“You have your answers, why do you continue to seek?” the familiar, bell-like voice sounded in the room, echoing off of the wooden walls and inside my mind. I opened my eyes to see Tegan standing between us, in the middle of our tools on the sacred cloth.
“We don’t have our answers,” I said, not surprised to hear my voice was a little breathy as if I had just run sprints in P.E. class.
“You have your answers and you have your tools, go find the Sylph, do what must be done, what only you two can do,” he said again, his hands on his hips. The fall leaves that were his wings opened and closed so slowly they didn’t even make the flame on the candle waver.
“We don’t know how to use our tools,” Jodi said, trying to cut through the faerie logic, looking for more help than I knew we were going to get out of him.
“You know without knowing how you know, Air Spirit. Go and do what you must do,” he said and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from asking him just what the hell he was talking about. I felt a surge of impatience from Jodi that set my teeth on edge and knew that she too was trying to keep her temper under control.
“Fine,” I said, cutting off Jodi before she could get the words out to argue with him. “We know without knowing, but we don’t know where we’re going and we’ve wasted enough time these last two days racing around trying to find them, so we’re trying to find him now.”
“You know where he is, or where he will be. Stop questioning yourselves and go,” Tegan said calmly, pushing off of the floor lightly and hovering in the air between our faces. I noticed that there was a fine line of worry creasing the usually smooth skin between his eyes, the only hint that he too was scared of what the Sylph was planning. Even the light he always seemed to emanate was dull.
“Why must it always be riddles?” Jodi asked, her frustration coming through clearly.
“Because you humans are stubborn. If it is too easy, you question it,” he said, turning to give Jodi his full attention.
“We are too stubborn!” Jodi cried with a sputtered laugh.
“Okay, fine,” I said, giving Jodi’s hand a squeeze as I cut her off again and drew Tegan’s face back to mine. “So if it’s too easy, then the obvious answer is probably the right one.” Tegan didn’t say anything to confirm or dispute that, so I continued, “I think he’s going after his father after what I heard him saying to his brother.” Tegan gave the faintest of nods. “But, I’ve thought that since he went after his brother and he didn’t go right after his father. First he went after Deb and then after Jensen’s mom trying to punish me, so to think he’s finally stopped me and gone on to his Dad isn’t necessarily the obvious choice yet.”
“Does he know you’ve left the Fire Child’s side?” Tegan asked and I thought of the cops keeping Jodi and me in the hospital when we tried to leave and the knot in my stomach went cold.
“What if I’m wrong? What if he tries to hurt someone else while we’re at his house?” I asked, tasting my fear like copper pennies on my tongue.
“There are always casualties in a war, Terra, you know this,” Tegan said, floating a few inches closer to my face.
“But I can’t let innocent people fall because of me,” I whispered.
“Terra,” Jodi said softly, pulling my attention back from Tegan. “Who else can he go after? Everyone who he could go after is at home, under the shields, and we’ll be together, so he can only get to me once we find him and that’s a risk we’re already preparing for.” We held each other’s gaze for a few quiet, tense moments before I gave the briefest of nods and we began uncasting the barrier spells we’d formed to work in the tree and by the time I had opened my eyes again, Tegan was gone, presumably still within yelling distance, but with faeries, one can never really be sure.
I ran my thumb over the tips of my fingers where the iron swirled under the skin and tried not to think of what we would have to do to get it out and use it against the Sylph. Molten metal was definitely on my list of things to avoid and now, like some damn masochist, I was going to try to draw this out of my skin as a weapon. Just another day in the life of me.
We crept down the ladder braced against the tree, each of us with a bag slung over our shoulders, containing a few tools we didn’t know whether or not we’d need and decided we’d rather have them and not need them than need them and have left them behind. We brought ceremonial knives we’d charged with power but had yet to have a chance to use. They weren’t iron, but the blades were live and any metal would help right now. We both had a full container of salt, one of the most convenient and simple tools in magic and still one of the most effective. You could draw a circle of protection with it in a second and you could banish evil spirits with it like a bullet shot from a gun.
Other than that, we had haphazardly thrown in amulets and binding cords of various colors, not really sure what would work against the Sylph. I had a feeling though that, with all these tools, we were really just hoping to find the weapon that would work and keep us from using the metal that still burned in our fingers. I took both bags and dropped them into my room from my still open window before giving Jodi a leg up onto the sill. She helped me slide in without making much noise before checking the hallway for sounds from my parents, but she withdrew her head and gave me a thumbs up that all was clear.
I dug in my closet for two hooded black sweatshirts and tossed one behind me to Jodi, who slipped it on as I pulled mine over my head, quickly grabbing my hair and twisting it into a ponytail. We were both already wearing dark jeans and I didn’t want to take the time to quibble over our tennis shoes being too light in color and change them. We grabbed our bags and crept out of my room, leaving the T.V. on with the volume turned down low to cover the lack of any sound from within. Luckily, I always slept with the T.V. on so my parents wouldn’t find this strange. Jodi waited for me by the front door while I dug in my mom’s purse for her keys. When I found them, I kept my hand cupped around them to keep them from jiggling and announcing our escape. We ran to the driveway and slid into my mom’s sedan, pulling our doors shut carefully to make as little noise as possible.
