Journaling about the highlights of the morning will help clear my mind, I decide.
The sunrise with Jared, eating cinnamon rolls, and drinking orange juice for breakfast. Seeing the bear. Nathaniel appearing by my side as the fuchsia highlighted clouds faded to somber gray. What started out as predawn dismal turned into one of the best memories I have with Jared. But Nathaniel’s predicament cast a shadow on the morning, and now I’m carrying that around with me, too. Then there’s Star’s unexpected gift. How am I going to be able to stay mad at her?
Horse hooves pounding.
The last song sounding.
The sky is gray and falling.
A parched earth rebelling.
Why is heaven calling?
Your name is my song.
Your face is far gone.
My memories are fading.
I know you dance in the stars.
Far away from my heart.
Let me hold you tight.
Long into the night.
And let go of any fear of the light.
Burning. The smell of smoke is unmistakable. Something’s on fire! I slam the notebook closed. The rush of adrenaline is like a shot straight up my spine. I throw open my bedroom door and cough. I cover my nose and mouth to help filter the smoke-filled air.
“Jared!” I yell as I burst into his bedroom.
The room is empty. I back out into the hall and run for the stairs. Oh, God, where is my mom? And Ariel? Please, please, please, let my cat be outside. I call for my brother again as I run to the kitchen. The smoke is so strong I can hardly breathe. I have to get outside. Where is everybody? Why aren’t the smoke detectors going off? I spin around and look at the stairs. Mom isn’t home, is she?
I crouch closer to the floor. Isn’t smoke supposed to rise? The air is only mildly clearer. Grateful for any relief, I suck in a burning breath and hack it back out. The smoke is suffocating me. The front door is only a few feet away. I run across the living room and throw the door open. Bursting past the screen door, I launch myself into the desert. Thigh high sagebrush greets me and I swerve around a large bush before tumbling over it. My lungs rebel against the smoke and I can’t stop coughing.
I’m fully aware that I’m not standing in my front yard. A disturbance in the distance attracts my attention and I peer at the horizon. An old white truck crests the top of a slope and eases along the trail. The pickup’s towing a long silver stock trailer. The truck looks familiar, but it’s far away and my memory isn’t cooperating. As I try to narrow my gaze into some kind of clarity, the smoke billows in front of me and blocks my view. Then I hear the horses. The scream of frightened animals, neighing and snorting, hooves beating the hard earth. The sound seems to echo and eddy through the waves of smoke. The cloud of smoke shimmers around my body, mesmerizing and hypnotizing me into a stupor. I want to run away. I want to flag down the pickup truck and beg for a ride out of here before I suffocate, but I can’t seem to gather my senses and react.
The sound of the horses grows louder, the smoke thicker. The truck is completely lost from sight. I spin around, seeking escape. My house is gone. My sanity is gone. And then to confirm it, the ghost of a man with a painted face appears out of the screen of smoke. He speeds past me, nearly running me over. I scream and cover my head with my arms for protection.
A black horse gallops out of the smoke. Its wild eyes are trained on the ghost as if it were on a mission to destroy him. The horse doesn’t see me and I’m bowled over. He tramples across my body with hooves like anchored knives. The faulty assumption to protect my head seems laughable now as my insides collapse and rupture.
The horse and ghost disappear as I lie on the ground and contemplate how I ended up alone with only a pinon tree and some sagebrush for company. A shadow passes over my dying body. I blink through the haze of smoke and tears. The raptor keeps its distance, high over my head it circles, inspecting me as carrion. I don’t blame it. We all need to eat, don’t we? Wouldn’t it be the perfect end for me? To be scavenged by vultures and magpies. The flying predator circles in lower and lower. The smell of my crumbled body must be too tempting for it to wait until I am totally dead. It alights and finds balance on the very tip of the tree and stares at me. It’s not a turkey vulture like I assumed, but a red-tailed hawk. Its banded wings, cream-colored chest, and rust tail feathers are unmistakable. It draws me into its gaze and I feel myself falling away from the ground, like gravity is suddenly optional. The color of its eyes are not like a raptor’s. They’re too dark. Not the gold color they should be.
