by Nova Nelson
I opened my eyes. “You mean besides my lack of training?”
He kept his eyes shut and nodded. “Yeah, it’s like a wall. I can’t even find your energy. I could find the energy on a simple post owl if I needed to.” He let go of my hands and opened his eyes. “Do you have some sort of protection on you?”
“Oh.” I reached down my shirt and pulled out the staurolite amulet. “You mean something like this?”
He groaned. “Is that staurolite? Are you kidding me?”
I pulled the chain over my head and set the amulet down next to me. “My bad.”
He sighed, summoning patience, and said, “Okay, let’s try this again.”
We went through the hand-washing thing again, and when we joined up and he began his chant, I immediately noticed a difference. There was a flow coming from his right hand into my left, and one coming out of my right hand into his left. A cyclone of energy flowed through me, sluggish at first until he broke down any resistance in its path and became a tornado.
Then the images hit me like a tidal wave …
The sun beating down on cracked dirt as far as the eye could see.
A black form sweeping through a lush garden, leaving nothing but wilt and death behind it.
Blinding sunlight as wooden horse-drawn carts cut twin fissures in the sand.
A natural tunnel of dark trees leading to the unknown, mist hovering around the soil.
A dark human figure appearing in the road in a small Texas town.
When I opened my eyes, I was on my back, staring at the ceiling of Donovan’s living room.
Donovan’s heavy breathing a few feet away filled my ears, as I raised myself carefully onto my elbows to peer down my body at him. He was on his back as well, but didn’t seem in a hurry to sit up. I had the urge to climb on top, but smacked myself in the cheek a few times until that idea went away. It had to be residue from the ritual.
“I don’t think it worked,” I said, breaking the silence.
He sat up and stared at me with an expression I’d never seen on him before. Maybe he was suffering similar side effects as I had for the briefest moment. It certainly looked that way.
“Are you kidding? I’ve never had one work that well.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’ve also never done it with a Fifth Wind witch before.”
“First time for everything.” I forced a smile, feeling heat rise in my neck. I wished he would stop looking at me like that.
“Does Tanner know you’re this powerful?” But before I could respond, he laughed dryly. “Of course he doesn’t. It wouldn’t matter to him anyway.”
“We didn’t get anything useful from it, though.”
“Are you kidding? We got way more than we needed. We just don’t know what it means yet. That last bit, though …”
I froze. Had he seen the glimpse of the figure in the road? The one that had caused me to crash, die, and end up in Eastwind? That had been my little secret. I’d taken it to the grave once, and my plan was to do it again. There was something more to it, some relevance I didn’t yet understand, and the last person I wanted to know about it was him. “Which part?”
“The tunnel of trees.”
I let go of the breath I was holding. “Right. What about it?”
“I feel like we need to go there, like we were moving toward it. Couldn’t you feel that?”
I considered it. “Yeah, you’re right. It was like it was calling to us. It didn’t feel like the others, either.”
“Exactly. Those felt like they were in the past or the future.”
“Yes!” I said excitedly. “But the tunnel felt like it was right now. Like it was calling to us from the present, through space.”
He bobbed his head gently as I spoke, and I could already see the storm clouds rolling over his mind as he gazed at the bubbling water on the table. “We only brushed the surface. There’s so much more we could mine.”
“Round two?” I asked, my stomach clenching at the prospect.
He nodded. “Definitely. Try to focus on the tunnel this time.”
We washed our hands again and our eyes met a moment before we grabbed hold of each other.
This time, the appearance of the images was immediate. He didn’t even need to chant before they blazed before my eyes. Only, they weren’t so much avant-garde flashes as a continuous shot, like in a movie fast forwarded at sixteen times the speed. Even though I remained still, the vision gave me whiplash as the perspective shot forward, through familiar streets of Eastwind, past Medium Rare, and into the Deadwoods. I had a creeping suspicion that I was seeing through the eyes of the entity.
The images didn’t stop once we entered the Deadwoods. We zoomed through thick oaks and firs, over slowly trickling streams, past a rickety wooden shack with birdhouses hanging from the trees, and on and on, deeper and deeper. How far did the Deadwoods stretch? What was beyond them?
It felt like my spirit was jolted from my body when the vision came to a sudden halt. And maybe it was, because I looked around, and next to me stood Donovan. Neither of us said a word, though.
We stood at the edge of the tunnel of trees, fog swirling low over the ground. On instinct, I approached the threshold, but the moment my foot crossed below the arched boughs—
I was on my back again, staring up at Donovan’s ceiling while everything in my peripheral vision spun in rapid and uneven circles.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” groaned Donovan from the ground.
When I propped myself up on my elbows this time, my head spinning and my stomach churning, I found him flat on his back, his legs spread eagle on either side of my knees, his arms out at ninety-degree angles from his torso. He didn’t bother trying to get up.
“Sheesh. Which part?” I asked, squeezing my eyes shut and using the table to pull myself up to sitting again.
“Um, most of it, actually. The continuous vision, being able to see each other. And I got the strangest feeling that I was looking through—”
“The eyes of whatever it was,” I finished for him. “Yeah, I had that, too.”
