“Can he hear us?” Dan whispered.
“Hopefully,” Alexa said grimly as she rose from her crouch. “Are you the Warden?” she called to him.
When the man turned his face to them, Dan couldn’t breathe. Where his eyes should have been there was instead blackness: the utter, pure black of negation. His eyes were twin voids, and it hurt Dan’s brain to look at them. She had seen eyes like that before, on Johnny, as Mora took him.
“Where have you called me?” he said in a voice like the rustle of dry leaves.
“To Icaria,” Alexa said.
The ghost made as if to spit on the ground, but nothing left his lips. “Icaria is a cursed place.”
“We know. We’re sorry to disturb you but we need your help. You defeated Kasyan when he tried to destroy Icaria—”
“Kasyan did not try to destroy Icaria,” the Warden corrected. “He didn’t care for it at all. He only wanted the people. Wardens destroyed this place.”
“Why?” Alexa asked.
The Warden drifted among the graves, passing his fingertips through the crooked stones. “So he would have nothing to come back to.” Something about him seemed to flicker. “Tell me, do you have news of Maggie Kelly—my sweetheart? She was waiting for me. I was to deal with Icaria, and she promised to wait for me. She was going to make me an honest man.”
“It’s been a long time since you were last here.” Alexa was trying to be delicate, even though Liss rolled her eyes at the ghost’s digression. “Like one hundred and fifty years.”
The ghost clutched his hat to his chest, his shoulders caved. “It wasn’t my fault—I missed her so badly. She was my love, and she’d promised to wait for me.” His voice broke, then he let out an otherworldly howl of sadness, like a scream echoing from the bottom of a well. Dan shivered. “I should never have thought of her in his presence. I should have hidden it from him, but I couldn’t help imagining coming back to her. He told me he would keep her waiting as long as it took. Forever, he said. He reminded me of it every day. Although there weren’t days down there. No sun, no days.”
“I don’t follow,” Liss cut in. It was incredibly Liss to be rude to a grieving ghost, Dan thought. “Are you talking about Kasyan?”
“What was that? Who spoke?”
“I’m, uh, Liss.” It was weird to hear Liss introduce herself to a blind ghost. “Another witch working on this project.”
“Two women? You both sound very young,” he said.
“You’ve been dead for more than a century—literally everyone on earth is younger than you. And we’re three young women here, technically,” Liss snapped. “Was it Kasyan who told you that Maggie would wait forever?”
The Warden turned his hat in his hands, his brow drawn with lines. He nodded. “Once he knew I loved her, used it against me—against both of us. Now I’ll never see her again.”
Dan spoke behind her hand to the girls. “He’s saying Kasyan cursed this woman he loved and then killed him, right?”
Alexa nodded. “And not fast either.”
Dan cleared her throat. “Um, sir, you sacrificed so much to fight Kasyan. We deeply respect that. But we have a bit of a situation with him now. He kidnapped one of our friends, and this sort of cult thing is trying to set him free.”
The Warden’s mouth pulled into a look of horror. “Set him free? That’s a diabolical thing to do.”
“We’re trying to make sure Kasyan stays locked up for good. But we have to get our friend back too. Seeing as you’re the one who trapped him in the first place, we were hoping you could tell us how you did it and where he is.”
The Warden shook his head and replaced his hat. “It’s too dangerous. You could easily free Kasyan yourselves in this rescue attempt. It cannot be worth that risk.”
“How long did Kasyan have you before you died?” Liss’s hands were clenched into fists. “Do you even know? No days and nights down there, you said. Must have made it hard to keep track.”
A look of pain flashed across the Warden’s face. “I believe I lasted just over three months.”
“Johnny has been surviving down there for two hundred ninety-five days. That’s ten months, and he’s not dead yet.” Liss’s voice was firm, but there was a bloodless, sick look to her as she spoke. She looked, Dan realized, miserable.
“Ten months,” the Warden repeated.
“Tell us about the spell,” Liss said.
The Warden hesitated long enough that Dan feared he’d refuse them. “I’ll tell you what I can recall, but the details are hard to keep hold of. It’s been a long time.”
“Anything you remember would help,” Dan said.
“I had been studying Kasyan for some time. The Wardens had given me the duty of watching him. I came to Icaria looking for him amidst all that death. When I found him he looked like any regular man. He had been living in Icaria, watching his handiwork as it unfolded. Somehow I drew him down the coast. About a day’s journey by horse south of here, but I needed somewhere remote, away from the miners and prospectors and the Pomo settlements. A place where no one could cross Kasyan’s path by chance. There is a beach where, when the tide was low, one can follow the waterline north along the base of the cliffs. When the tide is at anything but its lowest, the way is impassible. I led Kasyan there, into a cave that tunneled beneath the cliff. We fought.” His brow fell, his thick eyebrows nearly touching his lashes. “By the time it was over and I had him in his chains, I was weak. Too weak. And bleeding, from the spell. The way out was flooded. There was only one way to seal the cave.” He scrubbed a hand across his brow, then his voice fell into a quiet rasp. “I remember the last time I saw the light of day. It’s a strange feeling, wanting to live, but wishing you could die more quickly.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you.” Dan forced her eyes to meet his vacant black ones. “You shouldn’t have lost your love, and you shouldn’t have had to die like that.”
“Thank you,” the Warden said, his shoulders sagging.
“Do you know what beach it was?”
“My Maggie—she knew the beach. She was the one who suggested the idea. She would have made a fine Warden. I promised to begin teaching her, once Kasyan was dealt with.”
