by A. L. Tyler
I reached to clutch my sumac pendant without realizing it, and Adeline shifted her weight away. She was afraid of me, or what I was about to do. I forced my hand back to my side.
“Then why tell me?” I asked. “If it won’t do any good?”
“Because he’s going to try to hold on,” she said, still staring at the pendant with trepidation. “He might hold on a long time after you want to let go. What he’s going to go through might last months or years before he finds a balance, and he won’t be the same person when he’s done. He might not recognize that he’s the one changing, either, and he’ll project that anger and frustration onto you when the relationship starts to fail. If it fails, I mean. It might not, but that’s between the two of you. I’m just warning you that if you hold on, you should come to me if things go badly. I will be there for you when you need to end it. And Annie, I am serious when I say I need to be there. I have seen this end in death for one party or the other, and I don’t want to see it again.”
I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. I couldn’t imagine that a time would ever come when Vince could be angry enough to try to kill me, or that I would have to kill him in self-defense. We’d been through too much together already.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call if I need to. I promise. I really just want what’s best for him at this point.”
Adeline knew that I didn’t believe her. She crossed her arms and shrugged. “I suppose you’re seeing his resilience right now. It’s a honeymoon phase when the power is new. It fills him up with confidence so there’s no room for worry. Maybe that’s why he chose now, of all times, to approach you for something more. But it doesn’t last. I know you feel guilty about all of this. You should, because it’s your fault.”
The words stung more than I thought they would. Even in the pain, there was some small freedom of release. I had been feeling guilty for some time, and everyone around me kept saying that it wasn’t my fault because no one could have foreseen it.
But it was true. If not for me, this terrible thing never would have happened to Vince.
Adeline’s eye twitched, and her next words were said with a fixed frown. “It’s not all bad. If he’s going to be with you, it’s probably the best thing that could have happened. Kendra could tell you what life is like for the witches that dabble. It isn’t easy. He would have been a target for every person you ever angered, made jealous, or got in the way of. Now he’s protected. That’s why we call it a gift. I always thought that’s why Kendra took up with Stark, and then Charlie. She’s made more than a handful of powerful enemies. She wouldn’t have a love life at all unless her men could protect themselves, so she only ever fell for the ones that could. With our guidance, Vince will be able to protect himself. I’m sure you don’t want to get in the way of that.”
The sun was beginning to set behind the side of the mountain, and the cold September air suddenly felt even more chill. Adeline was walking away, and the stillness of the woods around me made me shiver. There were werewolves here, and no one would have ever guessed.
“There are others.”
When I spoke, Adeline turned back to me, looking weary.
“There are others, besides Stark,” I said again, quieter. “Kendra must have had other enemies, if Stark needed to protect himself.”
Adeline paused for a minute, looking away. She shook her head like she didn’t want to say it.
“She has friends, too,” she said finally. “The name Hawthorn carries a reputation in a lot of circles, and even I can tell you aren’t equipped to deal with the consequences. Between the demon and the necromancer, you’re starting off on the wrong foot in this circle. You should watch your back introducing yourself to anyone else.”
I followed her back to the car in silence. I found Martha lying on the hood with her back against the windshield, staring at the stars. Charlie was in the back seat, watching something in the distance, and I had to squint in the dark to see a group of people laughing and carrying on as they tossed something around. It might have been a football.
Adeline gave me another stern warning about calling her if anything didn’t seem right in Vince’s mood. She asked for my cell phone to program in her number. When I went to take the phone back, she caught my hand and we locked eyes for a moment.
“You’re alone in all this,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“I have a sister,” I said.
“She’s not here.”
“I didn’t want to bother her,” I said. I didn’t like her insinuation. “She has a family.”
“I’m already bothered,” Adeline said, letting go of my hand. “If you need anything, even if it’s not about Vince, call me.”
I nodded. Vince came back over, and I could see the sweat glinting on his brow in the glow from the headlights of the car. He’d been playing hard, whatever they had been up to. We had a quick reunion, and then said goodbye to Adeline, and piled into Marth’s car.
I was too exhausted to say anything, but everything that Adeline had said weighed heavily on me. She liked to interrupt a lot, but she had a new perspective, and I wasn’t sure how to piece everything together.
She didn’t think that Vince and I would ever work out as a couple, or possibly even as friends. He was going to change, and blame me for it. If we did work out, then she thought it was better for him to be a werewolf, which was the most contradictory thing I had ever tried to process. His being a werewolf was possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to me, because I had ruined his life forever.
She had seemed cordial enough with Martha, but then told me in private that hanging around a necromancer was a bad idea.
Her thoughts on Charlie were perhaps the most concerning, because she had called him Stark’s weapon. I understood that a warlock had a level of control over his demon, but I knew Charlie wasn’t a mindless automaton following orders. He and Stark had killed innumerable werewolves, and I knew that Charlie carried more blame than Adeline laid on him.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. I didn’t know how I felt about investing so much worry into the words of a wise older woman I had just met.
