Bane

by Trish Milburn

  When he sits close, he makes me jittery and calms me at the same time just as he has ever since I met him. It doesn’t make any sense, and I doubt I can explain it to anyone, but he alone has that effect on me.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” he says.

  “The ignoring me or the stupid fight with Rule?”

  “Both.” He goes silent for several seconds. “Are you two a couple now?”

  “No.”

  “I guess it would make more sense than the two of us. Even if he has no powers, he’s still a witch.”

  I take a risk and wrap my hand around Keller’s. “Listen to me. Rule is just a friend. Yes, he’d like to be more, but that’s not what I want.”

  Our eyes meet. “What do you want?” Keller asks.

  “Something I can’t have, at least not now.”

  He lifts his hand to my cheek and strokes it gently. I close my eyes and focus solely on the feel of his touch.

  “Why can’t you?” he asks.

  I sigh and open my eyes. Reluctantly, I pull away from his touch and release his hand. “It’s still too dangerous for you to be around me. Actually, it’s more dangerous now than when I left Baker Gap.”

  “Because of your increased power?”

  “Yes. It frightens me that I don’t fully understand it, that I might not be able to handle it.” I swallow hard. “I’m scared that I’ll end up hurting someone when that’s the thing I’m trying to prevent.”

  “You’re too strong for that to happen.”

  “I’d like to think so, but there’s so much I don’t understand. What I don’t know is scarier than what I do.”

  “It seems to me that I can help you with it.”

  I glance at him and know he’s referring to when he’d touched me earlier, and the struggle inside me died, at least temporarily.

  “Has that happened before when anyone else has touched you?” he asks. “Rule?”

  “No. But there’s no guarantee that it’ll happen again.”

  “But we can test it if it does. It’s important, I feel it. Think about it. If I’m there, you could access your full power without worrying about it getting out of control. This might be the thing that helps us defeat the covens.”

  “One witch and one hunter against hundreds of dark witches?”

  “One other witch, two hunters, three sort-of witches, and you, more powerful than all the rest of us combined.”

  I let out a long breath and look away, focusing on one of the headstones worn away by time and weather. I wish I could find a way to fix everything without putting anyone I care about in danger, but I just don’t know if that’s possible.

  “Are you fighting that darkness right now?” Keller asks.

  I realize I’m not and shake my head. “It calmed the moment you slid onto the bench beside me.” I remember the text about balance that Toni found and wonder if Keller’s calming effect on me plays into that somehow. “But I don’t want to depend on you for this, not when it puts you in danger of being killed. I need to learn to control this myself.”

  “You are so stubborn.” Keller stands suddenly and stalks several steps away before turning to face me. “I may not be a witch, but I’m not helpless either. This calming effect I have on your dark magic, maybe that’s supposed to be my contribution to this fight. And you’re not going to keep me from it, even if you don’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you.”

  He holds up a hand. “I know, you think you can’t. Or so you say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He lowers his hand. “You did kiss Rule.”

  “He kissed me.”

  “But you didn’t stop him.”

  “I did. I was pushing away when you jerked him up. You know that.”

  “For a moment, Jax, you did kiss him. I saw that, too.”

  The darkness wakes again, starts churning. “I was upset, okay? Lonely.”

  Keller walks toward me, starts to reach for my hand. I’m so upset that I jerk away from him. “What are you doing?”

  “Your dark magic is near the surface now,” he says. “We need to test the theory, make sure the calming effect I have on you wasn’t a one-time thing.”

  I want to tell him to leave me alone, to punish him for hurting me. But that’s selfish. Taking care of the covens trumps my personal feelings. Reluctantly, I nod.

  Keller takes both of my hands in his. At first, I think it doesn’t work, but then I realize that what I’m still feeling isn’t my magic. It’s just hurt feelings and guilt, normal stuff.

  “Did it work?” he asks.

  I nod. A bit of the agitation resurfaces when he drops my hands, but nothing near the level it was before.

  Keller takes a few steps away. “Good to know.” He sounds so distant that it breaks my heart.

  I don’t know if it will do any good or if it’s even wise to clear the air, but I have to. “Rule has been a good friend, and you’ve been ignoring me. Why’d you even come here if you can’t stand to be near me?”

  “Can’t stand to . . . ? Are you crazy? It’s all I can do to not pull you into my arms and kiss you senseless.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  Keller moves fast for a person with no supernatural powers. Before I can speak, he crosses the distance between us and pulls me off the bench into his arms.

  “This is how much I’ve missed you.” His lips take mine, and it’s not a soft, tender kiss like Rule gave me this morning.

  I melt against Keller. I run my hands up his back, feeling the wonderful definition of his muscles. Not the beefy kind sported by weight junkies but lean, powerful muscles born of hunting dangerous supernatural creatures. I realize that even without the covens, I could lose him. That fear makes me kiss him even deeper, longer, barely breathing.

  Keller lifts me off my feet and holds me so close I can feel his heart beating wildly against mine. I lose track of how long we kiss as I hang on to him and make up for lost time. It feels as if we’ve been apart a year instead of mere weeks.

