Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  And then, right on cue, Lucia called from the other side of my door. “What the hell are you doing in there?”

  “Trying to sleep,” I muttered, pulling the pillow over my head.

  “Doing magic in your sleep?” She didn’t sound pleased. “I thought we were going to avoid magic until after those strangers left town.”

  Doing magic in my sleep. I sighed loudly enough to blow the hair out of my face and yanked the pillow off so I could stare at the ceiling. “Just a minute. I had a dream.”

  She said something I didn’t quite catch, which was probably just as well. I’d never been much of a seer, in my dreams or otherwise, and though I certainly didn’t want to start, Lucia wanted even less to have two seers in the family. More than one seer in a particular place tended to amplify the visions each had, so it could become an echo chamber of visions and prophecies and all kinds of mess—none of which would be clear enough to act on. Since Liv got enough visions for all three of us, any of that running through my head would mean someone needed to move out.

  I paused after sitting up, avoiding the open book next to my pillow. Actually, having to move out wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. I could get an apartment in town, or move a few towns over just to make sure Liv and I didn’t affect each other... I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the still-damp towel in my laundry hamper, then stripped the sheets from my bed so I could throw all of it in the washer at the same time.

  The book flopped itself back open to the page with werewolves on it when I tried to close it on my nightstand, and I refused to look at it as I shucked the case off my pillow. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get to it.”

  A bright pain arced behind my eyes, pounding in rhythm with my heart, as I staggered to the door and fumbled the knob. Lucia still stood in the hall, looking at me with raised eyebrows, and I tilted my head back at my room. “I took a book from the cave and it dragged me back there in a dream. Apparently it’s got the instructions for the werewolf curse.”

  Her jaw dropped, and I took some comfort in finally having shocked her into silence. It didn’t happen often with Lucia.

  She shoved past me, almost knocking the laundry basket out of my arms, and I muttered under my breath as I picked my way carefully down the stairs. Lucia followed on my heels, holding the book gingerly and as far from herself as she could, but she kept her voice low as she spoke. “Where the hell did you get this? It’s…it stinks of magic all by itself. I haven’t seen that since Gran put her grimoire away. This looks even older.”

  “I asked the cave for help, and that’s what it showed me,” I said. I looked around for Liv as I led the procession to the laundry room and started the water on the washing machine. Our little sister was nowhere to be found, which made me just a touch worried. “Where’s Liv?”

  “Went to work,” Lucia said, not looking up from the book as she leaned against the wall nearby. Her lips moved as she tried to read the inscriptions around the crude drawings, shaking her head, and moved her fingertip along the words as well. “This can’t possibly be right, Sass. It ignores all of the basics, any hint of safety, and it’s... How do you even aim such a thing? It would just fly off and stick wherever it finds a target.”

  I peered into the bottle of detergent, shaking it to see if any remained, then sighed and filled it with water to try and get some kind of soap into the washer. Great. Something else to put on the grocery list. I’d have to ask Lincoln for my pay the next time we met and hope he had the cash to shell out before they closed the case, otherwise things would get pretty stinky at the Luckett homestead.

  Or we could use body wash instead of detergent, though that hadn’t worked real well the last time we tried it.

  “It’s gotta be right, Looch. You know it as well as I do. It feels right.” I shut the lid on the washer and leaned forward on the machine, closing my eyes for a long moment. “Whatever it is, wherever it came from... that curse is a lot darker than anything we’ve ever seen. And if you flip the page, there’s something about dire wolves, too. Some connection between dire wolves and werewolves that we didn’t know about.”

  She swore, gingerly turning the page, and followed me into the kitchen as I searched for a snack. “This is unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. Sass, what the hell do we do with this?”

  “I don’t know.” I pulled a bowl of pasta salad from the fridge, lifting the Saran Wrap to sniff the contents. It didn’t smell like it had turned. Only one way to really find out. I dug a clean spoon out of the drawer and carried the bowl over to the table to sit across from her. “What do we do with any of this, Looch?”

