by D. N. Hoxa
“Yes, Spellmakers can be made, but they are never as strong as a born one,” Amelia said. “Ezra was born with the power to shape magic. Nothing that can be learned can come even close to that.”
For a long moment, we were unable to speak. We just looked at each other, Julian, Bender and I, shaking our heads, trying to understand what my aunt was saying.
“You said of our time,” Bender said when he found his voice. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Spellmakers are born every few centuries, whenever new spells are required to adapt to the changes of the human world. Nobody has ever been able to define which changes have to occur for a Spellmaker to arise, though.”
“So, um…he…he just makes spells?” It sounded so fucking confusing, I could slam my head against the wall and still not get it.
“Basically,” Alice Rivera said. “He can lace new words, new sentences to magic, ones that will hold and last for eternity.”
“Okay…so he just makes them.” Really, really hard for me to get because spells felt so old. When they left your body, they felt ancient, like they were written before time itself, and to think that a ten-year-old boy could create them from scratch was mind-blowing. And terrifying.
“Throws in a few words and poof, it’s a spell that everyone can use?” asked Bender. He seemed to be on the same page with me.
“Now that you know what Ezra is, how are we going to get him back? If he dies, an entire generation of witches is going to pay the price, until the next Spellmaker is born,” Catrina Reigns said, not even bothered at all by what she said.
“That’s why she wants him,” Julian whispered, calling my attention back to where it should have been all along.
Ezra. Lynn. Jane Dunham.
“How the hell did she even know?” I asked, but just as the words left my mouth, I remembered the way Ezra had chanted in Bender’s house in Providence that morning.
And I remembered Mr. Wylde, who’d screamed and shouted, telling us that the boy was evil and without a soul.
And Jane…who’d heard the chanting Julian was pretty sure was dark magic.
Holy spell. We were screwed.
“Our guess is as good as yours. Maybe she was related to Hedge coven leaders back when the coven existed?” Joseph Davis whispered. “But it doesn’t matter how she knows. We need to get him back. We need to get our daughter back.” His eyes were full of tears he refused to let spill. I could feel their pain from across the room and it only made the guilt worse.
“How did you communicate with the fairy realm the first time you invited them over?” Julian asked. “You’re going to do exactly the same thing, except now, you’re going to invite the Seelie King and his Court only.”
The leaders looked at each other, each giving a weak nod. I jumped to my feet, ready to kick some fairy ass—just as soon as I used the bathroom. After that, it was show time.
Seventeen
“Are you kidding?” I asked the leaders, tempted to start laughing at the stupid joke.
They looked at each other for a second. “No, I’m afraid not,” Catrina Reigns said.
I turned to Julian, shaking my head. The leaders had called the meeting with the fairy Royalties by literally sending them a letter through the guards on their side of the portal in Manhattan.
That meant, not only would we need to go all the way to Manhattan, but we’d have to wait for whenever the guard felt like going to the Seelie Court to deliver the goddamn letter.
“We’ll say it’s urgent,” Amelia mumbled, but even she knew that this was unacceptable. Lynn and Ezra were out there, going through God knew what at the hands of Jane Dunham. There was no time to wait.
“I’ll do it,” Julian said with a sigh. “I’ll go back home and give the letter to Marva to deliver immediately.”
I flinched at the mentioning of that woman—the commander of the Unseelie army. I still remembered every line of her beautiful face, and the way she’d looked at me, as if she hated me even before she said hi to me. To be honest, though, when Galladar imprisoned us and she came to our rescue, I’d kind of disliked her, too, when she’d jumped in Julian’s arms like that.
“But wait, what about your father? Didn’t her kick you out?” I whispered.
Julian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. She can deliver the letter much faster than anyone.”
“She can?” Galladar had been the only one who I’d seen move really fast within the fairy realms.
“She has the black ravenstone,” said Julian.
My brows raised. “You gave her the portal opener?” Lynn had found that thing, and he’d given it to Marva?
“She’s the commander of our army,” Julian said without missing a beat. “She needs it more than anyone else.”
“But why don’t you just go to the King right away?” Joseph Davis asked. “Why bother to get someone else to take it?”
Julian offered him a tight lipped smile. “I’m a member of the Unseelie royal family. We’re not allowed into the Seelie Court without formal invitation,” he said, and Davis nodded as if he understood, but I doubted he did. “So, if you could get to the invitation…”
“Oh, right! Of course,” Amelia said, and ran to the desk closest to the door of the office/lounge room.
“We’ll need the other coven leaders to sign it,” Monica Raymond said. “They won’t be here soon enough.”
“It doesn’t matter. Your signatures are going to have to be enough for this one,” I said. No more waiting. “Why don’t you go help my aunt set up a meeting time and place?” I said to Julian. He was the only one who knew how time worked in the fairy realm versus on Earth.
“Have a seat,” Monica Raymond said when Julian went to Amelia and we were all just standing there in the middle of the office without having anything else to do.
But I couldn’t make myself sit down. All I could think about was Lynn and Ezra, the way they’d looked at me when Jane took them from Bender’s house. And how she’d smiled at me. And what she’d said to me about my father.
