Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  The ley magic released me and everything slowly settled, and I looked back at where they all waited. A green haze still lingered around Lincoln, and Hazel watched me far more closely than was comfortable. The shifters no longer looked so certain they wanted to enter the cave.

  But at least the magic told me something else. “I don’t think there’s anything waiting for us inside. Other than... what was there before.”

  I couldn’t name the spells or wards that maintained the secrecy of the cave and the Luckett records, since they felt older than any magic I’d encountered elsewhere. Not that I’d spent so much of my life around old magic, or even just strange magic. I rolled up my sleeves despite the chill in the air, and started toward the cave.

  “Wait,” Mason said, and strode forward. He glanced around and slowed just a touch as he neared and then passed me, as if he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to cross the invisible barrier that had pushed Lincoln back. But once through, his confidence returned and he focused only on the mouth of the cave. “I’ll go in first and make sure there’s nothing left behind.”

  I eyed the cave and wondered whether the werewolves had truly been able to get inside. The wards outside the opening hadn’t been disturbed, and nothing else in the ley lines revealed that someone violated the glamour that disguised the caves. “I don’t think—”

  “We can smell them,” Nelson said quietly. He, too, swung down from the horse and handed the reins to Hazel, who was looking more and more like she wanted to make whatever promises it took to get inside. The shifter brothers both approached the stairs into the cave with caution. “At least one of them was here recently.”

  “Recently? Like before we killed them or after?”

  Mason smiled as he glanced at me, then his attention went back to the cave. “It’s not that precise, Luckett. Is there anything inside there that might get in our way?”

  I frowned a bit, squinting at the steps and the darkness below. “I dunno. There’s nothing that keeps a Luckett out, but I don’t know whether there are other spells that might activate if intruders are detected. Guess there’s one way to find out.”

  Eddie snorted behind me, hiding a smile, and the shifters looked back at me to check whether I joked or not. I definitely did not. I folded my arms over my chest and watched them. “I can go in first if you’re scared.”

  Nelson gave me a dark look. “We’ll be fine.”

  Mason didn’t look quite so certain, so I stayed close as they edged onto the stair and sniffed around the entrance. I sighed. Maybe I could sit down on the rock and take a nap while the boys sniffed around and made their way down one step at a time. The ley lines remained silent, although when Lincoln stepped closer to the cave, the magic consolidated around his feet—preparing to keep him from going farther if he needed to be deterred.

  The shifters disappeared down the stairs, moving smoothly and more quickly than they had at first, and Lincoln paused next to me. “What do you think they’ll find?”

  I didn’t look at him, keeping my attention on the cave. Just in case. “Probably nothing.”

  “Probably?” He smiled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “What exactly are you hiding down there?”

  “All the Luckett men,” I said, and it was mostly a joke. The town certainly assumed the Luckett women killed or disposed of any men born in the family, since there weren’t any Luckett men. Ever. But that was just the way it was—no Luckett had had a son in generations.

  Lincoln didn’t laugh, but I hadn’t expected him to. Instead, he started toward the cave. I waited until they were all inside, debating whether it would be funny to wave my hands and make the cave disappear again, but part of me knew Hazel might strike me dead on the spot. Plus I didn’t know where the cave went when the ley lines concealed it. Maybe nowhere, maybe it was just the glamour that disguised it, but there was still a small chance the magic did something to it or sent it somewhere else.

  I sighed and figured I needed to be an adult, and headed for the stairs as well. Eddie called something about good luck, but I waved him off before he jinxed us. Lucketts didn’t have luck. That much everyone knew.

  Chapter 27

  Thirty-three stairs curled into the earth, just shallow enough that you thought you could take two at a time but deep enough it wasn’t completely comfortable unless you were as long-legged as Lincoln and the shifters. I took my time wandering down the stairs, drawing strength from the cool stone as my fingers dragged against it, and magic ignited sconces in the walls as I passed.

  Low voices echoed in the chamber below, and for a moment I lingered on the stairs. I didn’t want to know what they found. I didn’t want to see what the werewolves left behind. Maybe it was nothing. As long as I didn’t see it, it wasn’t my responsibility.

  Then I sighed and took the last few stairs down to the bottom. If I was being an adult, I needed to face what waited for me regardless of whether I wanted to or not. No doubt Lucia would have quite an opinion about me letting strangers into the cave and then leaving them alone in the chamber with the Bell only knew what secrets already exposed. The inside of the caves never looked the same twice, and there was no telling what would choose to reveal itself on that particular morning.

  The main chamber opened from the last stair into twelve-foot ceilings covered in stalactites, though the floor had been smoothed by the passage of many, many feet. Most of the surrounding circular wall remained rough-hewn, craggy in places and split in others, with a few stalagmites rising from the ground. In the many crevices and cracks waited the collective wisdom of the Lucketts, and a few passageways to additional rooms and chambers. I could feel the support reaching out for me, recognizing a Luckett and seeking to buoy me up. It could be heady and disconcerting to be in the cave alone after so long in the town where no one liked us. I wondered if that was part of what made the Lucketts go mad after a while—craving acceptance and belonging, and finding it only in the cave.

