miles an hour.” The laugh died on her lips when she saw a thin, white shape ahead of them. It could have a mile away or maybe five times that given how hard it was to judge distance with nothing else around them. But it didn’t disappear when she closed her eyes momentarily and opened them again.
“That’s definitely a change.” She pressed lightly on the Winnie’s horn a few times and the RV crawled to a stop.
When she opened the door, Romeo was already jogging up toward her from the back. Sweat glistened on his face, neck, and shoulders. He wiped his forehead with his arm and looked at her with wide eyes.
“Before you ask, yes, I’m totally fine.” Lily clambered out of the driver’s seat and stepped away a few feet from the Winnie. “But I figured you’d wanna know about this.” She gestured for him to come closer, and he complied reluctantly as he cast a quick glance behind them on the very small chance that there was actually anyone or anything else out there. When he turned toward her, she pointed across the flat ground ahead of the vehicle and a little off to the right. “You see that, right?”
He squinted and leaned forward before his eyes widened. “That could be a building. All the way out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Okay, good. I really hoped that I haven’t started to see even more things no one else can.” She sighed, nodded, and stared at the white square in the distance. “Admittedly, it’s a little weird to see that. We’re still far out from the closest road or highway, right?”
“Yep.” He stuck his hands on his hips, wiped the sweat off his brow again, and regarded her with a questioning look. “What do you wanna do?”
“Well, I bet anyone who has a house or a business or something all the way out here needs a way to get out here. Maybe they have extra gas.”
He frowned at her and the corners of his mouth twitched into not quite a smile. “That’s stretching it a little far, don’t you think?”
“Not any farther than you pushing an RV by yourself for the last forty minutes. Which you wouldn’t have to do if whoever that is has gas and is willing to share. Or sell it. It doesn’t matter. At this point, I’d pay someone to fill a few gas cans and bring them back so we can get going again.” She grasped his shoulder and her hand almost slipped off. “You were really working at it, huh?” Laughing, she wiped her now sweaty hand on the leg of her pants.
“Yep.” He grinned at her. “I saw that.”
“What?”
“You were staring at me all covered in sweat. It’s okay. I’d be staring at me too.” He ran a hand through his wet curls, made a face, and wiped his own hand on his jeans. “Yeah, let’s go see what we can find, then.”
“Do you want me to push this time?” Lily lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers. “I had more than enough time to rest up.”
He glanced skeptically at her and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Lemme get some water first and dry off before I sit and steer us toward a weird building in the middle of nowhere so we can maybe get some help.”
She turned with him toward the Winnie. “There’s that can-do attitude.”
“Hey, I haven’t lost the can-do attitude. I can do all kinds of things. Like this.” He moved too quickly for her to anticipate and slung his arm around her shoulders, hugged her close, and laughing.
She only squirmed for a few seconds before she gave up any attempt to break free. “Mm.”
“See? It’s not that bad.”
Her hand slid across his chest when she pushed him away, and he released her with a chuckle. “It feels the same,” she said and wrinkled her nose, “but if you’re gonna be all wet and slippery, it should be in the shower.”
“Oh, yeah? It’s a good thing we had that fixed.”
“Yeah, ʼcause you’re gonna need it.” They walked around the Winnie toward the side door, which was still buckled a little from essentially being punched by her magic. She paused, stretched toward the dented area around the handle and the side of the door, and spread her fingers. A violet light streamed from her fingers to the handle, and her simple repair charm twisted it back into place. The divots in the door popped out to their normal position, and she opened the side door with a little bow. “After you.”
Romeo chuckled but waited for her to look at him first. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Me too. And I’ll feel much better once we’re not running on empty anymore and can get where we need to be. All this time, we managed to stay on top of gas and food and all the regular stuff people need to manage for a road trip.”
With a smirk, he stepped into the vehicle. “It’s not a regular road trip. We’re doing very well if this is our only hiccup.” Before she could correct him, he raised a finger and looked at her over his shoulder. “Our only logistical hiccup. I know there’s a difference.” She merely grinned and nodded. “Are you sure there isn’t some kinda spell to, you know…magically pull gas out of nowhere? Like an emergency fuel charm or something?” He retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge and downed half of it in only a few swallows.
Lily shrugged carelessly and waited for the huge sigh she knew was coming. “No. No emergency fuel charms. Sorry.”
He grimaced and headed back toward her. “It’s a valid question.”
“Sure. We wouldn’t have had to stop for gas, food, or any other supplies if I could simply whip up whatever we needed out of thin air. I wish it worked that way.”
“It worked in Ozias’ bunker, didn’t it? When you got that coin out of the Winnie without ever coming up from underground?” Romeo stepped into the bathroom, found a towel, and quickly wiped himself dry.
“That wasn’t conjuring something out of nothing, though.” Lily swiped her hair back away from her face and frowned. “I’m sure that if I did that with gas or food, it’d essentially be theft by Optatus magic.”
“Huh.” He returned the towel and moved to the front, nodding as he considered it. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And using that magic to steal, even if it’s only gas for the Winnie…” Lily glanced at the cabinet above the kitchen sink where they’d stored the Varelos. “That feels like something leading down that slippery slope into going dark.”
“Like the other Optatus witches Ozias talked about.”
“Yeah.” She squinted at the cabinet and put a few more pieces together through this strangely banal conversation despite what they’d been through today and how close they were to reaching the end of this insane trip. “I think I know what the Varelos was trying to tell me about my choice.”
“What choice?”
“It said there were two ways for me to see. Through the dark or the light.” She turned away from the kitchen and fixed him with a considering look. “I thought it was talking about what kind of witch I want to be. You know, a witch who still has a conscience or one who’s willing to sell off pieces of herself to master dark magic and rule the world.” He snorted. “Or whatever.”
“If that artifact responds only to the person who holds it, I think it should�
��ve been able to see that you’re not gonna go the dark-magic route.” He gave her a reassuring smile and nodded. “We both know that.”
“Yes.” Lily took a deep breath. “With everything people have told us about Optatus witches, it was still kind of an issue in the back of my mind, though, you know? But I don’t think that’s what the Varelos was talking about. It literally told me there wasn’t a difference between hurting people and helping them, so I should’ve known it wasn’t talking about light versus dark magic. I think it was being literal.”
“Um…I didn’t think there was a difference between using your magic in the day and casting spells at night.”
She gave him a playful eye-roll. “There isn’t. The Varelos was talking about literal ways of seeing. With light and with darkness. This light—this super-annoying beam I can see all the time.” Lily waved her hands in front of her chest and the yellow beam flowed through her hands, which didn’t do anything to block out the glow. Romeo’s lips twitched. “And I think the darkness is using the Black Heron network. That’s literally what it is when I touch the coin. Only nothing before all the grid lines and the weird society-member faces staring at me.”
“And the tunnel vision.”
“Ha. Yeah. The tunnel vision.” She nodded and headed toward the Winnie’s side door again. “If I wasn’t sure before that this light coming off of me is gonna take me straight to my mom, I’m definitely certain of it now.”
“Good.” Romeo stepped backward toward the driver’s seat and held her gaze. “Then we’ll follow it. Weird white shape in the middle of nowhere first, then some gas, then we’ll follow the light I can’t see.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She smiled at him, turned, and walked down the two steps before she opened the side door and stepped out into the afternoon heat. Follow the light to Greta Antony. And nothing’s gonna stop me.
Return Of The Witch (The Witch Next Door Book 6) Page 18