by D. N. Hoxa
“What?” I said when I found my voice. I was still standing right next to Ezra’s bed, and he was already sound asleep.
“Are you okay? I kept calling you and you wouldn’t answer.”
Shit. “No, I’m fine,” I mumbled.
Julian didn’t look like he believed me. “It looks like I’m going to need your help after all. The bed is too big to fit through the door. We need put it on the side.”
Eager to have something to do that would distract the both of us from my zoning out, I ran to the door and got to work. The bed was heavy and we barely managed to drag it into the room. We made a lot of noise, too, but Ezra never even moved. He must have been even more tired than I thought. We did scratch the walls in a few places, but I could only hope that Bender wouldn’t mind, and finally, we put the bed right across Ezra’s. After I dusted off the sheets and the pillows and opened the connecting door to Lynn’s room, Julian and I lay down on the bed, sleep just minutes away. The weapons on my person made me very uncomfortable, but there was no way I was sleeping without them.
“You think the spells will hold?” I whispered to him. We faced each other, our eyes half closed, and just waited for whoever was going to fall asleep first.
“I think so. It reeks all around the place.” He was right. The smell of wet wood and menthol did take some getting used to.
“If she finds us…” I didn’t even want to think about that. Not until I could feel my body again.
With a sigh, Julian dragged himself closer to me and wrapped me in his arms. His shoulder was much more comfortable than the pillow. As soon as I put my hand on his chest, my eyes closed as if they’d found peace. My mind was shutting down quickly, too.
“We’ll get through this,” Julian promised. “We still have that date on the rooftop to get to, remember?”
I smiled against his shirt. Yes, we did.
Wherever the place sleep took me to that night, it was wonderful. It was…nothing. Everything had disappeared and my mind roamed free to the edges of the universe with no troubles to fear and try to ignore.
It was amazing while it lasted. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a long time, or so it felt to me.
The sound of a voice calling out my name dragged me violently into consciousness. Breathlessly, I sat up on the bed and looked at Ezra. He was still in the bed, sleeping, just like I’d left him. The sunlight streaming through the window surprised me. It had felt like I’d slept for mere minutes.
“It’s Lynn,” Julian whispered, jumping to his feet.
I’d almost forgotten that he was even there, but I didn’t get to even look at him before running out of the room.
“Winter,” Lynn called again. She seemed to be downstairs. I almost tripped twice on the stairs before I made it, heart in my throat, sweating like a pig.
And when I saw why Lynn was calling me, I almost screamed.
Bender was standing right in the middle of the living room.
Goddamn it. Putting my hands on my face, I breathed in deeply.
It’s just Bender. Not Jane. Bender. You can go back to beating normally now.
“What the hell is going on here?” Bender hissed, and when I put my hands away from my face, I found him pointing behind me. Right to where Julian was.
I squeezed my eyes shut again. “I can explain,” I whispered, but I wouldn’t even know where to start because Ezra was still upstairs, sleeping.
“What the hell is he doing here, Wayne?” Bender demanded, his eyes red with anger.
“I was just telling him that I came to see you, and that we decided to take a trip over here to spend some girl time. Julian just…found us,” Lynn said, her cheeks bright red.
“You’re a terrible liar, Evie,” Bender hissed. “Wayne?”
Ah, hell, I hated it when he looked at me like that. Like I’d betrayed him, when I hadn’t. He was the one who shut me out, right after my aunt did the same.
“Look, it’s a bit complicated. Let’s just sit down, grab some coffee and talk about this like adults,” I said. “Lynn, why don’t you go upstairs and uh…get dressed?” She was already dressed, but I couldn’t say stay with Ezra in front of Bender.
Lynn made for the stairs before I’d even finished speaking, eager to get the hell out of there, but Bender stopped her.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “You better start explaining this to me real fast.”
