He grips one of my hands in both of his. The encouraging smile he gives falls flat, but he gets points for trying. "You got a better idea?"
With a frown, I close my eyes and think about what I usually see when I look in the mirror. I can only imagine my current appearance, but I visualize my normal, human face and try to picture it in place of how I look now.
I imagine the texture of my own skin beneath my fingertips; remember the scent of my skin lotion as I smooth it over my cheeks each morning. Even the feeling of sitting up and stretching after I wake up. When I think I can feel every bit of my body all at once, and I don't have wings, Grey speaks.
"You did it," he says, after what I guess has been approximately ten minutes.
I open my eyes slowly; afraid that if I let the image go, I'll change back into a . . . thing.
"C'mon. Let's get out of here, I'll come back later and clean everything up."
I nod slowly, and allow him to help me up. As soon as I'm on my feet, my stomach flips over. My vision blurs and my skin crawls.
"I think . . . I'm gonna be sick."
"O-okay," Grey says, immediately looking for something I can throw up in.
I feel myself sink to the floor as my sight dims to black.
I inhale a familiar, comforting scent. My body is warm, and I think there's the soft weight of a blanket over me.
I have to try a few times before my eyes will open. My entire body throbs and aches, and my head is splitting.
"Hi," Grey says softly.
I'm instantly confused. I lay in my bed with Grey curled up beside me, under the quilt.
He looks both exhausted and worried.
"All of that really just happened, didn't it?" My voice is weak, and sounds weird and distant to my own ears.
Grey nods, sniffling. "Yeah."
"How'd we get here?"
"I told your mom you got sick at the dance. You're running a fever—"
"I feel like crap," I interrupt with a sad laugh.
He smiles reluctantly as he pushes sweat-dampened hair away from my forehead. "I told your mom you fell asleep as soon as I helped you into the car, and I didn't want to wake you. She thinks maybe you have the flu."
I laugh again, but force myself to stop, because laughing starts to hurt. "And you're in my bed because?"
"I asked her if I could stay with you for a bit." He shrugs. "She thinks I’m the sweetest boy you've ever dated. And she said only as long as I'm actually letting you rest. Well, and that no one tells your brother."
I can't laugh anymore, so I just smile.
The moment of light humor passes and his expression becomes somber.
"What are we going to do?"
"I don't know, Cae," he says slowly, his voice thick with concern.
"What's going to happen to me?"
Frowning, he pulls me close, hugging me tightly. "I don't know, but we will figure this out. I'm not going anywhere. Okay?"
I nod against his chest as I try to wrap my head around everything.
That night, when I saw those red eyes in the mirror, that had been a warning; a premonition.
I'm not human anymore.
I close my eyes and let myself cry in Grey's arms.
PREVIEW CHAPTER
Salem's Refuge, Book Two
I crash to the ground, landing hard on my left shoulder. Face pressed into cold, dying autumn grass, my squeak of pain comes out muffled.
I don't need to hear Grey's footfalls thundering toward me to know when he reaches me, I can feel it. I feel the closeness of another being hum along my skin like a whisper of warm air gusting over me.
I turn my head, meeting those bright, blue-green eyes as he kneels beside me. "I'm okay," I manage to say, the response automatic. I'm pretty sure the dull, throbbing ache radiating through my collarbone, shoulder blade, and underarm means otherwise.
"No, you're not, Cae," he says, a mix of worry and anger in his muttered words as he slides his hands beneath my waist and gently eases me up into a sitting position. "Maybe we should just call it a night and come back tomorrow. You're exhausted and I'm pretty sure you just dislocated your shoulder."
I blink a few times. My lids drifting down and back up over the fiery orbs of my eyes is still an odd sensation.
I angle my gaze toward the offset joint. "Huh."
A chuckle sounds in the back of my head. But it's not like I hear it, more like I feel the rumbling of it; the sheer vibration of someone creating noise. I'd like to pretend that I don't know what it is, or that it's my imagination, but I know better.
I know it's Jack.
He's been there, lingering in a corner of my mind, just beneath my senses. Since I woke up on All Saints Day—the morning after the most ill-fated Halloween I could imagine for myself—I had been hearing little hints. Faint whispers buried below my thoughts, nothing concrete, though. Like rustles of movement in a room when I know I'm alone.
But now, as I sit here, an injured little devil-thing, I hear him clear as crystal. As if he were seated behind me, whispering his laughter in my ear.
Swallowing hard, I push the feeling—like he should be so close to me that I'd feel his breath against the side of my throat as he chuckled—and focus on dealing with my injury.
