by D. N. Hoxa
“No.”
The word rang in my ears.
Hold on just a second…what did he mean with no? I looked at Bender, shaking my head in confusion, but he wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
“Bender?”
“Who is your father?” Julian’s father said, catching me completely off guard.
Keeping my eyes on Bender didn’t make him look at me, not for a second. I sighed in disappointment.
“What does it matter who my father is?”
“Someone must take responsibility for your actions,” the King said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what I’d said, then looked at the werewolves behind me. “Take her.”
Like hell I was going to let that happen. I had no idea what the Hedge witch did to Bender, or why he couldn’t recognize her—maybe he was hurt much more than we thought that night?—but she wasn’t going to escape again. I wouldn’t allow it.
Before the werewolves could grab me, I ran forward with my knife in hand.
Unfortunately, I slammed against the two Unseelie fairy guards, who did not look happy to have to deal with me. Screams in the background but my blood was boiling and all I heard was the voice in my head telling me that I couldn’t let Jane get away.
The fairies grabbed me by the shoulders, and the werewolves behind me by the arms. My magic roared. For a second, all I could see was orange as it demanded to be used to break the hands of all the people who were holding me back. And when I blinked, I could see Jane Dunham’s hiding behind the fairies while the rest of the room continued to keep their eyes on me.
Maybe that’s why she smiled at me for a split second. She knew nobody else could see her.
The fairies holding me by the shoulders were suddenly pushed back. Julian was in front of them, his hands on the guards’ chests. They both froze in place.
“You don’t want to touch her again, fellas,” he said, shaking his head.
Just as he finished speaking, his father put his hand on Julian’s arm.
“Julian, step back,” the King demanded, anger, disappointment and impatience flashing on his face. He didn’t look like a man you wanted to cross, but Julian had other ideas.
He looked down at his father’s hand, then met his eyes. “Don’t.”
If you’ve ever heard a warning, then you know exactly what that sounded like.
I could no longer see Jane Dunham, and I was glad for it. There was no way I could use my magic now, in front of all those people, and make it out alive. No, I was just going to have to hunt down Jane Dunham when nobody was watching.
Calling my beads back to my hand was torture, but before I could give my head a chance to acknowledge that I was giving up, I turned around and rushed to the exit. It was easier than I thought it would be, because the crowd parted like I was fucking Moses and they the ocean, except my aunt.
With her hand on her chest, she looked like somebody had died as she waited for me in the middle of the crowd, but for once, I didn’t mind making her sad. There was nothing she could say that could make me feel any better, so I didn’t stop to listen. I walked around her, then ran out of the hall.
Four
“Wayne! Hey, Wayne, wait up!”
Bender was running behind me, and I would have been running until I reached Turtle, too, but my pride wouldn’t let me.
“What the hell was that about, Wayne?” he asked when he caught up with me.
The anger made me burst out laughing. “You bastard! You saw her! How could you—”
“I did see her! That’s how I knew that she wasn’t Jane Dunham!” he cut me off. I could already see Turtle and the keys were in my hand. I couldn’t wait to get in and drive away already. Away from everyone. “What did you expect me to do?”
Bender stepped in front of me just as I reached the car. I had no choice but to look at his face.
“I expected you to back me up.” It was the sad truth, one I shouldn’t have even had to speak aloud. Not to him.
“I’m sorry, Wayne, but I couldn’t lie to everyone.” He looked desperate and that made me want to take a step back.
Could it be that he was telling the truth, too? “I don’t know if you hit your head hard in Staten Island and you don’t remember her, but that woman in there is Jane Dunham. It’s her, Bender. I’ll bet you my life on it.”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but he was at a loss for words. Instead of waiting for him to find a way to tell me that he thought I’d lost my fucking mind, I pushed him away from the door and got inside the car, but he didn’t let me close it.
“You need to get some sleep. This will all make sense to the both of us tomorrow, okay?”
Laughing dryly, I pulled the door closed. If he wanted to keep his fingers from breaking, he’d move away.
He did.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Wayne!” he called as I drove away.
Too bad for him, I’d already decided it.
I barely saw the road as I drove, too angry to even think about calming down. It just got worse when doubt began to slip through the cracks and make me second guess my own eyes.
Was Bender right? Had I lost it? Maybe I was the one who hit my head harder than I thought in the fight against the Hedge witches. Maybe that fairy was just a fairy, scared out of her mind when I charged at her.
But if my instincts were anything to go by, what I was telling myself was all bullshit.
That was Jane Dunham, and I was going to prove it. Or, I’d just hunt her down all by myself. I’d killed her once, hadn’t I? No reason I couldn’t do it again.
“Um…hi.”
I jumped back at the voice coming from the backseat and lost control of the wheel. I hit the brakes fast, but by then, I’d already driven Turtle up on the sidewalk to my right. No time to think about that now. My gun was in my hand and I turned toward the backseat as fast as I could. My finger was on the trigger, ready to shoot anyone who was there.