  Her attention remained on the book. “Liv will be back in a couple of hours, and hopefully that werewolf will be awake so we can question him on what he remembers.”

  “He claims not to remember anything—not being a werewolf, not getting cursed or bitten, not even his own name. His real name.” I picked around the veggies in the pasta salad, scooping up just the pasta and sniffing it again. “We can try to walk him through it. If he isn’t helpful, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  I meant all of it, not just the werewolves and dire wolves. I meant Lincoln and Heathrow. I meant being the Lucketts in Rattler’s Run. I meant everything. My voice wobbled and I cleared my throat, frowning at the pasta. Maybe it wasn’t okay after all. My stomach soured and I pushed the bowl back, leaving the spoon in it.

  Lucia sighed as she moved the book over to my side of the table, as if giving me the responsibility of all of it at once. “We’ll figure it out. We don’t really have much choice.”

  “Could we try and talk to Gran?” I couldn’t look at the book, couldn’t even think about touching it. If Nona knew to tell me to be careful, Gran might know more about the witch side of things. “She might have some tips.”

  My sister leaned back and stared out the window at the empty backyard where the rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle. Hopefully Liv didn’t get stuck in the mud on the way back from the fort. “She wasn’t very helpful the last time we tried to summon her. And you know exactly what she’d say the moment we start asking about the werewolf curse.”

  I laughed. I could hear our grandmother’s voice in my head, clear as if she sat with us at the head of the table, thumping her cane on the floor whenever we stumbled over a spell or stopped paying attention to her lessons. And just like she said I would, I regretted not listening more closely while she was there, because when she left, I missed her. We still needed her. Her and Ma.

  My throat burned a little and I blinked a lot to try and get rid of the moisture that gathered in my eyes. I knew Gran would thump me with her cane and tell me to get on with it, to get busy fixing the mess someone else had made. No point in wool-gathering.

  “We’ll figure it out, Sass.” Lucia got up and dumped the bowl of pasta salad in the trash before she walked past me toward the guest room. “And that was two weeks old. Good luck not getting sick.”

  “Why’d you let me eat it?” I leaned my chair back so I could scowl at her back as she walked down the hall.

  She shook her head. “Because I’m not your mother, Sass, and if you can’t smell when the salad turns, that’s on you. Like Gran said, you always learn best by doin’.”

  Sometimes I really didn’t like her. I picked up my book and headed for the porch. At least I could read in peace outside while listening to the rain.

  Chapter 40

  The peace and quiet didn’t last long. I’d slept longer than I thought, because it wasn’t more than an hour before the sun set and Olivia drove back from work. She carried a greasy brown paper bag, filled with leftovers from the questionable food truck that parked right outside the fort, and ran through the rain holding her costume’s skirt up to avoid dragging it through the mud. She grimaced and shook her head as soon as she got on the porch, flinging her soggy braid around so it spattered me with rainwater.

  I moved out of the way and gave her a dirty look. “Go do that to Lucia. She could use some
fun.”

  Liv waved the bag of food in my face and bounded inside, thumps and rustles indicating when she dropped her rain boots and bag and unused umbrella in the entry. “At least I brought dinner, Sass. What have you done all day but make more trouble?”

  It wasn’t untrue. I sighed and leaned my chair back against the wall, propping my boots on the rail, and listened with half an ear as Lucia spotted Olivia’s mess and started hollering. I squinted at the book and tried to decipher whether someone had written “yew branch” or “yellow hand,” though neither one made a whole lot of sense in context. The headache still split my skull, no matter how many painkillers I took, but at least the rain made a soothing patter on the metal roof of the porch.

  I was just starting to enjoy the back-and-forth between my sisters when they abruptly fell silent. Something like a growl echoed through the house and I shot to my feet. Frank.

  What if he turned back?

