“Everyone’s in your room,” he said hastily.
We followed him up the stairs to my dorm room where we discovered that Holly had just woken up from her trance like state. Sweets and Alba had already fed her and were trying to get her to talk. I pulled out my phone and dialed. I’d had enough of this nonsense for one night.
“Mom?”
“Mercy? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Merrick. He attacked me. You need to get Reign and Detective Whitman and get over here now.”
“Merrick – attacked you?! Mercy, are you alright?”
“Barely, Hugh saved me. Hugh trapped him in the potions lab, but he’s going to make it out and then who knows what’s going to happen. The only thing I know is, he’s going to be mad. You need to get the Detective and my brother and get over here immediately,” I said breathlessly.
“Ok, we’ll be there soon,” she assured me.
“Hurry, I don’t think we have much time to spare.”
The minute I hung up I looked at Hugh with gratitude. “Hugh, I owe you my life!” I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. As much as I hated hugging and displays of affection, I knew this didn’t count. The man had saved my life and he’d risked his own to save me.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat, darlin’,” he said with a shy smile. My unusual gratitude had embarrassed him, but I could tell he liked it.
Alba looked up from Holly worriedly. “You know he’s going to tell his sister, don’t you.”
“Yeah, I assumed he would.” I turned to look at Jax, who was shivering on the bed next to Holly. While the pins and needles were little by little dissipating from my feet, Jax had taken a full on body shot. “I can’t believe he shot his own niece!”
Tristan jammed a fist into his palm angrily. “What I wanna do to that man,” he said, pacing back and forth in my crowded room.
“Has she spoken yet?” I asked.
Sweets looked between Holly and Jax. “Which one?”
“Either one,” I said.
She shook her head. “Nope. Neither one has said a word since we’ve been back. Holly tried to talk, but she’s not strong enough yet. I think Jax is in shock. What are we going to do?”
“For now we’re going to wait here and get those two feeling better. As soon as Detective Whitman gets here we’re going to report that man for what he did to us!”
“Like the police are going to be able to do anything about it?” Alba cracked her knuckles as she stood up.
Hugh nodded. “She’s right. There’s no line on a police report that says assaulted a student with magic.”
“He assaulted us! It doesn’t matter if he assaulted us with magic or assaulted us with his fists. It was assault!” My blood was boiling now. The feelings of having to protect myself had all but vanished and what I was left with was rage. Rage that this man had just assaulted me and my roommate, his niece, of all people. What a cretin! And to top it all off, he was my brother’s father! How in the world did my mother manage to pick these kinds of people to father her children? Suddenly I realized that my granny had to have known what kind of person he was, to have bound them way back when. She was trying to protect my mother from him. If I had any doubts before, I was sure of it now. I couldn’t wait for Holly to be able to speak and tell us what she saw. I was completely confident that she’d be able to put the nail in Merrick Stone’s coffin.
As if on cue, Holly let out a deep sigh. “I saw him,” she whispered.
All eyes were on her as she sat up carefully in bed. “I saw Sorcerer Stone.”
“I knew it!” I declared loudly, throwing my hands into the air. The vindication felt amazing. I couldn’t wait for my mother and my brother and Detective Whitman to get to the school so we could reveal the truth about Merrick Stone.
“What was he doing?” Sweets asked expectantly.
Holly shook her head vigorously from side to side. “I don’t know, exactly. He was doing a spell with that candle. A powerful spell.”
I nodded self-righteously. “Totally knew it!”
“Did you see Ronnie there?” Sweets asked her.
Holly, who had been staring off into the distance, swung her eyes towards Sweets, but she still looked like she was in a fog. “No, I didn’t see Ronnie.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I dismissed that tiny piece of the puzzle. “He was there, you just didn’t see him.”
Holly’s head bobbed up and down. “It’s possible. I only saw Merrick in the middle of the casting floor. I didn’t see the rest of the room.”
I threw my hands out and spun around as if to say well there you have it folks, case closed.
Then, without warning, there was a knock at the door. I eyed the girls cautiously before opening the door just a crack to peer into the hallway. A tall figure in a long grey jersey dress loomed before me. Without moving my head, my eyes glanced up at her face. I knew who it was. The dress was a dead giveaway, but I looked nonetheless. I guess I wanted to see the level of anger we’d be dealing with that evening.
“Ms. Habernackle. I’d like to see you and your friends in my office in five minutes.”
I sighed. “What friends do you speak of?” I asked her brazenly.
Her face was unchanged, her expression did the talking for her and it clearly said Now is not the time you want to mess with me, young lady.
“Open this door.”
Stealthily, I slid the toe of my foot against the inside of the door. “This is as far as it opens.”
“Open this door, right now.”
“My roommate isn’t dressed at the moment,” I told her with as much of an honest face as I could drum up.
“Do not make me ask again,” she instructed with a firm, unwavering voice.
“I told you, my roomma… .”
Sorceress Stone pressed her body against the door. My foot held it partially closed.
“What are you doing, Mercy?” Sweets asked. “You can’t keep her out! It’s her school!”
Alba nodded. “It’s alright, Red. We have to face the music at some point. Let her in.”
