“So, where do we begin?” I asked after my first swallow.
Harley cast a glance at Noah, who was uncharacteristically silent. He stood tall and brooding, having quit his manic pacing.
“I think we start with your dream. Can you tell me about it?”
Harley asked, turning all her attention to me.
“Shouldn’t we wait until Gareth and Anna come back? That way we don’t have to fill them in and I won’t have to go through this more than twice.” My tone was only slightly wheedling.
“No, because they won’t be back for a week, and this might be trouble.” Harley was the voice of reason, always.
“We can call them then, if you think it’s that bad.” I offered, thinking that it was an excellent resolution.
Noah finally spoke, and his tone was harsh, harsher than I expected.
“No, we are going to let them enjoy their honeymoon. They need some time away from this, away from us.” He fixed me with a blue glare.
I nodded slowly, feeling as though I was suddenly alone, that the two people that I cared about the most had turned against me. It was an irrational feeling, sure, but I have been known to be totally irrational at times.
Harley knew me well, and saw that my hackles were rising.
“T, do you think it was a vision? Or was it just a nightmare?” She kept her voice level, knowing that I would react badly to a harsh tone. Noah either didn’t know that yet, or didn’t care. I gave her a slight smile, in appreciation, and returned Noah’s glare to him, letting him know that I did not appreciate his handling of the situation.
“It had the feeling of a dream, until he knew I was there.”
I went over the dream with them, step by step, going slowly. I tried to convey to them my fear, how palpable it had been, even though I had been confident it was a dream. When I got to the part with the girl, Noah visibly tensed. It caught my attention right away. His eyes went cold, his mouth tightened into a thin, grim line. There was something more there, something that touched him personally. Why else would a girl in a dream bother him?
“When he knew I was there, that’s when the dream changed, became something different. The quality didn’t change, but the…atmosphere…no, that’s not right. The feel of it, went from dream to reality, like I was astral-projecting. But not. Oh, I don’t know how to explain it. I was just more there. More solid, maybe.” I was frustrated with my inability to accurately describe how real the dream had been, if it had been a dream. I really had my doubts. I could recall the feel of his cold fingers as he pushed my hair back, the shock of his icy breath on my skin; the revulsion that had galvanized me into movement.
“But how do you feel about it? What are your thoughts?” Noah asked. His back was to me, his face hidden. He knew I had caught his reaction to the girl, and had turned his back to me so I couldn’t see his face, but his entire body was tense, like a wind-up alarm clock ready to go off.
“I…think…it might have just been a dream.”
“It was awfully realistic for a dream. A person usually doesn’t have tactile sensory input during a dream. I mean, he touched, you could feel his breath on your skin. That’s incredibly real. If people could feel things like that in a dream, it would give a whole new meaning to sexual dreams, you know?”
I don’t know if Harley was trying to inject humor in the situation or if she was trying to make a logical observation. Noah laughed though and his stance relaxed, so maybe she was trying to lighten the mood.
“I don’t know about you, but I usually wake feeling very relaxed after that type of dream, so that might put your theory down.” He turned back to us, and I could see his expression had relaxed also.
“But that’s what I mean. You feel emotion, pleasure, not actual sensation. You don’t feel someone actually touching you, you feel the pleasure. It’s different.” Harley explained with a shrug.
He nodded thoughtfully. I could see his mind working and for once I wished that I was attuned to him, so I could see what he was thinking.
“So if we follow you’re theory, then she was actually there. She could have been killed, and we would never have known what happened to her.” A hint of emotion colored his words, and that emotion was fear. Fear for me, I realized with a start. Maybe he really did care about me, more than just as a person that was tied to him by circumstance. This was something I had to think about more.
“I got out though. I came back.” I pointed out unnecessarily. I was here, after all.
“Yes, but by your own description it was a very close thing. We can’t take that chance again. Someone has to stay with you at night.”
I bristled at his authoritative tone. Who was he to dictate to me? Assume that I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself?
“The situation only happened once, thank you very much, and now that I know what it was, I can take steps to protect myself.” My voice bristled with indignation, and I stood up from the stool at the island where I had been sitting.
“Oh sure you can, because you really took care of yourself last night, didn’t you?” He raised his voice, fear and anger comingling with the sharp words. He moved to stand in front of me, crossing his arms across his chest.
“I was handling it just fine. I got away from him, didn’t I?” I shouted up into his face, poking his chest above his crossed arms for emphasis. He narrowed his blue eyes into a glare.
“You only got away because I brought you back.” He hissed, leaning towards me.
I could admit to myself, grudgingly at that, that what he said was right. I had been running pell-mell down that cold hallway and hitting a wall when he had shook me awake. That didn’t change the fact that I didn’t need him to boss me around.
“Both of you, stop!”
Harley’s voice raised to its peak volume had us glaring at each other, but no longer shouting.
“Noah, there are protection spells that we can do to stop her from traveling. No one has to spend the night with her every night. What concerns me at this point is why she went traveling in the first place.”
