“Fairy?”
“It disappeared when I dispelled the cold. Cassie, you’re bleeding.”
His hand rounded the back of my skull to where I felt a goose egg forming, and I yelped.
“I’m going to put you in an enchanted sleep too,” he said.
“No! Need to stay awake. Got to figure this out.”
“Cassie, there’s a lot of blood.”
“Head injuries do that.” I moaned softly, which probably didn’t help my case, but I stayed firm. Now was not the time to sleep. Now was the time to plan. “Can you just stop the blood and numb the pain for now?”
He didn’t respond right away, but when he touched my head again I felt the pain magically ease. I managed to sit up and push my way out of the destroyed wall, coming to a seat against an intact section of hallway.
Tentatively, I touched the back of my head. I felt only numbness and swelling.
“What happened?” Isaac had arrived from downstairs, along with Elena and Adam.
“Call Juliana,” I said. “Tell her I don’t care how mad she is at me, she needs to get over here now.”
“There’s blood everywhere,” Adam said.
“Where’s Michael and Maya?” Elena asked.
Evan gestured into his lab and Elena ducked inside, coming out with a sleeping Michael in her arms. He looked huge in the arms of an eleven-year-old; she definitely couldn’t hold both twins.
“Is he okay?” Elena asked.
“He’s just sleeping,” Evan assured her. “Can you take him downstairs for me?”
“I’ll get Maya,” I said.
“No,” Evan snapped. “I’ll do it.”
“I can do it.” Adam dashed past both of us and had gathered Maya into his arms before either of us could decide if it was a good idea or not. If Michael looked large in the arms of an eleven-year-old, it was nothing to how Maya looked in the arms of an eight-year-old. Still, he held her securely, as if he had done this many times before.
As Elena and Adam retreated down the stairs, Isaac pulled out his cell phone and ducked into the third-floor guest room we’d assigned to him. We’d offered another room up here to Elena, but she’d insisted upon sharing with Christina. I think she was afraid of being alone in a strange house, but didn’t want to say so.
I started to stand, but Evan stilled me with his gift. I stared at him, but he just shook his head.
“If I can’t heal you, I’ll at least carry you.”
“Okay.”
“It must be bad, if you’re not arguing,” he said.
“I’m not that stubborn.”
“Agree to disagree.” He knelt at my side and gently, using a combination of physical strength and telekinesis, lifted me into his arms.
It was a bit of an awkward position, to tell you the truth. I wasn’t sure where to put my head, and I felt simply too large to be carried around as if I were a child. I put my arms around his neck, not because I needed to hold on – his gift wouldn’t let me fall – but because I had no idea what else to do with them.
“I saw Master Wolf today,” I said as Evan began walking down the hall toward the stairs.
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To ask him what he knew about fairies.”
“What did he know?”
“Not much. But he …” I paused. We’d reached the stairs and I braced myself for some jostling that never came. My ride down to the second floor and then into the master bedroom was as smooth as floating on air.
Ana squealed when we entered the master bedroom. She was in the middle of our bed, her extremely damp head on a pillow, but when she saw us she popped upright.
“I never got her to bed,” Evan said. “When I heard you yell, I was just getting her dressed.”
“Ma!” Ana cried as Evan placed me beside her on the bed.
“You just nursed half an hour ago.” I tried not to cringe as my bloody head found a white pillow. It would have to be burned, to ensure all traces of blood were gone.
“Ma!” Ana cried again, and rolled over to nestle against me.
“All right.” I started to lift my shirt, but didn’t quite find the clasp of my nursing bra before Ana grabbed – not for my breast as she usually did – but for my head.
I felt suddenly warm and tingly. The numbness in my head vanished, replaced – not with pain – but with peace. I was whole. Undamaged. Healed.
“Ana!” I cried. It had all happened too quickly; I hadn’t been able to stop her. Of course I knew she was a healer – she’d saved my life before she was born – but she’d rarely manifested her gift since her birth. It was special, it was powerful, but it was also draining, and I never would have wanted her to use it on me.
“Ma,” Ana said sleepily, and, for the first time, I was pretty sure she meant me, not my breasts.
“I love you too.” I kissed her on the forehead as Evan scooped her off the bed and cradled her in his arms.
“That’s my girl,” he crooned to Ana as he walked her next door to her nursery. “Just don’t do that too often, okay?”
I sat upright and tried to figure out what to do next. I felt reenergized. Awake. Ready for anything. I definitely didn’t need to be in bed, but I did need to clean myself off. Quickly, I slipped into the shower and washed away all the blood that was matted into my hair. Aside from the blood, my head felt normal – no goose egg, no swelling, no pain.
When I emerged, I quickly dressed and went downstairs to find Evan. He was in the den with Isaac, the two chatting quietly until I entered.
“Is Juliana on her way?” I asked.
Isaac nodded. “Any minute. As soon as I told her about the twins, she started heading for her car.”
The doorbell chimed and I ran to get it, looking at the monitor to double check that it was Juliana before flinging the door open and pulling her into a hug.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you with the kids.” I drew back and looked her in the eyes. “I’m here now. Okay?”
“Okay?” She made it a question, but she followed me into the den. “Are the twins all right?”
