Chapter Fifteen: Truth Hurts
For the second night in a row, my heart hurt as I lay in my bed, alone and confused about the path before me. Dinner with Gran and Exit had been a mix of joy and pain; they both agreed that opening a line of communication with Wulfric was both deadly and necessary if he was to be saved. Gran’s admonition that I should sleep on every step forward with Wulfric was just good sense. She knew that love could overcome my good judgment. I knew that, too, but the problem was that I had the means to do great harm in my pursuit of that love.
As a white witch, that was unacceptable.
I felt heat suffuse my cheeks as another piece of the puzzle clicked in place, and I fought to laugh into the chill air of my room. How could I miss that? I was letting passion and anger get in the way of logic. I thought of Reina’s corpse, her body humiliated like a trophy, and picked up my phone to send a text.
To Alex.
Need to talk. Now if possible. My house.
I didn’t wait long for his response. Alex is one third of a family with whom I have what someone nice might call a challenging relationship. Alex is fine. In fact, he’s delightful. He’s a quiet, sweet, thoughtful guy, whose enormous dark eyes always make him seem as if he’s about to take flight. The world is too harsh for Alex, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t tough. He’s well past that, as I can attest, because I’ve watched Alex do battle with a gaggle of crazed vampires without so much as taking a backward step. He’s courageous, and gentle, and thrifty with his words and friendship.
He’s also a werepanther. Or jaguar. I can never get their coats right, but he and his sister are werecats of some large, dangerous variety.
But more about his sister Anna.
She’s . . . well, she has a daughter with Wulfric. She seduced him, used him as a potential wedge to gain control over his lands, and then, when he showed true love for Emilia, their beautiful child, she fled. Oh, she came back, but there was nothing altruistic about it, until she showed up with Alex to fight an invading horde of vampires that were going to turn Halfway into a meat grinder. That bravery only led to me partially forgiving her, although lately we’ve gotten along better because I genuinely care what happens to her, and Alex, and her child. It doesn’t help that she’s also small, but weirdly exotic and super hot, and oh, by the way, she can hula hoop, and eat waffles until dawn without gaining weight. I can neither hula hoop nor eat limitless waffles, but then again, I’m not a half-magical being who can turn into a giant cat. I’m a witch. We eat reasonably because no one really makes witchy clothing in larger sizes, and I think that’s discriminatory against women who might want to practice magic and treat themselves to the occasional pizza or two.
But back to Anna and Alex. They live in Halfway, and in case there’s some kind of shapeshifter club online I don’t know about, it made sense to ask Alex. He’s much more dialed in to the world than his sister, whose habits include eating, chain smoking, and flirting with men while eating and smoking. Oh, she also drinks coffee like it’s her last day on earth, but that I can forgive because duh, it’s coffee.
My phone pinged a light tone, and I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. It was a text from Alex.
Outside your house. I run fast.
I padded downstairs and opened the door to find Alex standing there in a casual pose. He wasn’t even breathing hard, and I made a mental note to run more and sit less, but for the moment I invited him in from the cold.
“Tea?” I asked. I knew he would drink it if I offered, and what I had to ask him wasn’t going to be easy.
“Sure.” He said hello to Gus, who favored him with a suspicious flaring of his nostrils, before going to the kitchen, presumably for defense. Or food. Or maybe both. Who knows with cats?
I busied myself with tea as the silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t awkward or hostile. Alex is just calm, and he radiates a field of hesitancy that makes you think when you speak to him. I rather like that kind of prompt from a friend. As I poured, I knew that niceties weren’t necessary, so I jumped in with both of my small feet. “Who are your parents?”
Part of the reason Alex chooses his words is because he’s incredibly smart. I’d like to say his sister isn’t, but that would be my bias speaking. Alex, though—he’s a different kind of mind. He deduced something in my question and fired back with one of his own.
“Why, are you asking me if I know why I’m a shapeshifter?” Like I said, smart. That wasn’t exactly what I needed to know, but I answered anyway.