  My chair hit the porch but I was already through the door, the book clutched in my hand. I slipped in the puddles of water Liv had left behind, straining my back and my leg and pretty much everything else as I collided with the wall. By the time I dragged myself into the kitchen, panting, three faces watched me in consternation.

  Frank stood near the sink, arms folded over his chest, while Liv and Lucia were shoulder-to-shoulder beside the table. I looked between them. “Who growled?”

  “Who growled? That’s all you have to say?” Frank didn’t look happy but he did look handsome, still kind of drowsy and flushed from sleep.

  Maybe they fought over him and Lucia was the one who growled at Liv to scare her off. The thought generated a hysterical giggle that threatened to explode out of me, and only clamping my lips together could keep it back. No doubt Lucia would lose her mind if I started laughing.

  Then Liv snorted and clapped both her hands over her mouth, and the bag of hamburgers smacked her in the chest.

  My whole body shook with the effort of keeping quiet as Lucia glared at all of us and Frank just looked bewildered and a little pissed off. I stuffed down the hysterics, since that wouldn’t get us anywhere, but I couldn’t look at Olivia in her ridiculous frontier woman get-up with a sack of greasy hamburgers.

  My voice shook just a touch as I swallowed a giggle. “I, uh, thought I heard some noise.”

  “A g-growl?” Liv said.

  “You two are just a mess,” Lucia said. She pointed at the table and then at Frank. “You. Sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”

  He didn’t budge. “Thank you, I’ll stand. I do not like being told what to do by women.”

  All three of us looked at him, the giggles long gone. That kind of bullshit didn’t float in our house.

  “Remind me again why we saved his life, Sass,” Lucia said. Her hands clenched at her sides, and it was probably only Gran’s “it comes back to you times three” rule that kept my sister from hexing the shit out of the shirtless man.

  “Because it seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. I didn’t get any closer. Maybe just a little hex wouldn’t hurt too much, and I could brace for the repercussions later. Nona had said it might take a while for it to come about around. After our recent run of luck, I found it kind of hard to believe that anything could get worse. But the universe might find a way.

  I shuffled over to the cupboard and pulled out some clean plates, so at least we wouldn’t be eating off of greasy wrappers. “And I don’t give a shit who you think you are, Frank, or how you feel about listening to women, but you need to sit down. We saved your life twice over, so find some respect and man up.”

  “Man up?” His upper lip curled as he looked at all of us in turn. “You have the strangest turn of phrase.”

  Lucia still scowled at him, but Liv unloaded the bag of burgers and divided them up among the plates. I grabbed juice and milk and a couple of sodas, then sat down in my usual place as my sisters did the same.

  We ignored him, just like we’d started to ignore Bess when her craziness got a little too out of control, and after the silence stretched and not one of us gave a shit about his attitude, the man grumbled and stalked over to take a seat at the end of the table. I didn’t like him on my right side, but it was better than him lurking in the kitchen.

  “Didn’t someone give you a shirt?” Liv asked. She sounded doubtful rather than intrigued, which I took as a good sign that she was more interested in Mason than the former werewolf sleeping in our guest room.

  “Yes,” he said, not looking up from his plate. “But it was a ridiculous thing, like these trousers, and I refuse to wear it.”

  Trousers? Who the hell called sweatpants trousers?

  Liv rolled her eyes. “Right. Because beggars can be choosers.”

  “I’m no beggar,” he snapped, fist pounding the table hard enough that we all three jumped. “I may not remember all of who and what I am, but I am certainly not some lowlife gutter dweller.”

  Something definitely wasn’t right.

  Lucia sat back, her arms folded over her chest, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. And her gaze drifted to where we kept a backup shotgun in the pantry, propped up in the corner. Just in case Frank’s temper got out of control.

  Liv finished off her cheeseburger and licked the mayo off her hand before glancing at him once more, unperturbed by his attitude and outburst. She’d always been the most forgiving of us. “So what do you remember, cousin Frank?”