“Anna did, that night she saw Damien being tortured by Padraigan in the clearing.” I pointed out.
“That’s where I was going with my point. Anna was inexperienced; she had no control over herself, and people that travel, have out-of-body experiences by accident, are uninitiated, people that don’t have any idea that it should be a controlled experience. You know better, so why did you travel on accident?”
She had a point. Astral projection was something that should be done under carefully controlled conditions. It was rare to be separated from your body, but it did happen. Your body would go on working, in what is called a persistent vegetative state, but your essence, your soul, would be forever separated from it.
“This is why I-…I mean, someone, should be with her at night.” Noah tried to cover his mistake, but failed. Harley cocked an eyebrow at him, and I glowered at him, my expression telling him what I thought of his slip-up.
“Noah, we’ll do a protection spell, and see how it goes.” Harley replied as she got up and started cleaning up the kitchen.
“That’s not good enough for me.” He ground out. It was obvious that he was angry, angrier than I had seen him.
“Do you think our magick isn’t strong enough?” I was shocked to hear Harley say that. It was something that I would have said, had in fact, been about to say it. In the beginning, when Noah had first entered the picture, I had to constantly fight to prove my strength in magick with him, he being a sorcerer having been born with magick, and Harley and I having to learn it. I had never thought that Harley might be a little resentful, too.
“You know that’s not the case.” Noah responded to her icy tone with his own cold tone.
“Then what is it Noah? Why do you not trust us to take care of each other?”
You could tell he didn’t want to answer the question. I naturally thought it was because he didn’t have faith in our abilities, so I had to goad it ou
t of him.
“There is some reason that makes you not trust us. Is it because we’re merely witches, and not all-powerful sorcerers, like you?” I sneered at him.
“No, you idiot! God, why can’t you just let it alone and let me protect you?” He roared, throwing his hands up in the air and resuming the manic pacing from earlier.
“Because I can do just as well a job of protecting myself as you can!” I yelled back at him, my hackles up.
“No you can’t. I would try harder to protect you because I…don’t…want…to…lose…you!” There was anguish in his words, and the pained expression that crossed his features made Harley and I realize that he really meant what he said, that he wasn’t just trying to one-up us. I moved towards him, but he spun around and walked out the French doors. I stared after him, debating whether or not to follow him when I heard his truck fire up.
“Well, that went horribly.”
I swung back at Harley’s dry comment, a confused look on my face.
“What just happened here?” I asked, my tone expressing my confusion.
“I think that Noah just admitted how much you matter to him.”
Chapter Four
The wind blew cold over me as I stood in the clearing behind Written, the area that we had cleansed and protected for our rituals. The weather had taken a cold turn, and I was half tempted to warm it up a bit, just in my little safe area, but it wasn’t worth it. I deserved the cold, to remind me how I had treated Noah when he hadn’t deserved it.
I hadn’t seen him in a few days, and Gareth and Anna were due back from Scotland in a couple more. I hadn’t gone traveling again, possibly due to the protection spells I performed every day, maybe because whatever drew me to Padraigan had dispersed. But part of me wanted Noah to protect me at night, to hold me through the dark hours.
I had no idea where these thoughts came from.
I brought my thoughts back to the present, or else everything that I was doing here would be useless. I focused on the ritual, breathing in and out, feeling the power move through me, and giving thanks to the Goddess for that power. I lost myself in the pure pleasure I got from the ritualistic motions.
The Craft held so more much for me than just a religion. It was an explanation for my abilities, a sanctuary for my mind, a feeling of being one with what had helped form me. Some people embrace God, others Buddha, and still others a Yogi, but I embraced the Earth and all the deities that represented her. I belonged with the Craft, it was a calling for me, much like the call to serve God that comes upon a priest.
The Goddess had provided well for Harley and I, and we gave thanks and praise to her every day.
When I had been a child, with newfound talents that had shown up out of the blue, I had no outlet for them, let alone knew what to do with them. I was a newly-minted teenager before I found the Craft, much the age when most teenage girls are finding out about the Salem Witch trials and thrilling to the danger and mysteries of what the Craft represented. To them it was all about getting the cute boy in third period to ask them out, or getting a bigger allowance from their parents.
To me, it was an answer to the questions I was having about religion and these strange talents that no one but me seemed to have. I had just created the fifth snow day in a row when a girl came up to me on the quad outside of the lunch room and hissed at me that I had better knock it off.
I had no idea what she was talking about, and she scared me a little with her direct green gaze. Even then, Harley had been very intimidating if you didn’t know her.
I had seen the dusky-skinned princess walking around school that year, and everyone was all abuzz about where she came from and what she was all about. Harley had just joined the school, her parents having moved here with her father’s new appointment at the university.
“I know what you are.” She had said to me as she sat down on the stone bench next to me. We watched the students around us gathering snow balls and lobbing them at their friends as the principle’s voice came over the intercom announcing that school was closing early due to another freak snowstorm. In May.
