by Nash, Layla
I didn’t want to. I didn’t trust Hazel enough. Something in her eyes wanted the book too much for it to just be normal interest. My lungs wouldn’t inflate when I thought about her holding it, and I started to shake my head before I could think of a reason not to. The book also resisted, not wanting anyone else to touch it, and something else in the air made it clear none of this was a good idea. “I can’t.”
Olivia jumped over and tackled me, almost throwing me to the floor, and wrenched the book out of my back pocket. I hollered and scrambled to get it back, but we’d played keepaway too often as kids for that to work. She tossed the book to Lucia, who launched out of the couch and got to the other side of the room as Liv pinned me to the floor. Hazel and the team watched with raised eyebrows, as if they couldn’t believe we’d just gotten into a sisterly fight right there in front of them and didn’t know whether to intervene before the “neener-neeners” began.
I tried to throw Olivia off, but she’d gotten way too strong from churning fake butter for hours at a time. Maybe she’d been moonlighting in the blacksmith’s shop. “Lucia…don’t. I can’t explain it. You shouldn’t—”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Lucia muttered. She held the book up and flipped it back and forth, searching for some clue as to why I didn’t want to share it, then she tossed it to Hazel. “Take a look and figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do.”
Hazel caught the book and then frowned at it. Her mouth opened to say something just as Lincoln straightened from his lean and reached out. “Put it down. Put it—”
Hazel cried out and the book exploded. It disappeared in a cloud of ash and a shockwave of power ripped through the house. It knocked Hazel back into the wall and she dropped in a limp heap on the floor. The shifters staggered and fell to their knees, and I stared at what remained of the book—just a small pile of dust. Nothing more.
All of our answers, the only possible lead for how to reverse the curse or at least contain Ronan... gone.
Chapter 55
Olivia finally got off of me and let me up, though Lucia remained frozen as she stared at the dent Hazel left in the drywall. I wondered if Lincoln would offer to fix that, too.
Nelson went to her and lifted her off the floor; Hazel remained unconscious, limp and unmoving, as he put her on the couch. Lincoln knelt next to her and pressed his fingers to her wrist, checking for a pulse. I held my breath. I’d never dreamed it would hurt her like that.
“What the hell happened?” Lucia demanded. She looked at me for answers, as if I had any fucking clue.
I held my hands up. “I have no idea.”
“It was a druid’s book of knowledge,” Lincoln said quietly. “I hadn’t thought about it, since it was given to Sass by an ancestor. I thought it was just a grimoire, even if an old one. But it was linked to the Luckett blood and druid magic. I handled it without an issue, as did you and your sisters, but anyone else... I should have known.”
“Will she be okay?” Olivia climbed to her feet and edged toward the kitchen. “I’ll get some water. Do we need to call an ambulance?”
“She should be fine,” Mason said, though his face didn’t share his voice’s confidence. “Just…there was some magic stuff.”
“Magic stuff,” Lucia said under her breath. She rubbed her temples and went to crouch next to Lincoln so she could peer at Hazel. “Let me see. Maybe more magic stuff can help with the other magic stuff. If we’re going to get technical.”
Lincoln retreated a step, letting my sister hold her palms over Hazel’s still figure, and as Lucia muttered and hummed, I went to the pile of dust to see if there was anything useful left. Not a thing. Not a scrap, not a single solitary word. We had nothing. Olivia returned with a wet towel and a glass of water, handing them to Lincoln before she stood over me. “Sorry, Sass. I didn’t think it would…do that.”
“Yeah.” I sighed, sitting on my heels. “What the fuck do we do now?”
“Nelson and Mason will go back to town to keep an eye on Heathrow and that druid,” Lincoln said. “Radio if you see them move. We need to make sure they don’t make it to the Crossroads before we do.”
“Why would we go to the Crossroads?” I pushed myself upright, feeling like I’d aged a few decades in the past day, and flopped into the closest chair. “We’re no closer to knowing what’s going on than we were this morning, so all we would be doing is putting ourselves in harm’s way and in front of a bunch of werewolves.”
