by Nicole Maggi
“That was four days ago. Give me some time.” I flung open the door. The hillside was drenched in mist shot through with the pink beginnings of sunrise. I breathed in deep and let the cold, clean air fill my lungs.
“We don’t have time. We need to act now.” Heath took my wrist, his hold much more gentle this time. “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass.” He turned my palm up and gazed into it as if it held the secret of the future. “You may think you can keep them separate, the part of you that is of this world and the part that is Benandante.” He raised his eyes to mine, his blue pupils clouded with trouble. “But you can’t. They intertwine, and you’ll find yourself lying to everyone you love, and it will eat you up inside, and eventually you’ll have to choose.” Heath swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple work up and down. “There was a girl in Italy. I—”
“Oh, please,” I said. My whole body shook with impatience and frustration. I yanked my hand away from him so fast that he stumbled forward a step. “I am not you. Just because it happened to you doesn’t mean it will happen to me.” I spun away from him and ran to the first hen trailer.
The hens sensed my distress, their nervous clucks and restless wings filling the close confines of the trailer. As I moved from one nest to the next, a couple of eggs slipped through my fingers. They hit the floor with a loud smack.
“Damn it!” I put the basket down on the hay-strewn floor and pressed my palms against the wall, pushing with all my strength. I breathed in and out through my nostrils, filled my body with the scents of hay and chicken droppings and feathers. Just because it happened to Heath doesn’t mean it will happen to me. I repeated it over and over in my head until I was whispering it. The mantra stopped me from shaking, and I was able to collect the rest of the eggs without dropping any more.
Heath was waiting for me outside when I emerged from the trailer. I blew out a breath of annoyance and looked up to the lightening sky. “Look, I hear you, okay? But what am I supposed to do, not get close to anyone? Hold myself apart from the world? Not ever fall in love?”
Heath stared at me without speaking, his eyes locked on mine. I saw into their depths, how much pain they held, and my breath caught. That was exactly what Heath had done. I had never seen him out with anyone. I had never heard him talk about any friends. He lived alone. He worked on our farm, but that was only because he had been sent here to be my Guide. He had nothing else in his life except being a Benandante.
I shook my head with such vigor that my ponytail came undone and my hair fell into my eyes. “No, I can’t live like that. I can’t do it.”
“I hope you don’t have to. But you must remember, if you ever have to make that choice, the mission is what matters. You accepted the Call; you cannot turn your back on the mission now. The Benandanti are your family.” Heath launched himself away from the trailer and walked toward me. “They will always be there for you. They will always take you in.” He stopped in front of me, just inches from my face. “Can you say the same for Jonah?”
Chapter Eighteen
The Construction Site
I didn’t want Heath to be right; he couldn’t be right. He was just jealous. He was alone, so he wanted me to be too. But his words swirled in my head. Keeping my two lives separate was as exhausting as trying to outrun a tornado.
I ate with the girls at lunch, listening to their chatter as though from a distance.
The next period, Jonah actually showed up to biology.
I moved to his table at the back of the room and perched on a stool. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He looked at me through a beaker, the glass enlarging his green eye to a cartoonish size. “Where were you at lunch?”
“I ate inside with the girls. Jenny’s been bugging me about it.”
“Oh.” He set the beaker down and ran his finger around the rim. “It’s not because of last night, is it?”
“What? No.” I laid my hand on his arm. “I’m not mad about last night. My mom can be a total freak sometimes. It’s not your fault.”
The bell rang, and everyone started getting their equipment ready for the lesson.
“I guess I have to sit through this class now, don’t I?”
I laughed. “I’ll help you. If you want, I could come over after school and catch you up on stuff.”
“Stuff?” Jonah raised an eyebrow, a sly grin pulling at his mouth.
“School,” I hissed, but I touched my foot to his under the table. It was better that he thought I wanted to come over to make out in his bedroom than the real reason. I didn’t like the idea of spying on Jonah’s father, but if it got Heath off my back for a while, it was worth it.
