I expect some kind of answer to that low-blow prod, but Jonas seals his lips tight and crosses his arms.
He closes his eyes, but he’s too tense to be really sleeping.
He holds like that until I pull into our town. Like he has some kind of internal homing beacon, he suddenly sits straight up and looks out at the familiar water towers, parks in bloom, chain-link-fenced schoolyards, and still-locked shops, closed against the greyish purple too-early morning light.
I brake at the end of the road I’ve lived down since I was a little girl, and look at Jonas.
“They’re either waiting for us or they have no idea we’re here. Either way, a hundred yards won’t make any difference.” He points for me to pull up, but I shake my head.
“Maybe it’s stupid, but I just…I just want to walk up to the house.” I’m talking mostly to the wrappers on my seat, fear making my mouth taste metallic.
Jonas gets out and comes around to my side, opens my door, and holds his hand out. There’s a muffled quiet in the air that would fit the morning of a snowstorm, not the life-heavy drone of early spring. Jonas and I both crane our necks, but there’s nothing black and winged in the air.
He links hands with me and says, “There are other things. Scary-ass things that we have to be ready for, even if we can’t really be ready for them. Okay?”
My attempt at swallowing is half-hearted and forced. I squeeze his hand tight. “Of course. What knight isn’t okay before battle, right?”
“I got your back. Remember that.” He pulls me over, and I see the flicker of our boble corded around his neck. He kisses me hard and fast, like a stamped and certified promise that there will be more later.
I trust that unspoken promise with every ounce of desperate, chicken-shit, horny hope in me.
Bestemor’s house looks exactly like it always has. But it doesn’t feel the same. The dread that marches closer to my heart with every step I take toward that house is offset by the boble around my neck. I feed off of the good memories bouncing around inside the springy walls, and pray that those good times don’t stay locked eternally in memory.
I drag Jonas through the gate and duck along the side of the house. Bestemor’s herbs are already getting wild and stringy without her regimented hands to prune and pluck at them. No matter how many shingles fell off or if all the siding buckled, the greenery around our house was always like Eden when she was well enough to take care of it. It’s a sharp edge of paper to the tip of my finger that everything is overgrown, wild, and mean-looking.
I pick up the florescent green turtle I made in my eighth grade ceramics class for my grandmother, jiggle the key loose, then silently open the back door.
Jonas’s hand on my hip seeps calm, like a huge cup of chamomile tea, right through me while I steel myself for the worst: blood and fur, ninja assassin witches, killer crows, Jonas’s aunt, any of my Japanese relations.
“Vee?” I call softly. But it’s not my best friend who comes to greet me.
Loki’s burnt orange coat streaks through the door, and she runs right to my feet, making a figure eight as she weaves in and out around my ankles. I scoop her into my arms and pull her close, and I feel the peace of her heartbeat transfer to mine. I bury my face in the fur at her neck and tears soak in. Every bad thought, every fear, every uncertainty gets channeled into her tiny, warm body, and she laps it all up without hesitation.
I sink to the floor, Jonas at my side, and let sobs quake from my open mouth into her fur. Her sandpaper tongue licks at my hand and I cry until my back aches from being bent over. I cry until my throat is scratched raw. I cry until my eyes feel huge and puffy. I cry for my mother and her lies and not-yet-revealed truths. I cry for my father and his absence and bitterness. I cry for Vee, who never should have gotten so involved, and has been so violated. I cry for Jonas and how much I love him…yes, love him, but can’t say it or admit it because it’s already too intensely complicated as it is. And I cry hard for Bestemor, the one person who has always been my shield, no excuses, no qualifiers. I cry for what’s happened to her and my fear that she won’t come back from it.
Every tear is a release, and by the time I’m covered in snot and damp salt, Loki speaks to me in that musical non-voice I thought I’d never hear again.
Now what do you want, Wren?
What do I want? Not a roll of money or a new coat or whiter teeth or more time to get ready for my diner job.
Flipping my memory’s mirror back to that night in the woods and those days at home and at work, it’s cut-rate circus bizarre that those fulfilled wishes ever made me so cagey.