  I remained near the stairs, folding my arms over my chest to ward off a hint of chill in the air, and watched as Mason gathered up some shredded clothes and tattered bags and wallets. “What did you find?”

  Lincoln’s attention drifted from what the werewolves had left behind to the rest of the cave. “Clothes, a few IDs, some bones. It looks like only a few of the werewolves were here for any length of time. And it doesn’t appear that they did any damage. Can you sense anything different in here?”

  It sounded like a test, although I couldn’t pinpoint why.

  I didn’t look at where any of the wards originated, wrapping the chamber in a protective blue-gold glow, and kept my attention on what they were doing as I let my awareness spread. The chamber still felt solid, the wards whole, and the secret knowledge of the Lucketts undisturbed. I exhaled the lingering uneasiness that had plagued me since I’d first agreed to bring strangers to the cave, and let my arms dangle at my sides. “Nothing is different.”

  He nodded, watching me, then turned his attention to the rest of the chamber. It still felt like he watched me, though, even as his eyes went elsewhere. “This doesn’t look like much, for the repository of generations of magical knowledge.”

  Another challenge. The shifters paused in their work, then scooped up the rest of the belongings and headed for the stairs. I smiled as serenely as I could and borrowed some of the cool composure I remembered from my mother. “What makes you think you see the same things I do?”

  He smiled back, nearly a grin, and walked around the perimeter of the room. “Good point. Many protective wards include an element of glamour in them, or at least the kind of magic that directs the attention elsewhere. Of course, if one knows what one is dealing with, it’s easier to know where to look. See, right here,” and he gestured at one particularly deep crevice in the stone. Lincoln squinted at it before going on, rocking back on his heels. “The wards make me want to look away from this spot, to walk away completely, so I know something is here, even if I can’t see it. That’s something to ke
ep in mind when you’re designing defensive wards.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, but I didn’t budge or look at where he directed his attention. It seemed like an odd time and place to give a lesson. And he didn’t need to know that that particular crevice housed bones from the ancestors and the crumbled remains of our earliest grimoires, before we’d known how to preserve them with magic.

  “Do you know how they worked the magic down here?” He returned to his slow survey of the walls, wandering around in the cramped space. “It feels very old.”

  “It is old,” I said. My feet remained stuck to the stone, polished by the footsteps of countless Lucketts, and I let the soothing old magic ebb and flow against me. “We know pieces and parts of it, but the magic was here before the Lucketts ever touched North America.”

  “So your family just... lucked into this place?” And he smiled again, almost in an unrepentant acknowledgment of the pun.

  I shook my head as I looked away, suppressing my own smile. The man made me feel like a complete fool, totally unmoored from the good sense of my ancestors. “You could say that. Legend has it that the original Luckett, Temperance, was walking over this part of the Crossroads searching for her lost chickens when she fell into the hole. That’s how we found the cave.”

  He chuckled. “They couldn’t come up with a better story? Like a falling star from the midnight sky led them to the cave? A meteor or something? They just blamed it on lost chickens?”

  “Don’t be so irreverent,” I said, though I had to clamp my lips together to keep from laughing with him. There had been plenty of rolled eyes when my sisters and I first heard the story, since we’d also been expecting something more. Something flashier or at least magical. Not accidental. “Chickens were a big deal back then. It was the only way she would eat that night, and she had to care for herself and the rest of her family.”

  “So they left the old country and braved the wilds of North America without a husband or son or any male?”

  “Yep.” I inhaled a deep breath, letting the taste and sense of the cool cave air fill me from top to bottom. I’d missed it, being in the cave, but that was itself a warning. Wanting it too much was the first sign of madness. My sisters and I had all made a pact to avoid going to the cave unless absolutely necessary, to try and save ourselves a little longer. But I’d missed it, and not wanted to admit it. Even then, standing in the cave, I didn’t want to admit it. Especially in the cave, I didn’t want to admit it.

  He touched the tip of one of the stalactites, and the magic rippled throughout the chamber at his intrusion. I sucked in another breath, bracing myself as the ripples spread and amplified, seeking shores against which to run. The cave reached back, tangling with his magic and drawing it out, hungry and wanting. Wanting.

  I hadn’t noticed how masculine and dominant his magic was, but the cave noticed. The cave knew. The lights flickered and Lincoln grunted, and more magic rolled through me. The cave wanted to keep a piece of Lincoln down there, wanted to absorb his energy and knowledge to add to the collective wisdom that existed there to sustain it. I reached for his hand, moving the three steps it took to touch him, and knew it had been a terrible idea to allow him down there. Or to not warn him about touching things.

  The cave’s magic didn’t feel aggressive or angry, just... curious. The same way a bear cub was curious right before it shredded your face with its claws.

  Lincoln shivered as his fingers closed around mine, and his voice reached me in a strained whisper. “Do you feel that, too?”

  “It’s not usually like this,” I said. I used my grip on his hand to pull him back a step, closer to the stairs, and shaped the magic that tried to tangle around him and keep him there. The cave’s hunger didn’t surprise me, since Bess’s episode had drained magic from the lines all throughout the Crossroads.