  When we come up for air, Keller frames my face with his hands and looks deeply into my eyes. “Did that feel like I don’t care?”

  “No.” My answer comes out a whisper. “But I maybe could use a bit more convincing.”

  Keller’s lips stretch into a smile, and my heart fills with love. He’s about to lower his lips to mine again when the sound of an approaching vehicle stops him. When he takes a couple of steps away from me, I suddenly feel how cold the air has grown. Or maybe it’s been like that all day, and being with Keller has simply caused my body to heat up.

  “We should go,” Keller says. He takes my hand in his and starts for the gate.

  A jolt of surprise goes through me when I notice who is getting out of the car.

  “What is it?” Keller asks.

  I don’t have time to answer before Sarah the librarian and another woman are within earshot.

  “Well, hello,” Sarah says when she sees us. “Still doing research?”

  “Yeah. Nobody in my family here though.” I squeeze Keller’s hand slightly, hoping he understands not to say anything revealing. “Though this is an interesting old cemetery.”

  “It is, isn’t it? This is my good friend, Amanda. We come out here a few times a year to clean the place up. It’s sad when these old cemeteries are lost because all the descendants have died off or moved away.”

  What Sarah says sounds totally plausible, but my intuition insists Sarah isn’t exactly telling the whole truth. But to what end?

  I let my power reach out a bit and examine Sarah again, but still there’s no indication she’s anything other than a librarian. Perhaps an overly curious librarian, but a librarian nonetheless.

  “So none of these people have relatives living here anymore?” I ask.

  “It’s possible they do, but they don’t get out here to clean. Maybe they’re too old.”

  “Do you ev
en know who some of these graves belong to?” I ask. “Some of the stones don’t have names.”

  “I’ve tried to come up with names over the years, and I’ve found a few,” Sarah says. “But some of their identities have been lost to time, unfortunately.”

  “I think it’s one of the saddest things, leaving no record of your existence behind,” Amanda says.

  My thoughts go to all those harmless witches who were killed during the witch hunts, all those people, whole families lost to history. But there are names that weren’t lost.

  I nod. “At least some of them have clues. Like the crypt back there.” I point toward the imposing stone structure. “It’s so different than any other grave here. All I saw was a last name, Davenport, and that ornate sun on the front. They must have been a wealthy family to have such a nice crypt.”

  Sarah hesitates for a touch too long. I doubt anyone else would have noticed. “I believe they were,” she says. “Though we don’t know much about them. They left the area in the late 1600s, I believe.”

  “So not long after the witch trials?” I say. “Were they caught up in the hysteria?”

  “I think most people were, one way or another.”

  How’s that for a non-answer? Time for a more direct question. “Do you know who’s interred in the crypt?”

  Sarah meets my gaze, and I get the sense she’s searching for something. “Penelope Davenport.”

  I do my best not to react. “Who was she?”

  “The daughter of a wealthy ship builder.”

  “Reginald Davenport?”

  Sarah can’t hide her surprise at my question. “Yes. Where did you come across that name?”

  I shrug. “Not sure. I’ve looked at so many dusty old records lately.”

  “And his name stuck out?” There’s definite suspicion in her question, and the darkness within me rises from its temporary slumber.

  Keller squeezes my hand, calming me.

  “Yeah. He sounds like a guy with loads of money, doesn’t he? All stuffy and proper. Hard to believe someone like that could have gotten caught up in all the craziness of the witch trials.”

  “It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, man or woman, well respected or not,” Amanda says.

  “All that had to happen was for someone point the finger at you.” Sarah points her finger at me, and the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “Glad things aren’t like that now,” Keller says, and I think I hear a note of subtle warning in his voice. Then he tugs on my hand. “We better get going.”

  I want to stay and dig for more answers, but something tells me to trust him. After all, we’re walking away with more information that we had when we arrived.

  “Okay. It was nice to see you again,” Sarah says to me. “Come to the library any time you need help with research.”

  Once we’re in Keller’s truck, he glances at me. “Thanks for trusting me.”

  “Why did you pull me away?”

  “As soon as she got near us, I felt a vibration start in you. It kept getting stronger the longer you talked to her. I figured we better leave before we had another incident like this morning.”

  I glance out the windshield, but Sarah and Amanda have disappeared into the back of the cemetery. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve felt like she’s been watching me since I got to Salem.”

  “Is she a witch?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t detect a signature.”

  “Could she be like Fiona’s family?”

  I notice he doesn’t mention Rule by name. “I don’t think so. Even with them, there’s the slightest disturbance in the air around them. Sarah just feels . . . odd but normal, if that makes any sense. When I was at the Pherson property, I felt a faint echo of a witch watching us, but it wasn’t like when I’ve been face to face with Sarah.”

  “You think it’s possible she’s part of the Bane?”

  I stare toward the cemetery for several seconds before answering. “Anything’s possible, but if so, she’s found some way to completely cloak the fact that she’s a witch.”

  “That would be useful to know, especially if you and Egan could use the same method to hide yourselves from the covens.”

  “I can’t figure her out. She seems friendly, always offering to help me, but I sense curiosity and a bit of suspicion coming from her, too.”