“I will show you the way. Watch for me,” the hawk says.
Hearing its voice pops my illusion of floating weightless and I fall back to the solid ground.
The smoke continues to assault my nostrils and throat as I drink in my last breaths. My eyelids flicker and I try to get a good look at the sky through the smoke. I want to see the hawk and its penetrating eyes once more, but it’s suddenly an inky night sky. I don’t have enough energy to question that the entire day has passed in mere seconds.
A flash of light pierces the smoke. Two beams like headlights bounce across the desert landscape. I hear the engine roar up next to me. There’s a creak of metal as the door swings open. He climbs out of the big white truck. Our gazes meet. Recognition is instant. The hawk sits on the driver’s shoulder. They stare at me with conviction of what needs to be done and soon.
“Jules?”
The voice is feminine, but not my own or Mom’s.
“Jared, is she all right?”
I’m standing in the driveway in front of my house. The grill of the rental van stares at me as if it wants to ask me a question like, Where should we go? The real question comes from my brother instead.
“Pretty impressive, right? Lance is paying for it. He doesn’t want one of our crappy cars to break down during the tour.”
I blink and blink again. I raise my shirt to stare at my stomach.
“Thinking of getting your bellybutton pierced?” Jared asks as he walks behind me to the driver’s side door of the van.
I lower my shirt and hug my middle. “No,” I murmur. Tears slide over my cheeks.
How long have I been standing out here? How did I get outside? The unknown is scarier than the vision. What if I had walked into the street? Or jumped out the window?
“I won’t be on tour that long, Jules. And I thought you were coming to all the shows with us. You can squeeze into the van if you don’t want to drive,” Jared says as he pulls the door open.
“I think your sister is upset about something else, not you being away on tour,” Star says.
She takes a hesitant step my way and stops. As much as I could use a steadying hand, I’m glad she doesn’t touch me. Star may have brought impressive magical gifts, but she’s still on my “can’t be trusted” list. I stare at her midnight blue hair and it reminds me of the night sky in my vision. Other images crash through my mind. The black horse with white socks and its eyes rolling with madness. Horses panicking in the background, smoke from an unseen fire, a red-tailed hawk giving me cryptic messages, and the white truck. Yes. I have seen the truck before. I’ve even ridden in it.
“Yeah,” I say, testing my voice. “It’s something else,” I confirm, and wipe my hand over my face.
I glance over at Star, but my fragile state-of-mind makes eye contact with her an impossible feat. I stare at her shoes. “I need a favor,” I say.
My insides flip and churn with the realization of what I’m about to do. But this has to be done on my own. First, there was the vision from the other day before meeting up with Chris, then this morning, and now a third one. If I don’t act now, I may walk out into the street or the actual desert next time. Then I might be lying on the ground dying in reality and not just inside my head.
“I’m going to take this whale out on a test drive and drop Star off at her aunt’s ranch,” Jared says.
Jared’s ready to leave. The van keys jingle from one hand as h
e watches me expectantly.
“I’d like to ride with you. Can you wait a few minutes while I can grab my things?”
Chapter Twelve: Past Payments
Juliana
“You finally moving out?” Jared asks.
I hug the bulging duffle bag in my arms and shrug. The straps of my overloaded backpack dig into my shoulders. “No. And no plans to until after college. Something unexpected came up. Better to be prepared, right?” I unload my bags onto a bench seat inside the van and take a seat.
“Is the zombie apocalypse finally starting?” Jared asks as he backs the van out of the driveway.
“I don’t own one zombie killing weapon. Try again,” I say.
My mind knows what I have to do, but my feelings about the situation are in complete opposition. Talking about my mission with Jared is only going to deter me. If I can stave off his twenty questions, it will make this easier. Not that any part of this is easy.
