by Nash, Layla
“You’re fighting a druid,” he said, taking my shoulders in his hands. He didn’t shake me, but only squeezed gently as he tried to convince me he was right. “You’ve never faced a druid before, Sass. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“But you do.” I rested my palm on his chest, right over his heart, and hoped he would listen to me instead of his boss. “You know how to contain him and destroy him, Lincoln. Please. Come with us and help deal with him. You said it yourself—Ronan is guilty of all manner of crimes, and he’ll be guilty of far worse if he gets there ahead of us. He could make more werewolves or call more dire wolves or…or he could bite Heathrow and his team and turn them into werewolves. There’s no telling. We can’t wait. Please.”
His fingers tightened on my shoulders and his lips compressed into a thin line, and he looked once more at Hazel where she lay on the couch. Lincoln’s head bent forward until his forehead rested against mine, and when he sighed, our breath mingled. “Sass, Heathrow was right. Whitehouse is not pleased with how things have gone out here. Heathrow reported you three as unaffiliated and unregistered witches, and Whitehouse rightly asked why that information was not in my initial reports. Heathrow also hinted at my judgment being compromised. Whitehouse is getting on a plane to come out here. I can’t be gone—especially with you—when he arrives, regardless of what Heathrow and Ronan might be up to.”
“We can’t wait.” I swallowed hard. “You can wait here for your boss and stay with Hazel until she feels better. You can head for the cave whenever you can.”
Lincoln gritted his teeth, turning away as he ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t want you facing him alone.”
“I’m not alone,” I said. I took a step back, trying to smile. “My sisters will be there, and so will Temperance and all the other Luckett women.”
“In spirit,” he said, exasperated. “That’s not the same as having shifters and a druid with you in reality.”
“Their ghosts are there, too.” I glanced up as Olivia hauled down a couple of backpacks from where Lucia packed everything up. “And you’re welcome to go with us now. But we can’t waste time. If you really want to help us—maybe go into town and keep Ronan from leaving. Keep Heathrow and his witch busy. Give us the time to find out what Temperance did and why Ronan deserved it, and we can probably figure out what he’s after.”
Lincoln nodded, though he didn’t look happy about it. “I can do that. I’ll take Hazel back to town so we can keep an eye on her, and I’ll keep Ronan there as long as I can. Once Whitehouse arrives, I’ll set him on Heathrow and slow the rest of them down as well. If you need help, call.”
He handed me a low-tech flip phone. “I’m in the speed dial number one. I’ll send you a message if Ronan leaves town.”
“Thanks.” I tried to smile as I headed to the hall to get my coat and a backpack. “Just don’t forget to slow him down. Hopefully it won’t take us long to protect the cave.”
Lucia and Olivia both waited in the foyer, expressionless, and I hesitated as I glanced into the kitchen. “What about the stew?”
Lucia made an irritated noise and moved toward the kitchen, though Lincoln waved her away. “I’ll deal with it. Go. I can find the cave through the ley lines. If I get lost, I’ll call. I don’t want you to set a beacon, otherwise Ronan might follow it to you faster.”
“I don’t know how to set a beacon,” I said. “So it’s a good thing you won’t need one.”
He smiled with only half his mouth and inclined his head to my sisters. “May the Mother guide your hands and protect your spirits. Do as you will to correct the balance.”
It felt too formal for us standing there in the foyer with our backpacks from high school and wearing ragged hand-me-downs. But Olivia pressed her palms together at her chest and bowed back, the collection of cartoon keychains on her backpack swinging as she did so. “The balance will be restored.”
Then she grinned and ruined the illusion, and hopped toward the porch so we could flash to the Crossroads. I took one last look at Lincoln, uneasy because I’d always believed you never looked back when you left a place, but I couldn’t help it. Just in case something terrible happened at the Crossroads, I wanted to carry that memory with me. I wanted to keep his face in my heart, so if I needed the memory later, it would be there. Then I sucked in a deep breath and followed my sisters into the yard, where a ley line coiled close to the surface and pulsed with all the energy we needed to flash back to the cave.
