Ironspark

by C. M. McGuire

  My heart skipped, and in an unintentional burst of sympathy, I couldn’t help imagining Dad or Ash or Jake in a hospital bed.

  “Wait. Is that why you started volunteering at the hospital this summer? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  Jasika snatched back her hand. “I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me like … like some kind of charity case.” The words fell like a hammer between us. Jasika’s eyes widened. “Wait. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s fine,” I sighed. Of course, even Jasika saw me that way. I grabbed my bag and rose. “I don’t know. I could have gotten killed last night.”

  “But you didn’t. You stood up to Mab and you survived. And you were alone. Imagine the two of us working it together. Mab can go on the back burner for one night. You just proved that!”

  “Why not invite Dom, too?”

  Jasika crossed her arms, glancing away. “Come on. Don’t make me say it.”

  “That’s something people tend to say before they say something assholish. And I thought there was only room for one asshole in this group.”

  Jasika’s expression hardened. “Because he’d tell us to listen to Gwen and not do it. And because he doesn’t have the knack for it. This isn’t some good luck spell. This is my cousin’s life.”

  Something buzzed in my veins. I couldn’t quite push the rush of the memory aside, sinking into the dream. The overwhelming surge of victory when Mab disappeared. I could still taste the iron on my tongue if I thought hard enough about it.

  “We have magic at our fingertips,” Jasika insisted. “What good is it if we can’t help anyone?”

  I thought of Dad, brows furrowed, the days when it took everything he had to focus. I thought of the pill bottles and the days he’d had to miss dinner for some late-night appointment. How much better would his life be if I could ease this burden for him?

  It was Mum’s book. What would she have wanted for him?

  “Just this once,” I allowed. “But next time, I need more forewarning. And we bring Dom and Gwen into it.”

  Jasika brightened like a star and nodded. “Of course. I’ll pick you up around seven.”

  Nineteen

  Jasika’s family car was pretty clean aside from the granola bars crammed into just about every available space. I tugged one out from the glove box and gave the wrapper a once-over. Chocolate cherry. Not a bad choice.

  Jasika squirmed in her seat, her eyes darting between me and the road. “Mom likes to make sure we always have enough. Especially when we’ve got extracurriculars,” she explained. “Help yourself.”

  Well, if I had permission. I peeled open the wrapper and took a bite. Jasika drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. I held the granola bar out to her.

  “No thanks. Seriously, I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime.” Jasika took a deep breath and shifted in her seat. “So. How deep is the crap this’ll put you in with Gwen?”

  I swallowed my bite of chocolate cherry. “Pretty deep, probably. But as long as I don’t show up with a broken leg, she never really gets too upset. I think it’s in their DNA to be pretty chill.”

  A little smile tugged at the corners of Jasika’s lips. “How do you even meet a water fairy in the first place?”

  I shrugged. “I was out in the woods and stumbled on her pond. I’d just started learning to see past glamours, and I think she was as curious as I was.”

  “So you just stumbled on them. Your very own ladies of the lake.” Jasika snorted and smiled. “Only you.”

  I waited for her to say something more, but nothing came. The silence stretched between us again, cut through only by the faint sounds of traffic as we wove through the wealthier side of town. Finally, Jasika flipped the stereo to a classic rock station.

  I alternated between nibbling at the granola bar, staring out the window, and just watching her. I’d never been alone with Jasika Witters this long. Up close, she had one of those perfect jawlines, like the bust of Nefertiti, and a soft dusting of eye shadow so subtle I would have assumed she wasn’t wearing any if she weren’t this close. And her scent. She smelled like sage and her floral body lotion. Safe, but strong. Jasika’s eyes darted to me, and I looked away, my face burning.

  Jasika cleared her throat. “So, is this just your life?” she asked. “Fairies and kid brothers? Don’t you have any hobbies?”