But it was…it was a boy.
“What…what…who the hell are you?”
My mind couldn’t process the image in front of me yet. No matter how I looked at it, a boy who couldn’t be older than twelve or so, with blond hair falling in his dark brown eyes, had no business being in the backseat of my car.
“I’m Ezra,” he said, slowly raising his hands up. “Please don’t shoot me.”
I looked down at his body, expecting to see a gun, or a knife, or anything at all, but instead, all I saw was a brown backpack by his side, and his knees slightly shaking. The boy was skinny. His jeans were a size too big for him and his green shirt was no better. His nails were uncut and dirty, and now that I was looking at him more closely, his hair was pretty greasy, too. Like he hadn’t showered in a few days.
“If you don’t want me to shoot you, Ezra, you better start explaining why you’re in my car,” I said breathlessly.
The boy smiled. His crooked teeth were kind of cute, and I found myself pulling my finger away from the trigger. But I couldn’t put the gun down, could I? This could just be a disguise. What I went through minutes ago was proof of that, so no. The gun stayed up, barrel pointed at the boy’s forehead, no matter how bad it sounded or looked.
“I ran away from home and I came to find you,” the boy said, and seemingly tired of keeping his hands up, he put them down above his knees.
“You came to find me,” I repeated, even more confused than before. At least now I’d caught my breath. “Do I know you?” I wasn’t very good with faces, so it was possible. But he shook his head. “No? So why did you come to find me? How do you know me?”
It just didn’t make sense that I was having this conversation with a boy who’d popped up in the backseat of my car in the middle of the night, but I reminded myself to breathe and just keep calm until I saw where this was headed.
“I don’t know you. I came to find you because I saw myself coming to find you,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”
Officially the weirdest conversati
on I’d ever had.
“Where are your parents, boy?”
“Home.”
“Where is home?”
The boy looked out the window. “Somewhere in Pennsylvania.”
I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. “Let’s try again, shall we? Why are you here and where are your parents, Ezra?” I shook the gun in front of his face just to remind him that it was there. I was obviously not going to shoot a kid, but he’d be scared into talking. I was sure of it.
Except… “You’re not going to shoot me with that.” Then he leaned closer to me—and the gun. How the hell did he get from please don’t shoot me to you’re not going to shoot me so fast? “What’s your name?”
With a loud sigh, I realized that I couldn’t deal with this any longer. Not tonight. “Playtime’s over, kid. I’m throwing you out.”
Putting my gun away, I jumped out of the car and opened the backdoor. Ezra had gone to the other end of it. Was he really going to make me drag him out?
“You can’t throw me out. I need you,” he said, holding onto his backpack and shaking his head, looking scared as hell now.
“Don’t make me drag you out because I will,” I warned him. It didn’t matter that he was a kid.
“Please don’t. I can’t leave your side.”
“See, you’re not making any sense to me. At all. And if you don’t start answering my questions right now, I don’t care if you scream at the top of your lungs. I’m leaving you right here on the sidewalk!” And I meant every single word. Making fun of me that night was not a good idea, especially when Jane Dunham’s fairy face kept flashing through my head every few minutes.
“M-my parents have kept me hidden since I was very little. I rarely ever went out of our house. They n-never told me anything, but I saw you in my vision. I saw your car, the time and the place. I ran away from home yesterday and your car was right where it was supposed to be. You look exactly like you were supposed to look,” the boy said in a rush, not even stopping to take a breath.
Did he say vision? Oh, I didn’t like that. Not one bit. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to ignore the headache but it was impossibly. The boy’s words only made it worse. Damn it, I needed a drink so badly.
Fighting a battle against myself, I somehow managed to push the door closed and get back in the driver’s seat. It was time I disappeared from that part of the city, anyway. And I could easily throw the boy from my office, couldn’t I?
Five
I was right, everything did look better with a glass of whiskey in my hands.
The boy sat on Ms. Riley’s chair, backpack on the floor, his hands tucked under his thighs. He was shorter than I’d imagined him, and skinnier, too. The only reason he was there in the first place was because of that word he’d used: vision. I couldn’t tell you why that word stuck with me, but it did, and now here we were. I leaned against the wall that separated my small kitchen from the office area, drinking my whiskey and looking at the boy, trying to come up with the right questions to ask. But when my head threatened to explode, I just let it all out.
“Are you a witch?”
The boy bit his lip. “I am.”
“Bone?”
“Yes.” It had been just a guess, only because most Bone families lived in Pennsylvania.
“Why did your parents keep you hidden since you were little?”
Pulling his hands from under his thighs, he rubbed them against his knees and looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”
Was I stupid to believe that he was speaking the truth?
“Tell me about your visions.”
“Vision,” he said. “I just had one.”
“And you saw me in it?”
“Yes. I saw your car and I saw you.”
I smiled at the temptation to believe him. “So then tell me, what happens next?”
The boy looked up at me. “I didn’t see this far. The vision stopped at the car.”