  “We’ll see what we can find out about her and her friend.” He starts the engine and heads back toward town.

  “Could they be hunters? How can you even tell if someone’s a hunter?”

  “It’s one of those ‘takes one to know one’ things. There’s a certain glint in the eyes, especially among the hunters who have been doing it for a long time. They’re always wary but pretty good at not letting it show to anyone who isn’t watching for it.”

  Keller squeezes the steering wheel until his knuckles go white before relaxing his grasp. “These two didn’t seem like hunters, but I’ll ask my dad if he knows of any hunters in this area.”

  “You’re in contact with him?”

  “I haven’t been since we left, but he might have information we need. If Sarah and Amanda are hunters, or even if there are other hunters here, we need to know that.”

  I don’t like the idea of Keller contacting Rev. Dawes, afraid the man might decide the greater good of ridding the world of supernatural threat is more important than making sure he doesn’t lose his son. But Keller has handled his father before, so I have to trust him.

  As I watch the world zip by outside my window, I think about Sarah’s appearance at the cemetery, the same out-of-the-way cemetery where Penelope Davenport is buried. “The more I think about it, the more I think it’s possible Sarah and maybe Amanda are members of the Bane. It would explain why I’ve had that feeling of being watched since I arrived in Salem. They’d know I’m a witch.”

  “Did you sense a threat from either of them?”

  “No, not exactly. Wariness, but no overt hostility. Part of me just wants to march up and ask her if she’s part of the Bane.”

  “Maybe that’s what you do eventually, but I think we need to try to learn a little more first. The last thing we need is to make another enemy.”

  “True. I’ve got those coming out my ears.”

  When we return to the cottage, Rule’s car is parked at the curb. As we walk up the path to the cottage, Keller wraps my hand in his as if to lay claim.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” I say softly.

  “Just a little insurance that he doesn’t go stealing kisses again.”

  I roll my eyes then tug on Keller’s hand until he stops walking. “Listen. This morning was a mistake, but Rule is a good friend. He and his family have helped us a lot. And we still need to work together, at least until Egan and I feel it’s too dangerous for them.”

  I’m not about to tell Keller, but Egan and I will find a way to protect him and Toni, too, even if it means hurting their feelings again. Bruised feelings can be fixed. Being killed can’t.

  “Fine, but I don’t have to like the guy,” he says.

  “No, you don’t. But I think eventually you will.”

  He gives me a half-grin. “You have way too much faith in me.”

  When we walk inside, Rule and Toni are watching TV and eating from a big bowl of popcorn.

  “Did I forget it was movie day or something?” I ask.

  “Don’t particularly feel like working at the moment,” Toni says. She doesn’t have to look in Egan’s direction for me to know that he probably said something insensitive.

  “Well, some of us are still working,” Egan says under his breath.

  I give him a hard stare. He shrugs and goes back to staring at his computer screen.

  Rule stands and sizes up Keller, probably trying to figure out if Keller is going to toss him out on his head. Rule isn’t a weak guy, but Keller stands a few inches taller and wider. And he’s already fought more fights than Rule likely will during his entire l
ife.

  I walk farther into the room and prop my hip against the end of the couch. “So, we have news.”

  “The covens have suddenly fallen off the face of the earth?” Egan says, sarcastically hopeful.

  “Sadly, no. But we did find Penelope Davenport. She’s the resident of that crypt that’s spelled.”

  “How’d you find that out?” Rule asks.

  “Ran into Sarah the local librarian and her friend there. They confirmed that it’s Penelope. Oh, and we think they might be members of the Bane.” I give the rundown of the entire conversation.

  “So what now?” Toni asks.

  “We see if we can find any more information about the Bane. If not, I go with the direct approach and ask her if she’s a witch and a member of the Bane. I’d rather go in armed with more knowledge, though, so I’m not caught off guard by anything.”

  “We can go all hands on deck with the research tomorrow,” Toni says.

  A lull in the conversation starts getting uncomfortable with Keller and Rule in the same room and Toni and Egan still barely speaking to each other.

  “Jax, can I talk to you?” Rule asks, breaking the silence.

  Keller’s hand tightens on mine, but I slip free and give him a look that tells him to behave.

  “Sure.” I nod toward the front door, and Rule follows me outside to a gazebo that sits at the back corner of the cottage. It reminds me of the one in Toni’s back yard, though the vines on this one have slipped into their winter nap.

  “I want to apologize for what happened this morning,” he says.

  “It was partly my fault.”

  “But I knew you still cared for him. I can’t say anything other than kissing you was selfish on my part. I wanted to, and I did it.”

  “I’m not sure this helps at all, but it was a nice kiss.”

  Rule laughs a little. “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry. You are a great guy, a great catch.”

  He starts to speak.

  I hold up my hand. “Wait, let me finish.” I take a step closer to him, and if Keller is looking he’ll just have to deal with it. “I can honestly say that were it not for the fact that I love Keller, things might be different between you and me. I know that probably doesn’t make you feel any better, but I wanted you to know the truth. Someone will be lucky to have you someday.”