“When did you start keeping secrets?” he asks. His inquisitive eyes watch me in the rearview mirror.
“It’s not a secret,” I say. “I need to borrow a truck from Vivian’s ranch.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Star says. “But I can’t loan it to you without asking my aunt. I’m sort of in a similar quandary as Jared these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jared told me he’s trying to stay clean for good this time, but he also has to earn your trust back. I’m trying to earn back my family’s trust, as well as yours.”
“Oh,” I say lamely, and lean against the back of the seat.
Great. They’re both trying to prove they can be trusted again. When did everyone start caring so much about what I thought? I push the realizations aside. I don’t need more responsibilities right now. First things first, I have to do something about these visions. I massage my forehead to help ease the building pressure, but no relief is to be found. When I close my eyes, all I see are stampeding horses and wildfire.
∞
Vivian Costa is an elderly witch who lives alone in a lodge surrounded by hundreds of acres of pristine forest. She’s not at all what I imagined. I met her the night of the moon festival and coven meeting, but it was a brief hello and no personal interaction. In the daylight, I see her with new clarity. Her aura, facial expressions, and the sickness in her body are visible, but she’s more vibrant than I expected.
She takes my hand in both of hers. “Hello again, Juliana. And Jared.”
She glances at my brother for only a second. Her green eyes turn back on me and are so similar in color to my own that it catches me a little off guard. Nathaniel mentioned this anomaly, but I didn’t realize how accurate he was. Other than the eyes, Vivi doesn’t resemble me at all. Her hair is shoulder length, thick, and straight. It curves neatly under her chin and the color is a fantastic old lady color. Silver with a black streak. She has a wonderful classic look to her. Sweeping curves and natural grace. Star has some of the same features, I notice. Nathaniel told me about her cancer, and it makes me happy that she appears healthier now than the last time I saw her. Her smile isn’t overly generous, but the speculative and appraising gaze is sincere, and that’s good enough for me.
“May we cross the bridge?” I ask.
“I suppose it would be a good idea,” she says. “Things around here were churned up quite a lot after Lammas.” Her gaze shifts to the side of my neck for a brief second. “I’ve been working my patootie off redesigning the protection border around the ranch house. Anyone who was allowed on my property prior has to have a new pass. Some of the coven members aren’t too pleased with Star, and I want my niece to have a safe place.”
“Thanks, Auntie Viv,” Star says.
“I felt the difference immediately,” I say as we stroll across the wooden footbridge. “The sound would be enough to keep anyone away, but the feel of an invisible waterfall is cool and kind of eerie.”
She must like my version of her magical protection. She smiles again and this time it is more than a tight-lipped curve at the edges of her mouth.
I lean a little closer to her and say in a low voice, “Can the big angel back there stay outside the boundary line?” Looking over my shoulder for Marcus, I find him sitting crossed legged on the roof of the van.
“He’s not welcome here and he knows it,” Vivi says as she leads us to the front door. “Will you come inside for tea? Star, did you want to show your friends what you’ve been working on?”
“Maybe later,” Star says.
We gather around the dining table with mugs of herbal tea.
“Nathaniel’s spoken so highly of you, dear. You live up to everything he’s said,” Vivi says.
I try not to cringe or blush. Both are probably happening in spite of myself. I take a drink to hide my face behind the mug.
“She’s the greatest,” Jared adds. “She sees ghosts and fairies and all the woo-woo fru-fru stuff. My sister is a gem.”
I reach over and pinch Jared’s leg. His bold grin confirms he’s trying to make my cheeks flare like the sun.
“Don’t listen to him, Ms. Costa. He’s only trying to embarrass me.”
“Well, any decent brother should know how to tease his sister well enough,” she says.
Jared pokes my leg under the table. “Vivi totally gets it.”
“Jared, would you do an old lady a favor and mix me up a drink? It’s been a heck of a long morning. This tea isn’t nearly strong enough for these old bones to subsist on.”
