by Sadie Sears
I’d purchased many bouquets and potted plants for Riley’s grave over the last five years, but this was a spur of the moment trip, so Shae and I took the time to pick pretty blossoms.
Drawing on my past, with no idea what I was really doing, after we had the bouquet, I pressed my hands to the soil and imagined myself sending energy from my body into the ground. Not a lot, nothing crazy, but as a thank you to the flowers for growing and providing beauty for our precious family members in the cemetery.
After feeling a slight drop in energy, I rocked back on my heels, shocked.
It had worked. I felt it. I’d given energy back to the flowers.
“Mom.” Shae’s voice was low and shocked. “They grew.”
I jumped to my feet and looked at the flowerbed. “What?”
“All of them.” She pointed up and down the row of flowers, which ran the length of the fence around the entire cemetery. “Mom, I think they grew all the way around the whole thing.”
Following the path, I shook my head. “I can’t tell.”
“I can tell because I saw it happen. Did you just do… magic?” She stared at me with huge eyes.
I nodded. “I think I did, kiddo. And that is so cool.” Excitement ran all over me. “Come on. Let’s take these flowers to Daddy.”
She grabbed my hand and led the way through the final resting places of so many people, in the same path we’d followed every time we visited. When we got to Riley’s grave, my heart pounded, knowing he was close. I hadn’t seen anything in all my years of communing with the spirits that made me think they stayed close to their bones, but still, I always felt connected to Riley when here. Sometimes too much, which was a big reason we didn’t come all the time. It could get to be too painful.
I settled myself on his grave and put my hand on the grass, trying the same trick I’d done back with the flowers and pushing a bit of my energy into the ground. This time, I kept my eyes open. The grass thickened and grew as I watched, but I wasn’t as careful about how much I sent down there this time and a bigger chunk of energy escaped me.
Peace settled over me, tickling at my aura the way the spirits did. And with it came a sense of familiarity. “He’s here,” I whispered. “And it’s not a spell this time, for sure.”
Shae leaned against me and we looked at Riley’s headstone. “I feel it too,” she said. “I just wish I could hear him say what he thinks about the dragons.”
“Me too, honey, but can you feel that? That happy peacefulness? That tells me he’s content and he’s at the very least not upset with us.”
She burrowed her face against me and sighed. “I miss you, Daddy.”
I missed him, too. I told him so silently.
By the time we left, I was definitely more at peace with Riley’s passing. I begged him to help me through this, but I had no idea if he heard me. If he wanted me to move on, he had to help me out somehow.
We walked back to the car slowly, giving the dragons plenty of time to notice our movements, then drove home.
After making a huge pot of spaghetti and garlic bread, I fed our guards, and Shae and I settled down to bed early. I had a sneaking suspicion she was back in her babysitting book, but I dove into the grimoire, learning and absorbing anything I could along the way.
Before lying down, much later that night, I tried to call Cam and Glenda again. Neither answered, so I sent several messages on different platforms to each of them.
I missed Riley, but the ache in my heart, the pounding pain through my veins, was for Cam. Now I’d lost two great loves in my life.
Worry for Cam dominated all my emotions, though. He was suffering tremendously. I wished he’d stuck around to let his clan help him through this torment. I had Lila, at least. He shouldn’t have been alone in this.
After finally drifting off to sleep, I was woken suddenly by a sobbing Shae. “What’s wrong?” I cried.
She shook her head. “Not wrong,” she said between wails. “I’m happy.”
In her hand was a white feather. “He came to me in a dream.” She hiccupped and began sobbing anew. “He said I should accept Cam as someone that makes you happy. Mom, I’m so sorry! I was such a jerk!” Every sentence was a wail, a lament of her intense, preteen pain. It was hard not to chuckle as I held my arms open.
I’d done the right thing after all. Shae had some help from Vince and from her father, but she came around on her own, and that was more effective than if I’d given her tough love and forced her to accept Cam.
