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

by J. Morgan Michaels

  “Why bother with the mask, Graham?”

  Confidence was exuding out of me in every direction, but it didn’t keep him from appearing unthreatened. He casually reached for his face and tugged at the fabric-like whiteness of the mask. It pulled off easily, like putty, and clouds of dust shot up from the ground and followed the whiteness into his hand. When it settled, the mask had morphed back into the golden, decorative form I had seen before. The white hair was gone, and I was looking into the exposed eyes of a murderer.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said, tossing the mask on the ground. “I honestly thought you’d walk away long before any of this happened. I’ve known you for years Hat . . . and if there’s one thing you’re good at, it’s walking away.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “I guess I underestimated you a lot during all this. I knew who you were when I hired you, who the Walkers really were, but I also knew you didn’t have any clue what that meant. I didn’t think it would even affect you seeing as you didn’t seem to have any powers. But then you suddenly did, somehow, and when I found out you had the Opalescence, I thought you’d walk away from it before it ended like this.”

  “It doesn’t have to Graham. Just stop this. Stop here and we’ll both walk away.”

  “No. I’ve been waiting for this for too long. The Opalescence is almost mine now, I can feel it. The power is . . . everything they said it would be. You don’t even know the extent of what this can do, do you?”

  Still sitting, he opened his hand in front of him. Like it was Justin, a ball of fire started to form above his palm. And with one quick flick of his wrist, it was flying at me.

  It was slow, though, and I casually crouched down and it brushed over my head.

  “Why do all this? That isn’t you, is it? You’re right, we’ve known each other for years, and I’ve always thought you were a little over the top, but I never thought of you as someone who could do this.”

  “It’s all perfectly black and white for you, isn’t it?” Graham stirred a bit in his seat, but still hadn’t taken a defensive stance against me. “It’s never as simple as being right or wrong, or good or bad, Hat. We live in a world built in the gray area, and the only difference between you and me is that I’m not willing to let someone else decide my destiny for me.”

  With three flicks of my hand, three of his expensive paintings jumped off the wall and hurtled toward his head. He turned, smiled, and then his body dissolved into the ripples of light just before the paintings crashed into the chair.

  When he rematerialized, he was at the top of the staircase, a ball of fire hot in his hand. He heaved it at me from above, but I leapt to the ground to avoid it, and it hit the wall behind me, scorching the paint. Another one came flying at me, and I rolled out of its way. It missed me, but little sparks from the flame bounced off the floor and sizzled against the hair on my arm.

  “What is power worth when you have to destroy everything and everyone to get it?” I yelled, while reaching into my pocket coyly.

  “Great power comes with great sacrifice. You’re too weak to understand what makes it worth it, but I’m not. It’s my destiny.”

  “Taken by you, this crime I see,” I called up the stairs.

  “What?”

  “I call back now what belongs to me.”

  “Stop!” he called down the stairs, realizing what I was doing. He flung another fireball at me from the top of the staircase, but I used my free hand to cast it aside with the power of the Opalescence that was still mine. It landed on a bookshelf and lit the contents ablaze.

  “Reverse what’s been done, uncross the line.” I pulled my hand from my pocket and opened it, revealing a mound of bright blue powder that Gloria had given me. “And return to me what is rightfully mine.” As the last words of the spell left my lips, I took a deep breath and blew the powder into the air.

  Like a swarm of bees, the specks of powder swirled around me before propelling themselves toward Graham. They created a dense cloud, buzzing between us before attaching to the Opalescence. Graham evaporated again, but the powder had already done its work and sent the necklace back to me.

  Two fireballs catapulted from thin air as Graham reappeared behind them. I couldn’t raise powers fast enough and both of them hit me, engulfing the arm I lifted in defense. I fell to the ground and rolled to put out the flame, but the skin on my arm had already gone coarse and turned bright red. An immense sting clawed through it, gaining painful momentum with every second that passed. I dropped the Opalescence from the shock of it all, and it rattled to the floor before landing a few feet away from me.

  Graham stepped closer to me, the smell of my burning skin making him smile. He put out his hand to form another fireball, but before it could come, I swung my body around and kicked one of his knees from the side, forcing him to drop to the ground with me.

  He evaporated quickly and reappeared a few feet away, standing above the Opalescence. I swiped my hand and the Opalescence slid across the floor to the other side of the room.

  “Why do all this . . . to your family?” I yelled, holding my crippled arm and trying to hold back from crying out.

  “Family?” Graham scoffed, walking toward me. “You’re hardly my family.”

  “We could have been if you had given us the chance.”

  Another fireball formed in Graham’s hand, and it created an eerie glow against his face as its hot orange and red colors swirled in his hand. It grew bigger and swirled faster, joined by the power of his other hand and forming a fiery cyclone between them. “I’m not you, being a Walker means nothing to me.”

  I threw up my good arm, flinging a chair at Graham and catching him off-guard. It hit him from the side, thrashing him through the banister of the staircase. Without its master, the cyclone of fire spun into the air and evaporated with little pageantry.