And then there was the news that Stark wasn’t Kendra’s only enemy. By far, that piece worried me the most.
Sitting in the back of Martha’s weathered ‘85 Buick, I let my head roll back and I closed my eyes and sighed. Charlie had moved to the front passenger seat, and when I heard Vince unclick his seatbelt and move up next to me, I opened an eye in question.
He didn’t say anything as he clicked on the center seatbelt and put an arm around my shoulders. I let my head rest on his shoulder.
His shirt was still a little damp from either the night air or the sweat, and I didn’t care. I tried not to think about his resilience abandoning him, as Adeline had said it would, and I slept most of the way home.
He invited me down to his place for a movie when we got home, and even though I was exhausted, I accepted. I wanted to hear about what they had told him and what he had done with the other werewolves in our absence. Mostly, I just wanted to hear him optimistic that they might be able to help him.
He got us each a small cup of ice cream and put on a movie. We settled onto the couch. He sat down next to me, so much more relaxed than he had been the last time we watched a movie. After a while, I leaned over and rested my head on his shoulder again.
He reclined back on the couch. I reclined with him.
It had been my plan to talk with him when we came down, but we were too tired. Sometime after midnight I woke up in the dark alone on the couch.
I sat up carefully, feeling cold sweat break out on my skin. Adeline’s warning that Vince was unstable echoed in my mind.
Vince was asleep in his bed across the studio apartment. He had set a pillow on the floor next to the couch and thrown a blanket over me. I turned over and went back to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~
I awoke to the sound of water running as Vince took a shower, and quietly crept ba
ck up the stairs. I was mortified and afraid that Charlie would say something, but he didn’t.
Martha continued to read Kendra’s journals, and she asked me for more. I told her I had shown her everything that I had, but she kept saying how much it meant to her to have anything to reconnect with her friend. I promised her that I would show her anything else I came across. Even without talking to Charlie, I finally knew what she was after.
Charlie’s book. The one book that he had seen fit to steal from the collection, before doing anything else, when I had summoned him. He refused to let me see it, and I knew that Stark was after it, too. I didn’t even know what was in that book that he was protecting so fiercely. I didn’t have the opportunity to ask him with the lack of privacy, but I doubted he would have told me anyway.
Vince finally came upstairs. He didn’t say anything about my overnight stay. He went home that day to have lunch and spend the afternoon with his parents, and I went to the greenhouse.
I spent a few hours practicing the resurrection spell that Martha had tried to teach me. After the third employee “accidentally” walked in on me as I waved a crystal rod over a wilted cactus situated between a burning mug of sage and a dish of salt on the office desk, I decided it was time to call it quits. The first time had been an accident. Now they were spying on the freaky boss.
I extinguished the sage and stowed the crystal back in one of Kendra’s secret hiding places, and tried not to care about all the stares I received as I set the cactus in a window and went about clipping the spider plants like nothing had happened.
I got a text around three. Vince wanted to know if I was up for watching another movie that night, and perhaps making it past the first twenty minutes before we drifted off. It made me smile.
I drove home on that note, and called my dad on the way. He didn’t answer, but Janet did, and we had a quick chat about how their search for a place in California was going. Neither of them could believe how expensive things were out there, but his new job was offering an inordinately generous relocation bonus. They had narrowed it down to three properties, and my dad wanted the one with the pool, but Janet wasn’t sure if he would like maintaining it so much. I shook my head; the thought of my dad in his trunks next to a pool in California, a smoothie in one hand and his work laptop open under the other, was almost too much. I got to talk to him for a few minutes before we hung up, and it was good to hear his voice again.
When I got close to the apartment, I passed the spot where I usually turned into the lot and went straight to the sandwich shop. All of the good spots in front were taken, so I had to double back to the apartment lot, and I ended up parking on the far side from my apartment to split the difference walking. I searched the tray where I dropped my change for extra quarters, because I felt guilty making Martha buy us so much food. As I was counting up my spare coins, I looked up and saw Martha, standing in the little alley behind the shop.
I was about to wave, but something stopped me. There was a guy with her, and he had the hood on his coat pulled up so that I couldn’t see him. He and Martha were talking, and it didn’t look amicable.
I didn’t know what to do. I was about to get out of the car to help her when I saw her cross her arms. She was repeating something in response to what he was saying to her.
Fine. Fine. Fine. But… I wasn’t a lip reader, and that was all I got. The conversation ended on better terms, and the guy in the jacket turned to go.
It was Walter. I watched him walk away, feeling my heart sink.
Then I looked back, and saw Martha looking right at me.
Chapter 11
I locked the doors on my car and fumbled for my keys.
“Charlie!” I hissed under my breath. I didn’t know if he could hear me. I really hoped he could. “Charlie!”
The locks on the doors all shot back up just as I got the key in the ignition. Martha opened the passenger side door. She made a disgusted noise as she shoveled three empty fast food bags and a stack of old notebooks and receipts into the back and got in.
I tried to undo my seatbelt and get out, but she caught the belt in her hand to stop me.