As Jonah and I made our way up Main Street with the girls after school, Jenny pulled up short on the sidewalk. “What is this?” she said, pointing to a red-and-black sign that screamed, “Stop the Destruction of Our Wildlife.”
“Oh no.” I stared at the sign, thoughts of spying pushed right out of my head. “She is unbelievable.”
“Who?” Jenny said.
“Lidia.” I shook my head. “She’s all up in arms about the power plant.”
“How come?” Carly came up behind me and peered at the sign over my shoulder.
“It’s going to be built in the woods right next to our farm.” I tugged at the edge of the sign, but it was stuck to the lamppost. Why couldn’t she listen to me for once in her life? Hadn’t I told her the Guild was dangerous?
“Are you kidding?” Carly knocked my hand away from the sign and smoothed out the corner I had wrinkled. “I never would have argued for it in class if I’d known that.”
“I know. No one really knew,” I said. I looked at the back of the sign to see what Lidia had fastened it with. Maybe Mr. Wolfe hadn’t seen it yet. If I could only get rid of it . . .
“Leave it,” Carly said. “I’m sure other people want to know about this.”
“But—” I swallowed and glanced at Jonah. I couldn’t voice my fears and bad-mouth his dad, not without compromising myself.
“My parents are going to have a field day with this,” said Jenny. “And your farm has been here a lot longer than the Guild. Right, Wolfe?” she added, turning to Jonah.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell them where to build it.”
We crossed the street, Jenny and Carly bickering with Jonah until Carly turned off to go home. At the next corner a blue-and-white sign greeted us: “The Guild Wants to Build in Your Backyard. Will You Let Them?”
“Your mother better take these down.”
I turned around.
Bree stood behind us. “If she knows what’s good for her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stepped in front of Jonah and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Just that she shouldn’t make enemies with the Guild.” Bree hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder and brushed past us. “It might not be good for her health.”
“Are you threatening me?” I started after her.
But Jonah caught my arm. “Ignore her. Your mom has a right to say whatever she wants. I don’t think it’ll do anything, but she can try.”
We followed Bree at a distance, Jonah stroking my wrist in an effort to calm me down. It didn’t help. By the time we got in his front door, I was ready to storm into Mr. Wolfe’s office and rifle through all his papers in plain view of the rest of the family. But instead I sat in the kitchen with Jonah and his mom, eating her cookies, my knee bouncing up and down.
Finally, his mom stopped chattering at us, and we escaped upstairs. I managed to keep Jonah on task with homework for quite a while before he got distracted by my neck.
“Do you want to pass biology or not?” I teased, dodging out of the way as he tried to kiss me.
“Your lips are worth a D,” he said, trying to pull me onto his lap.
“My lips are an A+, and don’t you forget it.” I wormed away from him and headed to the door. “Be back in a minute.”
“Hurry.” When I made a face he put his ha
nds up. “Hey, I’m just dying to know the difference between plant and animal cells. Really, I’m on the edge of my seat.”
“Ha-ha,” I said and ducked into the hall. The door to the upstairs bathroom was closed, and the smell of nail polisher remover wafted through the crack at the floor. Well, that gave me a good excuse to use the downstairs bathroom, conveniently located right across from Mr. Wolfe’s office.
I started down the hall, then froze outside Bree’s room. Her door was half open, displaying her unmade bed and cluttered desk where a laptop sat in sleep mode. I glanced at the bathroom door, then at Jonah’s room. One minute. Minute and a half tops, if I found anything interesting.
I slid into her room, heart pounding. Clothes were strewn on the floor; lipsticks and nail polishes littered the top of the dresser. What was I looking for? A big banner proclaiming, “I know about magic,” hanging from her ceiling? Not likely. I stepped deeper into the room, tiptoeing over tank tops and cardigans, and eyed the stack of books on her nightstand.