  “You may have Justin’s powers and whoever else’s powers you had to kill to get, but you’re not getting the Opalescence, and you’re not getting me. I’ll kill you first, family or not.”

  Despite the pain of my crippled arm, I raised both of my hands to cast a bombardment of debris at him. From every corner of the room, objects attacked—half burnt books, candles, more art, furniture, and anything else that wasn’t bolted down.

  He shielded his face with his arms before evaporating again. He reappeared on unsteady footing at the top of the stairs, and I cast a broken piece of the banister at his back. It knocked into him and forced him to tumble down the stairs.

  When he landed, he didn’t move.

  Is he dead?

  I picked up the Opalescence and slowly made my way to the base of the stairs. Breathing heavily, I bent down over Graham’s reddened face. Before I could react, his eyes sprung open and he grabbed my shirt, pulling me forward and tossing me to the ground above him.

  As I tried to get up, he hit me in the stomach with another broken piece of the banister. I let out a long, empty howl and slouched over. Then with both hands holding the banister piece like a baseball bat, he swung hard at my slouched back, driving my body into the floor.

  “Keep fighting, Hat . . . it won’t matter. I’m stronger than you, and that means I’m the one walking away with the prize.” He forced all his weight onto my outstretched, burnt hand to hold me down while he grabbed the Opalescence from the other. As he pried open my fingers, I let the Opalescence go and used the now free hand to yank on his wrist, tipping him off-balance and rolling him shoulder-first onto the ground next to me.

  He was starting to evaporate again by the time he’d stood up, but I wasn’t going to let him go anywhere. No matter how it was going to end, it was going to end, and even his power wasn’t going to stop that. Without thinking, I leapt toward him and grabbed onto his arm just before he vanished.

  * * * * *

  There were a few brief moments where Gra
ham and I were wrapped up together in his magic, jumping into the ethereal space between two physical places. Our bodies were inconsequential there, but our intertwined consciousness swirled and struggled against each other, fighting for supremacy of direction. When mine won, we reappeared at The Playground, crashing into the bar in an uneasy landing from the sky.

  Cooper and the others were all gathered there, and they jumped up and away from us as we wrestled around on the ground. “Stay back,” I yelled to them as I rolled away from Graham.

  “Damn it,” Graham yelled. He was getting ready to use his powers and disappear again when he realized that I’d gotten the Opalescence back from him during our fall, and it was already around my neck. Anger rushed over him, and he pushed out both of his hands and let fire run rampant from them.

  The fire streamed out at me like two endless breaths from a dragon’s gullet. I held my hands out in defense but couldn’t deflect the sheer force of his power. I was able to push back against it with the Opalescence’s power, but at the cost of charring my hands. I had to close my eyes to protect them from the heat. The flames were so close that I could smell my eyebrows burning off.

  We were locked in that standoff for too long, and my hands sizzled like I’d placed each of them on an unbearably hot stove burner.

  “AHHHH!” I called out in pain. Like I was trying to push a boulder away as it rolled downhill toward me, I fought against the fire, moving closer and closer to Graham. The grass wilted and then blackened under our feet. Saliva boiled on my tongue and I could smell nothing but burnt hair. My hands throbbed, but adrenaline pushed me past my pain. Closer and closer, I inched toward him and the backlash of the fire blackened my clothes.

  We locked eyes. It was no longer about who was stronger or who had more power, it was a grit-filled battle of wills. One step closer and there were only a few fire-filled feet left between us. Controlling Justin’s powers seemed to mean he was immune to the devastation it brought on others, but he wasn’t immune to everything.

  His expression changed to fear for the first time as the air turned cold around us. Swirling faster than ever, the Opalescence’s colors expanded beyond the stone until it was wider than my body. Slowly it started swirling faster and faster until it was just a blend of color. I stood at the fulcrum of the vortex as it sucked all the fire Graham could produce, stopping only when there was nothing left.

  Confused, but still not defeated, Graham quickly stood. Before he could evaporate again, I focused on a large shard of broken glass from the bar, casting it at him with my hand. It spun surely through the air before digging into his shin, forcing spurts of blood to spill out around him. He fell back to the ground, unable to focus on anything but the pain.

  With his leg still seeping blood, he tried to stand. I kicked the shard of glass still in his leg, causing him to scream out and fall back down. But he wasn’t the only one in pain.

  My skin was swelling and crisping more with every passing second and felt so tight that I thought at any moment it would tear me apart at my joints. Calling on my mother’s powers again, I waited as familiar tremors of light appeared and wrapped around my arm. Then I laughed, and Graham watched in disbelief as the magic healed the severe burns.

  The others were yelling something to me from behind, but I wasn’t listening. I held out my healed hands, my palms facing the sky, and said, “In this time and in this place, I consecrate this my sacred space.”

  Two golf-ball-sized blue lights formed in each of my hands. The color was so pristine and dark they almost looked solid—two tiny planets harvesting power within my hands. They shot up, dancing around each other like fireflies in summer before separating and falling to the ground. They splattered like paint balls, spreading their chrome-blue colors across the ground around us. Slowly, their colors spread, and pooled together until we were fully surrounded by their magic. That space, my sacred space, separated us from the others and from reality.

