“Whatever. Just read it. Just get us out of here.” She cringed at the hysteria in her voice. Not very regal.
He glared, unwilling to leave his home. Just as he began chanting, the front door burst open. A horde of armed guards swarmed the room, swords clanking. Celia thought she saw one of them loose a fireball just before she heard Oswald utter the word Tobias.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Tobias
Tobias awoke with his arms wrapped around Fiona, a smile on his lips. She was lying against him, and his head rested on the wooden armrest.
An unquiet thought tickled the back of his mind. What am I doing here?
He jolted with the realization that they were fully visible, lying outside the Williamsburg bus station. Fiona rested against him in her ripped ballgown, and Tobias wore only his singed black underwear. He was practically naked. He blinked in the bright sunlight. Cars were pulling into the parking lot. “Fiona.” He nudged her awake, and her head shot up.
She looked at him with horror before sitting up. A middle-aged woman in a floral dress shot them a dirty look, tutting as she walked past them into the station.
Alan slept near a flower bed, and Fiona jumped up to wake him before rousing Mariana. What are we supposed to do now? They would need to sneak in somewhere privately to make themselves invisible. But this entire task of fleeing Virginia would be near impossible without their own mode of transport. He didn’t want to panic Fiona, but had a growing feeling of unease about the fate of her mother.
A battered car with a smashed taillight pulled up to the station, and Tobias hunched over, hoping to avoid attention. A young man with spiked, green hair stepped out. He slammed his door, leaning against the hood of his car to squint at Tobias. “Good party last night?”
Tobias nodded. Maybe there was some way to get clothes off this guy. “It was quite a party.”
The green-haired boy pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping them in his palm. “You guys hear about the terrorist thing last night?”
There goes our plan to avoid attention.
“Oh? What did you hear about it?” Fiona pulled at the front of her dress, and her smile was as fake as the boy’s hair.
He pulled out a cigarette, popping it into his mouth. “Bunch of teenagers lit the Ranulf plantation on fire.” He flicked his lighter. “Rich kids. They’re all from a private school.”
Fiona’s voice was shaky. “You can’t trust anyone these days.”
The stranger took a long drag of his cigarette. “I don’t have a problem with it. I think all politicians probably deserve it anyway.” He seemed to study them intently. “But I imagine these rich kids wouldn’t want anyone finding out where they were.”
Tobias’s jaw clenched. He’s going to try to blackmail us, isn’t he? Good luck with that. I’ve got nothing to give him beyond my burnt underwear. He scrubbed at his face, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw something that froze the blood in his veins.
It must have been the Fury, drawn after them by his own guilty conscience. There was no other explanation. It was the people he’d left behind. Thomas, in the ragged uniform of a pearly cap, like the one Tobias’s mother had tried to sew for him. Celia dressed as a Throcknell princess. And Oswald—an avenging angel, draped in white silk and drenched with blood.
Tobias staggered to his feet. He pushed past the stranger, stumbling toward Oswald, who stalked toward him across the parking lot. The Fury was here to kill him, disguised in Oswald’s form. There was no point in trying to run.
Tobias tottered toward him on aching legs, kneeling down before him. “I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “I tried to save Eden. I thought she had the plague. She wouldn’t have—” He nodded, resigned. His voice cracked only a little when he spoke. “It’s all right. I know. You have to kill me.”
Oswald—the Fury—frowned. “What are you jabbling on about, you soft-headed pike-stroker?”
Tobias let out a long breath. That’s no Fury. He cocked his head, rising to gape at his blood-soaked friend. “Oswald?” He shot a glance at Thomas, clad in the tattered costume of a wealthy Maremount philosopher. “I don’t understand. How did you get here? Why aren’t you in Maremount?”
Thomas rubbed at the side of his neck. “We broke free from the Throcknell Fortress. We were nearly dead by the time we got to Celia. She helped us escape the city.”
Tobias’s jaw dropped. “No one breaks out of the Throcknell Fortress.”
Thomas shrugged. “Eirenaeus did. And he left me some clues.”
Oswald gripped a marble bowl in his hand. “Celia’s portal spell brought us to you. And I got us a Throcknell purse.” He reached into the bowl and grasped a handful of gold rocks the size of pebbles.
The philosopher’s stone. Oswald wasn’t his avenging angel. Apparently, Oswald was his guardian angel. It’s really him. He stared, disbelieving, before gripping his friend in a hug.
“Careful.” Oswald pushed him off. “I’ve got gold bits.” He eyed Tobias’s burned underwear. “Nice outfit.” He nearly smiled, until he noticed the scar on Tobias’s chest, and his features darkened. “Please tell me that’s not a demon—”
Tobias waved a hand. “I’ll tell you later. Anyway, you don’t look any better than I do.” Celia hadn’t spoken yet, and Tobias shot her a hard look. “The last time I saw you, you were selling us out to save your pearl-encrusted cousin.”
Her eyes glistened, and she looked like she wanted to hide her face behind her billowing white sleeves. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
Thomas scratched his stubble. “She helped get us out. And she healed Oswald. You would not believe what we’ve been through.” His eyes were bloodshot, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks.
Tobias’s head throbbed. He’d have to sort through all this later. Right now, he had a green-haired stranger to bribe. He nodded toward the gold. “We’re going to need that.”
* * *
A few handfuls of gold was enough to buy them silence, the car, the young man’s cell phone, and the cans of Diet Mountain Dew that went with it. Tobias could have kissed Oswald, if he weren’t still covered in dried blood. Fiona, Alan and Thomas took turns driving through the day. In between driving, Fiona dialed her mother’s number over and over, increasingly panicked that something had gone horribly wrong. Her mother always answered, she said.
The news stations talked of nothing but the most recent terror attack. But they reported only two deaths: Connor, and a guard who worked for the Ranulfs. Both were now being hailed as American heroes. Connor’s accusation of witchcraft had been left out of the narrative. Tidier that way, Tobias supposed.
But the most heroic of all were the Ranulfs, of course, who had fought bravely against the witch attacks. The suspects’ names were all over the news, and Fiona cried when she realized she wouldn’t be able to see her mother for a very long time. They were going into hiding.
Tobias stared out one of the back windows. They’d finally made it out of the Washington, D.C. traffic, and the highways were empty here. “Tell me more about this place we’re going?”
Thomas turned to him from the front seat. “It’s known as Dogtown. The legend is that it’s ruled by werewolves who protect witches. Sorry—philosophers.”
“Werewolves?” Alan cocked an eyebrow.
Tobias shook his head. “There’s no such thing as werewolves. There are witches with wolf familiars. And they may have become a bit more lost in their beast side than they should have.”
Fiona tugged at the torn bodice on her dress. “Are you sure this place is real?”
Thomas turned to face the windshield again. “I never believed it was real. But now I’m ready to believe just about anything.”
ilter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
A Witch's Feast Page 25