Jodi took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, I felt it swirl around me in a circle, touching each of the candles as it passed. Steven took a breath in and let it out, joining Jodi’s, and each candle’s wick burst into flame as the breath made one last circle around me. Once done, they both settled back again and began chanting slowly, calling up the power hidden in our tree until I felt it singing over my body, raising the hairs on my arms and making me feel electrified.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing until I felt the odd weightlessness settle over me. I opened my eyes and slowly sat up, feeling resistance, as if something was pulling me back. I fought the urge to lay back and pushed away from the floor until I was standing. I turned and saw both Jodi and Steven sitting around my body. I had successfully managed to start the astral projection journey. I took a moment to study all three of us, still in awe of the white and blue electricity that consumed Jodi’s body and the yellow, red, and orange flames that coursed over Steven, each of them an embodiment of their elements. But as always, I was more than a little confused when I looked at myself; I lay there looking almost exactly as I always did, except my long auburn hair was twined with ivy and white flowers and folded neatly under me were impossibly large, black feathered wings that shimmered silver in the dim lighting.
But I needed to focus on Dale, not myself. I reached out a hand toward Jodi and Steven both until the heat of Steven’s fire twined around my hand and the sharp tingling power of Jodi’s took hold of the other. Anchored to them now, I turned away and sprung from the tree, leaving them behind, searching for the hospital that Dale was lying in.
When I finally reached the hospital, I could feel the pain and loss of the building pulling at me, threatening to rip me apart. Focusing on my goal of finding Dale was difficult, but I knew if I allowed myself to get lost in the anguish that swirled around me, I would drown under it and never get back to my body. I called on my ties to Jodi and Steven and drew on their strength to shield me against it to get through the levels of the hospital.
I found Dale, looking like an unearthed mummy for all that was left of his body. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the same pull of anger and pain from him that I had from all the others in the ICU around him. As a matter of fact, as I got closer to him, I realized there was nothing there to feel at all, as if whatever gave us the ability to feel was just missing. I was staring at the empty shell of a boy that was vibrant and healthy just twelve hours ago.
As I stared at the body that was once Dale, Jodi’s words from the bookstore came floating back to me. You think they’re going after men for their souls like in the fairy tale? And just like that, I knew that I was staring at a person who had his soul ripped from his body. As soon as I realized what I was looking at, I could suddenly see the gaping black wound in the middle of his chest.
There was no blood rushing from it, and as the night nurse came around and checked Dale and all of the machines he was hooked up to, I knew she couldn’t see the wound, just like I couldn’t a few moments ago. My heart ached in my chest and I found it harder to breathe. My fingers twitched with the need to reach out and comfort Dale, even though I knew there was no one left there to comfort.
With great difficulty, I turned away from Dale and left the hospital, finding my way back over the city to my home, using Jodi and Steven’s anchors as guides and making my way back much more quickly than it took me to get to the hospital. Once I was securely back in place and the feeling of weightlessness faded and I could feel the draw of gravity pulling on my body, I blinked open my eyes.
“Drake,” Jodi said softly to Steven, interrupting their chant and nodding her head towards me.
“Terra?” Steven spoke my elemental name, drawing my attention towards him first, and I nodded slowly, letting them know our spell had worked and that I was feeling fine at the same time. They both sat back to give me what little space they could and didn’t pressure me for details immediately. Jodi held out a bottle of water for me and I took it gratefully, careful to sip it, even though the desire to just gulp it down surged through me.
“All right,” I said, feeling the need to catch my breath, “we have a huge problem on our hands now.”
“You figured out what was wrong?” Jodi asked.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding and capping the water bottle, looking at it rather than at either of them.
“Terra, you’re killing me,” Steven said, and I could both hear and feel the fear in his voice. “Please, just spit it out.”
“They are going after souls,” I said finally, waiting before I looked up at them. Steven’s eyes were wide, showing the whites all around that rich brown, and Jodi had paled, but otherwise looked calm.
“How’d you tell?” Jodi asked.
“He’s got all the symptoms of someone starving to death, but there were no feelings or emotions coming from him,” I said, fighting the shiver that was threatening to race up my spine. “He didn’t even emit pain or confusion; he was just empty, just nothing.”
“But how does that mean his soul is gone?” Steven asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“While I was standing there, trying to feel something, anything, from him, I remembered what we were talking about in the bookstore, and then I remembered what you said,” I pointed to Jodi, “that maybe they’re going after men for their souls and, all of a sudden, I could see this ugly, gaping wound in the middle of his chest that wasn’t there before.”
“Did it just appear? Like something hurt him right then?” Steven asked quickly.
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “It was like it had always been there, I just couldn’t see it yet. Like I had broken a glamour spell or something,” I explained.
“Are you sure?” Jodi asked this time.
“Yeah, because a nurse came around to do checks and she looked right at him and didn’t even flinch. Trust me, if she could have seen it, she would have screamed. If it was a physical wound, it would have killed him immediately,” I said and gave into the need to close my eyes for a moment, trying to not see Dale’s wounded and dying body in my mind.