“Aunt Viv, I’ll get it,” Star offers.
The subject of the pickup truck hasn’t come up. Jared wants to get back to town and find his band members to load the van. I’m going to need an answer before too long.
“I need you to open a new bottle from the pantry. If you would help this old woman out, it would be a blessing.”
Star and Jared rise from their seats. They share a look and then head toward the kitchen. Jared looks relieved to have something to do, and Star appears all too happy to have Jared to do it with.
“They’re a stunning couple, aren’t they?” Vivi asks.
I nod and sip the tea. “It’s still pretty fresh in my mind, but I think I’ll get used to it again.” Absently, my hand brushes my neck.
“I understand where you’re coming from. She wasn’t right and made a mistake that will cost her dearly. You on the other hand, are showing your inner strength. Not many would be able to bounce back so well.”
“I bounce,” I say. “You wouldn’t believe how this summer has been going.”
“Ahh,” she makes a knowing sound. “Nathaniel has been keeping me entertained with stories.”
Great. Hairy balls great. The summer of horrifying demons, ghosts, magic, and supernatural woo-woo fru-fru as Jared so plainly put it, and Vivian knows all about it.
“Don’t fret. He doesn’t tell me everything.”
“That’s somewhat relieving,” I admit.
“And where is our young handsome Nathaniel today?”
“Resting. We had quite the morning, too.”
“He’s such a hard worker. And caring. He’s a keeper, Juliana. He loves you like I’ve never seen. And love is something you should never throw away.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m trying hard to accept that our circumstances aren’t as different or difficult as I like to think they are from a normal relationship.”
“Believe me. Every relationship comes with its own challenges. The unique and private aspects are what make them special.”
Vivi glances across the great room toward a large window. Her eyes are suddenly distant and I watch with fascination as her aura simultaneously pulls inward to her body and reaches out toward the window.
“Here you go, Auntie.” Star sets a tumbler with ice and alcohol in front of her.
Vivi’s knobbed fingers wrap around the glass, but she doesn’t focus on the drink. “Thank you, dear. Why don’t you take Jared to the greenhouse and show him the new stone gar
den?”
“All right.” Star turns to Jared. “It’s a lot cooler than it sounds.”
I’m intrigued, but before I can invite myself to go with them, Vivi asks, “If you would spare me a minute?”
She places her hand over mine on the table.
“Of course,” I say.
She pulls her hand away to reach for the drink.
After a slow sip and Jared and Star’s voices have faded from hearing range, she says, “Let’s make a bargain. I’d like to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable. If you answer, I will do something for you in return. Nathaniel mentioned your love of plants. I would be willing to trade a plant for an answer, or maybe even a spot of magic for a minute of your time. I’m a water witch and I also lean toward Earth magic. It’s been a useful combination when it comes to the herbs and gardens.”
Her grim expression makes me want to go hide in the van and forget about borrowing the truck. As if she’s well aware of my skittishness when it comes to my powers, she continues on conversationally about Star.
“My niece is more of an Earth witch. She has Fire tendencies as well. We’re focusing on the Earth aspects to help her stay grounded. You’ve seen what happens when her Fire side is out of balance.”
“I hope we never see it again.”
“Absolutely. You’re not of the magical kind, but you’re a seer. There are some who have magic in their blood and can see clearly, but it’s a rare combination.”
“Probably because they’re stark raving lunatics who live at a mental facility,” I say.
“Good point,” she says.
“There was a time when I didn’t appreciate any of the magic flowing through me. I blamed every hardship I endured on it. I tried to ignore my power and then I cursed it up, down, and sideways, but you can’t deny a part of yourself that lives in your blood.”
“Well, that’s a disappointment,” I say only half joking.
“The sight might be harder to live with. I couldn’t say for sure as I don’t have it, but the magic was a challenge for me from the very beginning. If I were to go back, I would have done a few things differently.”
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