These questions revolved around my mind like bags at a luggage reclaim. I was sure that, somewhere, in the recesses of my head, a bag existed that was full of answers to my questions. But as the same suitcases rolled past more than once, I started to feel like my answer bag had been put on another flight.
I came to a halt at the foot of Aaron’s apartment building downtown a short while after leaving Frank alone at the bookstore. The high-street hustle and bustle reminded me that I was, at least for now, in a normal place surrounded by normal people. The thought was comforting enough to allow me a moment to ground my thoughts in the mundane; that is, my status with Damien and Aaron.
I didn’t consider myself a woman with a weakness for guys. Not in the slightest. I had always been independent, always carved my own way in the world—tooth and nail, sometimes—and only sometimes backed down from an argument even when I knew I was talking out of my ass and/ or totally wrong.
But that didn’t stop me from believing, at least for the moment, where I stood in regards to Aaron and Damien. For a while my life had been all about Damien. But in one fell swoop, he had popped that bubble and now all that was left was… nothing. I should have seen it coming. I mean, he cheated on his girlfriend with me. How could I have thought he would be loyal to me? Once a liar always liar, right? It was Kyle all over again, only this time I had the sense not to put a hex on the guy.
But Aaron; I couldn’t say I hadn’t thought about him in the months that followed our abrupt separation, although he didn’t cross my mind in a romantic sense. Aaron and I were never really romantic, were we? I didn’t think so, anyway. He was a jerk who wore sports jackets sometimes and hung out with assholes. He called me a ‘freak’ more times than I liked. And yet, I had thought about him. I may have even missed him.
Or maybe this was just the heartbreak talking.
It had been insecurity that threw me into Aaron’s arms the first time, and it was insecurity that led me into Damien’s when he seemed to be the perfect guy for me; the one who would fix all my problems and rid me of my loneliness. Now I had to contend with insecurity and with heartbreak. I felt like a gladiator who had just defeated a lion, only to find that another lion had been allowed into the arena and that some asshole in the crowd had just resurrected the first lion!
I took a deep breath, composed myself, and rang the buzzer. No one came, so I rang it again. This time I heard footsteps, and after a moment of waiting Aaron opened up for me. I was about to smile, but then I saw the color—or lack thereof—in his face. He was pale. Deathly pale. And sick.
“Aaron,” I said, wide-eyed with surprise, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he said, coolly, but his voice was hoarse and strained. “Come in.”
The coming out of Aaron’s apartment was harsh, so hot and thick it was like a threshold I had to cross in order to get into the apartment. Sweat. Sick. Man. It was the kind of scent similar to what I imagined a hospital would smell like if the staff wasn’t constantly hitting every possible surface with powerful disinfectant.
“You don’t look so good,” I said.
Aaron turned to look at me from the door. He was still tall and buff, but I saw a weakness about him now. His shoulders slumped, he dragged his feet when he walked, and his hands were almost perpetually curled into fists as if he were fighting through some kind of inner pain imperceptible to anyone but him.
“I know,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have brought you some pills or something.”
“No pills,” he said, hot and angry.
A wave of heat washed through me at the sound of his stern voice. For a moment he sounded like his old self, but then he was weak again.
“We have to do something about you, Aaron. You can’t live like this.”
“I don’t need you to be my nurse,” he said. He moved to the kitchen counter and propped himself against it. “Your text said you had something you wanted to tell me.”
“Well… yes, but you’re hardly in—”
Aaron interrupted what I was about to say by breaking out into a coughing fit. I wanted to approach, to rub his chest and his back, to make him better. But I was… fearful. I got the feeling that, if I was to approach and touch him, he would turn to me and growl like some wild, angry wolf.
“Then tell me,” he said, choking the words out.
“Aaron, no. Let me help you first.”
“How are you going to help?”
“By running you a bath, first. Then getting you some food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, approaching cautiously, “I’ve never known you to turn down food. Don’t start now.” Aaron didn’t reply, a gesture I took it as consent for me to approach. “Aaron. Let me get you to the bath. I have something to tell you, but I can’t bear the sight of you like this. It hurts me.”
For a moment I wasn’t sure what he was about to say, but he nodded, and that caught me off guard. Totally off guard. But I took his warm, sweaty hand and led him to the bathroom where I left him while I picked out a fresh towel from his linen closet and a pair of boxers from his drawer. I didn’t feel odd doing this. In fact, I kind of enjoyed taking care of someone like him. He was always untouchable, strong, and fierce. And now he was laid bare, weak, and vulnerable.
Wanting to give him some privacy, I waited on the other side of the door while Aaron stepped into the hot bath. While he was in there I took stock of his living room and let my invisible senses reach the Nether to feel out for that thing I had felt in my apartment the other day. But all was quiet in both the physical world and the Nether.
