“You’re going through withdrawals,” he replied in a smooth voice.
“That’s ridiculous.” Weren’t withdrawals supposed to make you shake and hallucinate? This felt more like my mind drifting away from my physical body.
“Drink.” Reed held the flask to my lips.
I pushed his hand away. “I’m fine.” But I wasn’t. It took me three tries to get my next words to pass my lips. “Please go.” I felt his hands leave my shoulders. Missed his scent when it faded.
You’re fine, I told myself.
I tightened my grip on my bed and dared to open my eyes. Reed was gone. Relief filled me even as my vision swam sideways.
Just breathe, and whatever you do, don’t pass out.
My eyelids drooped, closing once more. I clutched my mattress and waited for the dizziness to pass. I’m not sure how long I sat like that before a hand brushed my arm.
“Madison, can you hear me?”
“Dad?”
“Take this.”
I forced my eyes opened and took the small paper cup from him. My hand shook as I raised it to my mouth and relished the cool water as it slid down my throat. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, only it wasn’t Dad’s voice.
I blinked several times to remove the fog clouding my head.
“Reed,” I growled. “I thought you left.”
“You needed me.” He pressed a cool cloth to my forehead. “Do you feel better?”
My gaze dropped to the cup in my hand. A faint blue glow coated the bottom of it.
“Son of a bitch!” I snatched the washcloth from him and used it to wipe my tongue, then dashed to the bathroom to shove my finger down my throat and throw up. I rinsed with mouthwash hoping to kill any lingering molecules of Reed’s wine before returning to my room. He had the gall to still be sitting there on my bed. “Get out.”
“You needed it. I confess it’s my fault. Once you’ve partaken in our fare, your need for it grows, and my prolonged presence in your room would only make it worse.”
“Get out!” I repeated and pointed at the door.
This time he got up and crossed the room, stopping next to me. I could see the ice in his stormy white eyes. “I can feel your presence, even when we’re apart. You’re already changing. You will call for me.”
He reached the hall and vanished from sight. I knew he’d really gone this time because I felt an emptiness inside that came with loneliness and a bitter cold that my powers couldn’t warm.
Reed had left his clear flask on my nightstand. The blue liquid cast shimmering lights across my carpet.
“It would take away that chill,” Reed’s voice cooed in my subconscious.
I whipped the flask into the trash can, sank onto the floor, and pulled my knees close to my chest. I wanted to call Kaylee, but no way could I ruin her birthday with my drama. So instead, I put on my headphones, blasted my party playlist to drown out Reed’s taunting, and prayed I’d make it to morning.
Chapter 17
Tethered
“Madison, you have to tell Isaac.”
“I’ll tell him as soon as I figure out how.”
Kaylee had arrived at my house exactly nine minutes and a gazillion seconds after I’d called. One look at how upset I was, and she suggested we ditch class. I caught her up on Reed and then, because I needed a break from the thought of evil faerie princes, I insisted she give me a minute-by-minute replay of her night with Josh. Afterward, we went to the only place that ever offered me comfort when I was as lost as I was at that moment. Frozen grass crunched under our sneakers as we crossed the cemetery.
It had taken every ounce of self-control on my part not to dig Reed’s flask out of the garbage. The longer I resisted, though, the more distant his hypnotic voice became until finally I could no longer hear him coaxing me to join him.
With the exception of a crow, the cemetery was empty. I crouched down next to my mom’s grave. Kaylee stood to the side, bouncing on her toes and rubbing her arms.
“It’s freezing,” she whined.
“Two minutes, and then the hot chocolates are on me.”
I cleared the brittle leaves from in front of Mom’s headstone and laid the spring bouquet Brea had given me there, its stems and petals still in the gossamer layer of ice that had to have been Reed’s doing.
“Hey, Mom,” I whispered. “I could really use your crazy advice right about now.”