“Maybe the ghosts will tell you something else,” Olivia said. “Or Ronan will do something that shows us how to stop him. Or the werewolves will be there and we can finally kill them, if we’re prepared for it.”
Lincoln took a deep breath. “I still want to know what Heathrow is doing.” When he glanced at them, Mason and Nelson both got up and headed for the door, not looking back. Then Lincoln went to the fireplace and frowned at the grate as if considering how much effort it would take to start a fire. “Once Hazel is conscious, we’ll all take a deep breath and step through what we know. That’ll show us what we need to do next. And if it doesn’t... we go back to the cave and see if there’s anything else there that can help. I don’t want to wait here for more werewolves or dire wolves or Heathrow to show up and finish things off or destroy your house. The most important thing is to keep the initiative, to keep moving and stay on the offensive. We can’t just sit here and wait for something to happen.”
As much as I agreed with him, I didn’t want to charge off into danger. I just wanted someone else to handle it for a change. Even if the trouble was at least partly my doing. I wondered whether I should have killed Ronan-as-werewolf in the first place, instead of trying to help him. Maybe that hadn’t been a good deed after all, and all the shit we were dealing with as a result was the price-times-three of a bad act. But his death wouldn’t have helped us figure out how to stop the other werewolves, even though we weren’t very close to figuring that out even with him alive. At least I could have gotten a little vengeance for Temperance if I killed him. I could still rectify that, though. There was still time.
Hazel stirred and groaned, holding her head, and I exhaled in relief. Thank the Mother we hadn’t killed her. Even if I’d told her not to hold the book. I blamed my sisters for that one.
The witch blinked and mumbled, but didn’t try to sit, and she didn’t seem to be stringing any coherent thoughts together, which was probably a bad sign.
“Is she okay?” Olivia asked again, lingering near the hall to the kitchen. She’d always retreated in the face of danger, choosing “flight” over “fight” every single time. Even in hospitals and uncomfortable family meetings, she stayed near the exits—not that anyone really blamed her.
Lucia didn’t budge from the couch, her focus still on Hazel. “We’ll see. There’s no telling if that book was trapped with anything, or if the druid magic somehow managed to do something to her witch magic. I don’t know how any of that shit works, so until she wakes up enough to tell us what to look for, I don’t think we’ll be able to tell.”
I folded my arms over my chest as I watched Lincoln pace. “Well, Mr. Druid? Any idea of what that book might have done to her?”
“It shouldn’t have done permanent damage,” he said. The skin around his mouth tightened, as if he held off a frown, and concentrated on the cell phone that he held to his ear. “It will just take some time before she can shake off the stunning effects; I’ve seen it before. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out what the hell Whitehouse is thinking and buy us some time.”
“Great,” I muttered, and turned back to Hazel.
Olivia eased onto the end of the couch near Hazel’s feet, and watched Lucia work some of her healing skills on the half-conscious witch. My thoughts wandered as I struggled to comprehend what happened. And I felt the loss of the book as if it had been a part of me. As if Hazel chopped off my right hand and I was left to figure out how to go on without it. There was no telling what kind of vital inform
ation had been in the book and what we lost when it turned to dust. Even with as reprehensible as Ronan was, I could have learned something from his book of knowledge.
I pushed aside the faint twinge of grief at the wisdom lost, and instead focused on what we did know—or at least what we absolutely needed to know immediately.
How long would it take Ronan to convince Heathrow to go to the Crossroads—or vice versa, since Heathrow wanted to get to the ley lines—and then drive in that direction? No doubt they would take the SUVs, but it would take Ronan a while to get oriented. Or at least I hoped so, since the land around the Crossroads was hopefully different from the last time he’d been out there as a man. Maybe that would buy us some time.