The top two books were best-selling thrillers. The bottom two had their spines facing inward. Carefully, I picked up the thrillers and raised an eyebrow. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Definitely not on the approved reading list at Twin Willows High. I lifted it to reveal the last book.
Witchcraft of Italy by Summer Grimaldi.
It wasn’t a banner, but it was pretty damn close. I set the other books down and flipped through Ms. Grimaldi’s book. It opened in my hand to a folded-down page. There was a break in the middle of the text, with the heading The Benandanti and the Malandanti.
The words swam on the page. I didn’t need to read what it said; I already knew more than any book could ever tell me. But Bree had sought this out for some reason. More than that, she had known what to look for. She knew about the Benandanti. She knew what we were.
A loud ringing filled the room. I dropped the book on the floor with a snap. Bree’s phone was blaring and vibrating on the nightstand. No way could she not hear that from the bathroom. With shaking hands, I restacked the books on the nightstand and dodged out of the room.
The second I was clear of the doorway, Bree emerged from the bathroom, walking on her heels because of the separators in between her toes.
“Finally,” I said, hoping my voice sounded normal. I circled around her and into the bathroom, shutting the door as she turned away to answer her phone.
I leaned against the door and drew a shaky breath. It was not a coincidence that she had marked the Benandanti section of that book. The pieces of the puzzle were adding up. But what the final image would reveal, I had no idea.
I debated telling Heath what I’d found, but then I remembered how much he had wigged out over the website. He’d flip out over this too, and I wasn’t sure if it was worth flipping out over yet. Even if Bree knew about the Benandanti, it wasn’t like she was running around town telling everyone.
Still, the whole thing gnawed at me for the next couple of days. By the time patrol duty came around, my mind felt like an apple eaten inside out by a worm. I thought I would hate patrolling, but actually it calmed me. Besides giving me a night off from training with Heath, it was one of the few places where I was completely alone and I could hear only my own thoughts.
As the clock ticked toward midnight, I opened my window and lay on my bed, beckoning the shift to happen. When it did, I flew out of the house and through the woods to the sacred place.
I soared over a ring of pine trees, their needles glistening with frost. The sound of the Waterfall rumbled in my ears before I could see it, growing louder and louder as I angled my way around the trees. But there was another noise coming from the Waterfall. Something different. Something . . . wrong.
Floodlights ringed the Waterfall, casting an unearthly glow over the trees. The lamps reached almost as high as the tall pines at the edge of the stream and arched over the water. An eerie shimmer rose from the surface, a bright and ghostly light that prickled my feathers. I pitched over the Waterfall, following the luminescent trail that the lamps let off, a sickening feeling inside me as I saw the pool below.
The water, which usually reflected the sky above, now held the image of a squat building. I whirled in the air and found the source of the reflection. A sleek rectangular trailer sat at the edge of the water within the magical barrier the Malandanti had erected. The dark mist of the barrier swirled around the trailer, and the trailer’s silvery walls mirrored the forest around it. I peered at myself in it. My reflection was fractured and distorted.
Several trees had been flattened to make room for the trailer, which was elevated by four spidery legs that arched away from the structure. A wide landing fanned out from the doorway, with stairs leading to the ground. The noise I had heard was the constant whirring of a huge raised fan on top of the trailer. The sound shattered the stillness of the forest. The trees left standing seemed to lean away from the trailer, as if they knew it didn’t belong. Everything about the structure was out of place, wrong, and unnatural.
I had just enough time to read “Guild Inc. Headquarters” on the little sign on the side of the trailer before the door banged open.
Pumping my wings in the air, I took refuge in the dense branches of a pine tree. From my bird’s-eye view, I could now see the roof of the trailer was decorated with a huge imprint of the Guild insignia. It had been painted on with some kind of light-reflecting paint and looked bright enough to be seen from space.
“Three in total.” Voices floated up to me from the landing. “Another one across from this one and the third at the top of the Waterfall.”
Needles shed from the branch where I perched as I dug my talons in. They were putting up more of these heinous things?
