Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1)

by J. Morgan Michaels

  * * * * *

  My outburst at the restaurant showed me how much I was changing, and the part that felt like a victory mellowed quickly as I returned to hating everyone for the way that I felt. The residue from that spell’s consequences was dominating my emotions, and I wondered if I would ever be able to repair the damage I’d done to myself with it, or if the anger that slithered around inside me would ever go away.

  That night I drove to St. Alberts, the same place The Trials of Truth took me. It was a place I’d spent six of my younger years surviving, and many of my older years forgetting. Yet this time, the memories of my abuse were forcing themselves to be ever-present.

  They sloshed around my mind like sewage, scorning any hope of reprieve. I could still see the sickening body of that priest and what he’d do to me over and over again. I could still smell the room where he condemned me to a future of incongruity and distrust. And I could still feel the serrated sadism he pushed inside me and the immorality that filled the emptiness afterward.

  Why I went back to that school, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe I thought facing it head-on would help me cleanse the toxicity that spell had brought up, or maybe I was just in that place where you do self-destructive things for the sake of feeling something at all, no matter how bad. I was already acutely aware that life sends you all kinds of explosively painful experiences, so you’d think I would have been equally aware that bringing them on myself was unneeded, if not senseless.

  The building was empty by the time I arrived, and it hadn’t changed much. Its three dark floors still loomed over the street. Its recessed windows and unwelcoming front doors still made me want to turn away. The only light left on was above the front stoop. It was dirty and flickered erratically, casting monster-like shadows up and down the brick walls.

  The street was empty, and the only sound was of thunder building in a distant storm. A half-moon was playing hide and seek between the fast-moving, ominous clouds above me, and I let myself get lost in my thoughts. I don’t know how long I was there, staring at that square, menacing building and wrapped in a blanket of self-pity, but at some point the storm moved in and it started to rain heavily. Water tapped against the roof of my car and guided me into a fraught and morose sleep.

  The sounds of crushing metal surrounded me, and the sudden jolt of my car told me it wasn’t a dream. A large pickup truck had rammed itself into my passenger side door and pushed my car five or six feet from its parked position. Rattled and confused, I couldn’t make sense of what was happening before a second truck slammed against the rear of my car, forcing my head violently into the steering wheel.

  I blacked out and woke up in rapid intervals. My awareness was fractured, and I was unable to do anything but suffer. The doors from both trucks opened and shut. Then, heavy footsteps thumped toward my battered car.

  Seeing two of everything, I struggled to hit the automatic lock on my door’s handle. I may have hit it in time, but it didn’t matter. Some sort of metal tool crashed through my window, tossing broken glass all over me. I was losing the battle to stay conscious, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to see my attacker’s face. The last thing I remember is him reaching for my chest and pulling the Opalescence harshly from my neck.

  Chapter 28

  “Are you serious right now?” Liv said to me late that night when I arrived at Equinox. She touched and moved my face to get a better look at the bruise forming on the bridge of my nose from where it had hit the steering wheel. At least the swelling had started to go down.

  “What?” I asked, taking a sip of Blue Ice.

  “You could be seriously hurt. You should be at a hospital, not here at the club,” she said with a huff. “You could have a concussion, or internal bleeding, or . . .”

  “Relax, will you?” I cut her off and got up to fill my fourth drink. If I’d learned anything today, it was that feeling less was feeling better.

  She ignored me actively for the rest of the night. Everyone else, however, went about their lives, and their drinks, as they always did. A man was murdered in that very same room, I doubted they cared very much about a little bruising on my face.

  “What?” I asked Liv when she turned away from me on the balcony later.

  She didn’t take her eyes away from the lower level of the club. “You’re an asshole, that’s what.”

  “Could you be any more of a bitch right now? What is your problem?” I turned and walked back to the bar.

  She stomped after me, flipped her hair over each shoulder, and titled her head at me while I poured my next drink. “My problem is the fact than you’re taking this so lightly. You could have been killed today, and you’re not at all bothered by it. What is wrong with you?”

  Holding a few ice cubes against my nose, I sipped on a new glass of Blue Ice and tried to will it to be heavier on the vodka that it usually was. “Obviously this sucks, but . . .”

  “You okay, baby?” Elle asked as she walked by. She tenderly touched my cheek and frowned.

  Liv grimaced. “He’s fine,” she said. “Go about your business.”

  Liv walked to the couch and flopped down, exasperated. I followed close behind and sat down next to her on the couch. “Don’t make a big deal out of this,” I said, finishing off my stronger drink. “It’s over. They have what they wanted so let’s just forget about it.”

  “Whatever,” she said, crossing her arms and legs and turning away from me again. “I don’t know what is up with you, but I don’t like it.”

  “I’m sorry you’re upset,” I said.

