by A. L. Tyler
“Campus?” Kendra paused. “Aren’t you…how old are you?”
“Almost nineteen!”
More static and white noise on the line. “It’s been longer than I thought.”
We all waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“When are you coming?” Lyssa asked, as though we were trying to plan to have her for a vacation week.
“I’m not.”
“What?”
“I’m not coming,” she repeated. “I just…can’t. You understand.”
“No, I don’t—”
“It’s complicated, Lyssa, but I can’t be there. You’ve got to figure it out for yourselves. I’ve got to go…”
“No!” Lyssa grabbed the phone, nearly choking it with her hands. “No, Kendra, do not hang up! I need help—”
“—and I want an answer!” Charlie finished for her.
I could hear Kendra breathing into the phone on the other end of the line. She only said one word. “Stark.”
And then she hung up.
~~~~~~~~~
Lyssa sat there, staring at the phone, for a long time. Her complexion had turned to ash, and she partially hid beneath her reddish-blond curls. None of us knew what to say. Long into the dark of the night, we sat up together, starting quiet conversations about what we were going to do. They never went anywhere, and they all inevitably died back into foreboding silence. Lyssa stayed quiet nearly the entire time, only giving short, clipped responses when I forced her to.
Just before midnight, she stood up from the couch, looked at each of us, and made an announcement. “I’m going to stay a week until the charms are complete. I can do that much. But I’m not going to talk anymore. Not about anything related to…anything. That’s just how it has to be.”
“Oh, for the love…” Gates glared at her. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”
Kendra had said we had to figure it out for ourselves, and Gates and I had spent the better part of our islands of conversation debating what she had meant. By the way Lyssa only turned and left the room, it appeared that she had, in fact, figured it out.
And she wasn’t going to share her revelation.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“That’s really not helping much, either,” Gates turned and snapped at Charlie.
“She said Stark was the reason.”
“You asked for a reason, and she said ‘Stark,’” I replied. “It’s not the same thing.”
“If I am cursed, then killing Stark would release the curse,” he said. “It made sense to me.”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem,” I said. “You’re already guessing that whatever it is, you’re not allowed to know about it. So why would she give you a clue that only you would understand?”
Charlie looked to Gates, but she only nodded and shrugged. If Kendra was trying to keep him alive, she wouldn’t have given him anything that would have jeopardized that.
“I could kill him anyway,” Charlie offered.
I sighed and rolled my eyes as I looked over. He was lounging on the coffee table that I had rescued from the side of the road along with two matching end tables. They were all from the 1970s, but they got the job done. Charlie stared at the door like his eyes could punch a hole in it, with one leg hanging off the table. I once again remarked how much better the cat skin seemed to fit him.
“Is there any chance that if you run out and kill Stark, he somehow has a dead man’s trigger built into this curse and you die, too?”
Charlie didn’t answer immediately. He gave an irritated twitch of his ear.
“It’s possible.”
“Then let’s not jump to anything rash,” I said.
Gates shifted uncomfortably. “Annie, we’re trapped in an apartment by a psycho using magic to try and kill us. If now isn’t the time for rash decisions, then I don’t know when—”
“No one is dying to kill Stark,” I said flatly.
Gates narrowed her eyes. “I don’t understand why you care all of a sudden. Even two weeks ago you would have been thrilled to be rid of Charlie, even if it meant him dying.”
I looked her in the eye. “No one is dying to kill Stark.” I nodded at Charlie. “He’s a cat right now by choice, and that has to tell you that he’s at least not a complete ass.”
“Yeah, that or he wants something,” Gates shot back.
“Kendra screwed him over. In a big way.” I raised a hand to rub at my eyes. If Lyssa wasn’t going to help us, we were never going to figure it out. I didn’t even have the training to make an educated guess. “Given how this whole mess started, I think I can give him a pass on wanting revenge.”
“Technically, she screwed me, and then she screwed me over,” Charlie said dryly. He gave another flick of his ear. “In a big way.”
“Thanks, Charlie, too much information…”
I got up and went to the kitchen. Putting the kettle on the stove, I shook my head as I quietly wished that Charlie was still human so that he could brew my tea for me. But, sadly, he only had those extended abilities when he wasn’t bound, and it made me guilty for even thinking of him being human if Gates would have to take the cat skin again.
I had just pulled a mug from the cupboard, and I dropped it into the sink as my heart gave a leap. The ceramic broke to pieces when it hit the metal bottom, sending pieces scattering.
Charlie couldn’t do much as a cat. And he couldn’t do any of it without strict permission.
“Annie?” Gates was standing at the kitchen entrance, looking concerned.
I looked up at her, still so happy to see her face. There were times I had thought that I would never see her again. Then I looked at Charlie.
“A demon can have two bridges, right?” I asked anxiously. “Can a witch have two demons?”
“If a witch were up to the task,” he said, seeming to imply that I wasn’t. “Sharing a bridge is like being forced to share a toothbrush. I wouldn’t expect either demon to be particularly happy about it.”