  Graham gritted his teeth and held out his hand to me, but no fire came.

  “Your powers won’t work here,” I said to him.

  “And now what?” he shouted. “You won’t kill me.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said, “but I don’t need to kill you.”

  Thoughts of my family filled my mind peacefully. They were the Universe’s gift of strength, and the source of control over the Opalescence. I could feel every person who ever wore it. I could feel every person who had died for it. Kevin, my mother, countless others. Their emotions amalgamated into one focus—power, which was mine to command.

  “Walkers, hear me,” I yelled. “Remove this threat from our family. Take his powers and keep them where he can never be tempted by them again.”

  Whispers filled the circle, and the Opalescence’s colors sparkled and moved within the stone freely. One by one, spirits of my family appeared next to me and strengthened the Opalescence’s power. The first to come was our grandmother.

  “No!” Graham called out as she walked toward him.

  She put two fingers to her lips, and then reached out to touch Graham with them. As she pulled away, a bit of his power ripped from his body and when she came to stand by my side, that power funneled into the Opalescence.

  The next to come was the woman who wrote the poem. Then her son. Then more women too old for me to have known of.

  My mother came too, smiling sweetly at me as she touched Graham and took some of his power. If I could have, I would have stopped everything to have just one moment alone with her. I started to say something, but she shook her head knowingly and took her place with the rest of our family behind me.

  The last spirit to appear was Kevin. He looked down upon the son he’d never had the chance to know, and his sadness and grief for him washed into the rest of us through our connection. He whispered something into Graham’s ear before taking the last bit of his power.

  As Kevin walked back toward me, he and the rest of the family disappeared, the cold of the Opalescence released back into the Universe, and the circle around us broke.

  Graham pulled his hand close to his body, and when the fireball he was trying to conjure didn’t appear, he laid back in defeat, mourning the loss of his powers.

  Cooper and the others crowded around us, looking down at the heap of a once-powerful man.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Cooper as he roughly pulled Graham’s hands behind his back.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cooper said without looking at me. “Just be thankful that someone is willing to take him off your hands.” Cooper had tied Graham’s hands with some kind of cable tie and was moving him toward the door.

  “Wait,” I said, standing in front of Graham and forcing him to look at me.

  It was finally over, and the hatred I had for him as the man without the face, and what he had done as that man, was gone. I felt nothing more than pity, and he could see it drip down my face just from the sight of him. I could still see pieces of the real Graham, or the person I thought was the real Graham, fighting for a place within his dark personality. The generous man, the happy man, the kind man—to him they were masks to wear to sneak into my life, but to me the hate-filled and power-hungry man that almost killed me was the mask, and the rest were just casualties of his actions.

  Graham sneered at my outward deliberation. “Is this where you try to help me find redemption?” he asked.

  I laughed in his face. “No Graham. This is where I tell you that the next time you come near my family, I will kill you.”

  For a moment he almost looked disappointed that I hadn’t killed him already. “You think you know everything that’s happened, but you don’t,” he said before Cooper started to pull him away again. “You have the power to see . . . so look.”

  Summoning the control I had felt with the white flowers at the bottom of the well, I calmly said, “Show me.”

  Lights and sou
nds came and went without effect or tribulation. In that space between perception and reality, I dove into the primal depths of my soul to enjoy the serenity that waited for me there. And as the weightlessness took over my body, a vision unfolded.

  The door to my mother’s home office opened quietly. Light from the hallway illuminated the otherwise dark room, casting light over her lifeless body.

  Graham entered and stood over her with his cell phone in his ear. Talia drifted in behind him and started riffling through my mother’s desk.

  “Murder,” Graham said into the phone. “They made it look like a heart attack . . . like the others.”

  “There’s nothing in here,” Talia said.

  “No,” Graham continued into the phone, “it’s already gone. Whoever killed her must have taken it. Yes. Yes. Fine.” He shoved his phone back in his pocket and nodded to the door. “Come on, it’s not here. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 39

  Change is both cruel and beautiful, inevitable and constant. Whether we admit it or not, it dominates our lives; a common thread in the fabric of our past, a driving force in the actions of our present, and a rippling uncertainty in the outlook of our future. We can yearn for it to come or fight it off with our last breath, but it will be always there, like the dark shadow that follows us through the day and the flickering flame that guides us through the night.

  It will always be that way because the Universe will always weave it that way. Close your eyes for a second, and by the time you open them again, things will be different. Sometimes they’ll be better, other times they’ll be worse, but change itself will be the only thing that remains the same.

  In life, my mother taught me not to fear change, and in death, she taught me that change never travels alone. It brings with it companions born from secrets, fear, and struggle, but it also brings a renewed faith in the foundation of what makes you whole—your family, your inner strength, and your trust in the Universe. I accepted the shadows of change as they followed me through the day and thanked that flickering flame for guiding me through the night.