Now she’d do it willingly, and it would go all that much smoother. Shae, sheepish and apologetic, crawled into bed for a cuddle. “Can I sleep with you?”
“Of course, my sweet girl. Always.” She knew my room and arms were open to her anytime.
“Thanks.” She waited a few seconds before turning her tear-stained face toward me, the moonlight highlighting the blotches from all her crying. “How can I help you win back Cam?”
I burst into laughter and pulled her close. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
What I didn’t tell her was that we’d have to figure it out when we found him.
“Hello?” Lila’s voice pulled me from a deep sleep. “I have coffee and bagels from Snowshoe!”
Shae sat bolt upright in bed. “Is Zoe with you?” she yelled.
“I’m here!” Zoe’s voice was guarded and still sounded a little angry. “Mom made me come.”
Shae jumped out of bed. “I’ve got to go talk to her.”
By the time I used the bathroom and splashed a little cold water on my face, the girls had disappeared into the back yard. “Hey,” I said to my best friend, who held out a to-go cup of coffee. “You’re a lifesaver.”
I hadn’t slept a wink. As soon as I dozed off, I kept hearing Cam crying out. He was in pain in my dreams and scared. I woke repeatedly and reminded myself it was just a stupid dream, just my subconscious freaking me out, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Cam was terrified. I normally tried to listen to my intuition, but my lack of sleep was throwing me way off.
Maybe the coffee would clear out the brain fog.
“I was thinking, Soph, when was the last time you did a reading on yourself?”
I stared at her blankly. “I hadn’t even considered it. I used to do them all the time, but with everything going on…”
Lila laughed. “I figured as much.” She pulled a velvet bag out of her purse. “I took the liberty of grabbing your cards from the shop.”
When I’d left the night before, I’d packed up my things, but somehow hadn’t grabbed them. How odd. I always took my cards home with me. Tarot cards like mine, handmade and spelled, weren’t the sort of thing to leave lying around. Now that I’d discovered my own powers, I’d have to make some cards for myself, or maybe talk to Glenda about a way to imbibe my own magic into this deck. They’d been my favorite cards for so many years, I didn’t really want new ones.
Shuffling the cards, I dealt them one at a time.
Every damn card that I pulled said the same thing. Some variation or another of go for it with my love.
Cam, obviously.
I shuffled and drew again.
More of the same. Trust myself. Invest in love. Trust love. Let go of the past.
I sighed and looked at a smug Lila. I’d taught her way too much about what the cards I pulled meant. She knew exactly what they were telling me. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
And that was precisely what I wanted to do, go for it. Especially after my breakthrough the night before with Shae. But Cam was still ignoring my calls and texts, essentially gone missing!
As I filled Lila in on what had been going on and the fact that nobody could find Cam, my phone jingled from upstairs. “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t mean to leave it up there!” I cried. I went as fast as I could, pounding up the stairs with Lila hot on my trail.
It was a message from Glenda. Sorry, I just now got this. I’ve filled Mitias in.
As we read, Lila’s phone start
ed going off in her pocket, and a big thump on the front porch told me someone had just shifted back to human, and landed out front. “What is going on?” I asked.
Lila answered her phone as I went back to mine and Glenda’s next text. I think Cam went after Mary. I gave Mitias the location. Get to Cam’s ASAP. Meet you there.
“We have to get to Cam’s!” I cried out just as Lila spoke.
“Leath is outside and says we have to get to Cam’s, like, now.” We turned as one and rushed down the stairs, calling our daughters’ names.
“What is it?” Both girls ran inside as the dragons did, looking disheveled. They’d put their clothes on in a hurry.
“We have to go,” Theo said. “Now.”
“We’ll fly, you drive,” said Ben as a follow up. “But move it. No time to talk.”
Out the door we went, with Lila explaining things to the girls as we moved. “My car,” I cried, sprinting down the flagstone path toward the sedan. Lila hopped in the passenger seat as the girls threw themselves in the back.