Chapter 56
Something wasn’t right in the ley lines. Even Lucia, who was far better at flashing than I was, noticed the difficulty in getting back out of the in-between place where we traveled to skip between real places. It felt like sticky tendrils of ley magic clinging to me, trying to keep me from leaving, until I actually feared I’d be stuck forever. It didn’t seem possible that Ronan could have already affected the magic in the Crossroads, not in the short time he’d been human again, but I didn’t want to discount it. Maybe he hadn’t spent all night reading the encyclopedias, like I’d recommended, and fucked around with the ley lines instead. There were enough of the medium-sized lines connecting under our house that he must have felt the power right there around him.
I fell to my knees in the dry grass, materializing a good four feet above the ground, and braced my hand on the freezing earth to catch my breath and reorient. We’d brought Ronan into our house and let him sleep under our roof. I must have missed some warning signs. There must have been something we didn’t see, something that should have told us to lock him up or send him out in the rain to die of exposure. Nona had tried to warn me, too, and I hadn’t listened. That terrible dream had caught me after we let Ronan into the house, and Nona protected me. She was the only reason Ronan hadn’t killed me in my sleep. Nausea gripped my stomach as I thought of all the awful things he’d done, and him lurking like a toad in our house, maybe planning how to humiliate and trap us just like his sister. Maybe planning how he’d go back to the Crossroads and finish destroying her legacy.
“Sass, you okay?” Liv stood nearby, pulling a headlamp from her backpack as the sun hit the horizon.
I groaned and pushed myself upright. “How the fuck are you always right where you should be after you flash? I’m always high. One of these days I’m going to drop twenty feet and break my damn legs.”
“At least you’re not a couple feet low,” she said cheerfully. “We didn’t bring any shovels to dig you out.”
“Always the optimist,” Lucia said under her breath. She glanced around to orient herself, then started off in the direction of the hidden caves.
At least they remained hidden. Ronan would have no doubt broken the concealment spells and left some kind of trail behind, or at least I hoped so. There was no telling what his druid magic could do, since I hadn’t seen a lot of what Lincoln did. Studying up on the most dangerous magic wielders and what their limits were would be the first project I tackled once we all lived through this particular little adventure.
I gripped the rifle after pulling on my headlamp, scanning the surroundings for any hint of eyes reflecting light back at us. The sun was still above the horizon but sinking fast, and I didn’t want to risk being taken surprise by the darkness. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to find the glitch in the ley lines that concealed the caves, and I stood next to my sisters as we looked at the blank expanse of prairie.
Olivia cleared her throat. “Do we really want to expose the cave? What if the glamour holds and Ronan can’t find it?”
“We’ll have to take that chance,” Lucia said. “Because what if he finds it anyway and we’re playing catch up?”
They both looked at me, expecting the tie-breaker. I sighed and adjusted my grip on the rifle. It wasn’t like we had a whole lot of time to debate. “Maybe we can get in and back out, and reconstruct the glamour before Ronan and Heathrow leave town.”
Neither of them looked convinced. I gestured at the glamour. “Fine. Let�
�s just take care of our business. Liv, take down the glamour.”
She sighed and handed Lucia her headlamp, then closed her eyes and lifted her hands. I kept an eye on the slowly-darkening prairie around us, searching for a hint of danger. It would be just our luck that Heathrow waited until we were distracted by the ley lines to strike.
Magic shifted behind me and Liv exhaled. “Okay.”
When I turned back, the cave stood there, foreboding but still welcoming. It felt more like home than our house had. Lucia glanced at me as she started toward the entrance and the steep stairs. “Anyone want to wait outside and warn us if there’s a druid approaching?”
I snorted and shook my head. “There’s not enough money in the world to make me stand out there alone. We’ll be safer inside, all three of us.”