I sighed. Suddenly the picture of a locked cell in a tower crossed before my eyes. “Ugh,” I groaned as I opened the door up wider. “This isn’t our fault, you know.”
“Oh, really? And whose fault is it? My brother just came to visit me. He was drenched. Someone in here unleashed a titan of a storm on him.”
She narrowed her eyes into tiny slits as she looked Tristan and Hugh up and down. “It was one of these two.”
“Look, your brother, assaulted me,” I said, changing the subject. “And I’m pressing charges.”
She spun on her heel to look at me. “You will do no such thing.”
I’d had it with all the murders and the investigations and the weird happenings and the strange people. I felt my backbone stiffen as I stood on my tippy toes to look her straight in the eye. “I will do such a thing. Watch me. Your brother did – THAT – to his own niece. You’re daughter!” I pointed at Jax, who was still shivering in bed, but now she was rocking back and forth on the bed with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“What happened to her?” she asked, barely making a move or showing any concern about her own flesh and blood.
“Your brother happened to her! He assaulted us!”
“Merrick would never!” she said, unconvincingly.
“He did! And I’m pressing charges. So why do I care what you want to do to me? I would never want to go to a school and learn from a witch that couldn’t care less about what was done to her own daughter!”
There was another knock at the door. Our tiny dorm room was almost full to capacity, but Hugh opened the door anyway.
“Where is she?” my mother’s voice asked from the hallway.
“She’s in here ma’am,” Hugh said, opening the door wider to allow my mother to enter. Reign and Detective Whitman were right behind her.
“What’s going on in here?” Detective Whitman a
sked. “SaraLynn. What are you doing in here?”
“Detective Whitman! There was a … I – ,” she stumbled around on her words, unsure of what direction to take in the situation.
I stood back and let my rage loose. “Well let me fill everyone in at the same time. Merrick Stone assaulted us. Detective Whitman, I want him arrested. He assaulted Jax and he assaulted me. We’re lucky to be alive. Jax needs to be taken somewhere to be looked at. She still hasn’t spoken.”
“This is ridiculous,” Sorceress Stone croaked out. “My brother said it was these students that snuck into his building’s potions lab and assaulted him!”
“Mercy?” my mother questioned me. “Did you sneak into his potions lab?”
“Yes, but we were only trying to find evidence that he was the one that killed Ronnie Edwards.”
Sorceress Stone stood up taller, as if my words had somehow vindicated her. “See, as I said, this is their fault. My brother was simply punishing the students for impropriety.”
“He could have suspended us or even expelled us for that,” Alba piped up. “Instead he chose to shoot those two,” she said, pointing at me and Jax, “with electrical currents!”
Reign rubbed his face with both of his hands and then looked at me with worry. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “But only because of Hugh and Tristan. Tristan got Jax out, barely. Look at her! She still hasn’t spoken. Someone should call her an ambulance. Hugh got me out.”
“And my brother is ready to expel him because of his little antics back there,” Sorceress Stone revealed.
“He was protecting me from your brother’s hateful rage!”
Detective Whitman shook his head as he ran a hand through his hair. “Wow, it sounds like a lot has gone down. I think I’m going to have to get statements from everyone here. But first, I want to make sure that the little one over there is alright. I’ll get a medical team on site, pronto.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Sweets said from across the room. She hadn’t left Jax’s side. I knew she was worried about her, like we all were.
Detective Whitman stepped into the hallway to make the call to get an EMS team to come to the Institute. While he was gone, Sorceress Stone didn’t make a move towards her daughter, but my mother went to sit beside Sweets.
“How long has she been like this?” she asked.
Sweets eyes swung down sorrowfully. “I don’t know, maybe about 20 minutes.”
Mom put a hand on Jax’s forehead. “She’s burning up.”
“But she’s shivering!” Sweets replied, stunned.
Detective Whitman returned to the room.
Holly stood up carefully on her feet. “Detective. While we were in the potions lab, I had a vision.”
“Was it about the murder of Ronnie Edwards?”
Holly closed her eyes and raised a shoulder to her ear. “I don’t know. But it was a vision of Sorcerer Stone. He was in the potions lab with a black candle and he was firing off a big spell. It was very sinister.”
“Did you see Ronnie?”
“No. I didn’t. The vision was only of Sorcerer Stone.”
Detective Whitman’s shoulders slumped forwards. He was obviously disappointed that it wasn’t more helpful.
“Look. I want to throw the book at the guy too,” he admitted. “But I need more evidence. And that’s just not enough.”
“Detective Whitman!” Sorceress Stone exclaimed. “Are you gunning for my brother?”
“Maybe we should talk in the hallway,” he said gruffly.
She looked around at all of the students in my dorm room and nodded curtly. The two of them stepped out into the hallway. He pulled the door shut behind him, leaving it open just a crack. Their voices carried easily back into our room.
“SaraLynn, if those girls press charges against your brother, he is going to be hard pressed to get out of it. I could bring charges of reckless endangerment, assault with intent, the list would go on and on. He could go away for a very long time. And if I find him guilty of murdering that boy? That’s it. He’s put away for life. So whatever you or he thinks you want to do to your students as retribution or punishment, you should both seriously consider the consequences of that action.”