“Like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I had replied, sticking my nose up in the air. Inside I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was, so how did this stuck-up little newcomer know what was wrong with me?
Harley had looked down at me, her eyes holding more knowledge in them than a fourteen-year old should know. It didn’t help that she held herself with a poise that far outnumbered her years.
“Oh you do. I’ve been watching you since this year started. We can always tell when there’s another one of us around, and you’re the only other one here.” She had turned her gaze away from me as she said this, narrowing her eyes and looking at the chaos around us, as though she was searching for something. I followed her gaze, but all I saw was the high school across the street.
“There’s one of us in there, too, but she doesn’t know it yet.”
“Dude, what are you talking about?” I was starting to get scared of her, not just intimidated by her.
“You know, you can dress in black, paint your nails black, dye your hair black, listen to death metal, but that doesn’t make you what you really you are. It’s just bad fashion.” She said with a derisive sniff as she took in my black jeans and black parka. I shoved my hands into my pockets. “What makes you what you are, is the power inside of you. This wonderful talent of controlling weather, or the one you have of reading minds that are open to you.”
I had gaped at her, my mouth hanging open.
Needless to say, a friendship had been born, and I learned to control any tendencies I had of creating unusual weather patterns. It took me longer to quit reading minds whenever I found one open to me, which was nearly everyone. If I found a mind closed to me, I knew not to prod.
And here we were, twelve years later. Prosperous business partners with a friendship that had stood through the years.
I was wrapping up the ritual when I heard branches moving, as though someone was pushing through them.
“It’s just me.” Harley called out as she came through the last pine tree, and I stood with candles in my hands, my head cocked to the side. We usually didn’t disturb one another if we were doing solitary rituals, and I was a little puzzled as to why she was out here.
“I know, I know. But Noah’s inside. He wants to talk to you, and I told him I would come get you.” She shook her head, the loose bun her hair was done up in swaying dangerously from side to side, threatening to come all the way undone. Her jeans had some dust on them, and the pheasant shirt she wore was untucked a little from the waistband. This was interesting. Harley never looked disheveled.
Putting the thought of Noah waiting for me out of my mind for the moment, I looked at her, my eyes meeting hers.
“What’s up with the dust?”
She sighed, looking down at the dirt of the clearing, bringing a hand up to her loose hair.
“Damien was here. He needed a map of the town, from a historical stand point, and we were up in the attic looking for that old plat book that your grandfather gave us.”
I looked at her speculatively, trying to gauge her emotions, but she was curiously closed off from me.
“And?” I asked, drawing the word out, humor in my voice. I can only imagine what happened to the two of them, alone in a dusty attic.
“And nothing! It’s just dirty up there is all, and my jeans got attic dust on them, and my shirt got pulled out from reaching over my head. Get your mind out of the gutter Teagan!” She sputtered, her words betraying her chagrin. I rolled with laughter. Something had finally flustered Harley, and that something was a tall, handsome werewolf with dark, Gypsy looks.
“Did he kiss you?” I was still laughing, so my words came out as muffled snorts. She glared at me, her arms up over her head as she attempted to fix her hair. Her hands moved in quick, jerky movements that were doing more damage than they were fixing. Harley O’Connor was flustered, and it was t
he first time that I had seen her like this in twelve years.
“No, he didn’t kiss me, Teagan. He…we…oh, never mind!” With one final glare she turned and stalked off, slapping pine branches out of her way and making more noise leaving than coming in.
Wondering what they had done, or almost did, I went about cleaning up the rest of my things, putting candles, my athame, and my bowl into a backpack and slinging it over my back. I took one last look around the clearing and thought about Noah, and what he might want. With a shrug, I turned and followed the path that led to the house. There was only one way to find out.
I passed Harley where she was straightening herself up in the half bath off the ground floor, having come in through the back door of the shop. She didn’t say anything, just gave me another withering stare, and pointed up to the ceiling. I took that to mean that Noah was in the apartment on the third floor, and nodded to her. She would get over it, I knew, but it still bothered me a little to see that she was angry. I didn’t know if it was me she was angry with, or herself, or even Damien, but I would get to the bottom of it after I confronted Noah.
I climbed the back stairs to our apartment, which took up the entire third floor. It was a beautiful place, painted bright, sunny colors, full of plants and stained glass. The type of place you would expect to find in a restored Victorian.
As I came into the great room from the stairs, I saw Noah standing by the windows that faced the road in front of the house, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his khaki pants. The stained glass panel that was hanging in the window threw colors over him, gilding his hair and his face. He looked broody, as if he was pondering something life-altering.
“You don’t want your face to freeze like that, do you?” I quipped as I dropped my bag on the dining room table and moved into the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and took a long gulp. It gave me a moment to calm my heart that had started pounding the minute I saw him. I tried not to think about that night at Gareth and Anna’s, when he had held me close, and then the next day when we had tried to start over, but my body was having none of it.
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