“They’re both asleep,” I said. “Evan tried to bind their powers–”
“Their powers are bound,” she said. “Nicolas and Mr. Eagle did it last week!”
I shook my head. “They slipped again.”
Evan stood when we entered the den, though Isaac remained slumped in a recliner. Juliana perched on the arm of a sofa, apparently not willing to make herself too comfortable.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked.
“Get to the point. If the twins are okay, what do you need me for?” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a second. Isaac said you were hurt.”
“I was. Ana healed me.”
“Oh.” Juliana frowned. “I was going to do that, you know, after you groveled a bit.”
“What are we all doing here?” Isaac asked. “Can we stop with the chitchat and get to the point?”
I glanced at him, noticing how tensely he held himself despite his slumped posture. Nodding, I took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa from where Juliana perched. Evan chose a spot on the love seat.
“What do you think is wrong with Maya?” I asked Juliana.
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” she snapped, a bit too quickly.
“Juliana,” I said as gently as I could, “you’ve been like a mother to her almost since she was born. Something’s not right, and you know what it is. Or at least guess.”
She shook her head, but I knew she was lying. She wasn’t even trying very hard to hide the fact, which meant she had to be on the verge of talking. She’d never been this bad a liar.
“Maya’s just a baby,” Juliana said.
“Nobody’s going to hurt Maya,” I said. “But we need to know what’s happening before someone else gets hurt.”
Juliana licked her lips and looked at her hands; her finger
nails had been chewed and one was even bleeding. She couldn’t heal herself, I recalled, but biting her nails until they bled was a dangerous habit for a sorceress to develop.
“She’s a summoner,” I began, “but she can only summon what she can see. How’s she summoning the fairies?”
“I don’t think she can see at all,” Juliana said in a voice so faint I scarcely heard her.
I frowned. I’d thought the same thing for a second, but she was a summoner – and a blind summoner was about as useful as a dreamer who couldn’t remember her dreams.
“I know,” Juliana added, “she’s a summoner. She has to be able to see, right? And she seems to have visual awareness, but recently I began to wonder … she won’t leave Michael’s side.”
“You think she’s seeing through his eyes?” I asked slowly.
“Yes.” She twisted her hands nervously. “I blindfolded him a few days ago, to test the theory. Showed her a picture book and asked her to identify a cat – she knows that word. But she couldn’t, not until I took the blindfold off. I tried a few other similar experiments. I’m pretty sure I’m right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed with anger and something else … fear? “If you bind Maya’s powers, she won’t be able to see.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I hadn’t spotted that. Of course, Juliana would have. “But wait – you said her powers were bound. You said both of their powers were!”
She averted her eyes. “Her gift isn’t dangerous; I only had Nicolas bind Michael’s.”
“Juliana–” I began, feeling the icy tendrils of dread creep over me once again. Maya’s powers hadn’t been bound; maybe they never had been. Which meant … what?
“What difference does it make?” Juliana snapped. “Maya’s not doing this. It doesn’t matter if she’s seeing through Michael’s eyes, Michael can’t see fairies for her to summon either.”
“No,” I said, and the last piece of the puzzle finally slipped into place. “But Christina can.”
Juliana sucked in a breath. “Christina? No … I mean … no, that’s impossible.”
“We might need to stop using that word.” I glanced at Evan and at Isaac, both of whom looked utterly lost.
“Christina told me, not an hour ago, that there was a giant eyeball peering in at us, but it wasn’t here yet. She was seeing something – with farsight. She saw it, then she looked at Maya and begged her not to let it in.”
Juliana gasped, and I knew that she, at least, had followed my logic. Evan and Isaac still looked a bit lost.
“There isn’t just one gift at work here,” I explained. “That’s why I wasn’t seeing it before. That’s what’s so different. Maya’s gift of summoning only works on what she can see. But she’s also developed the power – I’m not sure if it’s a gift or a manifestation of her talent – to see through other people’s eyes. Maybe it was just Michael at first, but now it’s Christina too. And Christina is seeing creatures in another world.” I paused as I considered the enormity of that. Christina’s gift was beyond any other form of farsight I’d ever heard of. Beyond anything, perhaps, save the potential daughter I’d seen who spent all her time gazing at worlds light years beyond our own.
“So Christina saw the fairies in another world,” Isaac began, “and Maya saw them through her eyes and summoned them here?”
I nodded. Then I cringed. Had it all been right in front of me and I’d refused to see it? I’d disparaged Sydney for not seeing the truth when her own daughter was a suspect, but she hadn’t been the blind one. That had been me.
But no … I hadn’t guessed that Maya was literally blind. How could I have? I hadn’t spent enough time with her to know, and Juliana had chosen not to share.
“So what do we do now?” Isaac asked.
“We do a binding,” Evan said. “This time, with a full circle.”
“No!” Juliana cried. “You can’t. She’ll be blind.”
Evan looked at me helplessly, and I closed my eyes, feeling the same way he did. “Juliana,” I said, not willing to look at her, “people are dying.”
“Maybe we can find some way to heal her,” Evan said.
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Juliana shot back. “It must be something genetic. I can’t fix genetic anomalies.”