“There’s a man at Gran’s. He was hexed by a warlock of some power and spent the last century sleeping in a cave over in Tahawus,” I began.
Alex merely listened, but his brows flicked upward with interest.
“I created a talisman to find his wife, and it led us to an abandoned chapel to the west. I’d never been there before, nor had I even heard of it.”
“I’ve been there. I circled it a few times because the trailer was occupied. I wasn’t in human form.” He nodded that I should continue.
“We—gah, this is awful. We found her. What was left of her. She was—” I stopped, because nothing could make my thoughts come together in any sensible way. “Alex, who is your mother? Do you know your grandmother? Are you from here, despite what I think I know?”
He shifted once, thinking, then looked upward to the ceiling. “Do you remember when you told me what I was? Other than just a shifter?”
I recalled it in brilliant clarity. Gran and I revealed that Alex was a child of three worlds—human, shifter, and incubus. His mother had been a succubus, at the very least, and his father a shifter of some power. “I do. We were having tea.”
“Mmm-hmm. I told you Anna and I have been on our own since we were young? That mom left when we were born, and then dad a few years later. So, we’ve sort of been wild, but not really, because we’re too human to just go feral.” His eyes were dark with memory. I couldn’t fathom what they had endured by being abandoned.
“Yessss. Why do I feel like there’s something about to smash me flat in this chair?” I asked, looking up for effect. His grin was worth it, but it faded in seconds.
“You and Gran never asked me how long we’ve been on our own, and I—well, you know I don’t like to talk about things.” He shrugged, a young gesture of innocence that still fit him.
Oh stars above. A boulder of ice formed in my stomach. I’d never thought to ask Alex if he thought he was immortal, and shifters are incredibly long lived, as long as they can withstand territorial fights. Add the blood of a succubus, and you’ve got someone who will outlive most nations, and beyond. I averted my eyes, but not in time.
“What, Carlie? Tell me. I see your fear.” His request was even and shattering in its honesty.
“Do you know your mother’s name?” I cast a silent prayer that he did not, but his lips were moving almost at once.
“Dad told us. Reina. He said it was a name for a queen.”
The room spun as white stars shot across my vision. I felt the breath leave my body and knocked my scalding tea across the table in a shower of liquid and broken china. I might have screamed. Moments later, Alex was staring at me as I looked up from the floor, my hands clenched so tightly with rage that my nails cut half-moons into my palms like hieroglyphics of pain. My breath came in ragged gasps, and I couldn’t focus on anything. I wanted revenge. I wanted to be anywhere but in front of Alex’s concerned face, trying to figure out how I was going to tell him that his mother had been hunted and skinned like an animal.
I wanted so many things, but I could have none of them, because all I could do was fight the tears and hate myself for being selfish in that moment.
“Carlie, what is it? Tell me. Please?” He pulled me upright to lean against the fridge, its comforting hum against my back. After enough time that I felt myself calming, I raised a hand.
“One more question, please? Then I’ll tell you everything, honest.” At his terse nod, I asked, “Y
our dad. What’s his name?”
“Robert. He’s dead, of that I’m sure. Now, please.” He grew still, his entire body posed with tension as he waited for my answer.
And then I did something completely new. I took Alex’s hand and looked at it. He tried to pull away from surprise, but let me when he realized it was me and I was just holding his hand. I suspected that Alex didn’t have a lot of personal human contact.
“What are you doing?” His tone was more bemused than alarmed.
“Just . . . looking.” I turned his hand over. It was long, and graceful, slightly olive in complexion. He had the hands of a musician, or an artist. Maybe even a surgeon. I let my witchmark roam freely, pushing power out into my sight as I spread his fingers one by one, then gently let go of them. After a growing silence, I looked up into his dark eyes.
“Carlie. I think I’ve been patient enough.” His warning was gentle, but firm.
