by Diana Paz
“What about mom?” Ethan asked. “What about your life here? Can’t you have both, especially if time is so strange there?”
“Maybe. If it were only that.” He looked up, silent, his hands rising slowly to the rim of his hood. He pulled it back and fully faced them, revealing golden skin that shimmered, with rapid tracers of light speeding beneath his skin every few seconds. Hiding beneath his angelic hair, Julia recognized the pointed, leaf-shaped ears she had seen on Meliah and other nymphs.
“Mom will understand. I have been meaning to tell her about my own magic.” Ethan sat on the bed beside him and drew him in a close, side-hug. “We can do it together, little bro.”
Brian leaned his head on his brother’s shoulder for a second before looking up at him. “I want to tell her. I don’t want to just disappear.”
“Don’t leave.”
Brian shook his head. “The ocean gives me strength. I need it.” His eyes squeezed shut. “Meliah’s magic is stronger than the Scylla venom. I’ve turned nymph in every way,” he glanced up at Julia then, and for a moment she felt his power, the light that could bend her to his will if he wanted it to. The moment ended as quickly as it began, leaving her wondering if she imagined it.
“But Ethan,” he continued, “That Scylla venom is still a part of me. When I’m away from the ocean, I feel… disconnected. If I get mad or feel frustrated, there’s this pulse of dark energy inside of me. Horrible thoughts surface, and I don’t want that.” He released a shaky breath. “I’m afraid of it.”
“When you’re in the sea, you don’t feel this way?”
“No. In the sea I feel whole.”
Sorrow and regret shone from Ethan’s eyes, and it took all the strength Julia had not to go to his side.
“You could still visit, right?” she offered.
Brian’s head tilted. “I can sense people that I know or care about, when they’re in the ocean,” he said. “If you or Mom wanted to reach me, you could go to the shore. A few days away from the sea would be okay.”
“And maybe as you grow stronger, you’ll learn to control the Scylla venom better and could visit longer. For Mom’s sake.”
Brian smiled. “Yeah.”
The tension that had coiled around Julia’s heart eased. Ethan stood up, looking visibly relieved. “I should take Julia back home.”
Brian stood too, facing Julia without his previous odd nymphy super power. “Will you tell the other Daughters about what’s happened?”
“Of course.”
“And let them know, any time you need my help if you’re in the sea or a waterway connected to it, call to me.”
“You’ll hear us?”
“Even better,” he said. “I’ll feel you.”
Julia’s lips parted. “Just like Meliah did.”
She pondered this power, and the help he could provide. A new ally. Angie would be happy to hear this.
“Hijos, I’m home,” a woman called, interrupting her thoughts.
“I should go,” Julia said.
Ethan nodded and they headed out.
“Let’s tell Mom tomorrow,” Brian said. “Today’s her birthday and it should be about her, not us.”
“Poor Mom,” Ethan said. “How did she end up with both her sons mixed up with magic?”
Julia bit her lip, nearly tripping over her next step. Thoughts she had been puzzling over earlier tumbled back into her mind.
Because she was sure that Ethan’s mom was part of the magic, too.
Kaitlyn smiled, the zippers on her thigh-high leather boots chiming softly as she walked through the dark alley. Music blared behind her, the deep throb of fast-paced bass making her ribcage thump with each pounding note. She glanced at the man beside her. He was easily as old as her father.
“What did you want to show me all the way out here?” she asked, her voice ringing with confusion and innocence. Men were so easy to fool.
“Something cool. It’s… up against the wall,” the man—Victor, apparently—said in a hushed voice. He was panting.
“Oh. Okay,” Kaitlyn said, her heart hammering deliciously as the man placed his hand on her waist. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing, baby.” His hand slid down her backside.
“No.” She turned around, feeling the tears form in her eyes. They weren’t difficult to conjure. “I don’t like this. I want to go home.”
“Too late for that,” he said in a husky voice, pushing her against the wall.
“It’s not too late.” Her voice lost its sugary lilt. She stood tall, nearly as tall as this perv in her boots with their four-inch heels. “I said, I want to go back inside.”
His hand drew back. She nearly allowed instinct to take over, but rather than shielding herself or using magic to stop him, she let the blow come. His hand exploded across her cheek and her head whipped so forcefully to the side that she almost stumbled. This time, real tears of pain sprung to her eyes as sparks blazed through her vision.
“You’re gonna do what I want you to do,” he growled, shoving her against the wall hard enough to make her cry out.
This wasn’t the first time a guy had tried to force himself on her in a dark alley. But this time, the outcome would be a little different, she thought. A fierce and terrible pleasure stole through her. Magic flared from the mark on her arm. “When someone tells you to stop, you should really listen,” she purred.
“And you should shut your pretty little mouth.”
She felt him working at his belt buckle and she nearly laughed. “Idiot.” Power flowed through her body as she focused her anger and hatred into the palms of her hands. “No means no, asshole.” Twin bolts of magic shot from her hands, slamming into the man’s chest and shooting him clear to the opposite end of the alley.