“Except if it’s a trap,” Liv said under her breath. “But I’m not going to give either of you the chance to creep up on me and scare the shit out of me.”
“It has been a while since we did that,” I mused, trading a look with Lucia. Even with danger lingering all around and possibly racing through the night to confront us, it felt good to joke a little. “But not tonight, Liv.”
“Good. I don’t trust either of you bitches.” She put away her headlamp as she stepped onto the stairs and the magical lights in recesses in the stone ignited.
None of us spoke as we descended into the cave, listening to water dripping and a faint whisper of a breeze. We’d never been to the end of the cave, as more of it opened up when we needed it or thought we’d seen everything. Like the cave wanted to keep us humble.
“Where did you find the book?” Lucia asked in a hushed voice. She set her backpack down on one of the stairs, surveying the cave as she ran her fingers down the stone wall next to it.
“Here.” I led the way to the niche I’d squeezed through to find the book, but it was no longer wide enough to fit through. Not even petite Olivia could get more than her arm in there. I frowned and looked around, uneasy. There was no sign of werewolves, no sign of druid tampering, no sign that the ancestors were disturbed in any way.
Lucia pulled a few candles out of her bag and began to set them up in a circle, one at each of the cardinal directions. “It’s quiet. Doesn’t seem like there are any issues.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t like it. But maybe... maybe I made a mistake. Maybe Ronan isn’t going to do anything, and—”
“Do not speak that name here,” a harsh voice said, and I jumped a foot in the air and almost fired the rifle into the ceiling.
Lucia froze where she ignited the southern candle, the western one still unlit, and stared at the ghost of Temperance Luckett as she stood inside the circle.
Chapter 57
Her expression, already severe with her hair wrapped in a tight bun, grew even more pinched. “So you found him, then.”
I traded looks with my sisters, then nodded. “Yes. We turned him back to human after he attacked us as a werewolf.”
“It was you who removed my binding,” she said under her breath. “I tried to warn you, but like so many of my daughters, you did not heed my words.”
“You weren’t exactly clear,” I muttered. But when her attention sharpened on me, I flushed and cleared my throat. “Now can you tell us what happened? He might be on his way here. We’re trying to stop him, but he’s found some allies who might assist him.”
Temperance’s eyes darkened. “Of course he has. That’s why he’s been running around as a werewolf, biting people.”
Olivia took a breath and eased to sit on one of the broken stalagmites that made a convenient seat. “He’s been what?”
The ghost floated within the circle, though at a normal height so she really seemed like a living person, but her gaze went far away. “He thought he could control them after he bit them and turned them. He always thought that.”
“Can you tell us the whole story?” I glanced at the stairs, though I could hear nothing going on outside. The air felt too eerie and still, as if the whole Crossroads waited along with us.
“I can answer what questions you ask,” she said, and I thought I caught a spark in her eyes, as if a very simple creature had done something surprisingly clever. “Nothing more.”
“Great,” Lucia said. She lit the last two candles and retreated to her backpack to rummage for her spell book. Lucia looked at me and gestured for me to proceed, since it was my circus.
So I took a deep breath and hunkered down for the long haul. There was no telling what we needed to know or how to ask for it in the most efficient way possible. We didn’t have time to waste futzing around, but if we acted too hastily and failed to ask the questions we really needed to ask, then we’d be in just as much trouble. “Why did you leave England?”
“Because I was a powerful bandrui, and Ronan could not tolerate that our community valued my contribution more than his.” Her expression tightened once more and the lines around her mouth deepened, even in her ghostly form. She could have been real except for a shimmer around the edges and a faint blurriness when she moved. “I was known as a talented healer, and so everyone brought their wounded and ill to me in the hopes that I could save them. When it was discovered that Ronan studied those who had been cursed and attempted to recreate those curses, experimenting with the effects, he was banished.”
“So why did you leave?” Lucia folded her arms over her chest, unable to sit back and let me handle the questions. She could never stomach letting someone else take charge for more than a few seconds before her first-born instincts kicked in and she bulled her way to the front.