What I did notice was the fact that the windows were closed, and I immediately blamed them for the air being so thick. So I went for the window and opened it. I half-expected to be assaulted by a demonic force as soon as I attempted to bring some positive energy into the room, but was met with no such resistance. December came rushing in and touched me with cold fingers, replacing the stuffy heat and allowing me to breathe through my nose again.
I also noticed that the windowpane was a little scuffed, as were some of the walls—chipped corners and such. I thought the scratches could have been the kinds of tell-tale signs Inhuman Demonic Spirits left around wherever they went, but they didn’t seem consistent with what I knew of these entities.
They leave their marks in threes.
Of all the rooms in the house, though, the most foreboding was the bedroom. I hadn’t had to go in there to retrieve Aaron’s boxers since the room wasn’t big enough for his dresser, which he kept in the living room, but I was being drawn to it now. Pulled by an impulse I was sure wasn’t my own.
The bedroom was dark, cramped, and the air inside was thick. Stepping across the threshold into the room caused my hackles to rise and my skin to break out into goose flesh. The bedroom was still, empty, and quiet, and yet I got the impression that the room was somehow full of activity. As if there were creatures, blacker than even the shadows, dancing around in the darkness.
A hard gust of wind came rushing in and knocked over a tall lamp shade on the other side of the room. Outside I could hear cars and the rattling of a pneumatic drill on hard tarmac down below.
But as soon as the moment had passed I found myself turning toward the bedroom again, and when I stepped inside my heart started to race.
“Come out,” I said into the darkness, “Fight me, coward.”
Someone was watching me. From where I couldn’t tell. Above me? Below? From the darkness inside the bedroom? I could have reached out into the Nether again and been more thorough with my scanning, forced the creature out of hiding, but if a single brush with it had made me wretch, what would prolonged contact do?
“I’m warning you,” I said, “Demon or not, you don’t scare me. I’m a Witch. The Goddess of the Moon is on my side. The Horned God of the Sun is on my side. You’re just filth.”
“Yggip elttil olleh,” a deep, raspy voice said from the
farthest corner of the room.
My heart skipped a beat, my body froze, and the bedroom door slammed shut behind me.
CHAPTER 23
“Shit. Shit!”
I felt around for the nearest wall, groping for the light switch, but a powerful pressure came down on my shoulders. My body felt slow and sluggish, like I was wading through water. No, immersed in water! I closed my eyes tight. My heart thundered against my temples, chest and hands, and then.
Click.
The lights came on and the bedroom door opened, only I hadn’t found the light switch and I hadn’t touched the door. The pressure on my shoulders started to lift, but it would be a while before my heartrate returned to normal and the hairs on the back of my neck would relax.
I stepped into the living room and looked around. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary; no smells, no heat, no pressure. The windows were still open, too. I couldn’t understand what had just happened; had this entity just presented itself to me? If it had it wasn’t a very clever Demon. And what had it said? The words were a jumble of language I had never heard before and—Aaron opened the bathroom door and drove a wedge into my thoughts.
“Oh… hey,” I said, “I was just… how was your bath?”
“I feel better,” Aaron said. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, or pants; only the boxers I had picked out. Despite the battering his life had taken over the last few months, his body had kept its hard, rigid shape. I had to concentrate in order to keep my eyes from wandering.
“Sorry,” I said, “I couldn’t find you any clothes.”
“Yeah, I’m a mess. Don’t worry, I’ll get some.”
Aaron sailed into his bedroom like it was no big thing, emerging a few moments later wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a long woolen top. Grey, loose, but cozy. I wanted to yell Aaron, don’t before he went in, but that would have been stupid, so I left him to it and hoped nothing would happen. When he emerged he went to pull the living room window down but left it open a tad when he saw the objection on my face.
“I like it warm,” he said, “The heating is busted.”
“I didn’t know that. I just couldn’t breathe before.”
“I guess it did get a little warm in here.”
Warm and stinky.
I sat down on the sofa and he joined me once he had dressed himself.
“So… what was it you had to tell me?” he asked.
Right, only the whole reason I came. I had to tell him the whole truth, more so now after what just happened in his bedroom. I needed to get things moving. I needed Aaron protected. And the first step on that road was for me to tell him the truth.
“Are you sure you don’t want to eat something first?” I asked.
“I’ll eat after you tell me.”
“Okay.” I paused. “I’m a Witch.” Another pause. I waited for his reaction but Aaron didn’t seem surprised. He knew I was a Wiccan, though, so maybe a little more explanation was in order. “A real Witch,” I continued. It was the best I could do.
“I know,” he said, “I saw all those things up in your attic.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying that I can do real Magick, and I know things most other people don’t.”
“I’ve seen you use magic before. You used that bowl thing on me the other day, in the attic.”
“Yeah, I kinda lied about that. I wasn’t using it like it was supposed to be used. I was using it another way.” Aaron narrowed his eyes, curious. I took it as a sign to continue. “So I’m a Witch, and I know things. Today I learned more about what’s happening to you, and in order to explain it, I had to come out and tell you that I’m a Witch—and you have to promise not to tell anyone, because this is the kind of thing that gets people locked up in an asylum.”