With a sigh, I dragged my feet over to the sofa and sat down. Having woken up the way I did, it really took a toll on my body. Julian decided to stand, crossing his arms in front of him, looking at Bender like they hadn’t fought a war against Galladar together, and like they were sworn enemies instead. Guys.
“I’m sorry I broke into your home, but trust me, I would have told you about it if you’d have spoken to me instead of hanging up the phone in my face,” I started. I hadn’t forgotten about what he’d said to me when I called him, and the more my brain woke up, the clearer every word he’d said got.
“How did you even know we were here?” Lynn asked. She’d sat down across from me and was keeping her head down.
“I get notified when the alarm is disabled, Evie. It took a phone call to your mother to know that it was you. And Jessica? I thought we were done with lying,” Bender reproached. Lynn bit her lip but said nothing else.
“What are you doing here, Bender? I thought you said you were busy with the super secret coven business thing,” I said, half my attention toward the stairs, just in case Ezra decided to come down.
“I am busy, but Evie is my niece. I came to find her, and instead, I find you two,” he hissed, looking at Julian.
“You sound like that’s the worst thing that could have possibly happened,” I said, pissed off by his attitude. I mean, we did break into his house, but he knew us all. He knew exactly who I was.
“Just tell me what’s going on, Wayne,” Bender demanded, holding his hips, looking down at me like he could barely hold himself from grabbing me by the throat.
There was no way out of this. I’d known that the second I saw him standing there, like he owned the place. Well, he did, but that’s not the point right now.
“Look, before you freak out, I need you to listen to me very carefully, okay?” I said after a deep breath. Telling him about Ezra was inevitable, but it was hard when I had no idea how the hell he was going to react. My instincts were telling me that his super secret coven business involved the boy, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to like what Bender decided to do once he found out Ezra was sleeping upstairs.
“I’m listening,” Bender said with a nod. I looked at Julian as if he could save the day, but all he did was nod to tell me that he knew we had no way out of this, too. Bender was not just going to walk out the door and let us stay there. So, taking a deep breath, I spoke.
“Okay, so the night of the fairy event, when I got in my car—”
The words got stuck in my throat when the ground began to shake abruptly. I jumped to my feet and fell on the wooden table in front of me on all fours.
“Ezra,” I breathed, and looked at the stairs.
“Stay put!” Bender called, but he had no idea about the boy sleeping upstairs. The earthquake was going to scare the shit out of him. Damn it, this was not the time for a freaking earthquake!
Except…moving towards the stairs on my hands and knees, I counted the seconds. Twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-four…
Earthquakes don’t last that long, do they? Not even the large ones.
Julian realized this, too. He was going for the stairs, too, trying to hold himself up on the railing that was already starting to come off.
“Wayne!” Bender called but I didn’t turn. If this wasn’t an earthquake, it was magic, and whatever was causing it couldn’t get to Ezra faster than me.
By the time I made it to the stairs, the chandelier behind me fell on the floor. Julian was at the top of the stairway, his head and shirt covered in white dust coming off the ceiling. I gritted my te
eth and held onto the railing, hanging in place only barely, and once I made it to my feet, I took two stairs at a time.
The upstairs shook just as badly as the downstairs, if not more. I could barely make out Julian standing by the door to the room we’d slept in, holding himself on the knob, and looking behind it as if he was seeing a ghost. That couldn’t be good.
Holding myself against the wall, which now had a large crack going all the way to the ceiling, I threw myself against him because it was the fastest way to get there. Julian fell on the floor, and I above him.
When I looked at Ezra’s bed, I realized why Julian had been frozen. It wasn’t a ghost that he’d seen. It was Ezra, sitting up on the bed, his eyes closed, chanting a spell I’d never heard before faster than it should have been possible.
“Ezra!” I shouted at the top of my voice, but the bed he was on moved and if Julian hadn’t pushed me back, its frame would have hit me right in the face. Instead, the bed we’d slept on hit me on the back of my head hard enough to make me see bright stars for a second. I held onto it and Julian pushed me up with both his hands on my ass. I jumped over him and fell right on Ezra’s bed.