“I want Bestemor home and safe with Mom and Dad here, too.” Jonas’s brow creases as I begin talking in my croaky, tear-soaked voice. I take a deep breath and focus on Loki’s heart-rate, letting her calm hum through me, igniting a wild sweetness in me that’s been missing since she was taken. My hair seems to lift right from the roots and currents of power sizzle and snap through me like I’m a Christmas toy that just got new batteries. “I want Vee safe and sound. I want Sakura and Magda leashed far away from my powers.” My voice rings out, echoing through my familiar but hollow home. I can feel the glow deep in my bones and the lining of my cells, and it winds up crackling on my skin and into my beat-up hands. “I want Jonas. I want our love.”
Loki’s tail flicks and I hear Jonas’s sharp intake of breath, but I wouldn’t want those words sucked back in if I had a million chances to re-say what I said. I’m about to tell him in this whole monologue filled with words like truth, love, anything, us when every window in the house is suddenly blanketed by a dark, cool shadow.
“I do.” It’s the end. I can feel the crash of a total, unavoidable finale all around us, but I want to tell him before we fight this. His clear, light eyes are wide and shocked. “I love you, Jonas. I wish we hadn’t been so stupid all those times we had a chance to be together.”
“I love you.” His voice is gravelly, his eyes fierce. “And this isn’t some last ditch declaration, okay? We’re fighting our way out of here, and I’m taking you on a real damn date. Then I’m kidnapping you and we’re going to spend a lot of time completely alone.”
For one second I wonder if it makes me the shallowest superhero ever that my will to live is based heavily on my desire to see Jonas naked.
It’s my last second of clear thought, because just after my perverted imagination goes to Jonas Balto deliciously and completely undressed, every pane of glass in the house shatters in.
I know the real time version of this all happens in a few split seconds, but for me it draws out like it’s in slow motion. I hear the creaking break of the glass and have exactly enough time to throw my hands on either side of Jonas and Loki and let the pulse of power from my palms burst into two diament shields that I teepee over our heads. Glass clinks and blows everywhere, and when I look through the shields, it’s like a bad Charlie’s Angels remake walking towards me.
Magda is all in black, blonde hair slicked back, hands out and still glowing from the shield she popped so her posse can walk amid their destructive confetti. At her side are pink-haired, glowering Sakura and a woman I know must be my aunt, Hina, because she’s an older, normal-haired version of her daughter.
“Wren.” My aunt looks me up and down with golden eyes that say she’s seen it all and it’s all failed miserably to impress her. “Lovely. I see you took the bait. You’re right, Sakura.” My cousin beams through her tragic lavender lipstick. “This is so easy, it’s hardly sporting. Give the fox here, and let Aunt Hina hold your hands for a minute.” Hina has this red jumpsuit type thing on, with these ridiculous long, flowy sleeves that I’m positive she imagines look so dramatic against all her pin-straight black hair. Against all sense, it irritates the shit out of me that I’m going to be undermined by a woman with such cheesy villainess fashion sense.
Jonas puts an arm across me and presses me back. “Don’t. It’s a trick to draw your powers.”
“I know that,”
I can’t help whispering at his very obvious observation. But he barely notices because he’s in full-on protective magus mode, mumbling incantations in that low, deep rhythmic Viking language I love.
Magda leans her head back and laughs, and I’m irritated again at this new example of an evil cliche. “Jonas, Jonas, please, I’m begging you. Stop embarrassing yourself.” She draws out a long, delicate tentakkel shield with her pinky finger, just to show off, and snaps it over his mouth, muffling his incantation thread.
He yanks it away, more embarrassed than hurt, and she laughs again.
“You’re the only one I see making an embarrassment of herself, Magda.” I’ve jumped in front of Jonas, and my snarl comes from somewhere low, deep, and achingly loyal. No one talks to Jonas like that while I’m around. He takes me by the elbow, but I shake him off.
Magda presses her index finger to her lips, and I notice both nailpolish and lipstick are blood red. How cheesetastic can she get? Did these three have a sleepover and watch the best of the overplayed evil-doer B-movies all night in preparation for this showdown?