I put the gear into neutral and released the emergency brake to coast backwards down the driveway, turning the wheel sharply at the bottom of the slope so we’d back away from the house and drift in front of the neighbor’s before I turned the key in the ignition and started the engine. We were turning around the second corner before I heard Jodi’s exhale loudly and felt the razor sharp edge of her anxiety easy up just a little.
“God, you would think we were sneaking out after curfew to see boys or go to a party or something,” Jodi said with a shaky laugh, but I knew she was only trying to cover her growing agitation.
“Let’s promise, when this is over, we do something stupid and normal like that,” I said, watching the traffic light in front of me phase to green. Jodi laughed again and this time it sounded closer to normal.
We were pulling up in front of Jeremy’s house again, but this time made no pretense of parking across the street or hiding my mother’s car, which was a standard four-door mom-mobile; the best way to keep it inconspicuous was to have it right out in the open. We watched the house for a few moments. All of the windows were dark, but the front porch light was still on, as if they expected someone to come home late, but all three cars were accounted for.
“So what’s the plan?” Jodi asked, still looking out her window. “Are we waiting until we see Jeremy make a move or do we go in guns blazing and warn his parents or what?”
“Guns blazing?” I said, smirking and letting the joke ease the tension in my shoulders. “Easy there, cowboy.”
“You know what I mean,” she said over her shoulder and I felt her own tension give way just a bit.
“Actually I was thinking of going in and waiting for Jeremy,” I said gauging the distance from the car to the front door. “But not going to warn his parents.”
“What?” Jodi asked, turning her startled face to me.
“What? How do you think that’ll go over?” I asked, tilting my head to the side and looking her in the eye. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. McCormack, I know this sounds crazy, but your son, Jeremy? Well, he has supernatural abilities and can communicate with faeries and seems to have gotten himself mixed up with an evil faerie; a Sylph to be exact. We have reason to believe that he’s on his way here to try to hurt you or, worse, kill you. But never fear! We, two teenage girls, are here to save the day!”
“Yeah, okay,” Jodi said reluctantly with a nod. “When you say it like that, it does sound kinda crazy.”
“No, what’s really crazy is that’s really what’s going on here,” I said, trying very hard not to laugh.
“No kidding,” she said with a shake of her head. Jodi reached down to the floor by her feet and grabbed the bags we’d brought with us, handing me one and slinging the other over her shoulder. “So, through the front door?
“No, the light’s on, I don’t want to be seen trying to break in,” I said, putting the car keys into an inside pocket of my bag. “Let’s circle around back. All the houses in this neighborhood are the same; they should have a sliding glass door for their back door.”
“Can you see which side the side gate is on?”
“To your right,” I said, squinting through the dark over her shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Jodi said and my stomach did a flip and I knew that it was her butterflies I was feeling this time. I took a deep breath with my hand on the door handle and sent up a silent prayer for help before stepping out and following Jodi at a dash, bent over, trying to stay below a normal eye line. Luckily they didn’t have a lock on the side gate and, with a simple tug of the nylon cord sticking through the wood, we were able to open the gate and slip into the backyard unseen.
Our luck didn’t hold out for the back door though. They did, in fact, have a sliding glass door, but they had remembered to lock it before going to bed.
Hey look, Jodi thought at me, nodding towards our feet and I saw the doggie-door they had installed into a panel, taking up a foot of the door’s width.
Oh crap, do you think there’s a dog? I thought frantically.
If there is, it’s locked up somewhere. Otherwise it’d be out here already, Jodi reassured me and I realized she was right and clung to that logic for all it was worth. I crouched down and got on my hands and knees and reached out to test the doggie door. The flap gave easily under my fingers; they had forgotten to put up the plastic guard that would keep the dog in or out of the house depending on when it was slid into place. I reached up for Jodi’s bag and pushed it through with mine and started to wriggle my way through. I had to put one arm and shoulder through at a time, nearly giving myself a cramp in my left shoulder. I turned on my side to get my hips through, but after that I was scrambling quickly to my feet, listening for any signs of life before I turned and unlocked the sliding door and let Jodi in the easy way.
“Wow, glad you did that and not me,” Jodi whispered as quietly as possible as she slid the door shut behind her, remembering to lock it again. “I don’t think I would’ve gotten my hips through that.”
“Oh shut up,” I said automatically, squashing any discussion on the trivialities of body image. I was giving myself a few moments to let my night vision kick in as I scanned the dark room we were standing in. As the shadows in the room finally started to take shape, I realized we were standing in the living room.
“Now what?” Jodi asked and I tensed.
“Dude, I swear,” I whispered, rolling my shoulders, “if I never hear that question again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?” Jodi asked and I could hear the edge of annoyance in her voice and the pinprick of anger flare from her as she took my comment as an insult.
“Sorry, I just…” I shook my head trying to clear it to explain.
“No, no, don’t,” she said, raising a hand to stall me. “I understand, but seriously, now what?”