“Ezra, look at me. Open your eyes,” I begged him, barely able to sit on the bed in front of him. The strangest thing, he was not moving at all. It was like he wasn’t even sitting on the bed.
“Come on, big boy. Open your eyes. It’s me, Winter,” I said, and slapped him on both his cheeks a few times, but he wouldn’t stop chanting. His voice was so potent, maybe he couldn’t even hear me, so I tried again. “Ezra, open your eyes!” I shouted, and grabbing him by the shoulders, I shook him just as violently as the bed was shaking me.
He finally opened his eyes.
The shaking stopped abruptly and knocked me over on the bed once more. Ezra looked at me like he had no idea what I was doing in front of him.
“Winter?” he whispered, then thought to look around the room. Before he could realize what had happened, I took his face in my hands again and made him look at me.
“You’re okay. It’s okay,” I said over and over again, but I didn’t even believe myself. What the hell was that? What had he been chanting? Where had he even learned a spell so long and complex, that even I didn’t understand it?
“Oh, my God.”
Bender was standing by the door, looking at Ezra with his eyes wide and mouth open, frozen in place.
I sighed loudly. Shit was about to hit the fan.
Fifteen
Bender said nothing when he came closer to the bed and analyzed Ezra, seemingly too afraid to trust him own eyes. Julian put Ezra’s shoes in front of the bed, and I helped the kid to move to them.
“Why don’t you go downstairs with Lynn and eat something? We left the snacks in the kitchen,” I said to him, and Lynn immediately walked over to us, and held out her hand.
“Who is he?” Ezra asked, looking at Bender.
“Just a friend,” I mumbled, and before he could ask anything else, Lynn took his hand and walked with him to the door.
“You hungry? We can have candy for breakfast if you like,” she said, and closed the door behind her when they left.
Now, it was just me, Julian and Bender in the room. Good thing he’d had no other furniture than the beds and empty nightstands. The walls had cracked in several places but the house was still standing, so that had to count for something.
“You had him all this time?” Bender asked. No, Bender accused.
“I did,” I said reluctantly. The man was someone I trusted, but after what had happened at the fairy event…I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“But…why?” The judgment in his voice was a cold slap to my face.
“He found her,” Julian said as he stood by the window, looking out on the street.
“He did?” Bender sounded surprised.
“The night at the fairy event, I found him waiting in my car. Yesterday, I was there, at my aunt’s place to ask her about him. To tell her he was with me, but she wouldn’t let me. You wouldn’t, either.”
Shaking his head, Bender sat down on the corner of the bed across from me. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked, but the judgment and the accusation were gone. Maybe I’d been too quick to jump to conclusions about him.
“Why didn’t you?” I asked instead. I’d offered him my help with everything he had worked on, regarding the coven. I’d never spoken a word to anyone about anything he told me. I guess it just sucked to know that he didn’t trust me the way I thought he did.
“It was the leaders’ decision,” Bender said. “And I agreed. They’re looking for him, Wayne.”
I flinched. “I know. And it’s about goddamn time you told me why.” Yep, I was ready to hear it all. Enough with the mystery.
Bender raised his brows. “What do you mean, why?”
“I mean, what does he have that everybody wants? What is he?”
“I don’t know,” he said reluctantly.
“You don’t know?” It sounded like a lie to me.
“I don’t. The leaders won’t tell anyone,” Bender said. “But wait a second, who is everybody?”
So, he didn’t know. “The fairies. The fairy. Jane Dunham, wearing the skin of Raina from the Seelie Court.”
But he shook his head. “I saw her myself. She looked nothing like the Hedge witch,” Bender insisted.
“Well, her friends looked nothing like wolves when they showed us their true faces the last time we fought them. Why would this be any different?”
As if a lightbulb went on in his head, Bender’s eyes grew wide and he leaned back a little. “Fuck.”