  “That my name is not Frank,” he said, dark eyes narrowing. The cheeseburger looked tiny in his hands and he consumed at least half of it in a single bite.

  “Then what is it?” Lucia dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, pushing away her plate.

  “I do not remember.” His mouth puckered like he’d bit into a lemon, having to admit that. “But it isn’t that ridiculous moniker you gave me.”

  “She gave it to you,” Lucia said, pointing at me. “And she saved your life. So you might as well find some gratitude. The folks standing in the yard would have shot you without giving you a chance to piss them off as much as you’re pissing us off. You dodged that bullet, but you’re not making any friends around this table. We didn’t curse you and we didn’t steal your memory, and we might be the only people who will help you figure out what the hell happened. But I’m less and less inclined to aid you the more you talk.”

  She’d always been a great “bad cop” whenever we had to convince Olivia to do something neither Lucia nor I wanted to do.

  Frank leaned back in his chair, the rest of his burger forgotten, and looked from me to Lucia and back. “I hardly think I need your assistance.”

  “Great.” Lucia pointed toward the foyer and the front door. “Have a nice life. Good luck.”

  “Lucia,” Olivia started, frowning at our sister, and I sighed.

  I tossed my book on the table and stood to gather up the plates, but paused as Frank froze. My heart thumped as I followed his gaze to the thin, leather-bound tome resting dangerously close to the sweat ring from my soda can.

  “Where did you get that?” he whispered, gripping the table like he was about to fly apart.

  I didn’t want to move and shock him into leaping for the book, but I couldn’t grab it back up to protect it without dropping the plates. Olivia eased her chair back, since she was closest to the pantry, while Lucia kept her hands under the table. She’d always been good at magic on the fly. I just hoped she had enough time to come up with a hex before Frank stole the book and ran away with it.

  Then again, if he knew what the book was, chances were he had at least some witch magic of his own and enough knowledge to use it.

  “It belongs to my family,” I said calmly. “It’s just an old diary. Nothing of worth.”

  “You speak lies, witch,” he said. His voice shook as he stared at it, but he didn’t move to take it. “That book is mine. It was stolen from me, and…and…”

  His breath caught and he stared at the wall, unseeing, as his entire body shook.


  I held my breath as I placed the plates down and inched my fingers closer to the book. He made a strangled sound in his throat and a green glow flickered around his hands. “It’s my book of knowledge. Why do you have it? What has happened to me?”

  I traded looks with Lucia, and managed to get my hand on the book while Frank was still paralyzed by his memories. I didn’t know what the green glow meant but chances were it wouldn’t be good, based on Frank’s temper and other hints of how well he controlled his emotions. If it was anything like the green glow that had surrounded Lincoln, we were in for a world of trouble.

  He lurched forward but I had already moved, stumbling over my chair to get to the other side of the table. Olivia squeaked and flew into the pantry to get the shotgun.

  But Frank remained where he was, leaning on the table and breathing heavily, and when he looked at us, fear and pain radiated from his eyes. Not rage. Confusion and disbelief. I held my breath. He couldn’t have been the owner of the book. It was so old it would have fallen apart if not for the magic holding it together. And he didn’t talk as though it was a family heirloom he’d inherited. No, the way he called it his “book of knowledge,” and the way he looked at it, made me think he’d written every word in it.

  He collapsed into his chair and put his head in his hands, shoving away the can of soda we’d given him. “If we’re to discuss this, I will need a beverage much stronger than this... cordial.”

  Liv glanced at me and wrinkled her nose, mouthing “Cordial?” like it might have been a dirty word.

  I kept the book safely behind my back as I retreated across the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard above the stove. I hadn’t told either of my sisters that I kept it up there, since neither of them seemed particular to drinks stronger than beer, which explained the dirty look I got from Lucia. She seemed to disapprove of most of what I did, regardless of why I did it, so I could have told her she was the reason I needed whiskey in the first place if she bothered to ask.