“Yeah, now what?” I repeated, keeping my attention divided between the hallways that led off of the living room. “Guess we should find out if he’s here yet. Keep watch.”
“Okay,” Jodi said and I was already closing my eyes, holding up my right hand and concentrating on the power just days ago Deb and I had been practicing with. It didn’t take too long to search the house, only registering three signatures, all in the same room and I knew it was Jeremy’s parents and the weaker point most likely the dog the door had been installed for.
“He’s not here yet,” I whispered to Jodi once I came back to myself, feeling the tingle of power dancing over my skin.
“Now wha-” Jodi stopped herself as I threw a look over my shoulder at her. “Do you want to go into his parents’ room and wait there or do you think he’ll try another way in?”
I gave her a smile of thanks for making a suggestion rather than just leaving it all up to me. “I really don’t know. I mean, yeah, we can go check on them, but I don’t know if he’ll come climbing through their window.”
“He did at Cindy’s house,” Jodi prompted and I nodded, remembering the scene.
“You’re right, let’s go,” I said, reaching for the bags and tossing one to her before heading down the hall to our left that led to the bedrooms.
Hey, Jodi’s thoughts stopped me as we creeped down the hall, touching my arm. I turned to look at her, my heart pounding in my throat as we stood there, knowing the McCormack’s could open their bedroom door any second and we were lingering in the hall. Look, she thought, nodding towards the door we’d stopped in front of. I turned and saw the closed door that was covered in warning signs and fake crime scene tape telling people not to enter.
I reached for the door knob and, as my fingers touched the metal, a shock ran through me, nearly making me stumble back, but I held on, letting the electricity bite my skin as I turned the knob. As soon as the door was open, the current died and the knob was lifeless in my palm.
What was that? Jodi asked, touching my shoulder tentatively.
It looks like, I started to explain but stopped myself to check the other side of the door and found nothing hanging on the knob on the other side to explain the electricity. Seems Jeremy wasn’t entirely unschooled. Some sort of barrier spell.
Seriously? Jodi asked and I could see the dull yellow of her thoughts in my mind, coloring her words with disbelief.
Weak , but impressive anyway. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here, I motioned her further into the room so I could shut the door behind us.
“Do we chance a light?” Jodi whispered and I shook my head, not seeing a dimmer on the light switch. I walked over to the curtained windows and pulled them open slightly to let in the moonlight only to find Jeremy had put black paper over the glass. “Oh come on,” Jodi whispered with disgust. “How cliché goth can you get?”
I ignored her, silently agreeing with her, and walked over to the closet, opening it to see a string hanging down above my head and reached up and pulled on it. The light clicked on inside the closet. I turned to see that its illumination didn’t reach within a few feet of the door, so if his parents did pass by they wouldn’t see the line of light under the door.
“Nice,” Jodi nodded and turned her attention back to the room. “Is it weird how neat everything is?”
“Yeah, I kinda expected it to be a cluttered mess too,” I said, looking at the spotless floor and desk that was so organized it hinted of obsessive compulsive disorder.
“You’d think he was an Earth Element, not Air, looking at this,” Jodi said, sweeping her hands out.
“Hey, my room doesn’t look like this,” I said a little defensively, walking over to a small bookshelf in the corner.
“No, yours is much warmer and more welcoming, but remember, Earths can be stubborn and set in their ways with their rules and everything. Looks like he’s taken that to an extreme.” I had to agree with her on that. I scanned the bookshelf, but saw only fiction titles of books with creased spines and r
agged edges like he had reread the same collection a hundred times.
I stepped back and looked around again trying to notice anything out of place, but that seemed to be the plan; if nothing was out of place, then his parents wouldn’t go snooping around for anything because they could see everything. “Or can they?” I asked out loud.
“What?” Jodi asked, turning her attention from Jeremy’s desk drawers.
“I was just thinking, since it’s like everything is out in the open, not hidden under clutter, his parents wouldn’t go snooping,” I explained, walking towards Jeremy’s bed, which was made, complete with hospital corners. “Because they can see everything,” I said, dropping to my knees in front of the bed and lowering myself to the floor. “Or can they?” I repeated as I shimmied under the bed.
Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t so much as a wayward sock or shoe under there. I spread my hands out and slid them over the floor, searching for something out of place. I shifted towards the head of the bed and continued sweeping my hands over the floor until the tip of my finger caught on a groove.
“That’s what I thought,” I said to myself and clawed at the loose floorboard, prying it up to reveal a gap under it. I slid my hand in slowly, trying to keep all thoughts of bugs and vermin from my mind, reaching until I felt the cool firmness of what I was expecting, a book. I grabbed it and shimmied backwards out from under the bed and sat up on my heels and set the book on the bed.
“Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky,” Jodi whispered as she came over to look at the journal. I dusted myself off and grabbed the book and headed over to the closet to use the light.
“I’d feel really bad about this if he hadn’t been acting like a rampaging psychopath these last few days,” I said as I opened the front cover.
“Is it his grimoire?” Jodi asked in a whisper as she crouched down next to me to get a better look at the book as I turned the pages.
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