“What is it that’s happening to me?” Aaron didn’t seem too concerned about the Witch part. I was happy about that. Having never done it in front of a human before I didn’t quite know how he would have reacted to a demonstration of power. Having said, Aaron was way more likely to react to a demonstration than to an explanation.
I didn’t think he understood what I was trying to tell him.
“I think you are actually being possessed,” I said.
“For real?” Aaron said. I didn’t think he believed it, even now, even after he had said himself not a few days ago in my car. But this wasn’t so much about belief but rather acceptance. Belief implies room for interpretation, acceptance makes an intangible thing tangible. “I thought that only happened to kids with Ouija boards. I haven’t done anything like that.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said, “I think someone has done this to you on purpose.”
Aaron’s eyes shot open Wide and angry. “What?”
“Over the last few days I’ve had encounters with men wearing hoods. One of them came to my house the other night. I had to fight him off. Then I followed him to a spot in the woods where… there were more of them. I think they did this to you. And they’re after me, too.”
“You?” Aaron’s confusion bubbled to the surface in angry waves. “Why you?”
“Because… I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure that out. But the point is, for some reason, they’ve targeted you.”
I didn’t realize until then, but I was shaking.
Aaron ran his hands through his wet hair and then wiped his hot face with the water that came out of it. “So, what are we going to do about it?”
“We?” I said.
“Yes, we.”
“Aaron, there is no we.”
“Then why did you tell me all this?”
“Because I need to fix this problem, and the only way I can do it without having to dance around the truth of what I am was to just outright tell you.”
“But I already knew you were a Witch.”
“Yes, but…” I sighed and glanced over Aaron’s left shoulder. With a gesture of my right hand, the window Aaron had left open a tiny bit bolted open. A downward gesture sent it slamming shut. A trickle of dizzying power coursed through my veins until it passed and left my system.
“How… did you…” he said, stammering.
“I told you. I’m a Witch. A True Witch.”
“So you’re…”
I narrowed my eyes and made a thin line with my lips. He had better not ask me again, and to his credit he didn’t. Aaron had accepted it, somehow, and instead of asking me if I was a Witch he asked me to explain to him what I knew and suspected. So I filled him in as best I could, particularly where this cult that wanted to marry us was concerned. The news seemed to only further gnaw at Aaron’s already razor thin patience.
“Look,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I know it’s probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, but right now I don’t know how good our options are.”
“Okay?” he said.
“We could run.”
It totally wasn’t like me to suggest something like this, but there weren’t any good ways of dealing with the situation. Every choice was a bad choice, including running. I had never run away from anything in my life. Running never solved anyone’s problems. But it would give me time to think.
“Run?” he asked.
“I could get this thing away from you and we could get the fuck out of Raven’s Glen for a while, figure out what to do next.”
“Can you get rid of this thing?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if it’s here, and it’s listening, it’s possible it already knows what we’re planning on doing so we don’t have much time.”
“Amber… running… no. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s… it doesn’t feel right.”
I shuffled closer to him on the couch and took his hand. “Aaron,” I said, “There are people out there right now gunning for us. For both of us. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“And I don’
t want to see that happen to you either.”
“So then let’s grab our things and get the fuck out of here for a while. At least until we can figure out how to get close to those guys without drawing attention. They knew where I lived, Aaron. I can’t go back home. And they probably know where you live too.”
Aaron thought, long and hard. I could see the gears turning behind his eyes, the lines on his face harshening. In that brief silence I also considered what I was saying. The idea to leave hadn’t come to me until it left my lips, but why not run? My life was a mess anyway, and the suggestion didn’t come from a selfish place; I was worried about Aaron, not me.
Aaron wasn’t only innocent, he was human, and way more vulnerable than I. Guaranteeing his safety wasn’t something I could just do. We needed to leave, check out our options, and then come back with a plan on how to get rid of those assholes. It was the sensible thing to do; if not the most courageous thing.
After a long lull, Aaron said, “Alright.”
“Alright? We’ll go?”
He nodded.
“Perfect. Okay. We’ll figure out where to go later. Grab your stuff and I’ll—” My phone vibrated in my pocket, cutting me off. It was Frank. I took the call without thinking about it.
“Frank,” I said, “What is it?”
“I’ve just had an awkward conversation with your ex-boyfriend,” he said.
“Right… I forgot that was happening.”
“Here’s the thing. I fucking love you, but I’m not going to play middle man here. Go talk to him.”
“What? You said you would talk to him. I don’t want to see him right now. I’m busy.”
“Well, you have no choice. Look, he really needs to talk to you. You just stormed off last night—and yes, I know, you had every right to, don’t worry—but I’ve listened to his side and I think you need to see it too.”
“But—”
“Listen, witch. Would I ever steer you wrong? No. So put on your big girl panties and go see him. I’ll owe you a favor if you do.”
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