Flashing to the Crossroads with Lucia and Olivia would be the only way to beat them, and that was assuming that Heathrow’s team couldn’t do the same thing. Maybe we could destroy or free the werewolves still left in the Crossroads. No doubt they would be drawn to the cave, like the first group, or maybe we could use whatever tricks Lincoln used to find the first group. Their bureau had some way to chase down werewolves, otherwise they’d never have ended up in Rattler’s Run. I hadn’t seen their little tracking doodads since they’d reached town, so those had just been decoys to trick me and there was some other way of locating the werewolves that they hadn’t told me about.
At least if Heathrow kept an eye on Ronan, the druid couldn’t make any more werewolves without the other team knowing about it. It might have bought us some time, having Heathrow babysit Ronan. I tried to convince myself as Lincoln argued with his boss on the phone. Neither of them sounded happy. At least we could count on Heathrow not wanting another pack of werewolves running around, so if Ronan got out of hand, maybe Heathrow would take care of the problem for us.
As long as Ronan didn’t try to curse Heathrow into being a werewolf. Or the whole team. That would be worse. That would be the worst. A whole supernatural team of sentient werewolves at the direction of a bat-shit crazy druid. Why not. That would be the cherry on the top of my sundae.
I drifted to the window to look out at the muddy yard; at least the rain had slowed and mostly stopped, with only the occasional sprinkle disturbing the puddles. There was no telling how Aunt Bess stumbled into this mess: whether she’d known about Temperance Luckett and her brother and the werewolf curse, or if Bess only wanted to deal with the dire wolves. Everything got worse after Bess died, so maybe her death had something to do with what freed Ronan and the werewolves from whatever bound them to the ley lines. Maybe if she’d tried to free us from the Crossroads, she’d instead freed Ronan from whatever kept him at the Crossroads. And then I’d come along to take one of the curses off him and turned him human so he could go back to causing trouble for everyone.
The thought made me pause. My heart jumped to my throat and I struggled to hold onto the idea before it slipped through my fingers and disappeared. Ronan hadn’t been able to do any magic as a werewolf, and he hadn’t been able to remove the curse I’d taken off him—some version of the werewolf curse. What if someone cursed him into being a werewolf to prevent him from working magic? What if being a werewolf was the lesser of evils when it came to our ancestor? What if the rest of the Lucketts were kept here as a way of controlling the werewolf population, since we alone could go into the Crossroad to cull the dire wolves and werewolves?
I turned to face the room, my hands shaking, and I wobbled toward to where both of my sisters waited. “What if…what if someone cursed Ronan to keep him from doing magic?”
Lucia sat back on her heels, frowning. “A werewolf was better?”
“Actually, maybe yeah,” Olivia said. Her head tilted as she watched me, but I could see her mind working in the way her forehead wrinkled. “He’s a total dick. Just imagine how much worse it would have been to be stuck with him when he first showed up in Rattler’s Run, when he could have overpowered Temperance with the law and done all kinds of awful things to her. What if she cursed him to get him out of the way, after he bound her here?”
It made sense. It made perfect sense. The siblings came into conflict, Ronan cursed Temperance and kept her in Rattler’s Run, and she cursed him into being a werewolf to prevent him from doing anything else to her. I nodded and started to pace, running my hands through my hair as I picked apart the story.
“Exactly. There must have been something to set it off, since we know that Ronan had been working on the werewolf curse. He knew about it and wanted the book back, so maybe he worked it on someone they both knew. I don’t know. Maybe we can…we could ask her, if we get to the cave. Regardless of what it was, maybe Temperance confronted him, probably tried to stop him, and he bound her to the town and the cave. Then she cursed him as a werewolf and that was it.”
“Why wouldn’t he have bitten her, too?” Lucia dragged herself up and sat on the chair next to the couch. “He could have bitten her and turned her into one of the werewolves with no memory or knowledge, and that would have been a better revenge. Instead he just let her go?”
“She was a powerful witch. Or lady druid or whatever they call it,” I said. I rubbed my temples. “Maybe she warded herself to guard against that? What if he tried to bite her but she was immune? Is that possible?”
“From what I saw of the curse, the only way someone is immune is if they’re already a werewolf.” Lucia shook her head. “So unless there’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about Temperance Luckett, I don’t think that’s it.”