Involuntarily, my eyes found my aunt’s face while I paced around the office. She was so focused on the screen of her computer and in what Julian was saying, completely clueless of the storm going on inside my head. A storm that her name was causing. I wondered how long I’d be able to hold myself from asking her. I wondered how long until my whole world turned upside down. Again.
It took ten minutes for Amelia and Julian to get the letter right, to print it, then have all the leaders sign it at the bottom. When they sealed the envelope and handed it to Julian, I sighed in relief. Finally.
“She’ll go right away, right? Like, as soon as you give this to her,” I asked Julian, my nerves all over the place.
“Yes. As fast as possible,” he promised, and winked at me. I was tempted to return a smile, but like I said, my nerves wouldn’t let me take control of my face muscles.
Julian took a step back and closed his eyes as he began to chant the spell that would open the portal for him. Once upon a time, he’d needed dragon blood to fuel the spell, and me to charge it with energy. Now that the portals were open and our world was once again connected to the fairy realm, all he needed was his fairy magic, pretending to be Blood magic.
“Can every fairy do that?” Alice Rivera asked when the black hole began to take shape in front of Julian.
“Nope. Only Julian.” And we’d never said it before, but we were both going to make sure that nobody else knew that spell for as long as was possible—not even me.
***
The meeting was going to be held at five thirty the next morning. Seven more hours to go.
I was sitting on the ground against the wall, head tucked between my knees, listening to the leaders talk, and to Caroline Davis cry for her daughter, when Julian finally made it back—dressed in new clothes, I might add. The letter had been delivered to the King. He’d agreed to come to Earth with all the members of his Court.
Now, we jus
t had to wait.
“Looks like you’re in need of some alcohol,” he said when he gave the news and I didn’t even have it in me to stand up. He touched the bottle of vodka to the top of my head. It wasn’t a good time to be drinking, but I was going to have to kill the hours somehow. I took the bottle and drank a mouthful. The vodka burned my throat and stomach, making me forget all about the world for a few seconds. I handed the bottle to Julian, who’d sat on the ground right beside me.
Not long after, Bender came and sat crossed legged right in front of us. He looked pale, the bags under his eyes dark blue. He looked really miserable—just like the rest of us.
“What if it doesn’t work?” he whispered and reached out for the bottle Julian was handing to him.
“It will work,” I whispered back. The others were sitting on the sofas, too stubborn to leave already and go home to get some sleep, and we didn’t want them to freak out even more so we kept our voices low.
“I think he means we need a plan B,” Julian said. Chills washed up and down my back. Plan B. Making a plan B meant accepting that plan A wouldn’t work.
“We don’t,” I insisted. There was no time for plan B. If Julian’s idea didn’t work, I was afraid it was going to be too late for Lynn and Ezra.
“We definitely do,” Bender said, and Julian nodded. “If the King refuses to expose her, or to even banish her like we hope he will, we need to figure out another way to find her.”
“I want this plan to work. I don’t want to figure out another way to find her.” I realized I sounded like an angry kid far too late.
“Do you have anything better to do?”
I looked up at Bender. Goddamn it, he was right. Seven hours were ahead of us, and they were going to go by a lot faster if I did something instead of sitting there and feeling sorry for myself. I grabbed the bottle of vodka from Bender’s hand and straightened my shoulders.
“All right, hit me with your best,” I said to them, sure that, if we said enough stupid ideas out loud, we were bound to accidentally find a good one.
I was right, time did begin to pass faster while we talked. Yes, they were mostly stupid ideas, like impersonating one of Jane’s fairy soldiers, or even the Seelie King himself, but it did get us heated and arguing. Before I knew it, I looked up, and the leaders were gone, except Amelia, Joseph and Caroline—who still hadn’t stopped crying.
Meeting my aunt’s eyes got harder and harder, the drunker I was. Even though I was fully focused on Jane Dunham, there was still a part of me that begged me to just walk over to where she was laying on the sofa, and demand she tell me everything she knew.
When the bottle of vodka was empty, I was relieved. Bender wanted to get another one, but Julian and I insisted that we’d all had enough. Eventually, he lay down on the ground, arms under his head, and I rested against Julian’s shoulder. Before I realized it, my eyes were closed, and sleep was trying to lure me in with all its strength.
It must have gotten to me at some point, because the next thing I knew was that I was being nudged lightly on my shoulder. Eyelids heavy, I half opened my eyes and saw Julian. With the tips of his fingers, he caressed my cheek.
“It’s time,” he whispered.
The loudest alarm in the world began to ring inside my head. I sat upright, my whole body numb, and blinked until the view in front of me was crystal clear. I was still sitting against the wall, and I’d slept on Julian’s shoulder. Bender was snoring, lying on the ground just like I last saw him. Amelia slept on one sofa, and Joseph slept sitting on the other, with his wife’s head on his lap.
“What time is it?” I asked Julian.
“Almost five,” he said. “You don’t need to hurry. The portal is just fifteen minutes away.”
“Let’s wake the others.”