“Annie,” she said in a low tone. “Annie! Calm down!”
Suddenly, she let go of my seatbelt, and fell back against the seat, choking. It took me a moment to register that Charlie was behind her, holding her back by the neck. He was holding a rough wooden stake to her side with his free hand as Martha kicked and squirmed to try and escape.
“He came to me…!” She gasped with her stolen breaths. “For help!”
Charlie moved his face in closer to hers and loosened the hand on her neck just enough for her to speak.
“Make it fast,” he said in a deadly whisper. “I don’t like you, and that didn’t look good.”
“I told you we would take care of Vince first,” she said in a hurry. “Annie, I did that, I got him help, and I told you the second thing was to focus on the thing with Walter and Stark, and that’s what I was doing, I was going to try to find Walter—”
“You said he came to you,” Charlie accused. I saw him jab her a little with the stake, and she jumped away with a high-pitched whine.
“He came to me before I could even look!” she said. “He heard that Adeline is looking for him, but he can’t go to them. He’s in too deep with Stark, and he can’t get out. He’s just a dumb kid, Charlie, he thought he could manage a demon but he can’t, and now he can’t sever the connection without Stark killing him, you know that’s how it works! Even if the demon and the bridge mutually agree, it can be life-threatening without the proper spells, and Stark will not consent! Walter is a hostage!”
Charlie looked at me, his eyes asking an opinion. I finally nodded and he let her go.
She swore at us, touching her neck and the place where Charlie had threatened to stab her. “I offered to help you! What is wrong with you?!”
I shrugged. “You’re a necromancer. Even the people you call friends don’t trust you. Figured you were used to it.”
“What’s with the attitude?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
Charlie gave me a long look before answering the question himself. “Because she knows you’re after something, and she doesn’t like being lied to. And you’d best give it up, because she doesn’t have the book. I do. It’s safe where no one can reach it, even in the event of my death. I know that’s why you were at the greenhouse. You were looking for the book.”
“Book?” Martha turned around, looking confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“That’s fine,” Charlie said calmly. “You can play it that way. Go on and tell me how you’re going to help me break Stark’s spell, now that there’s no pay off in it for you.”
Martha glared at him, and then at me. She sounded pained.
“I was going to offer myself as a bridge to Stark, because necromancers are always looking for werewolves to sacrifice,” she said. “I was going to convince him to have me as a bridge, and that would ease the burden off of Walter before we sever their bond. Then I was going to bind Stark, make him undo his curse, and banish him. And I’m still willing to do that for Kendra’s sake, if that’s okay with you!”
I took a breath in and opened my mouth to speak, but her words sank into me with the ring of truth. I looked at Charlie. “That’s actually a good idea. As long as Stark doesn’t know her he won’t know it’s a trick. And if you don’t know her, I’m betting he doesn’t. Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Because it takes one to know one, and she’s a liar,” Charlie said in a low voice. “She’s after something.”
“She’s offering to help us in the meanwhile,” I pointed out.
Charlie gave me a long look. “Related to a certain scar I have, I’m not fond of people who offer to help in the meanwhile. It ends badly.”
“The only thing I’m after is Kendra,” Martha said. “And even if I wasn’t, that’s a good plan, and you’ve got to move fast. Walter thinks he�
��s already being advertised for sale. That’s bad for Walter, and possibly worse for the rest of you if Stark finds someone more willing to indulge his vendettas.”
Charlie and I shared a long look. That wasn’t a lie, and we both knew it.
“He said he could come by the apartment next weekend.” Martha spoke more gently now, as though she really hoped we would accept her recommended course of action. “He goes out alone more as the moon is turning, and he thinks Stark is less likely to follow him or think the outing is unusual. That’s our chance, if we’re going to make a move with his help.”
Leaning back, I watched the cogs turn in Charlie’s head as he considered the offer. When his eyes finally focused on Martha again, he didn’t look happy. “Fine.”
~~~~~~~~~
That night I found myself sitting on Vince’s couch again with a bowl of popcorn in my lap as I explained the new developments in the plan. When I mentioned that Charlie thought Martha was after his book, but that I didn’t know what was so special about it, he stopped me.
“Gates read it?” he asked.
I shrugged and nodded.
“She practically has a photographic memory,” he said. “You should ask her.”
“She can’t remember which stuff came from which book a lot of the time, because they’re so mixed up,” I said. “And besides, I don’t think the stuff that’s written in the book is the important part. This is about something else.”
He gave me a long look. “I thought you said that you trusted him.”
“I do!” I said quickly, and a little more enthusiastically than I meant to. “It’s just…”
I didn’t know how to put it without letting my secret out, because Charlie had warned me that people would be biased against anyone who was ever a demon, no matter how short of a time. He had made me human again and kept the secret, and he had never asked anything in return. He had even fielded a few questions when I had developed what I thought was a super-human lack of a need for sleep in the days following my revival, reassuring me that insomnia didn’t mean any trace of the Other Side had stuck around to toy with me. I trusted him deeply, even when he was lying to me, because I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me.