I looked at my mother and Reign cautiously. They were the ones I was the most worried about being harmed by Merrick’s actions. My mother just couldn’t seriously be interested in renewing a relationship with the man. She had to see how dangerous he was! But her face was unreadable. Completely masked by concern for Jax and concern for me.
“We’ve got to get Jax warmed up,” she finally said to the painfully quiet room. She stood up and pulled Jax’s comforter off the top bunk and wrapped it around the small girl’s body. “Jax, can you hear me?”
Her eyes blinked in response to my mother’s question, though she still appeared too paralyzed to speak.
“She blinked!” Mom announced with excitement.
Sweets squeezed Jax’s arm. “Yay, Jaxie! You blinked! You’re going to be ok, I just know it!”
{ Chapter Seventeen}
The ambulance came and went and before we knew it, Jax had regained her ability to speak and use her arms and legs and the EMT’s agreed to let her recuperate in bed after I promised to take good care of her and that I would rush her to the hospital if anything changed in the night.
Detective Whitman offered to give my mother a ride home after Reign asked to hang out with me and Jax before heading home himself. Sorceress Stone never returned to our dorm room and Detective Whitman hinted around that neither she nor Merrick would make any trouble for the students that participated in the little trip to the potions lab.
Holly, Alba, Sweets, and the boys had all grudgingly gone back to their own rooms. I made Hugh promise to text me several times throughout the evening so that I could be sure that Merrick hadn’t come to his room in the night to get payback for the incident earlier. I didn’t care what Sorceress Stone had implied, I didn’t trust Merrick Stone and I was worried about Hugh and Tristan’s safety.
While I lay on Jax’s top bunk with my head and one arm and leg thrown over the edge, Jax was cocooned in blankets on the bottom bunk. Reign lay on his back on the floor in the middle of the room with his arms behind his head and his legs outstretched.
“I can’t believe what just happened,” I muttered to the room.
“It was quite the night,” Reign agreed. “I think we all just need a break to decompress.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“I know my father just put you two through hell tonight, but I really think if we just took some time to relax and unwind, we’ll all feel better in the morning.”
“I don’t think that I’ll feel better in the morning, Reign, but I do think we all need some time to relax,” I agreed. “It’s been such a stressful week.”
“This actually feels really good, guys,” Jax said happily. “I know today was a bad day, but it’s really cool getting to lay here with my cousins. I never had cousins you know.”
Reign chuckled quietly. “You know that Mercy’s not your cousin right? We don’t have the same dads.”
I could hear the smile in Jax’s voice when she replied to Reign. “Oh, we figured it all out. She’s a second cousin once removed. The once removed part means your cousin’s dads don’t have to be the same person.”
Reign lay there thinking for a long moment, but before he could respond, I thought I better chime in. Listening to Jax happily talking about her family made me strangely happy. And in the midst of the eternal chaos and disillusionment that seemed to be happening here at college. I needed to find my happy place, too. Hugh had wedged himself into a large chunk of that happy place, but I was learning that a boyfriend wasn’t the only person that could do that for me.
“You don’t have to piece the whole family tree together, Reign. Jax and I figured it out.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, she’s my cousin.”
“Ok,” Rei
gn said with a little smile.
“Which means we’re practically sisters,” Jax declared from the bottom bunk, sounding happier than a lark that I’d informed Reign that we were cousins.
“Yeah, practically,” Reign agreed with only the slightest mocking undertone.
“I’m really sorry about how things are going with your dad, Reign… and your uncle, Jax.”
Reign covered his face with his arm. “Yeah, this whole thing really sucks. I wanted him to be a good guy.”
The bunk bed shook as Jax rolled onto her side to be able to look at Reign better. “Uncle Merrick is a decent guy. I think he’s just kind of misunderstood.”
The memory of how charming he was when he met my mom earlier, suddenly flooded my memory against my will. He’d been perfectly normal for about five seconds and then he called us dumb girls! Granted, it wasn’t illegal or anything, but it certainly wasn’t a sweet, kind, fatherly thing to say.
“Jax, how can you say he’s misunderstood after what he did to you today?” I asked her with exasperation.
Jax was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “He’s my uncle and I don’t really have a lot of family. I didn’t have a normal childhood. I guess I just don’t want him to be bad. He’s the only uncle I have. And he’s my cousin’s dad. That counts for a lot too. I don’t want Reign to feel bad about his father. I’d rather Uncle Merrick turn out to be a good guy than a bad one.”
“Thanks, Jax,” Reign said quietly.
Jax was quiet for a moment before she whispered back, “Hey Reign?”
“Yeah Jax?”
“I’m really sorry about that one time that I kissed you. I didn’t know you were going to turn out to be my cousin.”
Reign chuckled, filling the room with his hearty laughter. “It’s ok, Jax. Water under the bridge.”
“Thanks, Reign!” I could practically see her nervousness melting away like an ice pop on a hot summer day. “Now things don’t have to be weird between us, right?”
“Definitely. No weirdness between us. We’re family now.”
Witch Degrees of Separation: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #3 Page 15