It only took minutes to get to town and then Cam’s house, but it felt like hours. As we pulled through the gates, the three dragons landed behind the house. “Give them just a minute to change,” I said as Lila took off running. I waited with the girls until Lila waved at us, then I drove around to the back porch.
“What’s going on?” I didn’t wait for introductions, just went to the first dragon I was familiar with. Vince.
He shrugged. “Mitias told us all to get here without delay, to drop what we were doing.”
An older man, with a shaved head and a close-cropped white beard, stepped forward. “It is lovely to finally meet you, Sophie. We’ve been missing one another while I’ve been in town.”
I shook his hand. “Forgive me, but where is Cam?”
Mitias nodded and addressed the group, which included both girls, all of the dragons besides Cameron, and Gretta and Lila. Everyone had come out to try to find him.
“We have a possible location for Cameron,” Mitias called. “The last he was seen, Glenda told him where we could probably find Mary, the witch that has been tormenting Sophie and Shae. We believe that Cam, in his distraught state, went after her alone.”
Guilt washed over me. If I hadn’t rejected him so fully and completely, he wouldn’t have been so distraught. All he’d asked of me was a possibly, a maybe. I wouldn’t give him that because I hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up.
I wished fervently that I could go back and change it, but that couldn’t happen.
Glenda called out the location of Mary’s home, and the dragons stared at the girls. “Girls!” I yelled. “Inside, now. Gretta and Lila are going to stay with you here while I go find Cam.”
Everyone froze and stared at me but didn’t speak until the other females were inside. Then, most of them began to strip as Glenda and I purposely didn’t look.
Well, I didn’t look. I noticed Glenda’s eyes straying a bit.
“I don’t think you should go,” Vince said.
I fixed a glare on him. “Try to stop me and see what happens.”
Mitias had yet to shift. “Glenda,” he said. “Could you stay here and protect the girls? If this is some sort of trap to lure us away…”
She looked from me to Mitias, then grabbed my hand. “Sophie, please don’t think less of me for not going. But I’m telling you, what I do is a pittance compared to what Mary can do. She will kill me quickly if I go. But here, I can put up a quick ward and even a powerful witch will have a hard time breaking through a weaker witch’s existing ward.”
I squeezed her hands. “Please don’t feel guilty. Stay here and protect my daughter. She’s the most important thing in the world to me.”
After taking one last look at Mitias, Glenda ran inside, and I ran for my car. I backed out, but saw a naked Gretta and Lila come streaking out the back door and morph into their dragons. The others had gotten ahead, and only Mitias remained to take up the rear. I suspected he’d stay with my car and me until I got there.
“Hang on, Cam,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
18
Cameron
Time had no meaning in the void. I could’ve been there for an hour, days, even years. Stumbling around proved hazardous when I kept slamming into trees and tripping over roots and bushes. It was hopeless. There seemed to be no escape. Stilling myself, I focused on my surroundings. I was an ether dragon, after all. What did I sense?
Nothing. I sensed nothing. I should’ve been in the middle of a thick forest, with animals running all around me, water nearby, and the sound of wind whistling through the branches.
But there was silence. No light, no sounds, no feeling. Only emptiness. Why was I slamming into trees and branches?
I gripped the edges of my shirt and pulled it off, then my pants, keeping them in my hands so I wouldn’t lose them as well. My full-size dragon burst from my skin, but the result was the same. My magic couldn’t penetrate the blackness. I kept my claws tightly gripped, hoping my clothes were still there when I shifted back.
I’d sent so many messages to my team, telepathically projecting my thoughts but got no replies from any of them. Surely at least Theo should’ve been able to hear me. But maybe they were too far away.
Or maybe this darkness wouldn’t let them through. This was not a natural state. The witch had affected things, no doubt about that. The question was how much would this spell hurt me in the end?