“Fuck, indeed.” He’d seen the Hedges turning into wolves. He’d seen me do it with the ring James the vampire had paid me to deliver the package to Julian almost a year ago. He sure as hell couldn’t deny that it was at least possible. “Look, Bender, the kid ran away from home and came to find me because he had a vision about it. Right now, he’s going to stay with me. The fairies are after him, and they were waiting at his parents’ house when they found us. I think you’ll agree, too, that he’s better off with me.”
“Are you sure?” Julian asked, surprising the both of us. “She knows you have him, Winter.”
“She knows?” Bender said, suddenly panicked.
“Yes, she knows, but I killed her last time, didn’t I? I can do it again.” And I was going to. With pleasure, only this time, I was going to have to make sure that she never came back to life again.
“Wayne, the covens are going crazy looking for him. They’re going to find him eventually. Even the ECU has started to look,” Bender said.
“Wait, covens? He’s a Bone. Why would others want to find him?”
Bender pressed his lips together. That could only mean he had no idea. “I don’t know, but this is serious. He means a great deal to a lot of people, and we have to take him back to keep him safe. Three covens together can do that.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Bender, but the kid stays with me.” He’d seen it in his vision. Now that I believed that wholeheartedly, I trusted it more than any cold, hard, fact anybody could give me. There was a reason he’d popped up in the back of my car, and, sooner or later, I was going to find out.
“Wayne, you can’t just make that deci—”
“You heard her, Bender. If she thinks Ezra is better off with her, he is. Besides, she’s not going to be alone,” Julian said. I didn’t exactly need him to talk on my behalf, but I’d lie if I said it didn’t feel good to have backup.
“Of course, she’s not,” Bender said, his brows narrowed.
“So, you’re not going to call us in?” I asked halfheartedly.
“Call you in?” He jumped to his feet. “Are you mad? I’m not going to call you in, Wayne. I just think it’s better to take him somewhere safe while we find Jane Dunham.”
“We?”
“Yes, we.”
“In that case, I suggest we get going. That earthquake couldn’t have gone
unnoticed,” Julian said.
Holy spell, he was right. The earthquake. I jumped to my feet and made for the door.
“Wayne, I really think we should consider taking him back,” Bender said while we ran down the half- broken stairs. It was amazing that the building hadn’t crashed yet.
“He insisted on staying with me. I think he knows exactly what he’s talking about.” His visions sure as hell do.
“What about the spell he was chanting?” Julian asked reluctantly. “That was dark magic, Winter. I’ve only ever heard those words in dark spells.”
Who the hell punched me in the gut? “You don’t know that,” I said, my voice weak as hell.
“I do. I’ve worked with all kinds of people and all kinds of spells,” he said with a sigh.
“Let’s just—”
“Help!”
Ah, hell, this couldn’t be happening. Shouting help was never a good thing.
We all ran to the kitchen, which was to the right of the living room, and found Lynn on the floor, holding Ezra’s head while he spit out white foam and shook like the ground had just minutes ago.
Oh, no. Not again.
“Find me, Winter,” Ezra said. “Release me.”
***
“Anybody want to talk about what the hell that was?”
Bender’s voice echoed in the high ceiling of his kitchen. Ezra was okay now. After he’d said those words, the seizure stopped and he’d stood up, with Lynn’s help, like nothing at all had happened. He’d even asked for a glass of water.
Julian stood above me while I sat with Ezra and Lynn on the counter stools. I could feel his questioning eyes on the back of my head. He, too, wanted to know what the hell that was.
“It was the man in the prison,” Ezra said, looking down at his hands.
“The man in the prison?” Julian asked, confused as I’d been when I first heard it. But back in Bloomsburg, in Lynn’s room, I’d spoken to whoever the man was, and I’d asked him to let go of Ezra, and he had. Now, there was no point in even thinking that this might be some sort of a mistake. No, whoever was using Ezra, they knew me. They called me by my own damn name.