I swiped at a tear with the palm of my hand. I missed how Mom had worked her advice into everyday conversation, casually giving her thoughts on things. On a couple occasions, when we’d been folding laundry, she had said, “This basket is a lot like a bedroom.” She’d put a pair of Dad’s boxers on top of his pile of clothes and add, “If we keep your dad’s stuff in one pile and yours in another as we fold, it will make putting everything away much easier.” That translated into, If you would just put your things where they go to start with, it wouldn’t have taken you two hours to find your bedroom floor. And once when she had added orange zest to Dad’s favorite chicken dish, she’d held her finger to her mouth as if saying, Shh, this is our little secret, but out loud said, “I’ve always wanted to jazz this dish up a bit.” That had loosely translated into, You should try softball; you might find you like it.
I didn’t like softball, and the chicken dish was better without the orange zest, but Mom had pointed out that we would never have known that if we hadn’t tried.
Kaylee glanced around us. “I feel like we’re being watched.”
I concentrated on our surroundings, using my powers to help me sense others. “We’re alone. Focus and your senses will become heightened. You’ll be able to tell too.”
Kaylee groaned. “I’m too cold to focus. Reed’s a faerie, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And humans can’t see faeries unless they wish to be seen.”
I stood back up. “Yeah.”
“So you can’t be sure we’re alone.”
I looped my arm through hers and guided her toward the gates. “Reed smells like winter and pine, and his presence is bewitching. Trust me, you’d sense him if he was here even if you couldn’t see him.” We followed the sidewalk to Kaylee’s car. “I had thought that feeling was Brea, but I realize now it’s Reed. He’s been watching me since the day I did that spell.”
She stopped walking to gape at me. “You’re able to sense his presence, which you described in the over-the-top gooey, omigod tone of a star-struck kid meeting her favorite actor.”
“I did not!”
Kaylee pulled her keys from her jacket pocket and unlocked the car doors. “That’s it. We are so going straight to Isaac’s house to tell him what happened.”
“He’s in school. Remember the place with all the classrooms and teachers?”
“School let out five minutes ago.” She got in the car. I still didn’t think my voice had been over-the-top gooey, but whatever.
“Isaac’s just going to freak,” I said as I buckled up.
“Good, because your lack of freaking out is freaking me out.”
She didn’t even stop to get the hot chocolate.
At Isaac’s, she pounded on the doorbell at a rate that would have impressed Chase, who tended to think his friends would get to the door quicker if he beat on the button a hundred times.
The door swung open. Mrs. Addington frowned at us. “Which one of you has lost your mind?”
I pointed to Kaylee.
“Ever hear of a united front?” Kaylee whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“Yeah, well, I’m here more than you, and you are the one who rang the doorbell,” I replied just as quietly.
Mrs. Addington removed her red-framed reading glasses, resting them on the top of her head. “Did you come over to chat amongst yourselves?” Her smirk gave away she wasn’t quite as annoyed as her snarky comment had sounded.
“No, ma’am. Is Isaac home?” I asked.
“He’s in the basement.”
She stepped aside so we could come in. “Shoes off. I just washed the floors.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We slid out of our sneakers and hurried downstairs.
Isaac took the news of Reed’s visit about as well as I had expected, although I hadn’t anticipated his face would turn the shade of a dark red cherry. Sadly, it made me think of the candy Reed had. I kept that thought to myself because Isaac and Kaylee were already talking crazy.
Kaylee had the brilliant idea of me wearing full-body armor. I thought I was going to have to steal her car keys and run from both of them. Luckily, body armor isn’t made out of iron, so her suggestion was out. Isaac’s, as ridiculous as it was, was actually doable if I were five.
“Isaac, I am not going to wear my clothes inside out,” I said, exasperated.
That was his solution to finding out that iron bothered Reed about as much as a fly bothered a horse. Supposedly, faeries couldn’t see humans when they wore their outfits with the tags on the outside. Isaac didn’t find me in the least bit funny when I suggested it wasn’t that a faerie couldn’t see a person who wore their clothes inside out, but that said faerie didn’t like no-name brands.