Shifting back down to my skin, I slipped back into my clothes and sat down, without having any clue what I was sitting on. It could’ve been a branch, could’ve been a spaceship for all I could tell in this blackness.
Sophie was out there somewhere, maybe worried. Did she wonder where I went? Did she think I ran off to get away from her? The idea had crossed my mind once during my days-long pity party, but I couldn’t leave. It was painful to stay but leaving would’ve been so much worse. Surely, they knew I was missing. When I didn’t return from my lunch meeting with Glenda, they all would get worried and come looking for me.
It didn’t bode well for me that I liked to take off once in a while and be on my own. But they had to realize that I’d never leave my mate. Not willingly.
I just had to sit here and wait.
The idea that she might think that I ran to get away from her freaked me out, and my anxiety swung right back up. I leaned back against something hard, hopefully just a tree, and put my head between my knees, trying to control my breathing. If I couldn’t leave here, I couldn’t get back to Sophie; I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t save her. Someone was hunting her. Me being here left her out there, alone and defenseless.
My gasping breaths echoed oddly in the darkness, like I was trapped inside a small container instead of a wide forest. Tears spilled from my eyes as I tried to get a hold of myself, but nothing was working. I was alone, no one was coming for me, no one could hear me. Maybe they were all dead. How long had I been there? How many days had passed? It felt like weeks, months even. I was drowning in darkness and oppression.
Suddenly, when I thought I would gasp my last breath there in the ink, the forest brightened around me. I glanced around excitedly, hoping to find whoever had come to help, and spotted Sophie. My heart soared, and I jumped up, wiping at my face as I ran to her.
She was dazzling in a loose red skirt and gold top, rings on all of her fingers because she couldn’t decide on just one. I loved that about her. She held her hand up, several bracelets jingling-jangling, and I stopped before I could touch her. The expression on her face held me up. What was happening? She’d come to help me find my way out of the darkness, hadn’t she?
“Cameron, don’t make this harder,” she said, her eyes hard. What was this? No. Please, please, let her be real.
“Y-you came for me, right?” I needed her to say yes. My heart ached for it, and there was a sharp sting in my chest. “You heard me calling and came to save me.” Sophie, my mate. She came for me.
But S
ophie shook her head, her blonde curls falling over her shoulders. “I came to say goodbye. You were just a crutch, and now I don’t need you. Shae and I will be better on our own.”
What? “I don’t understand. Sophie?”
“If you can’t help me with the only problem I have, then I don’t see how I can ever make it work with you. Good luck finding a new mate.” She looked at me scornfully, as if she was too good to speak to me. I’d become a pebble in her shoe, a nasty piece of gum on the pavement.
No, no, this wasn’t right! “Sophie, please!” My throat locked down, and I couldn’t get any more words out as she turned and walked away from me yet again, weaving through the forest. The branches slid easily out of her way, and she walked down a path only she could see. This wasn’t right. If she could move so easily through the forest, why couldn’t I? Even though I wanted to follow her, my head pounded, and my vision blurred. “Wait!” She couldn’t leave me here alone. She couldn’t! But she was gone. She’d disappeared down the path.
I started trying to run after her, but my feet felt like they were trudging through mud, and then the darkness rolled forward again, swallowing me. Screaming only brought my anxiety back to the forefront until I choked on it. There had to be a way out. I hissed as another sting ran down my arm. Where were my brothers? Why couldn’t they find me?
The darkness lifted again suddenly. As if my very thought had called them, my family stood before me, the forest reappearing with them. Vince knelt down right in front of me, his shimmering silver eyes meeting mine, but I didn’t recognize the expression he wore. It didn’t match his face, his easygoing personality. Had something happened to put it there? Was it Sophie? What had happened?
“Forget it,” he called back to the others. “He’s a lost cause now.”
Leath rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, huffing irritably. “Why are we always the ones left cleaning up his messes? He begged for this case and he can’t even do it without calling all of us away from our jobs to help him with his.”