“It’s amazing, really. You’d never know that those are the hands of someone nearly a hundred years old.” The dart struck home, and he flinched, but before he could speak, I held up a hand. “I’m not even sure you know, given your history, but I have something terrible to tell you, and it isn’t going to get any better. We have much to discuss tonight.”
At his slow nod, I took his hands in mine and felt my eyes flutter with the sadness I was about to unleash. But he beat me to the punch. Like I said, Alex is smart.
“Who hunted my mother down?” The words were flat like the eyes of a snake. I began to worry that he would be a kind of vengeance I couldn’t control.
“I don’t know, exactly, but we’re certain that a warlock from New York is involved. Your parents must have met after Exit was hit with that timespell.”
“So he’s a sort of stepfather?” There was such hope in his voice it nearly broke my heart. I could feel his thirst for a family.
“He is, and moreover, he’s a good man. He loved your mother more than anything in this world from the moment he saw her. They met in Africa, you know, while she was on mission and he was busy pulling ore from the earth. He treasured her, but I’ll leave the rest of the story to him. I think you should meet and discuss what you want to do next. Can you bring Anna and Emilia to Gran’s later today?” I thought of the unspoken danger we were all facing, but Alex surmised that, too.
“Is the killer still alive? Must be, right?” His fingers began drumming on the table, slow and deliberate.
“Almost certainly. There has to be a reason behind such a powerful spell. You don’t put someone into stasis for a century without an excellent reason, and if the murderer was killing shifters, then it was unlikely that they could be brought to justice. You know where you live; on the edges of society. The killer could hunt shifters without and fear of the law, but that still leaves us wondering why—why Reina was targeted, and why Exit was removed from the equation. He’s a capable man, but that’s all. He’s not from the Everafter, so his ability to exact revenge would be limited by his human senses. It just doesn’t add up.” I began tapping a nail against my tooth as we both slipped into a contemplative moment where the silence was a friend, not foe.
Alex uttered a short, brittle sigh, his eyes bright with tears. “Tell me about where you found her. What did she look like? Tell me all of it. I need to know.”
Over the next twenty minutes, I gave him a detailed account of everything I could remember from Exit’s appearance, to unrolling the remains of his beautiful mother. He asked for occasional clarifications, but sat otherwise unmoving as he listened with his entire body. The sense of pure understanding was palpable as he sorted facts and details as quickly as I could repeat them. When I finished, he spread his hands on the table, looking shortsighted into a spot somewhere in the space between us.
“If she was a trophy, it means that he’s still hunting. You said there was a magical tripwire on the man Jonny?” At my silent nod, he sank into deep thought once again, then finally spoke. This time, there was no hesitation in his words. “I can’t let anyone else be killed like that. I’m too late to help my mother, but I can do something about him now.”
“We’ll help. All of us.”
A slow, kind smile played at his lips, then faded away. “I accept, and thank you. I’m not quite sure what to do next.”
“I am.” I grinned. Revenge was sort of my specialty. Well, that and waffles, but no one ever used them for revenge. That I know of.
“Okayyyy . . . I’m listening.” His smile was apprehensive. That either spoke well or ill of my reputation. I chose to take it as a compliment.
“I need to do a few things. Some, I can take care of from here, like more supplies for location spells. The rest will have to be done in the field.” I pulled at my lip, thinking. There were a lot of moving parts in what I had in mind. “Get Anna and Emilia to Gran’s today. Don’t hesitate, okay? You can talk to Exit. He’s family now, and you’ll need each other.”
“What about you?” His tone slipped back into the quiet, awkward pattern he used more often.
“Me?” I was confused. I’d just explained the plan, or at least the start of it, but Alex had an expression of pain on his face that didn’t match the question.
“Um. Are we—are we family?” He looked down, and there was a world of loneliness in his eyes. I felt like an idiot. Here was this boy—no, a man—who’d lived for nearly a century in a blur of loss and uncertainty. I should have known that the connection between Anna, and Wulfric, and me would be something much more important to a shifter. We were family, by any definition.
I stood and wrapped my arms around him. “We are.”