  I frowned. Did I have a life outside of all of this? I used to. Probably. “I like to knit, I guess. Can’t really afford to go out and buy Christmas gifts or anything. But all of my yarn was in the fire, so … I guess, right now, this is it. Fairies and family.” Maybe that would change in college. I didn’t even know what I was going to major in. Just that I was going to get out of here soon, get whatever degree a person needed to get a nice, safe job. Given how I’d basically kept the house running for years, I’d probably make a decent office manager. I shifted, stretching my legs out as much as I could, and tucked my head between the window and the seat, watching her out of the corner of my eye. “What about you?”

  “Me?” Jasika laughed. “I’ve done everything. Choir. Art. I was in soccer back in junior high, but it was too much to keep up with when I got to high school. You know, it was actually gardening that got me into playing with all this magic stuff in the first place.”

  “Really?” I grinned. “What, did you accidentally grow some anti-fairy weeds?”

  Jasika shook her head. “No. I was, like, thirteen? Yeah. I think thirteen. Anyway, I had this little herb garden. I think I had like ten plants. And I had this gut feeling that I ought to name each individual plant after a member of the family. I sort of forgot about it until one of the basil sprouts wasn’t doing so well. And there was absolutely no reason for it. Well, it was the one I named after Jade, and I don’t know why, but it got in my head that something was up with my sister. So I went and talked to her. Turned out there was this whole thing at school. She was getting bullied, the teachers had no idea…” Jasika shrugged. “When Jade felt better, the plant did, too.”

  “Really?”

  Jasika grinned at me. “Oh yeah. I was playing with this stuff long before the redcaps got into our bathroom. You and Father Gooding just lit a fire under my butt.”

  “Me, Father Gooding, and William.”

  Jasika’s smile faltered, like a shade thrown over a lamp. “Yeah. All the magic in the world and I haven’t found a thing to help.”

  “Do you have a plant for him?”

  “Yeah.” The smile disappeared completely. “It’s not doing so great.”

  “Does your family know you do this?” I couldn’t imagine her parents being thrilled that she was playing with magic, especially not now that they’d all met some of the nastier types of fairies out there. Plus, they were pretty Catholic.

  Jasika snorted. “Oh yeah. The boys think it’s a hoot. Jason got me a crystal ball for Christmas. Well. He said it was crystal.” She shook her head. “We’ve all got our things. And, hey, they like it. They think I’m some sort of super-witch here to protect them all. Sometimes Jade picks up sticks and waves them like magic wands whenever the boys are bugging her. Tells them I taught her.”

  Little Jade Witters was probably the cutest thing ever to wear pigtails. And the spunkiest. She would do that, wouldn’t she?

  Jasika sobered. “But, truth be told, sometimes I wish I didn’t have this … thing. Whatever you call it. A knack or a cunning or a witch-sense.”

  “You seem awfully into it not to want to have it.”

  Jasika gave a little half shrug. “Yeah. I mean, I like it. But it sucks when there’s nobody else to talk about it with. It’s not that anyone in the family didn’t believe me. They just … didn’t understand. I thought I was alone until you and Father Gooding showed up with those redcaps.”

  I’d never really thought of it that way. For all that I tried to do things alone, there’d always been someone else in it with me. Mum or Gooding or the shadelings. What would it have felt like to be in i
t alone?

  Jasika glanced at me. “What about you? What do the twins think of all of this?”

  “They don’t know,” I muttered. “I mean, they know the Fae are real, but they don’t know what I’m doing about it. Dad does. Well. He found out. But we all think it’s better that the boys don’t get involved.” And how would they respond if they found out? Would they think it was cool? Stupid? Dangerous? Would they be scared of losing me or expect me to do it because I was their big sister and protecting them was my job? How different might things be if they knew? Not that it felt like I had much of a relationship with them lately. They were so caught up with being angry at each other it was like walking through a hurricane to try and talk to them.

  Just thinking about it made my heart ache. The whole world had gone topsy-turvy since the fire.