I ran out from the kitchen, kneeling down before him, and he withdrew back into his own space a little.
“But it can be done,” I said. “I can summon another, and then bind him into a familiar. Like a cat. A cat that sits there and sulks all day because he hasn’t got permission to do anything.”
Charlie’s ears perked up as he stared at me. “Oh, that’s a very dangerous proposition, Thorn.”
“Could I command him to remove his curse on you? Any curse, even if I don’t know what it is specifically?”
He turned his head a little to the side. “Theoretically. I would feel better about the plan if we knew the specifics.”
“I’m going to summon him—”
“NO—!”
The shout came from next to me and behind me as both Lyssa and Gates came running toward me. Lyssa clapped a hand over my mouth, and then patted me gently on the shoulder. Once again, she had gone white, with all of the blood drained from her face.
“Let me teach you demon binding first,” she said shakily.
“Why teach her at all?” Charlie asked, gazing up at Lyssa. “You know what you need. Have you done a binding before?”
Lyssa shook her head, and her frown deepened.
“Well…” Charlie stood up and paced back and forth. “You still stand a better chance than she does. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it.”
She opened her mouth, worry clouding her eyes. “I don’t think—”
“Kendra isn’t going to help us,” Charlie said. “She told you so. We’re on our own, unless you have a specialist on speed dial.”
“Right.” Lyssa looked at her shoes in defeat. “Blue candles, one black. All new. Morning glory vines, goat’s milk, an old knife…”
She continued to rattle off the instruments and ingredients like she did this every day, and I began to wonder how often she had been using magic in her daily life. She was so comfortable asking for things; it seemed that she knew a lot about how various co
mponents were used, and I could see where the temptation would be strong.
Gates sat down this time before Charlie threw the cat skin back on her, and I sat down to breathe and wait. Lyssa stayed standing, and then started pacing, and I realized she was repeating the spell and procedure to herself. Gates gave me an anxious look.
“Wait—” I said, standing up and stopping her. “You know what you’re doing, right?”
“Geez…Annie!” Lyssa gently pushed my hands away. “You’re good at math or whatever, right? If I told you you had to solve one particularly hard problem or I’d put a gun to your head and kill you, don’t you think you’d be a little nervous and review, just to be sure? Even if you’d done it a hundred times before?”
I stared at her. “I suck at math.”
She took a deep breath. “And technically, I’ve never summoned a demon, let alone bound one.”
Gates looked from me to Lyssa, and then back again. “Sounds like this will be an educational night for everyone, then.”
I blinked. “I don’t think we should do this.”
“You don’t have any choice,” Charlie was back, this time with a large burlap sack that had arrived at the greenhouse full of fall bulbs. He set it down and looked at Lyssa.
“We have every choice,” I said. “We could wait until Lyssa finishes the charms to protect us outside the apartment, and then find someone who’ll…”
Lyssa was already smiling sardonically and shaking her head.
“What?”
“No one is going to help us with this,” she said. “No one, Annie. When you mess with demons, you’re on your own. It’s kind of an unspoken rule about parts of the craft you dabble in at your own risk. No one is sticking out their neck for us on this one.”
She set up her summoning circle and began making preparations. She even went so far as to shower and fast, drinking only tea over the next twenty-four hours. I wished the prep time hadn’t taken so long, because as things stood, I was already so nervous that I thought I was getting an ulcer.
Even so, the time it took Lyssa to get ready gave me time to talk to Gates about things that weren’t magical in any way, and she was already planning to see if the high school would let her finish up her classes and receive her diploma in the fall. She was a good student, so I didn’t see why not, and if she had a good enough reason for disappearing, it was likely she might be able to start college in spring semester, too.
Charlie was an unexpected help after his previous idea, and helped her to come up with a plot where she had pushed a toddler out of the way of a speeding taxi, ending up in a coma, and then with amnesia in an East European hospital for some time. He promised that he could get her convincing medical records and newspaper articles, and even alter a few memories in case anyone decided to call and ask about her.
Gates smiled and shook her head. “My mom is going to kill me…”
I felt the tears well up in my eyes, and I reached over to hug her. “Yeah. I know.”
As the hours grew darker, the time for the summoning approached.
Just as dusk passed, Lyssa sat down to do her spell. Charlie stood by, and Lyssa made him promise three times over that if things went badly, he would take me and Gates somewhere safe before he came back to help her. I held Gates in my arms for the first time since she had been a cat as we stood next to the little kitchen table and watched.
And waited. And watched some more.
And…nothing happened.
After how easy it had been to call Charlie, I was beginning to think that Lyssa didn’t know what she was doing, but after her third attempt, she shook her head in dismay and looked to Charlie.
“You’re doing it right,” he said distantly. His eyes wandered. “He already has a bridge. It’s the only answer. Someone has him under protection so he can’t be called away.”
“Okay,” Lyssa said, standing up and extinguishing her candles. “What do we do about that?”
Charlie considered for a moment. “You kill the bridge.”
Lyssa glared up at him.