“So what do we do about this?” Steven asked. “I mean, do we try to get Dale’s soul back or is that impossible? Do we just try to stop it from happening to anyone else? Do we have to kill these things or banish them? What?” I fought the urge to tell Steven to shut up, but he was just voicing the same questions that were racing through my mind and I was sure were also racing through Jodi’s.
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “I don’t know if you can get a soul back and, if you can, how would you put it back?”
“And do we risk the karma of killing other living creatures?” Jodi asked.
“Well, if Dale dies, then I think by the rule of three, we’re justified,” I said, “vengeful though it may be.” The rule of three is a concept that all magical practitioners live their lives by which says that whatever you put out into this world – for good or bad – it will come back to you, threefold. If these things took the life of one child, then would we be in the wrong to destroy the lot of them? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
“I think the first thing we have to do is see if we can get Dale’s soul back,” Jodi said finally. “If we can find a way to do that before he dies, then we have to at least try.”
“But what if someone else is attacked before we can do that?” Steven asked. “Then we’re working on getting two souls back.”
“Well, to get the soul back, we’ll probably have to catch one of these things, so we’ll be there if they go after someone else, and maybe we can stop it,” Jodi said, looking at me for help.
“Yeah, I can see that, but we can’t be there twenty four hours a day,” I said, realizing that the amethyst crystal I had placed on my chest to protect me while I was out of my body was lying in my lap. I picked it up and rolled it between my hands. “And there’s a chance now that we’ve proven we know they’re out there, they may go off to another beach. How can we stop that?”<
br />
“So we do nothing?” Jodi asked a little more heatedly than I expected.
“Of course not,” I said, happy to hear how calm my voice was, that I hadn’t risen to her anger. “I just think it would be better if we look into getting rid of these things instead. If we’re able to get Dale’s soul, great, but if we can’t and that’s what we focus on, Drake’s right, we may risk other people becoming victims as well.”
“So we just let an innocent person die?” Jodi pushed the issue and I could feel the sense of injustice coursing through her, making her blood run faster.
“Fae,” I said softly, “sometimes in war, innocent people die and there isn’t a goddamn thing the good guys can do about it. If we can stop them and save him, then of course we’ll try, but we have to look at the big picture, not the small one.” It was an ugly business we found ourselves in at such young ages, but we had all learned very early in life that a happy ending isn’t always a perfect ending.
Chapter Six
I woke in the morning, all too early. I laid in bed for a few minutes, trying to will myself back to sleep after glancing at the window and seeing the faintest light of predawn showing through the blinds. I stretched long and deep to try to loosen my back and leg muscles, feeling them complain from yesterday’s exertion, before I decided to roll out of bed. Although it was insanely early to any teenager, both my parents were already up. My mom was pouring herself a cup of coffee and my dad was reclining in his chair with the morning news on and his newspaper held in front of him.
“You’re up early,” my mom said when she realized I was standing in the hallway.
“Eh,” I said with a shrug. I walked over to the counter and slid an empty coffee cup in front of her. She poured coffee into the cup until it was two-thirds full so that I could add the appropriate amount of sugar and cream.
“Honey,” my dad called from the living room as I put the cream back in the fridge. “I hope you’re not planning on going surfing today.”
“Actually, I was,” I said, knowing Steven, Jodi, and I were going to be spending quite a lot of time at the beach now. Surfing was a good cover.
“Well, they’re reporting the worst red tide in the last ten years,” he said as I grabbed my coffee and walked towards the living room behind my mom.
“There’s red tide all of a sudden?” I asked. Red tide was a sudden surge of bacteria in the seawater, usually brought on after a rain during warm weather, and it made the water look an unhealthy brown. The worst part was the effect it had on people; if you swam in the water, you could become sick with diarrhea and nausea, among other unpleasant things, even death.
“Well, it’s here now and look at the TV,” he said as I came into the living room. He had paused the live feed at a point where the news helicopter was soaring over a very familiar beach, Emma Wood, just north of our local beach on the way up to Santa Barbara. But in the middle of the water was a huge spiral of whitewash, almost like someone had pulled the plug and the ocean was swirling down the drain.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“Riptide,” my dad said simply.
“I’ve never seen riptide like that,” I said, still staring wide-eyed at the screen.
“Well, they’ve said it’s the worst they’ve ever seen too.”
“So the worst red tide and the worse riptide? Kinda strange they both happened at the same time,” my mom said as she sat down on the couch.
“Yeah,” I said, “what a coincidence.”
***
I was standing in front of my car staring out at the ocean in front of me. The cars on the freeway up and behind me faded into white noise. Jodi and Steven were standing near the side of the car waiting for me. I had picked them up and driven us out to Emma Wood after seeing the news report this morning.
Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few cars parked here with people standing on the rocks watching the water just like I was. Although we couldn’t see the churning rip tide as well as the helicopters that were still circling overhead could, the waves were crashing loud and fast. I could feel their force reverberating through my body from the ground below me, stirring my magic hidden inside, making me tap my foot in time to a tune only I could hear.