If I'd busted my shoulder three days ago, I'd be whimpering in pain like any normal person and panicking as Grey rushed me to the ER. I also probably wouldn't be here to bust my shoulder as I hurtled into the ground in the first place.
Three days ago was when we released Jack Addison, Grey's something-other-than-human ancestor from a magickal seal that had held the creature captive for close to two hundred years.
Things didn't go quite as planned.
Well, that isn't entirely true, either. Grey planned to kill Jack all along, to stop the supernatural happenings that follow his family around like a group of lovesick fan-girls. What we didn't plan, what we couldn't possibly know would happen, was that I became something-other-than-human—a devil-like creature called a Spring-heel—in the process.
Problem? We don't really know what a Spring-heel is. Well, we know it’s a creature whose energy is from another spiritual plane . . . . Oh, yeah, and that Jack has brothers out there, somewhere, but that's kind of all we know.
Everyone else was at the Halloween Dance, partying and having fun. What was I doing? Poking a monster with a stick.
We were stupid not to realize that using my blood so we could play with magick and extra-planar energies would have a downside. So, so absolutely, blindingly stupid. That downside leaves me with onyx skin, fiery red eyes that constantly burn, and wings. I can't fly though.
Grey managed to coax me into changing back to my human form—an ability we were clued into by the fact that Jack led a human life back when. I was stuck in bed, running a fever and generally feeling gross for the last two days.
Guess I'm lucky this hit at the start of flu season, allowing me to play off how haggard I looked and felt. I don't want my mom and my brother Jeremy to worry.
Sadly, that our town, as a whole, is haunted and magically bound from remembering anything about Jack, works in our favor. No one knows anything happened on Halloween night, except for Grey and me.
If not for Grey moving here and dragging me along for the ride, I would still be as clueless as the rest of Drake's Cove's native population. Okay, now I'm just being unfair. He didn't drag me into anything; I pushed, prodded, insisted, and even whined a time or two—not proud of that, but it is what it is—to get him to not leave me out of his search.
But that was three days ago, marking this longest seventy-two hours of my life. Now here we sit in a vacant lot behind a stand of pine trees, blocking any view of us from the street. Never know who might be out wandering the streets at night. Well, besides us.
Myth about the Spring-heel holds that I can leap pretty far, and this is the first night I've felt okay enough to test the theory. Hence my fall out of the air to smack into the ground face—all right, shoulde
r—first.
I can't say I'm really aware of what I'm doing as I grasp my left wrist with my other hand. I grit my teeth, flexing my fingers around the bone to be certain I have a good grip.
"Cae, what are you doing?" Grey takes hold of my elbow, but I pull away; no clue what I'm doing or why.
I lean backward as I raise my arm and wrench my wrist as hard and fast as I can in the opposite direction. Pain shoots through me as I let go and the joint snaps back into place.
"Oh, God," he whispers, sounding like he's going to be sick.
Definitely something I wouldn't have been able to do three days ago. My body sags a little as I shake my head, my breath coming out in short spurts as I try to get my bearings.
I'm a little disturbed by what I've just done, but Jack's laughter has silenced, so that's a plus. There's a mild, throbbing ache in my shoulder, but it beats the two, far worse, levels of pain I just experienced. Right before we met Jack, Grey had said he didn't consider his ancestor a person, because he wasn't human.
Relocating my shoulder without any sort of aid, like it’s something I do every day, might cause him to think the same of me. I've been struggling with the thought of no longer being human for days, what happens when . . . .
I force a gulp down my throat, and stand, dusting myself off. I don't want to think about how Grey will react to me when he finally realizes that I'm no different than Jack, now.
"Hey." Slipping his fingers around my arm, he tugs, turning me to face him. He tips his head down in that way that makes his chocolate-brown hair fall into his eyes. "I really want to freak out about that shoulder-snapping thing, but I won't. I'm just worried, okay? It's not exactly easy watching you go through this and knowing there isn’t shit I can do about it."
I can't help a small grin that plays on my lips. No matter how bizarre the circumstances, I always feel warm giddy, butterflies whenever he shows he cares. I reach up, cupping his face in my hands.
The contrast of his tan, human, skin against my shiny onyx flesh is jarring. I drop my hands quickly, turning from him as I blink away the tears welling in my burning eyes.
I'm not me, anymore. And I don't think that's something I'm able to face, yet.
"Cadence—"
'"I'm fine," I say, forcing a sigh. "I just want to get the hang of this."