“I’m sorry!” He didn’t look sorry. “Whoever has him, they’re allowing him to do these things. They’re just as guilty. Unless you think you’re going to find the bridge behind Stark’s back and talk about your feelings to make him change his evil ways.”
Lyssa rolled her eyes and made a face. “Let’s start with the bridge, okay? How do we find him?”
“I have no idea.” Charlie threw out his hands. “That’s all you. Demons hide their bridges from other demons, so if you’re going to find him—or her, because I find your assumption that women can’t be evil sexist—you’re on your own.”
Lyssa grumbled to herself as she went to the stack of Kendra’s old diaries. She had taken an interest in them during her forced stay, because Kendra had never let her look at some of them before. Apparently she had known about how Kendra had hidden them around the greenhouse, but she had never been allowed to look in them, and force of habit had led her to leave them alone until the fateful day they had fallen into my hands. Now, she just considered them an asset.
Mumbling something about how there had to be a way to track someone by their demon, I breathed a sigh of relief and set Gates back on the floor. We were safe. For now, at least.
Just as Gates walked off into the bedroom, there came a knock at my door that made Lyssa go quiet and snap the journal in her hand shut. I was closest, so I went to the door, peering out the peep hole as I kept my hand on the knob.
I immediately opened the door.
“Vince!” I said, looking him up and down as he clutched at his bloody arm. “What happened?!”
“Annie—”
Charlie was at my side, and he put a hand out to stop Vince from entering. “No, no—he’s not coming in here.”
“What are you talking about?” I turned on him. “He’s hurt. He’s bleeding! We have to help him—”
“Annie, he’s been bitten by his roommate,” Charlie said calmly. “He’s a werewolf. If we let him in, he’s likely to kill us all when the full moon hits. Stark is trying to prevent Lyssa from completing those charms.”
Vince groaned, holding himself up against the door frame. His eyes were bloodshot and ill. “He said if I don’t come in, and stay in, he’s going to kill me… Annie, please!”
I looked at Lyssa, whose wide, scared eyes told me that Charlie wasn’t exaggerating. Then I looked at Charlie.
He gave a slight tilt of his head. “Well, at least we know who Stark’s new bridge is. Does anyone have any qualms about killing Walter the werewolf roommate now?”
Preview
Preview for Hawthorn Witches Novella #3: Werewolves & Wisteria
Coming December 2015
Pre-order now available
Chapter 1
When I was eight, I nearly died choking on a strand of spaghetti. I was sitting in a restaurant filled with my friends and family, and they laughed at me. They thought I was miming the whole time. It wasn't until I was on the floor turning blue that my mother finally picked me up and smacked me on the back.
My retainer came flying out of my mouth. With it came the strands of spaghetti that had wrapped around it and created the blockage in my throat.
It was only a minute of my life. An insignificant one at that, because nothing ever came of it and we never talked about it again. There's something about being helpless in a crowd of people that stays with you, though.
And as I stood there, staring into Vince's desperate eyes as he bled all over my doorstep, I had that same feeling.
“We can’t just leave him out there!” I protested, grabbing the front of Vince’s shirt to pull him in.
Charlie’s hand was on my arm, stopping me. “Thorn, I said—”
“No one is dying to kill Stark!” I shouted. “That’s what I said!”
Lyssa was behind us, but she didn’t seem to know what to do. “Can you take him somewhere else?”
Charlie glanced back at her. “St
ark will be watching. It’s unlikely I hide him well enough that he survives.”
“What about the Other Side?”
“Dream state,” Charlie said. “If I put him there, we’d better hope he doesn’t wolf out on us and lose his lucidity, or else his werewolfism will be cured by demonism. And I know how much you love demons, Lyssa.”
Gates made a frustrated noise, and I looked down. She was right by my feet.
“We can always kick him out later,” she said quickly. “Just get him in here and close the damn door before they try to throw something else through it!”
Charlie looked back at Vince with determination and a new clarity in his eyes. He grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him in, and the door slammed shut.
A moment later, Vince looked even paler beneath the bathroom lights as he hung his damaged arm into the tub. I panicked.
“Can’t you make him stop bleeding?!” I turned frantically to Charlie.
With a sharp glare, I fell silent.
“It would take more than you’re willing to give,” he said bitterly. A strange bundle of plant leaves had appeared in his hand, and he offered them to Vince. “That’s not a normal wound. Keep that on it, and the pain should stop soon.”
Vince grunted in effort as he took the leaves. “How soon?”
“Sooner than it would have.” Charlie turned to go back into the living room, and he closed the bathroom door behind him as he went.
Vince winced as he put the leaves on his mangled arm, and I closed my eyes as I automatically raised a hand to the scar Stark had left on my side. There were scars and wounds that even magic couldn’t fix, and this was likely one of them.
“Annie.”
I opened my eyes again, staring into Vince’s eerily calm, gray stare.
“They’re going to kill me,” he said. “I’m going to turn into a werewolf. That’s what they’re talking about right now.”
I didn’t know if he was in shock, or wanted sympathy, or a denial, or help—I was choking in a crowd full of people. We were all choking, and no one could help us.