  Jasika’s fingers thrum-thrummed against the wheel as the street signs whizzed past.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my ugly windbreaker. “I was thinking of waiting until I left for college to tell them. For now, it’s better to keep them safe.”

  Jasika snorted. “You’re pretty obsessed with keeping everyone else safe. Especially for someone who throws herself into danger all the time.”

  “You’ve got siblings.” I glanced sidelong at her. “And parents. And a cousin. You know how it is.”

  “Not really, no. Look, when I first started playing with all this stuff, I was scared of getting caught. Thought they’d call me Devil Worshipper or something. So I told Will first, and you know what he said?” Her lip curled into a half smile. “He said there’s lots of ways of doing the same thing. And if I was doing it to try and help people, it was fine by him. But he also told me I had to be safe about it. He said you can’t save someone when you’re drowning.”

  “That sounds like you’re trying to teach me a lesson here.”

  “Maybe. Pretty sure he got that from a fortune cookie. But I think it’s a pretty good philosophy, anyway.”

  I glanced down at my backpack on the floorboard. Mum’s book was nestled inside of it, safe for the moment. I wanted to shoot back some sort of clever retort, but none came. The car came to a stop. I glanced up to see the hospital, lit from underneath like a scary story around a campfire.

  Jasika flipped off the ignition, and for a moment, we didn’t move. Maybe she was having second thoughts about this. Fae magic. What the hell were we thinking?

  A warm hand rested on mine, heavy like an anchor and light like that first breath coming out of the swimming pool. I swallowed. My heart tightened in my chest, but I didn’t look over at her. If I did, I’d have to pull away. Right now, we both probably needed a little reassurance. I moved my fingers, lacing them through hers for just a few long heartbeats as we stared together at the hospital.

  In the end, it was Jasika who pulled away.

  “Come on,” she said, pushing her door open. “Visiting hours are almost over.”

  * * *

  THE HOSPITAL INTERIOR looked sort of like a hotel, all green-and-gold walls and soothing paintings of people hugging one another. It didn’t even smell like antiseptic. Jasika headed straight for the reception desk and spoke softly with the woman at the computer before returning with a pair of sticky name tags.

  “We’ve got one hour,” she said. “Let’s make it count.”

  William lay in a smallish room, made smaller by all the flowers and cards on his bedside table and the pervading whoosh and click of the ventilator protruding from between his lips. Jasika sighed and gathered a bundle of wilted daisies from the vase, chucking them in the trash.

  “Useless,” she muttered before turning back, arms crossed. “Guess I can cross those off as something helpful to coma victims.” She gnawed on her thumbnail, eyes fixed on William’s still form.

  “I’ve tried everything,” she murmured. “Spells, oils, candles, talking to him, playing music. The doctors say that’s supposed to help but it doesn’t.”

  “I can’t promise this will work,” I pointed out. “I mean, there’s only one healing spell in the book that I can read, but I have no idea what it’s capable of.”

  Jasika stared down at him with enough love to light a city. “I don’t care.”

  She said that now. If I screwed this up, there was no way she’d be so forgiving. I pulled the book out, running my fingers over the smooth leather surface. Just holding it, being this close to using it, lit me on fire. “It might not work out the way you want it to. I don’t think this magic wants to cooperate for humans.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It could kill him.”

  Jasika swallowed, and I caught a faint glimmer in the corners of her eyes. “Aunt Allie’s thinking about pulling the plug. Medicine won’t help him anymore.”

  My heart hammered. Last shot, then. No pressure on us to get it right or anything. Just a person’s life hanging in the balance.

  I opened the book and flipped to the healing spell. It looked like old Welsh, but only Mum’s scribbled title made any actual sense to me.

  Jasika straightened, rubbing her eye with the heel of her palm. “Right. Let me just get us started.”

  She started pulling things out of her bag. A compass. A bottle of water. A candle. A lighter. A rock. A knife. Clearly, Jasika wasn’t one to improvise ingredients like I was. I watched as she carefully arranged everything in its cardinal direction and lit the candle.