Part of me ached as I watched the water and saw, sure enough, the murky rust color that warned all seasoned surfers to stay clear of the water. I could almost smell the contamination coming off the sprays of the waves and the bursting bubbles of foam.
“Shay?” Jodi called a few feet behind me. “What are we doing here?”
“I guess I just had to see it for myself,” I said, knowing I wasn’t speaking loudly enough to be heard over the traffic and the waves and wind, but, feeling the swirling magic inside of me, I had a feeling they could hear me clear enough through our connections.
“You think they’re doing it, don’t you?” Steven said, and I could hear that he was walking towards me.
“Too much of a coincidence if it wasn’t them,” I said, still watching the water.
“I’m confused though,” Steven said, standing next to me now, and I could feel Jodi walking over as well.
“About what?” I asked.
“Why would they cause red tide?”
“Good question,” Jodi said, now watching the water as intently as I was.
“Maybe it’s unintentional,” I said. “Just a side effect of them being here.”
“You know we can’t go into the water, right, Shay?” Jodi asked, finally looking away from the water and trying to look me in the face, but I was still watching the water.
“I know that,” I said.
“Do you really?”
“Yes,” I said with a quick nod. “Doesn’t mean we can’t stay at the beach though.”
“You don’t think people are really still gonna go out into water that looks like that, do you?” Steven asked, pointing out to the ocean for emphasis.
“If you planned a vacation to Florida for months and it suddenly rains while you’re standing in line at Disney World, do you go back to your hotel? Or just stick it out and get wet?” I asked, turning away from the water and walking back to the driver side door of my car.
“I go back to the hotel,” Steven said.
“Stick it out and get wet,” Jodi said at the same time.
“Exactly,” I said, buckling my seatbelt as they both slid into the car.
“Exactly what?” Steven asked.
“Not everyone’s going to behave the same way,” I said, putting the car in reverse and pulling back out on to the road. “People are still gonna go out into that water, and if we want to catch these things or save Dale, then we’re gonna have to stay at the beach.”
I drove us back onto the freeway and made our way down to the Main Street exit and back to the surfers’ parking lot, hoping for once I’d manage to snag a free parking space. To my surprise, I pulled in just as a surfer was loading his board onto the roof of his car. “Hey, bro,” I called out, leaning out my window a little. “Are you leaving?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile.
“Awesome, thanks.” I clicked on my turn signal and waited.
“Why do you suppose he risked surfing with the red tide?” Jodi asked.
“I don’t know,” I said and leaned out my window again, calling out to the guy. “Heya, did you know about the red tide?”
“Aw, yeah,” he said, pausing. “Surfed in it before, never been sick.” He shrugged at me. I nodded and shrugged.
We walked towards the beach, crossing over the sidewalk and weaving in between dog walkers and mid-day joggers before passing through the low brick wall that separated this part of the beach from the sidewalk.
The water in this part of the beach didn’t look any better than it had at Emma; in fact, because it was shallow for about twenty yards, it looked worse. I sighed and realized that I had been hoping the water would look clear here. Sure enough, I watched as children laughed high and excitedly as they ran do
wn to the water’s edge, waiting until it rushed up and washed over their feet, just to scream in delight and run away from the water again. All the while their parents lounged on their beach chairs only half paying attention to them, occasionally warning them not to go out too far when they finally got brave enough not to run away.
“Ugh,” Jodi said next to me. “That ain’t gonna be pretty later tonight.”
“Seriously,” I said, shaking my head. I made up my mind and started walking down the beach to the parents of those kids. It took Steven and Jodi a second to realize I was walking away from them before they reacted and came jogging up to me.
“What are you doing?” Steven asked as we maneuvered over rocks and loose sand.
“Excuse me!” I called out when we were close enough to be heard. I didn’t want to wait until we were standing over them to get their attention. “Hi!” I called out, waving my hand as they both looked up at me. I was aware of their three kids pausing in their play to look up at us.
“Can we help you?” the man asked, raising his sunglasses up to look me in the eye. I liked that.
“No, but I was hoping we could help you,” I said.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“I get the feeling you guys aren’t from around here?” I waited, and the man nodded in agreement. “Well, I don’t know if you saw the news this morning or not, but we’ve got a real bad case of red tide right now.”
“What’s red tide?” the wife asked.
“It’s basically when there’s a lot of bacteria in the water.” They both blinked at me for a moment. “So, if you’ll look,” I said, turning slightly towards the water and pointing, “you can see that the water looks dirty. If you keep letting your kids play in it, they can get really sick. The main symptoms are vomiting and diarrhea, but it can be deadly.”
I waited, watching my words sink in, and the mother’s face quickly showed the dawning horror as she decided to believe me. She jumped up quickly, towel in hand, and ran down the beach, calling to her children to get out of the water. I turned back to the husband who still just looked shocked and gave him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry I had to ruin your vacation.” I gave him a small wave and turned to leave.
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