“Let’s think about this, Wren.” She starts to count off my failures on her fingers, the murder-bright polish glinting at me. “You and your ragtag team of misfits and failures has managed to put your grandmother in a coma, lose your prized kitsune, almost get destroyed by a single band of Kråke, and get your best friend kidnapped.”
I had hoped Vee just didn’t get my message when she wasn’t here. I never even imagined—
Magda snaps her long pale fingers and Sakura yanks Vee, bound and gagged, from down the hall. “Vee!” The cry is out of my mouth before I can calm myself down and play my cards closer. Vee’s eyes are pure hazel, wide open, and frantic. She can hardly focus on me or anything else in the room, and her low moans deliver shivers up and down my back. I square my shoulders and leapfrog all negotiations. “Anything you want.”
Jonas balks. “Wren—”
He starts to argue, but my stare cuts him off. “Did you see what they did to Bestemor? I’m not sacrificing anyone else to this.” I look right at him, trying to communicate that nothing could ever be that simple, that I need to come up with a plan and I will. But I don’t have the time or energy to head hop and plant the idea. I just hope he can trust me without any supernatural convincing.
“What we want is simple.” Magda’s eyes gleam with maniacal triumph. Seriously, all she needs is a shark tank, a monocle, and a long, pompous monologue about my impending demise and they’ll mail her an evil villain decoder ring. “We need to draw what little power you’ve amassed in the last few weeks. Hina can do that without an issue, and it will only take a few minutes. You’ll recover in a couple of weeks.” She points the shiny black toe of her heinous boot at Loki. “And we’ll need the fox, naturally.”
I look at Vee and try to send her waves of comfort and relaxation. From the way she gnaws on her gag and whimpers, I realize I’m failing. “Loki won’t be any use to you.” I swallow hard and try to think, think of what I can do other than round-about argue with them. “She’s bonded with me. There’s nothing that can undo that.”
“But there is.” Magda runs a hand over her shellacked blonde bun, her entire demeanor so damn cocky, arrogance is virtually oozing out her pores. And then, she delivers the monologue I’ve been waiting for. “You think it was an accident Jonas got sent on this wild goose chase with you? For all his other failings, he does have the makings of a powerful magus. But he was soft about you. Luckily, I can sense your bond.” She swings her attention to Jonas, and it’s strange, glancing back and forth between them, how similar they look. “I assume you didn’t turn your nose up at Wren like you did the last girl?” She raises one pale eyebrow, and Jonas and I keep blank expressions in the face of this completely degrading sexual innuendo. “Since you two lovebirds bonded, Hina can also drain Jonas, which will allow us to make an exact copy of the footprint of your bonding agent. It’s like having a patented pheromone that can replicate your connection to your kitsune. Anyone can use it and trick the bond.”
“There was no ceremony. With me and Jonas. It was just, uh, a cheap motel thing. Fling.” I put a hand back on Jonas’s and squeeze hard to let him know he needs to go with this. “The bond isn’t complete.”
Magda gives another sharp laugh. “Ceremonies aren’t needed when you have a witch involved. We’ve done some experimenting of our own.” Her smile communicates more crawly innuendo, and I can’t catch her drift, but I follow the narrow gold glint of Hina’s eyes and wonder what piece of the puzzle I’m missing. Magda can’t resist gloating just a little more. “So many of our kind frown on intermingling, but I applaud your parents’ forward thinking, Wren. Though, why waste the magic on a mixed-blood offspring when you can just reap the benefits yourself?”
Loki rubs her head against my ankles, and this time I don’t need her voice in my head. We’re connected by something deeper and more elemental. I unfold the Jacob’s ladder of a bridge that allows me access to Hina’s brain and am sucked instantly into a place I immediately want out of. Unlike Vee’s bright, ocean-view space, Hina’s mind is a literal labyrinth with tiny red and black snakes on the pebbled path and a full moon that gets obscured by clouds often enough to make it impossible to see clearly.