He groaned again then also used the table to pull himself onto his knees. “I’ve never heard about that happening.” He massaged his temples. “Maybe it’s a Fifth Wind witch thing.”
“Maybe,” I said. “What I do know is that I need to pay a visit to the Deadwoods.”
Grim perked up in the corners, his ears pushing forward on high alert. “Yes! ‘Bout time! I can show you all the best places. The Glen of Loss, Scavenger Hill, Sorrow Creek—all the best places. You’ll absolutely hate them.”
Donovan shot me near lethal side eye. “You need to go into the Deadwoods? Did you hear what you just said?”
“Yep.”
“Alone?”
“No. Grim will be with me. He’ll give me the tour.”
“Nuh-uh. I can’t let you do that.”
I laughed. “It’s not up to you.”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to do everything in my power to stop you. I promised Tanner I wouldn’t let you dive headfirst into a suicide mission. He said you have a thing for that.”
“I do not!” Was Tanner really saying things like that behind my back, or was Donovan being dramatic?
“You absolutely do. But here, how about this. In all likelihood, whatever visited you was a one-time thing. That happens occasionally. Some lonely loser summons something from beyond, it does its job, then it disappears. Before we go stomping into the Deadwoods, let’s wait and see if it was a one-off visit.”
Yeah, I caught that. “Before we go stomping into the Deadwoods?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. We. You and me.”
“And me! No way you’re leaving me behind the one time you go anywhere good.”
“The way I see it,” Donovan continued, “if you go into the Deadwoods alone, you’re as good as, well, dead. And then I’m as good as dead if Tanner finds out I let you go by yourself. So, if you’re set on exploring the single most dangerous ter
ritory in the entire realm—”
“I am.”
“And there’s nothing I can do to stop you—“
“There’s not.”
“Then our best bet is to go in there together.”
“Sounds like a plan. When do we go?”
He stood up and grabbed the tray. “Nuh-uh. You have to promise me you will not go running into the Deadwoods until we know for sure that the entity is still prowling around. Until we hear anything else, we’re not going anywhere. Considering you’re now dragging my life into jeopardy, I think you owe me that.”
I wasn’t big on him towering over me, so I stood as well. I was a few inches shorter than him, but it was better than before. “Okay, deal. But as soon as I hear about another attack—”
“If you hear about another attack. Which you probably won’t. And please, for the love of Gaia, don’t go thinking every plant that dies during the middle of the summer is a sign that it’s time to storm the castle, okay?”
“Ye of little faith.” He glared at me. “Yeah, okay, fine. I won’t do that.”
He left the room with the tea tray and when he returned a moment later, he paused in the doorway. “You’re still here.”
“You have to promise me one thing, too,” I said.
“Nope. We’re already even. I promised to go into the Deadwoods with you if you promised to wait and see if there was a second attack. Promise session over. Next item on the agenda.”
“Oh, for fang’s sake. Just hear me out. I need you to promise you won’t tell Tanner about our plans. Or, um, about the visions.”
He chuckled dryly. “You think I’d run and tell my best friend that I conducted a connection ritual not once, but twice with his girlfriend? And, oh yeah, we’re planning a date to the Deadwoods to most likely get ourselves killed.”
“Fair point. But I’m not his girlfriend.”
Donovan arched an eyebrow at me. “Does he know that?”
“Yes. I mean, he should. We’ve never talked about it, so I just assumed—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Please. I’m not Jane. I don’t want to know all about your love life. In fact, I don’t want to know anything about your love life. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see if I can’t sleep off some of the impending headache from that brain scramble we just went through. You know where the door is, right?”
Wow. Okay. For a moment, I’d thought we were in this together. Not that we were suddenly friends, but that there was some mutual civility. But apparently not. Donovan was still a jerk who could only tolerate the sight of me for so long.
He disappeared the way he’d come, and I grabbed the amulet and led Grim toward the front door.
But not before sneaking a peek at the kitchen. It was immaculate, with copper pots and pans hung along the wall over deep blue marble countertops.
“Still unsure?” Grim asked as we emerged into the bright morning light.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen a single straight man with a kitchen like that.”
“Probably because he’s not a single straight man. Or at least not if Gustav is any indication.”
“Gustav? You mean his familiar?”
“Yep. Never met a gayer cat,” said Grim.
“I didn’t know cats could be gay.”
“Anything can be gay, Nora. Even stuff that’s not gay has the potential to be a little gay.”
“Thanks for the wisdom. I owe you one.”
“One … steak?”
I sighed. I had the day off work and didn’t particularly want to spend it at work. Plus, now that I had a secret to keep from Tanner, I didn’t trust myself to be around him right away when the vision was still so fresh in my mind.
I couldn’t go back to Ruby’s house, though. Not while the mystery was unsolved and she still couldn’t brew her own tea. Maybe in a few hours, once she’d had time to take Tanner up on his offer of free tea and bacon at Medium Rare, she’d be in a better mood and I could fill her in then.