  “You don’t have anything for air,” I pointed out.

  “I usually just breathe out for that one,” she said, positioning herself behind the rock. She licked her lips and raised the knife, drawing a half circle behind herself. As it came close, I took the knife from her fingers, neatly closing the circle behind me. It felt oddly nice to do it the human way. Grounding, even. We were about to play with Fae magic. It felt right that we should start ourselves off doing things the human way.

  We joined hands, and a warm thrum of energy crashed like waves over me. Jasika Witters was a lantern of a person, brighter and clearer than humans ought to be. I felt weirdly on edge just doing this with her. Like she was ten shots of espresso all at once.

  “I’ll take earth and air if you’ll invoke fire and water,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  She called to the elements with the practiced ease of a priestess. I fumbled through mine, unable to shake the feeling of energy surging all around me. When it was over, Jasika spread the elemental bits far enough apart for me to lay the book in the center and flip to the appropriate spell.

  Jasika squirmed. “Do we need, I dunno, an offering or something?”

  I shook my head. “I just have to say it out loud, I think.”

  “Fae magic,” Jasika muttered. “It feels too easy.”

  “To be honest, I don’t think a little prayer for luck would hurt our chances here.” I bit my lip. Hard to say what was worse. If it worked and something went wrong or if nothing happened. Either way she’d never forgive me. I wiped my sweaty palm on my jeans and took a deep breath. No turning back now.

  I ran my fingers down the page, practicing the unfamiliar words in my head. But they didn’t stick. No matter how many times I read through the page, the second my eyes left a line, the words left my mind.

  I took a deep breath, and I read, carefully sounding each word out before moving on to the next. There was a life on the line.

  The text wavered on the page in front of me. I blinked and caught my breath, almost tripping over one of the lines. The world went blurry at the edges. My cheeks flooded with heat as the page shimmered in front of me. The words pushed forward, flooding through me like water through a pipeline. Faster and faster, ringing in my ears until my own words were lost in the torrent. The words faded to a murmur. Then a whisper. Then a wheeze.

  A hand caught mine. My heart lurched in my chest, my vision sharpening.

  “I’m with you,” Jasika said. “Keep going.”
r />   I swallowed and blinked. The words came out stronger. Jasika made them stronger. I almost stopped to look at her, to try and understand how she could do this, but the flood only intensified. It was in control now, not me. This spell performed itself through me … no. Through us. Jasika’s voice joined in mine, identical in tone, in speed.

  The steady beep of the heart monitor picked up. My own heart fluttered against my chest as a throb started to build right between my temples, pounding like a gong inside my skull. The peculiar reek of burned honey washed over me. The other voice broke off.

  “Bryn!” Jasika’s voice sounded muffled and distant.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the page. I tried to back away, jump to my feet, but my limbs locked into place, immovable as stone. Electric pinpricks traveled up and down my arms, my chest, my whole body, first pressing, then stabbing into me as the ringing in my ears built up to a roar.

  I gasped, tears pricking at my eyes. The words came out in wheezes, but they came out all the same. Oh God, what was happening? This was different. This was wrong. It felt like I was—

  “Bryn!”

  The world went dark.

  Twenty

  An oak table in the woods.

  Mum sat on one side, her dark hair strung with cobwebs and flowers, palms down on either side of the book.

  FREUDDWYTH sat on the open page, the black ink stark against the old vellum. Dreaming. Why was she showing me this again?

  I sat across from her, twisting my fingers in my jacket, heart pounding. I needed to get out of here. Something about this place wasn’t safe. I needed to go home and check on the boys. But they were with Dad, weren’t they? Surely that meant they were safe. And more than anything, I just wanted to reach across that table and hug her, but something in my gut told me it wasn’t allowed.

  “Mum, why am I here?” I asked.

  Mum flipped her hands palm up. The book fluttered, pages flipping, sending a musty cloud of dust into the air between us.