  Then she took a deep breath, leaned in close to me, and put her hand on my leg. “Listen, I get it, okay? This place changes everybody. It can make you feel like you own the world, like you can just party and be crazy and do whatever you want without consequence. But it’s not really like that in the real world. People get hurt . . . you can get hurt.”

  I had already gotten hurt and she could see that.

  “Justin was murdered right over there,” I pointed to the bar, “and you pretend like nothing happened, just like them—so tell me more about how I’m acting like this world doesn’t have consequences.”

  “I don’t know what you saw in that spell, but I can see what it’s doing to you, and I’m so, so sorry for helping you when I knew you weren’t ready. I didn’t know it would do this. Please talk to me. Let me help you.”

  Liv’s mind reached out with the lightest touch toward mine and I pulled away violently. I couldn’t let her see anything that awaited there.

  “I don’t know what to say, Liv, but you can’t fix this. You can’t fix me.”

  “Then what about the Opalescence? Are you just gonna let them walk away with it?”

  I slammed my empty glass down on the table, causing everyone in the room to turn and stare at us. “You know what? They didn’t just walk away with it. They hit me with a fucking truck—two trucks actually—and knocked me unconscious with my own god damn steering wheel. Then they stole it from me. Did I smack my own head across my steering wheel and then hand them the fucking necklace? No, I did not.”

  “So that’s it then?”

  “Yeah. That’s it. I don’t care anymore. About that stupid necklace or anything else. As far as I’m concerned, they can fucking have it.”

  I stood up and walked toward the bar but skipped it and left the room instead. It wasn’t until I got outside and started scanning the parking lot that I remembered I didn’t have a car anymore.

  Liv burst out the door behind me. “Where are you going?”

  “Away from the bullshit.”

  She yanked at my sleeve earnestly, spinning me back around toward her. “Stop! I can see you getting consumed by this and I want you to talk to me.” Tears were rolling down her beautiful cheeks.

  “You know what I want Liv? I want to forget this ever happened. I want to be just
like everyone else up there. Partying, laughing, pretending there aren’t bigger things happening around us. That’s what I want.”

  “You’re not like them, Hat. You have a bigger responsibility and they couldn’t understand that even if they wanted to.”

  “You didn’t seem all that worried about this responsibility before now.”

  “Well, before now I thought you had it under control. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. Hell, I am worried. I know that sometimes even I get caught up in the idea that we can just live our lives as free as we want, responsible only to ourselves. But we can’t. This is bigger than that. It has to be. Someone has to be the person who stands up to people like that guy who hides his face. And that’s you, Hat, whether you like it or not. Fight this, and maybe we can stop accepting murder and violence as a normal part of our lives.”

  “I don’t have any fight left in me.” I frowned and walked away without saying anything more. There was nothing I could say to her; because there was so much that I couldn’t say to myself. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

  It was well after midnight at that point, but no cabs were waiting on the street, and my house was a long walk from Equinox. When I rounded the corner from the alley, I saw a sleek black motorcycle with Canterbury blue streaks down the side. It was the kind you had to ride leaning in and it looked hotter with its matching helmet and leather jacket, both of which were left on the bike’s seat.

  The keys were still in the ignition. I wanted to forget everything Liv said, and ignore some cosmic duty that she tried to remind me I had. I needed to be free from it all.

  Fuck it.

  I zipped up the jacket and pushed the helmet down over my head. Inhibitions were a thing of the past, or so I told myself. I straddled the bike and smiled under the helmet as the muffler started roaring.

  I had only ridden a bike like this once in my life, but steering around the streets of the city was easy, and almost effortless, when you have very little concern for your safety. My speed increased with each turn, and I passed the street to my house in favor of riding out my magic-induced high. It was a faster, more dangerous version of the treadmill, and if I could just go fast enough, I’d leave everything behind me in the dust.

  Blue lights flashing in the small side mirrors of the bike brought my situation back into focus only a few minutes later. I looked down and saw I was doing over sixty on the inner streets. But I kept riding.

  The cop swerved around the road to avoid the typical Rhode Island pot holes while trying to catch up to me. I had to make a decision: either stop and face whatever was coming to me or hit the accelerator and take my chances. I looked back at the cop again.

  Fuck that.

  I ducked closer to the motorcycle’s small, tinted windshield and pushed the accelerator down. We had just hit a long stretch of road when the cop started gaining on me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before more would join him.

  Even though I no longer had it, I could still feel the Opalescence’s power with me. And from it, a radical thought crept into my head, bypassing the part of the brain that controls rational thinking. Slowly I sat up and released my hands from the bike’s handles. My eyes focused the Opalescence’s powers on the handles and the accelerator, controlling the bike almost better than I had with my hands. I howled into the helmet and looked into the sky, letting my mind control the bike without the aid of my eyes.

  Then with my feet secured below the foot pegs, I arched my back completely. I was looking at the cop upside down, and his shock as the bike continued to steer itself was priceless.