Oh, this kept getting better and better. “Look, Ezra, I’m going to find your parents and I’m going to take you home, okay? What you think was a vision was probably just a dream, that’s all. A very strange dream, but a dream nonetheless. You shouldn’t have come here all by yourself.” See how that made perfect sense, and how easy an answer it was?
“No, you can’t call my parents. They’ll just lock me inside again,” he said, his chin quivering. Shit. I didn’t think I could handle seeing him cry. I wouldn’t know what to do.
“How about if I talk to the coven leaders? They can make sure that you’re treated the way you deserve to be treated, okay?”
But Ezra shook his head. “They’re in on it, too. I can’t go back there.”
“The coven leaders are in on it?” He nodded. “In on what?”
Frustrated, he stood up. “I don’t know. All I saw was that I was supposed to find you. That’s it! If anybody finds out I’m here, it will be all over.”
I stepped closer to him. “What will be over?”
This time when the boy looked at me, it felt like I was looking at a completely different person. “My life,” he whispered.
Flinching, I put the glass to my lips only to realize it was empty.
“Listen, you’ve been on the road for a long time. Let’s just get some sleep, okay? You and I both need it. In the morning, we’ll talk some more and figure out what we’re going to do.” Basically, how I was going to call my aunt and ask her what the hell she and the other leaders were doing keeping a twelve-year-old locked up in his house—if the kid was really telling the truth. There was bound to be a good story behind this. Unfortunately, as I thought of Jane Dunham’s face, Ezra’s story completely lost its appeal.
“Can I have a glass of water?” he asked.
“Have you eaten anything?” I asked him as I brought him the water.
“Yes, I’m full.” He drank the water all at once. “So, what’s your name?”
“Winter,” I said reluctantly. Right now, he was just a little boy, but he could become anything else later. I’d seen too much to believe everything was as it looked anymore.
“Winter? Like when it snows?” the boy asked, his eyes wide in surprise.
“Like when it snows,” I said with a smile. “Follow me.”
I took him to my room and the only couch in the office. It looked like I was going to have to give it away again. Ezra stayed by the door while I changed the sheets and analyzed him through the corner of my eye. He was still the same—standing awkwardly in the doorway, trying to look everywhere but at me. I doubted he was wearing a disguise, but I’d be up all night, anyway, so if he was there to kill me, he was in for a surprise.
“You can take a shower if you’d like.” I pointed at the bathroom door.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, and even before I closed the door, he fell on the couch without bothering to even take off his sneakers.
“Goodnight,” I whispered, feeling more confused by the second.
“Goodnight, Winter,” Ezra said, and I heard him snore even before I properly sat at my desk after locking the office door.
My thoughts were all over the place and I looked back a few more times, expecting the door to be open and the room empty.
First, I’d seen Jane Dunham when nobody else had, and now this kid came out of nowhere and told me he had to stay with me or he was going to die. Half of me was pretty convinced that the whole night was a dream and that I’d wake up covered in sweat any second now.
But I never did.
***
I must have fallen asleep sometime before sunrise, because when my eyes opened, sunlight was streaming through the windows. Sitting up, every cell on my body screamed in objection.
I’d slept at the desk, using my hands as pillows, and I didn’t even want to look at the mirror to see how much of them were imprinted on my face. Dragging my feet, I made it to the bathroom. My neck hurt, my forehead hurt—which made me suspect I’d slept with it pressed against the desk at some point—and
my back was killing me. Before hopping into the shower, I realized I didn’t have a towel with me.
That’s when I remembered that there was a boy sleeping on the couch in my room, right where the towels were. A shiver broke down my back and my eyes opened wide. My face suddenly went numb, too.
Had it all just been a bad dream? Was I really at the fairy event the night before, and did I really see Jane Dunham? Did I attack her in front of everyone?
Most importantly, was a boy named Ezra really sleeping in my room?
I held my breath and very slowly opened the door, just a tiny bit, before closing it again.
Yes, a boy named Ezra was really sleeping in my room.
I didn’t have it in me to even make myself some coffee. Instead, I just sat on my chair again and looked at the street outside my office. It took a good five minutes for my brain to pick up where it had left off the night before. I’d been wondering why the hell I seemed to attract the strangest fucking things right before sleep took me.
Biting my tongue, I checked my phone. My aunt had probably called me a thousand times already to demand an answer about the night before. Bender, too. They must have gone out of their minds trying to reach me.
But when I unlocked my phone, I had no notifications. No missed calls, no text messages—nothing. Huh. It was almost nine am. Maybe they’d stayed up late at the event, and they hadn’t woken up yet?
Knowing my aunt, that was highly unlikely, but what other explanation was there?
The door to my room opened and I instinctively jumped to my feet. Ezra, the boy who’d popped up in my backseat claiming he’d had a vision about me was standing right in front of me, eyes swollen and shirt wrinkled.
“Morning,” he said with a nod and before I could reply, he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Fuck me,” I whispered to myself and fell on my chair again.