I felt his smile as his cheek rested against my shirt. “That’s good enough for me.”
Chapter Sixteen: Circle the Wagons
Alex ran off, literally, to go alert his sister. They’d be on high alert until we could develop a cohesive plan, but it would be nearly impossible to sneak up on a shifter.
But it was possible, and I’d seen the evidence. I was still bothered by how Reina had been murdered mid-change. For experienced shifters, it’s a process that takes seconds at most. It’s magical. There’s no baying at the moon and sprouting hair over a span of hours; they simply make up their mind and use magic to change into their other form. It’s virtually instant.
That meant someone had an intimate knowledge of the internal workings of Reina’s system, or they had known exactly the instant that Reina was going to change. Neither were likely, and I more or less ruled them out since we were dealing with a killer who seemed to be highly skilled. There’s an old saying that luck is the residue of preparation, but executing Reina in the middle of a change wasn’t just improbable, it was impossible.
I smacked my hand on my forehead, cursing myself for being so blind. Reina couldn’t have been taken by a hunter and then skinned like an animal, because shifters will always revert to their human form, unless they’ve been feral for too long. That meant there was a magical element I hadn’t picked up on. Something insidious, and likely related to blood magic, since nothing Gran had ever described could freeze a shifter in time, so to speak.
The sun began to creep in my windows, pale and timid. I stifled a huge yawn and dragged myself back upstairs to catch some sleep. My witchmark was free of alarm, so I nudged Gus, who had already taken the prime real estate in the middle of the bed, and burrowed under the covers. I drifted off to sleep with thoughts of hunters running me down in the snow and wondered if that heart-pounding terror was the last thing Reina felt. With a last glance, I looked out over the brightening mountains and realized that I needed my own hunter to advise me on what to do next.
And I knew just where to find him.
Chapter Seventeen: O, Pioneer
I sat at Gran’s table as I have so many times before, seeking wisdom, guidance, and breakfast. Exit listened with interest as I described my plan, which I found nothing short of brilliant.
“So, I’ll go to the north end of the lake and ask Rene if he’s see
n anything more unusual than what’s normally roaming about the woods in the heart of winter,” I concluded.
Exit cleared his throat unobtrusively. “This Rene? He lives on the north end of the lake, and is some sort of, what? Watcher? Warden? Isn’t that what Wulfric does?”
“Oh, yes. I guess they do share some common ground, in a way, but no. Rene is dead. Has been for more than two centuries,” I added brightly.
Gran snorted in a most indelicate fashion. “Perhaps some explanation would be in order, dear.”
“Of course.” I turned to Exit, smiling to soften the shock of our next little revelation. “As you may know, based on the chats we’ve had, ghosts are quite real, but not all of them are to be feared. Rene falls into this category, and he’s not only pleasant, but helpful.”
“Fair enough.” Exit nodded sagely, as if this was common knowledge.
“Rene was a French trapper who lost his wife, and his spirit can more or less be found around the north end of the lake; although he’s been known to wander occasionally,” I said with a cringe. His description of dating in the afterlife was the magical equivalent of seeing your mom’s love letters; it had been a squeamish discussion I didn’t care to repeat. “He was, and is, superbly observant, so it makes sense to ask him if he can help.”
“I agree.” Exit beetled his brow at me like a judge delivering a guilty verdict, saying, “You’re not going alone.” I bristled until he explained. “It’s frigid. It’s dangerous, and you wouldn’t go anywhere alone if you had a reasonable option. I am that option. I know the area, I’m experienced in the woods, and I’m tall enough that I won’t die in a snowbank because I am too proud to ask for a hand up after falling.”
Gran burst out laughing at his description of my less-than-flexible attitude when it came to asking for help. Exit had also managed to work in a short joke, and I started to wonder if saving him from certain doom had been the best idea. I composed myself with great dignity, arched a brow, and stuck my tongue out at him. Never let it be said that I’m not acquainted with the finer points of rational discourse.
Halfway Hunted - Halfway Witchy Page 10