  “Push it,” I said to myself as I continued to concentrate on the handles. It could have been the adrenaline or just my own carelessness which allowed me to manipulate the Opalescence powers like I never had before, even when it was with me. The bike was moving faster, but I couldn’t see the speedometer, so I had no idea just how fast.

  With my helmet just inches away from the back tire, I extended my hands to either side of the bike. I flicked them back and forth at the cop’s car, dumping trash bins into his path with my powers. Any rocks and broken pieces of pavement that I saw flew at his tires too. But it was the loose mailbox that I flung at his windshield that got him to panic and slam on his brakes.

  He almost stopped before hitting the speed limit sign, almost. He was out of his car with a gun pointed at me before I had pulled myself back up, but I was too far away for him to do anything.

  Then the sounds of the motorcycle faded into the distance as lights and noises attacked me and a cold sweat crawled up my spine.

  “Why me?” my mother asked. She was rubbing her eyebrow and pacing around the living room of her house.

  “Would you wish it on someone else?” Kevin asked her. He was sitting on her couch and his eyes followed her back and forth in front of him.

  “But Victor, he’s so young. He needs me alive. And I have another one on the way,” my mother said, pointing at her pregnant stomach. “It’s just not fair.”

  “I’m sorry Mia. I wish it could have been different. But you know why this happens. You know why you have it.”

  “I don’t want it!” my mother yelled. From inside her shirt, she pulled out the Opalescence and tossed it onto the table. “I have a family, a life, and this thing can’t be part of it.”

  “Mia, what do you want from me? I’m dead. I died protecting that stupid thing and I didn’t want it any more than you do. But it’s our family’s responsibility, and we can’t just walk away from it. You know what could happen if we don’t take care of it.”

  “Maybe that’s just all some story someone made up to force us to do something they wanted us to do.”

  “Mia, you don’t believe that. You know that you have to do what we’ve all had to do—keep it safe, at all costs.”

  “And what about after me? What if it ends up with one of my kids? I don’t want this life for them.”

  “I’m going to tell you the same thing that Mom told us our entire lives, sis. Someone has to protect it. Someone has to take the responsibility, because if they didn’t, it would be so much worse for everyone else. It’s not pretty, it’s not fair; it just is.”

  Through the Opalescence, the three of us were connected emotionally in that vision. From that connection, I could feel my mother’s fear. I could feel Kevin’s guilt for having died and caused it. And I could feel the heavy burden that damn necklace put on all of us.

  “I don’t want this to ruin my life,” my mother said, rubbing her eyebrow.

  “Then don’t let it. Don’t stop living, Mia. Mom had that thing for years without any problems. Maybe it’ll be the same way for you. And when it isn’t, you’ll handle it. Just like I did.”

  My time in that vision was short, but it was more than enough to make me lose my concentration on the bike. I struggled to retake control with my hands, but it was too late. The front tire was wobbling against the grainy pavement of the bridge I was crossing. I tried to slow down, but the direction of the bike was already too skewed from my stunt, and my battle for control was swiftly lost.

  The bike tipped over on its side and slid with my excessive speed across the grooved pavement into the opposite lane, the one I should have been driving in. My leg was pinned between the bike and the ground, and I struggled to grab onto anything that might pull me free from it.

  Sparks flew from the metal of the bike scraping against the ground. I wasn’t slowing down and had begun spinning in circles across the bridge.

  One flimsy guardrail between me and the forty-foot drop to the river below was not enough. Both tires hit the guardrail together, splitting it open and taking me over the edge with the bike. Only after I slid off the bridge, did the bike release my leg, but it was already too late. I fell right behind it, hurtling toward the jagged rocks of the river below.

  Chapter 29

  Th
ey say when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. I don’t know what fool ever said that, because the water was approaching so fast that there wasn’t enough time to think about anything, even the stupid decisions that got me there in the first place. The bike crashed into the water, and it would only be the smallest fraction of a second before I was next.

  I closed my eyes and accepted my fate.

  Then a rushing sound slammed into me, and when I opened my eyes I was falling inside the private room at Equinox. I hit the floor with enough force that there wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t feel it. But I was alive.

  “Liv?” I rolled onto my side and pushed off the helmet. My ribs, having taken the brunt of the fall, buckled beneath me as I tried to move. “What happened?”

  “You just tried to get yourself killed, that’s what happened,” she said fiercely. “I think there are more than enough people around who’d be willing to do that for you if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “Fuck.” I tried pulling myself up but fell back to the ground in pain. “I was falling into the water . . .”

  “I know. I was with you . . . inside your mind. Then I saw that stupid stunt you pulled and cast a spell to transport you back here,” she said.

  The club must have been closed by then because it was empty except for us. I groaned as I tried to move, my ribs and leg throbbing beyond belief. All I was able to do was prop myself up against the wall.

  “Do you even want to try and explain to me how stealing a motorcycle and driving off a damn bridge was going to make anything better?”