“Where is everybody?” she asked. Didn’t seem to be too many people on the beach. That was good because she was fairly certain that walking on sand would completely suck.
“We have a campground,” he said. “At the back of the lake.”
“All the way at the back?” She stifled a groan. She knew this path well, often coming here to run. The trail was solid and wide, and the park crew kept it free of fallen branches and big rocks. The walk to the back of the lake wouldn’t be difficult.
It would just be long. The complete circuit was more than three miles.
She forced a smile onto her face. This was their date. A walk around the lake was a good start. Kind of romantic, actually.
Or not, she amended ten minutes later. Apparently, Jels wasn’t out for romantic stroll. He was speed walking.
“So, you guys must have something pretty awesome set up at the campground. I mean you’re in such a hurry to get there.”
“Well, sure,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Sure,” she said, trying to sound agreeable. “Who all is there?”
“Just about the whole class. Junior Fling.”
She’d heard about junior flings. Now she realized why they were heading to the back of the lake. It wasn’t one of the public campgrounds. It was an unofficial campground high up on the hill where local kids had their bush parties. Usually only the in crowd showed up in these bashes.
And he was bringing her. She grinned, despite the sweat that was breaking out on the small of her back. She knew it—this time was different.
There was no actual path to follow once they reached the rear of the lake trail. Jels just turned and started tromping his way through the brush and the layers of last year’s leaves, heading for the thick woods on top of the hill. She stumbled more than once. When she almost went down, she was convinced the next time would end up her breaking an ankle.
He turned sharply toward her when she sucked air through her teeth, looking like he’d launch one of his caustic remarks. “You’re going to kill yourself in those shoes.”
“I can’t say I disagree,” she said, leaning up against a tree and trying to catch her breath.
“Well, I don’t want that to happen. Come here.” He grabbed her by the hand and hoisted her up, over his shoulder, before resuming the march up the hill.
She wanted to laugh. Truthfully, it was very awkward, being carried like a sack of potatoes. “Put me down, Jels. I just have to take it slower.”
“Are you kidding?” He patted her on the ass and laughed. “This is a win-win. You don’t have to walk, and I’ve got some great scenery.”
Her face grew hot. He was flirting with her. Awkward or no, he was treating her like an actual girl.
He carried her all the way up to the ridge, following the crest of the hill toward a stand of thick pines. Although she still couldn’t see where they were going, she could hear voices and the crackle of a fire.
When he set her down, he let her slide down his body. Another flirt.
“Are you okay?” He smoothed back her hair and straightened the shoulders of her top. “There. No one will ever know.”
She had no words.
When he took her by the hand and laced his fingers with her, she almost forgot how to breathe. Together they walked the last few yards to the campground.
Boys called out his name in greeting. Some of the girls called hers, sounding somewhat surprised. Everybody knew Aerie. Although she was never in-crowd material, she wasn’t exactly a nobody. The strength of her magic had always set her apart. It was well-known she’d trained in mixed martial arts since junior high, which kept her off the bullies’ lists potential victims. With one glaring exception, of course.
But that one glaring exception had just carried her up a hill and was holding her hand in plain sight of everybody in school. Everybody who mattered to him, at least. That was the important part.
One of Jels’ buddies came over to greet them, holding out a pair of red plastic party cups. Jels drained his fairly quickly. Aerie just sipped at hers. Beer wasn’t her thing. It was bitter and had a funny smell and, worst of all, it dampered magic. Natural mages weren’t natural drinkers. Could be why she didn’t see many Natches—just about everyone here had been apprenticed.
Although she had never thought about it before, she realized that Natural mages kept to themselves. They weren’t cheerleaders or football players or pageant Queens. They were in marching band and quiz bowl teams. In the social ladder of high school celebrity, Natural mages weren’t top rung. Only the Elemental kids and the druggies stood between them and rock bottom.
No wonder she’d didn’t see any of her close friends here. She hung out with the wrong crowd.
At least tonight everyone treated her nicely. The girls smiled and complimented her hair and made admirable noises at her shoes, which were only a little but scuffed all to hell. Little by little, she relaxed and started to have fun.
Before she knew it, she was laughing and her cup was empty. Jels handed her a fresh drink, pausing to drape his arm around her shoulder and chat with her group before heading back over to his group of friends, where he kept an eye on her.
Eventually, the beer ran out and kids started to leave. It got hard to keep track of who was still here and who wasn’t. A little tipsy, by now, but still having a good time.
Until she realized she was the last girl there. And it was dark. And Jels didn’t look like he was in any condition to carry her down a mountain.
And he was behaving strangely. One minute, he was Mr. Date and the next he was distant, shut down. She didn’t have a lot of experience with drunk teenagers. Maybe this was normal.
The fire was dying, crackling softly. The small group leaned against a large fallen tree that bordered the fire circle. From deep in the woods around them came the sounds of night: buzzing insects, the trilling of a screech owl, the mysterious rustling of leaves that sounded so much more threatening in the absence of light.
By the time she realized things were going to go downhill, it was too late. It started when Mr. Date began acting like Mr. Steady Boyfriend and kissed her.