Isaac paced zigzags around his dungeon-like room while I flipped through the book on Fae. Kaylee stared into space, twisting and untwisting the necklace I’d given her. She did her best thinking when she zoned out like that.
“What if she’s never alone?” Kaylee asked.
Isaac looked past me to Kaylee as if I wasn’t there. “That could work.”
Kaylee jumped up from the corner of the bed where she’d been sitting. “We’ll take shifts. I’m sure Josh will help us.”
Isaac crossed the room to his dresser and picked up a small notepad as if he was going to write out a schedule right then and there.
As much as I loved my friends, no way did I want them around twenty-four seven for the rest of my life. “Guys, my dad’s not going to let Isaac or Josh sleep over at my house.” Kaylee opened her mouth, and I knew she was going to suggest she and I take turns sleeping over at each other’s houses. I quickly added, “How long do you think it will take our parents to tell us we need to sleep in our own beds?”
When we were nine, the answer to that question was eight days.
Silence followed. Isaac continued to pace. I continued to read. Kaylee plopped back down on the bed and resumed staring at nothing in particular.
“Isaac, why don’t you cast one of your protection thingies?” Kaylee asked.
“I can’t put a ward on the entire town,” Isaac replied. “Maybe there’s an herb that repels the Fae.”
“I see that working as well as the iron bracelets,” I retorted. I’d taken the chains off as soon as I’d finished telling Isaac about Reed’s visit.
Kaylee’s hands fell to her side as if she’d given up. “How did you get rid of him the last time?”
Isaac rubbed his temple. “After several days spent trying to get the better of the other and engaging in a fight that quickly became apparent neither would win, we came to an agreement.”
My gaze went to the smooth crescent-shaped line below his eye. “Your scars are from Reed, aren’t they?” Reed’s faerie magic would explain why the cuts hadn’t healed on their own. “Heather was the ex you’d been protecting.”
Isaac nodded. “I didn’t get my shield up fast enough. Two of his daggers got through.”
As part of my magical training, I had sparred with Isaac. He had incredible reflexes. Reed’s had to have been just as impressive for him to throw a dagger—let alone two—with speeds greater than Isaac’s ability to put up a shield.
“Can’t we skip past the battle and strike up a deal?” she asked.
“He tricked Madison into eating that candy. He’s already one up on us. No way is he going to make a deal. Besides, he’s using her to get back at me, and I don’t have anything else Reed wants that I didn’t already give him.”
Several minutes passed.
“Kaylee may have been on to something with her first idea,” Isaac said, breaking the quiet.
“I’m not wearing body armor.”
Isaac dropped to his knees and rummaged through a pile of musty old books in his closet. “Not that one. The idea about not leaving you alone. Only, what if we didn’t have to actually be with you for you to be with us?”
“What?” Kaylee and I replied.
He sat on the edge of the bed, a large book in his lap. Kaylee and I scooted closer.
“What is that?” Kaylee asked.
“My grandfather’s grimoire. It’s a collection of spells he mastered. There was this one I had asked him about.” Isaac didn’t finish his thought. Instead he searched the discolored pages, hastily flipping through them. “Here it is.”
“A unity spell?” I inquired.
“It binds one person to another.”
“Isn’t that what our hemp bracelets do?” Kaylee grabbed her wrist as she spoke.
Isaac shook his head. “That links our thoughts, giving us the ability to call each other without a phone. This spell literally binds a person’s being to someone else. It’s like handcuffing your wrist to something solid.”
“So it would anchor me to our realm,” I said.
The corner of Isaac’s mouth quirked upward into a lopsided grin. “Exactly. We could reverse the spell once Reed is back in his realm. You game?”
“A magical ball and chain,” Kaylee quipped with a giggle.
Isaac pinned her with a glare that clearly said, Shut up. Since I’d shot down every idea they had to keep me safe thus far—mainly because each plan had been more ridiculous than the prior one—I couldn’t blame him for being wary of my reaction.