There’s too much shadow and poison, and my first thought it to just leave. But Loki drops in and flashes ahead of me, navigating the twists and turns. I follow her red glint of fur to the labyrinth’s center, the controlled quiet place in the middle of her thoughts, but come against a door, locked and chained. I flex my hands and try to manipulate the lock with every shield I can rotate through, but it’s no use.
Loki scratches at the little glow of gold light low in the door. There is a keyhole, and when I fall onto my knees to look through, I see Magda and Hina. There’s low light and not many clothes.
Magda kisses Hina softly. “This is exactly what I dreamed of. This is what I hoped for. You and I, two powerful women who know what it’s like to want dominance. Now we can join. Now we can share what we had before and multiply our abilities.”
Hina rolls over onto her, and I feel like a perverted creeper for watching, but it’s Hina’s face that gives me the key I need.
Magda, for all her evil, is glowing with love.
Hina is glowing with total and absolute power. Power that casts a jade light through her veins, the exact toxic shade of green I know so well.
I transferred powers to Jonas when we kissed. But Hina isn’t half-shieldmaiden, and this is much more than a kiss.
Did she draw Magda’s powers?
My body cyclones back out of the maze in Hina’s head and into my grandmother’s kitchen. I need a distraction, a plan, a way to stop this in its tracks.
In the middle of the kitchen where I shared so many meals with Bestemor, a sweet date with Jonas, late night snacks with Vee, I have to find something to fight with. And then I realize the cabinets and drawers are filled with glass and knives, an everywoman’s arsenal.
My tentakkel is crooked and wobbly, and I sure as hell can’t command it with one pinky finger. But this isn’t about showing off. This is about inciting some straight up riotous chaos.
I snake my shield arms through the cupboards and drawers and collect huge, crunching, breaking, sharp pieces of shrapnel, which I hurl in quick, frenzied concentration, grunting from the effort of raining knives and hailing plates. Jonas looks from me to Vee, his hands held up uncertainly, like he’s pondering jumping in and using his own limited shield capacities to stop my psychotic destruction.
It’s funny how a tiny bit of everyday insanity can bring on a world of cosmic implosion.
With all the random sharp and broken kitchen accoutrements flying their way, Hina, Magda, and Sakura pop their shields up and open. The knives and forks ping against the diaments, and the plates and mugs explode in tiny pieces of cutlery buckshot. When I run out of things to throw, Hina and Sakura drop their shields down to their sides, but Magda stares at
hers.
And I have my definite answer.
Even a novice maiden could have formed a diament shield better than hers. Weak frame lines, spotty structure, uneven distribution. Magda’s eyes move to the mess on the floor, looking for whatever impossibly strong item could have broken her shield wall, but it’s all mundane chunks of white ceramic and stainless steel.
I whistle and Magda looks up. “Pretty weak shield, for a master. Funny how even the witches did better than you.”
I make a soft, lopsided boble with my damaged fingers and underhand toss it to her like she’s a catcher on the peewee softball team. My droopy, loopy gelatinous shield hits what should be a diamond barrier and shatters it into a thousand fractured shards.
Chapter 28
My tentakkel shields are glowing the soft green Hina knows well, and Magda is slowly adding all the common denominators.
The sharp pieces of her blown-up shield deliver tiny slices to her fingertips and blood drips and runs everywhere. She rubs her fingers against her thumbs, smearing everything red, then her head whips up and she lunges at Hina, who throws up a diament shield that knocks her back onto her ass.
“You!” The swagger, the arrogance have all fallen away and it’s just pure, vicious, exposed unrequited love. Magda flips a tentakkel, which should be tenacious and flexible, but it snaps into brittle pieces between her fingers. Her boble is underdeveloped and dishsoap thin, and I know she’s trying to make a smør, but it’s a completely lost cause. She holds her blood-streaked hands out in front of her and her voice rises and falls like a seesaw manned by two kids high on Pixy Stix. “Give it back! Give me it back, you witch!”
“It’s not yours anymore,” Hina hisses, flapping those dramatic red sleeves. “You gave it to me.”
“You told me you loved me! You said we’d work together.” Magda’s last words choke on a frantic sob that would be painful to listen to if she hadn’t been gloating over my demise a few minutes before.
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