She didn’t know what to do. Totally dumbfounded. She tried kissing him back but she couldn’t get into it. He was way too much into tongue, considering it was their first hookup. Plus, he tasted like beer.
She decided she really didn’t like the taste of beer.
She broke the kiss and turned her face. Turned out it was a serious miscalculation. When he moved on to her neck, nuzzling below her ear, her legs almost melted out from underneath her.
Holy crap, she thought. How could a touch on the neck feel so deliriously hot? This was a completely foreign sensation. The beer breath couldn’t even turn her off at this point. She slipped her arms around his neck and dug her fingers through his thick hair, pulling him closer.
“I don’t want to,” he murmured. “I don’t. I really don’t.”
“You do,” she whispered.
“I don’t. But I have to.”
“Have to?” She arched her back, craning her head away from him with indignation. “What do you mean, have to?”
He pulled back, leaving her chilly in the absence of his heat. “Have to do this.”
Suddenly, two of his friends grabbed her by the arms and pulled her backwards, arching her back over the tree, kicking her feet apart and pinning her legs in front. She struggled, unable to get any leverage. “What the hell?”
They only laughed meanly and threaded their fingers with hers. They weren’t being sweet. They were preventing her from forming a casting circle.
Adrenaline flooded the gates, kick-starting her heart and turning her limbs into a buzz of useless noise. She screamed once before someone hit her with a silence spell.
Wide-eyed, she shook her head madly, trying to break through whatever had a hold of Jels. His eyes were stony and cold. Was he drunk? Why was he wearing that awful expression, the one he always wore when he was about to d
o shit to her?
She writhed helplessly, her bare legs yanked as far apart as the skirt would allow. Jels paced a step closer, rubbing his mouth.
He was going to rape her.
The thought hit like a wall of horror, too big to think around. He’d rape her and they’d take turns. She’d provoked him with her skirt and her heels and her doe-eyed lashes. They’d say they were all drinking and deny everything and no one would believe her and he was going to rape her—
He lifted a hand and reached toward her. She twisted her head away, eyes squeezed shut. The other guys’ mean grips on her arms, her hands, the painful arch of her back, the rugged roughness of the tree bark that dug into her flesh—all of it caused sensory overload.
She couldn’t block what was happening.
A soft touch on her face lit an explosion of nerve sensation. He stroked her face, his fingers tracing a gentle tickle on her skin. A cruelty before the cruel act.
The tickle multiplied, trailing down her throat, her arms, her legs. He touched her everywhere at once.
And that was impossible.
She snapped her eyes open. Jels stood three feet away, his hand still outstretched, holding his brass knuckles. His preferred casting circle. Dirty jerk couldn’t use his class ring like everyone else.
The tickle continued, even though he wasn’t touching her. She looked over at her arm. The warm glow of firelight danced across her skin, causing moving shadows to creep across her flesh.
When she squinted and focused, she saw what the moving shadow was.
A spider. She was covered in spiders.
They were everywhere and they were in her hair and down her blouse and she opened her mouth to scream and no sound came out and a spider crawled in—
Her mind frayed and she fought and she failed and they laughed and they catcalled and they dropped spider after spider onto her helpless body and only in her mind could she hear her screams.
And they never, ever stopped, the screams and the spiders and the laughter. The dying fire went out and she went out with it.
When she came to, she was alone in the grey dawn.
The acrid smell of the gutted fire stung her nose. She lay crumpled in the dirt and the leaves. Her arms and legs were filthy and scratched bloody, her nails broken. All that remained were a few scattered cups and snack wrappers.
She scrambled to her feet, swatting her legs and arms free of debris. No spiders. No spiders. No don’t think don’t remember just don’t
She stumbled down the steep hill, branches slicing at her legs and snagging her hair. Down, down, down to the lake trail, across it, over the narrow stony beach to the waterfront. She plowed into the cold lake, slipping on the wet stones, tripping and almost going all the way under. She scrubbed her skin, her limbs, her face, senses snapping wide awake. She stayed in the water until her teeth chattered and she couldn’t feel her fingers or toes.
Climbing out, she circled her numb fingers and summoned a heat vortex around her, pulling power from the ley beneath the lake bed. Enough to dry her clothing and prevent hypothermia but not to warm her. She wouldn’t be warm inside for a very long time.
If she was cold, she’d be numb. If she was numb, she wouldn’t feel. After what happened last night, she didn’t want to feel anything ever again.
She walked home alone. At this time of the morning, every road would be empty and alone. This road, and the next, and every road thereafter.
Good. Alone meant no one to hurt her.
The open road faded away, replaced by the corroded walls of the amulet. She’d been so deeply immersed in the memory that it took many long moments to remember where she was, who she was. Those details had taken years to block, to dumb down and reduce to the barest of details. The abuse was fresh again, fresh and raw and real and now, so very now—
“Aerie.” Eilis’ voice cut through. “Look for me. See me. Focus.”
“I didn’t need that.” Wild-eyed, Aerie shook her head. “I didn’t have to go through it again. Why?”
“Because you were made a victim.”
“I’m not a victim. I overcame it.”