“Within our community, I was more powerful. In the rest of England... Well. A woman did not have many choices. He made it clear that he would put me in an asylum unless I went with him to the colonies.” Her eyes closed against the memory. “So I conceded.”
Liv leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and her hands under her chin, and watched the ghost closely. “What happened when you got to the U.S.?”
“It was not the United States at that time, but we arrived in Salem Town and made our home. I hoped Ronan would be able to focus on his talents, far from the distraction of our old acquaintances and the pressure of my reputation. It lasted only a short time.” Temperance turned away from us, facing instead the blank wall of the cave, and her voice lowered. The words pained her, clear in the way her shoulders slumped and the words dropped reluctantly from her lips. “I helped the women and children of Salem and the surround towns, even the natives, as I could with small healings and herb craft that did not require magic. They were simple things to do, really. I served as a midwife. The knowledge of the bandrui is about preserving life and balancing debts. This I sought in Salem.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked, even though we all knew. Even though we all imagined how awful it had been, yet had no real idea. I almost didn’t want to know.
“A child accused a woman of witchcraft,” she said quietly. “As I’m sure you’ve read. It was far worse than that, in truth. You could trust no one, rely on no one, as the accusations spread and panic followed. People you thought were friends or at least sympathetic were forced to confess to crimes they had not committed and implicate others, simply to save themselves. I tried to argue for reason, to discredit the children who made such wild claims, but there was nothing I could do to save the first victims. I tried. The Mother knows I tried. And then there were two true witches in the town who kept a few charms amongst their things, enough that others noticed the charms for what they were, and were caught. I could not see them hang. Even though Ronan demanded that I do nothing, that I let them hang, I could not. I saved them and was myself accused.”
Temperance faced us once more, all hints of grief gone and replaced with steel instead. “Ronan would have let me die on the stake or be hanged. He refused to speak for me. He condemned me instead and pretended he knew nothing. So I accused him, so that if I died, he would as well. I knew he could not talk his way around the wit
ch-hunters; his arrogance and ire would get the better of him and cause him to slip, incriminating himself in the process. I managed to escape, since those... humans did not know anything about real magic, and freed the other witches as well as the humans. Against my better judgment, I freed Ronan as well. I told him he was no longer my brother and I never wanted to see him again. Then I headed west, following the ley lines.”
“And they brought you here.” I held my breath as I tried to imagine the strength and courage it must have taken to flee certain death and hanging into the unknown wild of the western U.S. before it was actually the U.S. It must have been only trees and emptiness and Native Americans.
“Eventually,” she said. Her gaze unfocused and she shook her head. “There were many stops, hiding and avoiding Ronan as he chased me across the frontier. It was some time before I found this town. A hundred years, maybe more. Time was... different then. The magic and the ley lines changed things and affected how we moved in time.”
Olivia’s mouth hung open and she watched Temperance like a little kid mesmerized by story time. “You moved through time?”
“Not exactly.” Temperance’s expression softened a little, for the first time as close to a smile as I’d seen on her, and she glanced at my sister. “I hid in the ley magic for a time, so Ronan could not find me, and jumped back and forth in order to protect myself. I could not maintain it for as long as I wanted, so I would have to touch down in a town for a short time to resupply and rest and hope that Ronan had not found me again. I was better at manipulating the ley magic than he was, but he could still find me if I remained on the lines for too long.”
“Why did he chase you for so long?” Liv hardly blinked. “You left so it wasn’t like he was responsible for you or relying on you or anything.”
“I embarrassed him,” the ghost said. “And he cannot abide being embarrassed or humiliated, especially by a woman. He is so convinced of his superiority that any evidence to the contrary... he cannot tolerate it. He would not stop until he killed me, until he destroyed my legacy and my magic and everything about me. Until he wiped any hint of my existence off the earth so I could tell no one that Ronan had once been weaker than me.”