Olivia ignored Lincoln as he continued to pace near the fire, his voice rising and falling as he argued with his supervisor. “Then it sounds like we need to talk to Gran Temperance and figure out what the fuck she did to stop him, so we don’t end up bitten or up to our ears in more werewolves.”
“She can’t tell us,” I said. “The ghost that was in my dreams couldn’t tell me exactly what was wrong. Maybe that’s how he bound her—she can’t reveal his crimes to anyone, or tell us how to get rid of him.”
Liv shook her head. “But she managed to talk around it in your dream, right? She gave you enough clues that you could start to figure it out. We could go back, all three of us, and between us we could get what we needed.”
“And hope Ronan doesn’t get there first,” Lucia said. Her gaze met mine and didn’t stray. “Since there’s no telling what Ronan would want to do to the cave if it meant destroying the rest of his sister’s legacy. We have a chance to protect Temperance, at least in part, and I think it’s about time someone did.”
“Yeah.” I nodded and held my breath as I tried to think up a list of all the things we would need before we flashed to the Crossroads. There was no telling what kind of spells we would want, but we’d have to wing it. Curses, probably, and different kinds of wards. Some of the protective charms Ma left. Lots of salt, some sage, maybe all the dried herbs we’d harvested from the garden that year.
Lincoln frowned as he went to check on Hazel again. “What’s this now?”
“We’re going to the cave,” I said. I wished Hazel would wake up and bounce to her feet so we could have her on our side. She’d faced off with other witches, and at least knew what Heathrow’s witch Newton was capable of. But she still looked dazed and disoriented. Dragging her through the ley lines wouldn’t help even a little. “We think Temperance cursed Ronan to keep him from working more magic. He must be headed back there to disturb her rest or maybe even to finish whatever he started. There’s so much magic there, and the ley lines all pass through that point... he could destroy the town for sure, maybe half the state.”
He glanced at his watch, then at Hazel. “There’s still time to plan. There’s no use rushing out there without preparing. Mason and Nelson will call when they see Heathrow and his team move.”
“Can they flash there like we can?” Lucia asked. “Or are you assuming they’re going to drive?”
Lincoln rubbed his jaw. “The witch might be able to take a few people, but not the whole team.”
“Ronan could,�
� I said. Most of me felt cold at the thought. “Ronan knows how to use the ley lines. He could get himself there without waiting for Heathrow or the others. What if he’s there now? What if he’s already there?”
“Heathrow wouldn’t let him—”
“Could Heathrow really stop him?” I felt everything slipping out of my control, desperation building until my skin felt too tight and my chest ached. “Could a sorcerer and a witch and a couple of shifters prevent a druid from grabbing a ley line and getting out of there?”
Lincoln thought about it. I had to give him credit. He took a deep breath, frowning at the ceiling, then heaved a sigh. “It’s possible. I would think Heathrow had a plan when he invited Ronan to go with him, but I doubt very much that Heathrow knows what Ronan is capable of. And since Hugh isn’t a druid, he won’t be able to tell right away where Ronan’s strength lies.”
“So we have to go, and quickly.” Lucia got up and headed for the stairs. “I’ll pack as much as we can carry. Do you want to recall the shifters so we can take them with us to the cave?”
Lincoln hesitated, glancing down at Hazel, then back at me. “We need a plan. You can’t charge in there without knowing what to expect.”
“I know what to expect,” I said. I nodded and Lucia went up to the workroom and started rummaging. Olivia started hunting for coats and scarves and the first aid kit we kept in the hall closet. I faced Lincoln, wishing he would trust me but wondering if I could trust him. “Ronan will probably try to kill us, or at least curse us. We might turn into werewolves, or we might be bitten by werewolves, or he might desecrate the family tombs. He could hurt Temperance yet again and destroy her legacy and violate her resting place. I can’t sit back and just let that happen. Our family is stuck here because of him. There’s no telling what else he can do to us, to our children, if he’s allowed to run rampant through the Crossroads. We have to deal with him as soon as possible.”