Amelia had requested that the King take the portal that led to Pennsylvania, instead of the one in New York. He would need to travel in the fairy realm to get to the portal, but much less than we’d have to, to get to Manhattan. It still didn’t make me feel any better, though. I hadn’t showered in two days, my hair hadn’t seen a brush in two days, and most importantly, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since Ezra popped up in the backseat of my car.
Julian went to wake my aunt and the Davis’s, and I poked Bender on his cheek—five times before his eyes opened. “Rise and shine,” I mumbled, standing up. “Where’s the bathroom?”
The bathroom was on the third floor, it seemed. The elders didn’t have one close by, which was strange, considering how fancy their office was. A look at the mirror, and I cringed. Mascara all over my face, my clothes bloody, torn and completely wrinkled, and my hair…let’s not even go there. Five minutes later, I was as decent as one could get by using fingers as a comb.
When I walked out of the bathroom and saw Amelia standing there, I almost passed out. She pushed me to the side and walked into the ladies’ room, holding something in her arms.
“Fresh clothes. You can’t be seen by anyone like that,” she gave a pointed look at my clothes before disappearing in one of the three stalls. Frozen in place, I couldn’t even breathe. Half my mind was made up to just forget about the clothes she’d put on the marble sink and run out of there as fast as I could, but I controlled myself because she was right, I looked worse than horrible.
Without even looking at what she’d brought me to wear, I put the clothes on faster than I ever had in my life, then ran out of the bathroom. Being in there, all alone with her, meant giving myself a chance to ask her about my father. I couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway.
The third floor hallway was empty, so I didn't have to hide while I put on my hip belt and everything else I had with me. Three minutes later, and I looked like Amelia Wayne carrying a lot of weapons. She’d brought me a button up dark green shirt, one I’d never normally wear, but the pants were okay. A size too big, so the hip belt that carried my knives was going to have to carry my pants, too. And the fabric of them definitely didn’t go well with my white sneakers, full of blood splatters, but it was much better than what I had on before.
Throwing my old clothes in the bin across the hallway, I ran upstairs to the office again. We were ready to go. The other elders, Bone, Blood and Green, were going to wait for us by the portal, according to Bender. He’d already spoken with all of them, and they were on their way.
“You ready?” Julian asked, and though he tried to act indifferent, the look in his eyes gave his true feelings away. He was nervous, and he was scared, too. No shame in that, I guessed. We all were.
When we finally got into the coven cars and headed east toward the Pennsylvania portal, my heart was all I could hear, pounding in my head. Bender had changed his clothes, too, and he kept saying, this is going to work every few seconds while the driver took us to our destination. I wanted to believe him, I really did.
But something inside me, right below my rib cage, insisted that we had no idea what we were in for.
Eighteen
As we got out of the car, I realized I’d never seen a portal before. We were in a neighborhood somewhere close to Bloomsburg, full of two story buildings, the first floors of most turned into all kinds of stores. It looked like it would be a busy street during the day, but it was five twenty-five in the morning, so there was nobody around us yet. Guards were appointed up and down the street, just to make sure we wouldn’t be interrupted, and the Blood coven leaders were already there.
“Where is it?” I whispered to Julian. We were in between two buildings, looking at a grey wall with three witches and one werewolf standing in front of it. That couldn’t be it, could it?
“It’s right here, but it won’t open until the King goes through the one in the fairy realm,” Julian explained.
“He’ll be on time, right?”
“I believe so. The King is very punctual.”
“How do you think he’s going to react when we tell him?” The letter that was sent to the Seelie Court didn’t specify the reason for the m
eeting, it just stated, in bold and underlined letters, that it was very urgent.
Julian thought about it for a second, and I did not take that as a good sign. “I’m not sure, but he’s surprised me before.”
“What if he refuses?”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed my fingers. “Don’t, Winter. Don’t jump to conclusions just yet.”
I bit my tongue and tried to do as he asked, but by the time all the coven leaders arrived, I was an even bigger mess than before. None of them spoke to us, and they didn’t look happy to be there, either. Most looked suspicious—even Theodora Sullivan, the Green leader who seemed to like me more than most. Maybe they didn’t believe the story about Jane Dunham, or that she had Ezra and Lynn. Maybe they did, and they were freaking out, just like me.
But that no longer mattered because the whole world was about to see Jane’s true face soon.
Just as I was finishing that thought, the ground beneath us shook slightly. My mouth opened to ask what that meant, but then, the guards in front of the wall stepped to the side, and the coven leaders straightened their shoulders. They stood in a straight line right in front of us, and we were in front of the eighteen witch guards of the covens.
The light that began to shine through cracks that weren't there on the grey wall just a second ago was fascinating. It was like a hologram, bending yellow light to all angles, as small as my fist at first. The more it expanded, the brighter and more golden the light got, until it enveloped the entire wall. Standing in front of a very large 4K screen couldn’t give you the same view that this wall did.
“Where is the black hole?” I asked in wonder. I kept expecting it to pop up, but it didn’t look like it intended to. It was just a square wall burning with golden flames that promised to hypnotize you if you stared at it long enough.
“There is no black hole,” Julian whispered. I could hear the smile in his voice. “These portals are different. They…” but his voice trailed off when the first leg appeared between the golden flames, and then an entire body.