What I needed was somewhere to sit and think. There were two separate questions to answer here. First, what was the thing that had entered Ruby’s home, the one from our vision. But also, who had set it after me? It seemed like it would take quite a bit of power to send something like that after a person, and until I figured out who it was, I might still be at risk. It hadn’t injured me in my encounter, but I’d also had Ruby there to cast it out before it had much of a chance.
Unfortunately, it looked like I would need to come up with a list of possible suspects, all of whom would share the motivation of hating me. Great. What a fun way to spend the morning off of work.
But if the person responsible was to be dealt with, my options were either catch them myself or tell Deputy Stu Manchester what had happened, thereby admitting my stupidity to him (not ideal) and being tasked with convincing him it was something criminal and, therefore, his job to solve (not likely). Deputy Manchester was a good guy at heart, but sometimes bringing him into the picture was more trouble than it was worth. This felt like one of those times. Being a witch, I was probably better equipped for this sort of situation anyway. Manchester was just a were-elk, after all. I doubt he had any proclivity for catching evil entities, and if he did, what would he even do, lock it away in Ironhelm Penitentiary? Not sure how that would work.
“How about meatballs instead?” I said.
“Only if we’re talking Franco’s Pizza meatballs. You can’t cook worth a rat-shifter’s rump.”
“And yet, you still beg for scraps when I do. What does that say about your standards, Grim?”
“Nothing about my standards, everything about my desperation to get my daily nutrients.”
“Grease isn’t a required nutrient.”
“Maybe not for you.”
The idea of spending the morning at Franco’s Pizza, eating Italian food and sipping a spritzer, sounded divine. As soon as I imagined it, I knew it was the right fit for the day. If I had to spend my free time thinking about who would want to send a possibly demonic entity after me, that was where I wanted to be.
Chapter Eight
My wand couldn’t come soon enough.
I didn’t often wish I had one—after all, I’d lived my whole life without—but while I was wiping down the empty tables and booths at Medium Rare at six fifteen in the morning, I couldn’t help but think of the ease with which Donovan did his job at Franco’s Pizza, thanks to his little tool.
His wand, I mean.
Like, his actual wand. Not …
Anyway.
It would have been nice to complete it all with a flick of the wrist rather than hunching over to reach the far side of the table by the window and digging in the creases of the booth to get out all the crumbs. I had to remind myself that even once Ezra had finished my wand, I had years of training with it before I was as skilled as Donovan. And, considering I was the oh-so-special black sheep of the witch family, I might never get to that point. Who knew if I could wield a wand with any sort of power or precision. Channeling ghosts? Check. Going on vision journeys that my flunky friends from high school would pay their life savings to experience? Check. Everything else witchy? Not so much.
“How’d it go?” Tanner said, drying off his hands on his apron as he popped out of the kitchen.
“Fine. I found three spoons and a copper in the crease of the second booth from the corner. Not sure what the story is there …”
“No,” he said. “I mean, how did your meeting with Donovan go? You didn’t come by for lunch, so I’ve been dying to hear all about it.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, still a little groggy this morning.” I looked around. Hendrix Hardy, the insomniac werewolf who spends more late nights and early mornings in Medium Rare than in his own home, was currently the only guest. He sipped his coffee and stared out the window toward the Deadwoods like a complete zombie. The odds of him listening to us were slim, the odds of his deprived brain retaining any of the information slimmer, but still, I didn’t want to g
o into too much detail with Tanner, so Hendrix was the perfect excuse to keep it basic. “Yeah, it was fine.”
“You find out anything useful?”
I grimaced. “Eh, not really.” I nodded toward Hendrix. “We can talk later. But seriously, nothing especially interesting.”
He leaned forward, speaking softly. “The, um, ritual, or whatever you did. Did that work?” He leaned back, feigning mild disinterest once the words were out. But I knew what he was getting at. Did I tell him the truth? That, yes, we did a connection ritual and it was so amazing we did it twice, and in between I was overcome with a split-second attraction for his best friend that I only just managed to reel in?
Telling him that seemed mean. You try being mean to Tanner. It’s impossible. Even if what you’re saying is the truth.
So, yes, I lied. I didn’t think there was any practical harm in it. “Not really. And I wasn’t big on trying it again with Donovan, and he wasn’t big on it with me. Obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “We figure it was just a one-time attack anyway. The … thing, whatever it was, will probably never come back.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Tanner said, sneaking a glance at Hendrix, who now had his head down in his hands. Tanner grabbed my shoulder, leaning in, only a few inches away so that I stopped caring about whatever he was going to say and started wanting to drag him into the kitchen to have a little alone time until Anton showed up for the breakfast rush. That wasn’t my proudest moment, but proximity with Tanner was intoxicating. Maybe someday soon I would get to perform a connection ritual with him. Mmm …
“Forrest Uisce, that dryad that runs the farmland just west of Eastwind, I heard part of his crops were hit with an unexplained drought last night.”
I hurried a step back. “For fang’s sake. It’s six fifteen in the morning! How has that gossip already reached you?”
Tanner looked confused. “The walk to work. I pass the Bouquets’ house, Janet Timberhelm’s apartment, Lance Flufferbum’s shack, and Vic Hornsheart’s lair.”
“And they just, what, wait outside for you to pass and then tell you everything that’s happened?”