The man groaned, his pants falling around his ankles as he curled into a fetal position.
Kaitlyn’s heels clicked along the pavement. He was so pathetic. She blasted him again for good measure, enjoying the sound of his agonized pain.
“What to do… what to do,” she murmured lazily, twirling her hand around and compelling a length of rope across the alley to slither across the floor and twist itself around the man’s hands, tying him securely. “There’s a nice long pipe here I could use to beat you, but then again, you weren’t planning on beating me, were you?” She lifted her palm and the thick pipe floated up from the ground, hovering in mid-air. She turned her hand the slightest inch toward the man and the pipe pointed itself directly at him. “You were planning on—what, exactly?”
“Nothing,” he yelled. “I wasn’t planning on doing anything to you!”
She urged the pipe closer. It was heavy and solid. Beating him to within an inch of his life would be so easy. “Strange, it seemed like you were planning to do something when you had your hand up my skirt. Even when I told you I didn’t want you to touch me. Maybe you should see what it feels like to have someone touch you when you don’t want them to.”
The man twisted against the ropes. “You come anywhere near me and I swear I’ll kill you!”
Kaitlyn chuckled, the ropes tightening and coiling around the man’s body as light glowed from her palms. “I doubt that.”
She flicked her wrist. The pipe fell beside the man’s face with a startling sound of metal against asphalt before rolling beside the man’s head. Kaitlyn closed the gap between them.
She crouched down, a smile curving her lips. “It’s good being a witch.”
“G-g-get the hell away from me!”
“Would you have gotten the hell away from me, if I had asked?”
The man began jerking and struggling in earnest. “Help,” he cried. “Help! Someone, please!”
“Calm down,” she said irritably, digging through his pants pockets until she found his cell phone. “I’m not going to hurt you, even though you deserve it.”
“Th-then let me go!”
Such a silly pervert. “Now, why would I do that? Oh, I t
old you online that I’m only sixteen. You remember that?”
“Wh-what the hell difference does that make?”
“It’ll make a difference to the judge, I think.” She aimed his camera phone so that the shot would show his pants down and her skirt up. “Say cheese.”
He stilled. A new type of panic took over his features. His eyes bulged as he strained against his bindings with more force. “Damn it what are you doing?”
She returned his phone to his pocket before taking out her own. “I’m calling the police, of course. What does it look like I’m doing?” She rolled her eyes, tapping 9-1-1 and hitting send. “Seriously. It isn’t rocket science. If someone tries to rape you, you call the police.”
“No, please don’t. I’ll do anything! You’ll ruin my life. I have a wife and kids and… do you know what they do to guys like me in jail?”
“Yeah, pretty much what you tried to do to me tonight, but just a sec—” She turned her cheek to the phone and infused her voice with panic, “911? Oh my god! I n-n-n-eed help. A man followed me in an alley. He-he tried—he-he tried to—” she broke into incoherent sobs, amazed at how quickly she could conjure up tears again when all she felt inside was deep satisfaction.
Maybe using her powers for good could be fun, after all.
Angie lay curled on her side. Her gaze remained unfocused as she stared at the pale blue of her wall. Her curtains kept most of the light from entering her room, and she couldn’t tell whether afternoon had ebbed into evening or not. Time could move forward or not. It didn’t really seem to matter which. Their mission was completed and she was tired. Tired and sad.
When she returned home, her parents had listened to the struggles she had gone through in the Caribbean. It had felt like a purging, the story coming out in a rush of information, with more detail than she had intended to share. She had been left feeling drained, but better. Unburdened. There was strength in trusting people with something so huge.
She buried her face in her blankets, wishing she had trusted David sooner. Time had been unfrozen for more than a day, and he still hadn’t called her back. Was this how he had felt when she refused to talk to him after what he and Kaitlyn had done? She blinked against the heat in her eyes.
A knock on her door didn’t inspire her to move. She had told her mother that she wasn’t feeling well. Another half-lie. Her mother had taken her temperature and offered her soup. Angie could have told her what happened, that David had found out about the magic and might never trust her again, but trying to say the words overwhelmed her. She had gone to her room, letting her mother believe whatever she would.
The knock came again. “Honey? Someone’s here to see you.”
Her throat constricted as she sat up. Someone?
The door opened a crack and her mother peeked inside.
“Is it David?” she asked.
Her mother nodded. “Should I tell him you’re not feeling well enough to—”
“No, no,” she said in a breath. “I’m glad he’s here.”
A smile lit her mother’s face. “I’ll send him up.”
She glanced down at herself as her mother closed the door. Pink pajamas. She had crawled into her favorite ones as soon as she had come out of her bath. She should have asked her mother for a minute to change and wash her face. Now it was too late. Now David would see that she had been crying.
Her mom opened the door. David entered the room holding a tray with a bowl and a steaming mug.
“I’ll be downstairs if you need anything,” her mother called from the hallway.
David smiled, his turquoise eyes lighting on her in the dim room. She held her breath as he set down the tray on her nightstand.
“How are you doing?”