“No, you didn’t, and that’s the problem. You were made a victim, yet you always blamed yourself for what happened.”
“It was my fault,” Aerie spat. “If I would have just walked away, if I hadn’t been trying so hard to get him to like me, if I had just worn normal clothes—”
“You think it wouldn’t have happened?”
“I know it wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t make him do it. It was him, Aerie, only him.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t there!”
“No, I wasn’t.” Eilis’s voice took on a tone of steel, of gritted teeth and suppressed rage. “I was in here. Trapped and helpless and ripped away from everything I knew and loved. I wasn’t there because I was a victim, too.”
Eilis took her daughter’s hands and drew her against her, holding and rocking and stroking her hair. “You were a victim, once. But it doesn’t make you a victim forever. Stop blaming yourself. You did nothing wrong. You trusted. You loved. And you tried so hard to keep your faith in someone, even when he’d proven false. This is what holds you back. When you see him, you go back to that moment of absolute helplessness. You are trapped by that trauma. Lay the blame where it belongs, Aerie, because it doesn’t belong on you.”
A swelling in Aerie’s throat stole her breath, and she fought to swallow it down. She made it sound so easy. Just like Pop, with his get over it bullshit. Easy to tell someone what to do. Too bad no one was ever willing to show her.
“You are powerful. You are strong. You are so smart.” Eilis smiled and held Aerie’s face in her hands. “And you have such a beautiful heart. Those things get eclipsed by the trauma of what he did to you. You must see past him, past his power, and push through to remember your own. Remember who you are, Aerie. He can’t change you. He can’t make you into something else. Reach through him and see what he’s trying to keep from you.”
Aerie drew a few hitching breaths, fighting to keep from sounding like a little girl. “What could he possibly be keeping from me?”
Eilis let her hands trail down Aerie’s arms, grasping her hands and holding her at arm’s length. “Your confidence. Your dignity. Your true self. Seize it, Aerie. And take it back.”
“How? How do I?”
“You remember, and you face it down, and you tell that memory it cannot hurt you anymore. Because it is only a memory. You survived the abuse. It did not vanquish you then. It cannot vanquish you now.”
Aerie closed her eyes, tears squeezing out. That was exactly what she’d been doing, wasn’t it? Self-defeat. No one could defeat her if she did it first.
Such twisted logic, now that she saw it for what it really was. But just because she knew it was twisted didn’t make it any easier to stop doing it.
“You are here because you are a fighter. You have gone through so much. So many big things. So many little things. But it was just life to you. That which happened in the woods…why does it deserve more reverence than all the rest of life put together?”
“It doesn’t.” She allowed it to sink in, a few drips at a time. The knot in her throat dissolved, and she felt…cleaner. Not all the way sparkly brand-new, but cleaner. It was a start.
Eilis peered into her daughter’s eyes, nodding as if she sensed the stir of change within Aerie’s heart. “No, it doesn’t. And now, I think, if you are ready to cast off this burden you’ve let weigh on you for so long…”
Aerie spread out her hands and gave herself permission to move forward.
She visualized the shame as if it were a thick, dank cloak and pushed it down, down off her head, down off each arm, down her body like it was a cocoon. She separated her true self from the version Jels had forced upon her and willed herself to emerge.
She lost nothing but the dark, the negative, the blame and the impotency. It gave her room to breathe, the ability to close her eyes
without seeing Jels. Maybe, one day she’d let herself even dream again.
More importantly, it gave her power room to move. Blame and guilt and a lack of confidence had been keeping her from her fullest potential. Now, the fetters were off.
“That’s my girl.” Eilis smiled, holding her hands more firmly now, a desperate strength joining them a moment longer. “Now, try the spell again. Are you ready?”
Aerie nodded. “Yes. And no. I don’t want to lose you—”
“You will never lose me.”
“But I don’t know you. I never got a chance to know you.”
“You only know what he told you about me. All lies. Take this…” Eilis raised a finger and gently placed it on Aerie’s forehead. A flood of images and feelings, overwhelmingly inclusive and loving, filled Aerie to a spinning delirious fullness.
Memories of her earliest years, from her mother’s POV. It was like watching a home movie play out, images of herself and Finn and Jim, the way they once had been.
And with it came strength, a power that resonated with her own. Eilis’ magic, her last gift to her daughter.
Thus bolstered, she glowed from within: her strength, her mother’s bequest, and the power of a woman who would not be vanquished.
“Now,” her mother said. “You must go. Do this, Aerie. Do this for me, for our family. They are waiting to reclaim you.”
A sudden wrenching feeling separated them, breaking their contact. Aerie’s sight dimmed as their combined magic lost the upper hand over the darkness. The ley swarmed, sensing her weakened position, her solitude. “The amulets. He’s separated them. You must do it. Now.”
Eilis’ voice was fading with the light. They were being pulled apart.
“Mom! I love you.” Aerie laughed. Such odd words. Powerful words. Saying I love you was like casting a spell itself: a granting of the gift of one’s self. “I never said that before.”
“You did. You just don’t remember. Now, go.”
The rift between them grew to an unbreachable black chasm that exploded with a booming silence. Aerie found herself completely alone.
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