  Each step back took a momentous effort, like dragging our feet through setting cement, and I eventually moved myself in front of Lincoln, leaning back against him. I closed my eyes and let my consciousness merge with the cave’s so I could make my intentions known to the magic and the Crossroads itself. He is mine.

  The claiming went out through the magic and the hungry searching paused, retreating just a hair, and Lincoln drew a ragged breath. I leaned back, sending him another step toward the stairs, and closed my eyes, raising my hands to press against the magic that still sent tendrils toward us. He is mine.

  Mine.

  And something in the cave sighed, relented. Relinquished. It acknowledged I claimed Lincoln and the strength of his magic, and just before he reached the stairs, some of the blue-gold sparks that filtered through the air adhered to him. It blended into his green magic in an uneasy swirl, carrying the Luckett magic into the warmth that was his druid magic.

  And then it released him. It retreated.

  Lincoln sucked in a breath, like he’d finished running a marathon, and staggered up three stairs before he caught himself and paused.

  When I looked back, his eyes were wild and no longer dark brown. They were gold, pure gold, and shot through with green streaks. I thought for a moment that I saw horns sprouting from his hair, perhaps antlers, and the scent of old forest and fresh snow rippled off his clothes. Then I blinked and he was just Lincoln, in dirty clothes and with unwashed hair and a bushy beard that needed trimming.

  He stared at me, pale underneath the tan, and retreated another step. “What was that?”

  “The magic,” I said, and gestured behind me to take in the cave and everything else. Water dripped from the stalactites, echoing in the empty chamber. “It was curious.”

  “It wanted…me,” he said. He searched my face for something, maybe a hint of threat or a trap, and the muscles stood out in his jaw as he ground his teeth. “It tried to—”

  “We don’t spend much time out here,” I said, trying to find a way to explain that wasn’t super creepy. “I think it gets lonely without witches to... speak to, to interact with. The magic gets stronger but it doesn’t always have somewhere to go.”

  Lincoln shivered again, searching the chamber behind me as if expecting a bear to jump out at him. “Then you should spend more time down here. Oak and Ash, this is just... strange.”

  No stranger than a man with antlers. But I didn’t say anything, and just tucked that knowledge away for later. At least the cave had imprinted a memory of him, had sensed his magic, so the collective wisdom of the Lucketts could perhaps fill me in on what the hell a druid was and what he was capable of.

  “We can’t spend too much time down here,” I said. “The why of it doesn’t matter. I need to clean up down here, so you should go and wait with the others.”

  I didn’t expect him to argue to stay down there, but he hesitated. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “No.” I attempted a smile, though, since he didn’t know where the danger was. “But it’s an uncertainty I’m accustomed to, and you’re too…disruptive.”

  He retreated another step. “That’s not the first time someone’s called me that.”

  I turned my focus back to the disturbed magic, wondering how to find answers when I didn’t rightly know what the questions were. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Luckett,” he said, quiet and calm. Like the cave hadn’t just tried to inhale all his magic. “Shout if you need help. I’ll come.”

  That was sweet in a completely impractical way, given how the cave reacted to his magic the first time around. “I’ll be fine. Thanks. Make sure you all search around this area to clean up any werewolves or other critters that might be lingering.”

  “Consider it done,” he said, and then only the sound of his steps retreating up the stairs filled the chamber.

  I exhaled once he was finally out and the prickle between my shoulder blades lessened. The distant sound of voices faded more, and I counted to a hundred after that to make sure I was alone. The familiar Luckett magic wrapped around me like a warm blanket, a memory of better times, and I sank
slowly to perch on the flat top of a broken stalagmite. It had been months since Bess’s death, but it still felt too raw in my heart and in the magic. If there was something to be learned about all the changes at the Crossroads and with the magic, then chances were I’d learn it here. Exhaling all the worries and stress of the journey and the stink of the werewolves gave me a little steadiness so I could open myself to receive the message.

  Chapter 28

  The cave didn’t answer.

  The magic continued to surround me with no hint of the seeking and wanting that accompanied Lincoln’s presence there, but neither did the cave send me any clear messages. Lucia claimed the cave gave her visions when she went to clean up after Aunt Bess’s funeral and inter her ashes in the deepest crevice along the western side of the chamber. It was the only time I was very glad I wasn’t the oldest sister. Lucia hadn’t slept well for weeks after, mumbling about the magic and dreams and all sorts of other things.

  My mind wandered as I leaned back against the wall of the cave and listened to the quiet beating of my heart. Even the water stopped falling as I waited, then slowly began again in time with my heartbeat. Drip, drip, drip. It wasn’t until I felt completely in sync with the hush of water in the cave and the subtle movement of air within the chamber that the magic opened further. I lost the sense of my own body, where it stopped and the cave began, but at least worry evaporated along with my skin.

  Everything would be fine. Something had been disturbed in the ley lines along the network of power that traversed the plains, but the ancestors fully expected it to be fixed. For me to fix it.

  My awareness spread out along the web of connections, floating with the power that flowed far and wide—into and through the oceans, coming ashore in faraway places that I would never see in person, and cascading back into the lines spreading from the cave. There was no beginning and no end. It was all just... there. Complete and complex.