“Okay. I’m not really sick. My mom just thinks so because…” she swallowed tightly, trying to get a grip on her emotions.
“I know I hurt your feelings,” he said, his gaze soft.
She couldn’t deny it. Not in her jammies with a face still swollen from crying. But she did understand. “We said we wouldn’t keep secrets, but I had a huge one all this time. I don’t blame you for not being sure what to make of it.”
He sat beside her. Before she could make more room for him, he slipped his arm around her, scooting up to the headboard and bringing her with him. “It was a shocker, that’s all. But I can understand, too. You had good reasons to keep something like that a secret. Maybe you can tell me about what they were.”
She snuggled up to his chest, relaxing her head against his heartbeat as his arms came around her. “At first, it was important that the magic stay secret. But… I could have trusted you. You trusted me with your secrets… you told me things about your family that you haven’t told anyone.”
“But that doesn’t mean you owe me your secrets in return,” he said, brushing back her hair.
“Even so, I’m sorry. I should have trusted you. I know that now.”
“We’re both sorry, then.” He kissed the top of her head and sat up a little, offering her the mug her mom had prepared. “Can you forgive me for making you sad?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, breathing deep of the tea and wishing it were hot chocolate, instead.
David brushed her hair away from her face as she took a sip. Her heart spilled over with warmth at having him near, and knowing he wasn’t upset with her. They were together again. Nothing else mattered.
After a few more sips she set the tea back down. David smiled and kissed her nose before snuggling her close again. They sat silently for a while, content in the quiet of each other’s arms, breathing in the mingled scent of aftershave and vanilla-scented bathwater. His fingers traced lazy designs along her bare arms. She relaxed against his warmth, shifting slightly to make it easier for him to touch her. His closeness made her feel protected… and something more. Something stronger than she could understand. The spaces between them disappeared as her palms slid along his back.
Her lashes lifted. They were close enough to kiss now. His body lay half on top of hers, and through the thin fabric of her night clothes she could feel his heartbeat.
Her fingers entwined in his hair. He whispered her name. The syllables brushed against her lips as his fingertip slipped beneath the laced edge of her sleeve.
A vibration near her hip made turn her head toward the noise. He rolled onto his side, pulling his phone from his jeans pocket. “My mom,” he said, giving her a half-smile. “It’s like she’s psychic.”
Angie tried not to let her disappointment show. “Do you need to go?”
“Pretty soon, yeah,” he said, scanning his phone before returning it to his pocket. “She’s letting me know that everyone’s heading to my uncle’s house, so not to go home.”
“You should go,” she said, not wanting to keep him from having fun with his cousins.
“You’re kicking me out already?” he teased. “I want to hear about the magic.”
She twisted her head to smile at him. “You have questions?”
“It’s magic. I want to know everything.”
“Well, it’s pretty awesome,” she grinned. “And I make it myself.”
He tapped her nose, but the playful light in his eyes faded as his hand lingered on her cheek.
“I can explain more about needing to keep it a secret,” she offered.
“That would help, but first, show it me again?”
She smiled and sat all the way up to face him. His vivid blue eyes seemed almost electric in her half-lit room. She let herself become lost in them for a moment, cherishing the feeling of being safe in his love again. His gaze softened as she watched him. He leaned forward and her heart sped up. What had she been about to show him?
Oh… the magic!
She lowered her eyes and cupped her hands between them. White light pooled in her palms, illuminating their faces. The mark on her arm glowed white, casting shimmers along the walls of her room.
“Magic,” he said softly.
David’s eyes lit up as he looked at the sparkling ceiling. Pinpoints of magic hovered in the air and drifted down, coating them in light.
“I can cast spells, too,” she said. “Make people see things that aren’t there… make things float across the room. I’m a bit like a witch.”
“Having powers would make me really lazy.”
She lifted her hand and flicked her wrist, lighting a row of scented candles on her dresser, and another on her nightstand. “I know what you mean.”
He sucked in a breath.
“I told you. I’m a witch.”
“Where’s your broom?”
“We fly without one, but only if we’re all connected.”
He flopped back on the bed. “You can fly, too? I was kidding!”
“There isn’t a lot we can’t do, I guess. But nothing comes without a cost. Over-using our magic can hurt us. We can black out, even in the middle of casting a spell. Imagine if we’re flying and our magic gives out?”
His gaze swept across her face, then down her baby-doll pajamas and back up again. “You’re the cutest witch I’ve ever seen.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and wiggled her fingers. “Watch out. I could turn you into a frog.”
“Could you, really?”
She stifled a laugh and considered the question. Could she? She wouldn’t want him to be a frog, even if she could kiss him and turn him back into her prince. “Maybe,” she finally said, still giggling, “but probably not by myself. Kaitlyn, Julia and I, we’re connected. Powerful spells like that have to be done together.” She sobered, taking his hand and holding it between her palms. “But even now… I could make you think you were a frog. Or a dog, or a cat.” She pressed her lips together, lowering her head as she thought over dark magic and all it implied. “I could make you believe… anything really.”