A figure stepped farther out onto the landing. It was Mr. Wolfe. He pointed across the water. “We’ll have to bulldoze that cluster of trees, but that will only take a day.”
I snapped my beak, fighting the urge to claw the back of his neck.
“Good. The board doesn’t want any more delays.” Pratt Webster came into view. His pin-striped suit clashed with the muted green and gold of the forest around him.
Mr. Wolfe pursed his lips. “Did you see those signs in town?”
“Yes.” Pratt pulled out his BlackBerry. “I’m handling it.”
What did that mean? I fluttered down to a lower branch. My wings hardly made a sound, but Pratt looked up, his fingers hovering over the keypad for a moment.
Mr. Wolfe’s pocket buzzed. He took out his own BlackBerry and, after checking the message, glanced around. “We’re done for tonight, then.”
“You could be a little less obvious,” Pratt muttered. He slid his phone inside his jacket and stepped down from the trailer. “Set that bulldozing up for Thursday. We want the other trailers here by the weekend.”
“You’re supposed to be the assistant,” Mr. Wolfe said.
Pratt gave him a look that could have withered wildflowers and stalked away, his lip curling at the mud that clung to his designer shoes.
Mr. Wolfe leaned against the rail at the edge of the landing and watched the Waterfall. His shoulders were hunched, defeated.
I unfurled my wings and glided away from the pine tree. What did he have to be upset about? He . . . they . . . the Malandanti . . . were winning.
Anger fueled my speed, searing through my veins, as I nose-dived at the trailer. I slashed at the insignia, my talons scraping against the metal with a screech that tore through the silence of the forest.
Mr. Wolfe spun at the sound and clutched the rail.
With every fiber of my heart, I wanted to strike him, slash his skin, and tear down that horrible trailer. But more than anything, I wanted him to transform into the Panther and show me who he really was.
Mr. Wolfe’s breath came in little shallow puffs of white in the chilly air.
I locked eyes with him, willing him to transform. Come on. You know you want to.
He blinked, fear flashing in his dark irises.
&nb
sp; I pumped my wings. Dark eyes. The Panther had green eyes . . .
Across the water, something rustled and snapped.
I broke my gaze from Mr. Wolfe’s dark eyes.
From out of the tangled undergrowth, the Panther emerged, its silvery aura casting glittered shadows on the forest floor.
I glanced back at Mr. Wolfe. If he was here, wide awake, there was no way that he was the Panther. The Lynx had been right.
Mr. Wolfe took advantage of my distraction and scrambled to the ground. His clumsy footsteps echoed through the trees long after he disappeared into the darkness.
I turned to the Panther. We don’t confront the Malandanti, I remembered the Lynx saying. We stay hidden and observe. Well, it was too late for that—the Panther had already seen me.
Under the black velvet sky, the water glistened between us. The Panther crept forward, its paws right at the edge of the pool where the earth turned muddy. The thought of it touching the water filled me with such red-hot heat that my aura flamed outward. My sight fixed on the Panther, I careened toward the magical barrier of black mist.
Too late I remembered the barrier was there for a reason: to keep me out. I hit it with a loud smack. The barrier looked ethereal, but it was very, very solid. An electric jolt blew me backward, throwing me to the ground. I righted myself and launched into the air, ruffling my feathers.
The Panther leapt to a rock in the center of the pool and tracked me. I flew high over the water, frustration mounting inside me. The barrier shielded the site like a bubble, and every time I got too close it shimmered with anticipation.
I landed on a rock at the top of the Waterfall, just outside the barrier. The Panther watched me. I examined the filmy magic, looking for any weakness, knowing it was useless. The Benandanti had combed over this site, trying to find a way in through the barrier. I stiffened. They had been searching for a way through the barrier. What if the way through was under it?
Before I could question my sanity, I dove into the water and let the stream carry me toward the barrier. The second I hit the surface I realized this wasn’t the best idea; I wasn’t a duck. But I had to know if my instinct was right.