“Your gift isn’t the only solution,” I said. “We’ll put all our resources into finding a solution. Nicolas will too. We’ll talk to Henry Wolf and Mr. Eagle and–”
“Wait,” Isaac interrupted. “You’re forgetting something.”
We all stared at him.
“Even if we bind Maya’s power, how do we get rid of the fairies? Mom’ll never get better as long as that fairy’s attacking her.”
I wasn’t as sure as I should be that Mom would get better once it stopped, but I didn’t say that out loud. There was also the matter of the other fairy. And the hell hounds.
“We need to capture them,” I said. “And we can’t bind Maya’s powers until we do. She’s the only one who can summon them.”
Chapter 22
WE REACHED OUT TO THE WHITE GUARD and soon had an emergency meeting in our living room, planning and arguing well into the night. I forced Isaac up to bed but Juliana refused to budge, not when we were discussing the future of her baby. I couldn’t blame her, but I did ask her to keep an open mind.
“The one thing I don’t understand,” Linda Eagle said shortly after midnight, after I passed around mugs of a stay-awake potion stronger than coffee, “is whether Maya is controlling these creatures she’s summoning. You said the hell hound considers itself hers, but also responds to Christina.”
“That’s what Christina said.” I shook my head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s only one hell hound. Not unless they can magically disappear in Eagle Rock and reappear three hundred miles north in the blink of an eye. Uncle John can shift place, but he can’t make a jump like that.”
“But gifts are getting stronger,” Linda pointed out.
I couldn’t argue with that. The rules of magic seemed to be changing, and I was already behind the times.
“Maya isn’t controlling them,” Juliana said, almost defiantly. “She wouldn’t hurt people on purpose. Besides, she’s a summoner, not a mind mage.” She winced as she shot a glance at the Blairs, though none of them seemed to have taken offense.
“I agree, actually.” I went to stand at Juliana’s side, sipping from my own mug of stay-awake potion. “I think these are wild creatures she set loose, driven by their own impulses. The hell hounds have generally acted to protect children–”
“What about the one that attacked you at your own house?” Juliana flushed. “I mean, our house.”
“And the one that attacked Jim at Nadine and Jared’s place,” Scott added.
“I think …” I considered my answer carefully before replying. “… they’re wild creatures too, driven by a need to protect. But I’m not sure they always understand the danger. Nadine and Jared regularly cared for five children. When the sun set the night they died, a hell hound, thinking to protect Maya or Haley or one of the other children, might only have sensed the fear and death without knowing what was to blame. And there’s been a lot of fear going around, especially with two wild fairies on the loose.”
Linda nodded slowly. “I wish there was a way to find out more about these creatures. If Maya can summon them, what’s to say someone else can’t do it too?”
The room fell silent. No one had an answer for that. And we still weren’t sure how to either capture the fairies or send them back to wherever they’d come from. It was largely what we’d spent the last three hours arguing about.
“Cormack knows something,” Scott said. “All you have to do is tell him the truth – that I saved my mate from his vicious, murdering brother.”
“No,” Evan said, for the third time. Though not as many people seemed to agree, judging by their downcast eyes. We were getting despe
rate.
“It’s time to break for the night,” Matthew said, rising to his feet and setting aside his stay-awake potion. He looked at it and shook his head. It would keep us all up for at least the next two hours, whether we stayed here to talk or not. “We’re getting nowhere. We need to face this tomorrow with a fresh perspective.”
“The fairies could attack again at any moment, though,” Kevin said. “And Maya could summon another one.”
“She’ll stay asleep until I wake her,” Evan insisted, although given how effective binding spells were on the twins, I wasn’t so sure.
“You can’t keep her asleep forever,” Juliana protested.
“I won’t, but Matthew is right.” Evan stood too. “I’m tired. I worked a lot of magic earlier and while I’m feeling okay now, I don’t think it’s the right moment to start a fight.”
Everyone grudgingly agreed and the group broke up. Evan and I showed everyone out, murmuring goodbyes and reminders of tasks each had been assigned. The Blairs were going to look through their seers’ old journals for even so much as a rumor of a fairy or hell hound. Linda Eagle was going to research magical visual aids – Juliana had refused to talk about anything else until she elicited that promise. Scott had some iron cages in his lab at home; I chose not to ask why.
Finally, we were alone. Well, Evan, me, and Juliana. She hadn’t decided to return to Aunt Sherry’s.
“I don’t think I can sleep,” she told us.
“Try. The twins will need you tomorrow.” I paused then added, “and so will I.”
I scooted past her up the stairs, Evan just behind me. A week ago, he would have held my hand as we walked. How things had changed. And all because of my damned pride.
Pride had always gotten me into trouble. Tonight, I had to swallow it. I’d started to say something earlier, but gotten sidetracked by everything that was going on.
When we reached our bedroom, we had to take a few minutes to change the sheets. Finally, the bed was made and we slipped into it, each on our own side. The distance between us felt like an ocean.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and it took me a minute to realize that the echo I’d heard was Evan saying the same words at the exact same time.
Frozen: a ParaNormal Mystery (Cassie Scot Book 7) Page 20