My “being,” as Isaac called it, had to be the same thing as my aura. I’d be tethering my life force to Isaac. Funny how I’d never really given much thought to having an aura in the first place or how a part of me that I couldn’t see or touch could be taken away bit by bit by something as beautiful and alluring as Reed.
And the fact that I called the thing that wanted to steal me away from my home “beautiful” and “alluring” told me how much I needed something tying me to my world.
“I’m game.” Heaving out a breath, I asked, “What do we have to do?”
An hour later we were sitting in a circle on the cold stone floor in Isaac’s room. Josh had joined the party to act as a second witness, Kaylee being the first. A single bright white candle with Isaac’s name and mine etched into the wax stood like a lone soldier next to a ceramic bowl in the center of our circle. In the bowl were a few strands of my hair, bloodroot, myrrh, dirt from a crossroad, and a scrap piece of notebook paper on which I’d written the words to the spell.
“Why is there dirt in every spell we cast?” I asked.
“Crossroad dirt,” Josh corrected. “The veil between worlds is the thinnest at a crossroad. Many spells feed off the power that collects there.”
Isaac and I sat across from each other, my hands in his and our powers gently pressing against each other’s. The written portion of the spell was in Nordic. To be honest, none of us really knew what it said, but Isaac trusted his grandfather, and I trusted him. The verbal portion was easy enough to remember and read more like wedding vows than a spell.
I pushed a small amount of magic out and lit the candle. Next I said, “I, Madison Elizabeth Riley, do hereby willingly and completely entrust my spirit to Isaac James Addington.”
“I, Isaac James Addington, do hereby promise to hold and guard Madison Elizabeth Riley’s spirit as if it were my own.”
I reached into a small leather sack that Kaylee held. My fingers curled around the cool grainy powder inside. A trail of dark particles followed my hand as I moved it closer to the bowl.
This was it: my spirit-being-aura—whatever you wanted to call it—was about to be cast to the nearest witch. It was a good thing I liked him.
“So I will it, so mote it be!” I threw the powder into the bowl. Sparks an
d flames erupted, burning the notebook paper. Its ashes drifted upward like snowflakes in reverse.
Isaac held his hand inches from the bowl. “So she wills it, so mote it be!”
The ashes swirled higher. The gnarly fingers of the flames twisted into a braid that Isaac sliced in half with his hand, like a sword through rope, leaving a small fire to finish off the herbs.
“It’s done,” Josh said.
“How do you feel?” Kaylee asked, squinting at me as if she didn’t recognize me.
I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, relaxing only when I saw I looked exactly the same as I had before we’d cast the spell. Thankful that I hadn’t gone three shades paler by messing with my aura, I returned to the circle and chastised Kaylee for worrying me.
“Stop looking at me as if I’ve grown roots.”
She closed the pouch and admitted, “I was sort of expecting to see a part of you drift away to Isaac or something. I don’t know.”
“I feel fine. Relieved, actually. Reed really messed with my head yesterday.”
So much so that I’d dreamed I was on my deathbed, begging Reed to take away the pain, only I’d waited too long. He’d lost interest in me and came to say goodbye. I had woken in a cold sweat, afraid to go back to sleep yet unable to keep my eyes open. I remembered bits and pieces of the dreams that followed: walking into an abyss, Natalie welcoming me to Sanctus, looking in a mirror to find I had pointy ears that poked out from beneath my hair, Chase with slanted eyes, Dad laughing hysterically as he ate the candy in the bright wrappers, Isaac unable to look at me. The memories of the nightmares were awful.
I hugged my stomach and reminded myself that I had woken exhausted but without the cravings. With Reed gone, my mind no longer felt as if it was swimming in my skull. And now, there was no way he’d hurt me again.
Who has the upper hand now? I thought with a smile.
We left the candle to burn. The spell would be even stronger once it was a tiny nub.
Kaylee drove me home shortly after eleven.
Hold Tight (The Embrace Series) Page 14