Taking a deep breathe, I back up a few paces. I try to remember a dream I had back when we were first trying to find out what happened to Jack; a memory of Jack trying to leap, but being unable because he was crippled by a restraining spell cast by my ancestor, Elizabeth.
He hobbled, trying to break into a run. I latch onto the memory and focus on what he was thinking, on the reflexes his body attempted to go through.
I feel him back up, but I already did, so I discard that step. He breathes naturally, as if he's doing nothing more than walking. He runs . . . runs and leans forward, into the wind he generates with his own movement.
Okay, I got this. I think.
I don't concentrate on breathing normally; I only try to remember not to hold my breath. I step away from the trees, I don't know for sure that the space will allow for a more even passage of air around me, but it sounds like logical thinking.
In my head, I imagine what Jack must've looked like when he leaped. My legs make the decision for me, and I'm running almost before I realize. Dipping low for a quick second, I push off from the ground.
My stomach flip-flops and I remind myself not to look down, to focus on the skyline in front of me. Forcing my breath to stay steady, I open my arms, catching the air under my wings—not being battered by wind, not tumbling back to the ground—and my eyes drift closed.
The sensation of the air whipping over and around me is exhilarating and, I can't quite describe it, but oddly comforting. Like stretching after waking from a good, long sleep.
Sounds buzz in my ears—crickets, the rustle of grass and leaves in the wind. So close and crisp, I may as well be right next to them.
They're too loud!
Startled, I open my eyes and find my gaze fixed on a point ahead of me. I know I should land there, but I'm jarred by my senses getting bombarded and I land short, hitting the ground hard on the balls of my feet before dropping to my knees.
I don't realize how far I've gone 'til I turn to see Grey jogging toward me. Standing as I catch my breath, I brush the dirt and grass from my jeans out of reflex—I mean, really, I’d worn this ratty pair specifically because they’d seen better days.
The moment he reaches me, his hands are on my shoulders as he gives me a long once-over. "You okay? That looked like an emergency landing."
"Funny. Yes, I'm okay." I shake my head, closing my eyes and imagining my human form. "I just . . . . My senses got, like, super-sharp for a second. I got spooked, is all."
I picture seeing myself in a mirror. My dark green eyes, my fair skin, my not having leathery flaps that line my body from wrist to waist. My flightless wings are the reason I'm wearing a top with a wide-open back—its sides bunched down around my hips to make even more room—on a Northeast November night. The burning behind my eyelids slowly cools and I wait for it to subside entirely, taking it as a sign that they're not fiery coals in my skull anymore.
I also wait for my stomach to revolt, but it doesn't and I find the lack of nausea strangely pleasant. Not as though I wanted to feel sick, but the first time I changed back, I’d thought I was going to lose twenty-four hours' worth of meals right on the spot.
Letting out a breath, I open my eyes, meeting Grey's bright gaze. "I'm okay," I say again, offering him a small, reassuring smile.
"We calling it a night?"
I shake my head, ignoring that I feel my body sway a little. I hate the first few seconds after shifting, because my normal, pretty, form feels weaker, as though I barely have the strength to stand. And I feel slower—like if I lost my balance, I wouldn't even be able to catch myself.
I don't like any train of thought that makes me think that thing I become is somehow better.
Grey doesn't notice my slip as he throws his head back and lets out a groan, his shoulders slumping. "Why not? You're exhausted. Hell, I'm exhausted, and I'm just here for support."
"I shifted back on purpose. For practice, not because I'm ready to give up." I inhale deeply and force myself to shift back, bracing for the burning in my eyes and the uncomfortable sliding sensation of my wings forming.
"It's just until I get the landing right, okay? Then we will go home, I promise."
He sighs heavily; I think it's finally dawned on him that he hasn't been able to talk me out of anything since the day we met. "Fine. But I'm not happy about it."
"Neither am I. I hate this thing." I lift my arms, extending my wings to elaborate. "But this is something I'm stuck with—maybe for the rest of my life, for all we know. I'm going to make damned sure that I'm used to it and that I know what I can do."
He frowns, but gives a nod, dropping his gaze to the ground for a long, silent moment.
Stepping back a few paces, I try again. And I keep trying. I have to keep trying.
At least until I'm a little bit used to being a Spring-heel.
COMING SOON
About the Author:
Photo courtesy: Jessica Stumpp
A New Yorker born to a family of mixed Slavic, British, and Native American heritage, Gerilyn is a mom and artist who suffers from social anxiety, has a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the paranormal, and loves reading, video games, and all things MARVEL.
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Witch-Child Page 21