“That’s a start.” By the tone in Liss’s voice, she clearly had little patience for a gentle approach. “What can you remember about the spells you used?”
“There are two spells. One to chain Kasyan, and another to seal the cave—an extra precaution. To chain him, blood was needed.”
“What kind?” Alexa asked.
Alexa flinched when the Warden focused his unblinking black-hole eyes on her. “Human. You must avoid spilling any blood once you’ve entered the cave. If you can manage it, his chains should hold. But do not think that will keep you safe from him.”
“And the spell for the cave?” Liss pressed. “This was the most important magical day of your life. You can’t just not remember.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re very unpleasant?” He scowled at Liss. “I wish I could tell you, but the best I can do is tell you where to find it. The spell was in my Black Book.”
Dan heard Liss draw a sharp breath. “Your what?”
“My notebook. But it was with me in the cave, with Kasyan, so there it stays, along with my bones,” the Warden added. “Kasyan won’t be able to do the spell himself. It’s not designed for his type of power, and the amount of energy it requires is enormous.”
“We have a Black Book,” Liss ventured. “That’s where we found the spell. The one that let Kasyan take our friend.”
The Warden’s frown deepened.
Liss went on. “There were three of us at a crossroads on Kasyan’s Day, so the odds were against us. The spell went weird, somehow, and that crone-woman who works with Kasyan appeared.”
“Mora? That woman is a magpie,” h
e scowled. “She’s little more than a servant to him. The spell was designed to hold Kasyan, not her. She is harmless without him. Mainly she’s a scavenger—you know how birds like that are.”
All three of them shook their heads, which the ghost ignored.
“Anyway, we played this game, Likho, with her, which is sort of like evens and odds—”
“I know the game,” the Warden interrupted. “What was the wish?”
“What wish?” Liss asked.
Dan had to be very deliberate about continuing to breathe.
“The conditions of Kasyan’s capture don’t fully contain his power. But even on Kasyan’s Day, Mora cannot simply wander around kidnapping the unlucky. Kasyan’s power relies on desperation and desire and willing sacrifice: wishes, prayers, things like that. Mora could only have taken your friend if someone wished it. Presumably you knew that when you played.”
“But we lost the game,” Dan said, her voice small.
The Warden shrugged. “Kasyan’s games are more complicated than winning and losing. What made you think you knew the rules?”
* * *
—
As they hiked back in silence, with each passing step Dan clung tighter to the possibility that Liss would ignore what the ghost said about the wish, or maybe she’d think that there was no way to know what went wrong with Mora’s game. Maybe Liss herself had hoped it was Johnny who was taken. But the lower the sun fell in the sky, the more desperate that possibility felt, and so the harder Dan wished for it, because if Liss and Alexa knew what she’d done, then what?
But when they got back to the car, Liss turned to Dan.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
Liss’s voice was honed to a knife’s edge. “The wish.”
“What are you talking about?” It sounded feeble and incriminating.
“The wish, Dan! Don’t act like you don’t know. You heard him—someone had to have wished that Johnny would be gone or disappear or something for Mora to take him.”
“Liss, watch yourself,” Alexa said, but her eyes were fixed on Dan, waiting for an answer.
It was a sensation like falling, slipping into an abyss and that abyss was the truth of what she had done and who she was. There would be no going back from it: she would lose both of them for this, but there was no way to deny it now.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
Alexa stepped back. “Dan, you can’t be serious.”
“It was an accident. It was just a thought I had, before we even started doing the spell,” Dan tried to explain. “I didn’t know anything about Kasyan—neither of us did.”
“Why?” Liss said. “You wanted Johnny so bad that you had to destroy him? Or did you wish that he’d leave me so you could have him all to yourself?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Dan was shaking. “It wasn’t some evil plan.”
“You should have had him take me instead.”
“But then I couldn’t have had you, Liss!” Dan cried. “It was never about Johnny. It was about you.”
“What are you talking about?” Liss glared at her, genuinely confused.
“You’re exactly the same, even now. You’ve never once thought about how much you hurt me.”
“Hurt you how?”
This was why Liss’s friendship was an unhealing wound, and Dan felt it now like physical pain. Liss was still blind to Dan’s sadness. She never saw how badly Dan wanted her best friend by her side, instead of at her boyfriend’s. Even now, Liss was annoyed that Dan’s feelings had interrupted her anger.
“You abandoned me for him,” Dan forced herself to say. “You started dating, and it was like I barely existed. You were my best friend. I had no one else. I was miserable and you didn’t even see it. Can you blame me for wanting him gone?” Dan smeared tears across her cheeks. “It wasn’t the kind of wish that was supposed to come true.”
Liss gave her a look that could shatter ice.
“Get in the car,” she finally said. “Before I leave you here.”
TWENTY-THREE
Liss
Liss didn’t speak as she drove away from Icaria. She threw no one the cord for the music. Her hands curled so tight around the steering wheel, she couldn’t even release them long enough to count to four and back. She worried if she pried her grip away, she’d lose control completely—of the car, of herself. Her jaw hurt from how hard it was clenched.
Dan didn’t say anything either. At first, she was making whimpering noises, and when Liss dared to look at her in the rearview mirror, her face was tear-streaked and she was wiping her nose on her sleeve. Fury sparked in Liss at how unabashedly wrecked Dan looked. Like once this last secret was out, she’d let it all go, without caring who saw her misery. It wasn’t fair, Liss snarled to herself, that Dan didn’t have to be strong anymore, not when Liss wanted to sob too.
God, she wanted to sob. Instead, Liss devoted her attention to keeping the car steady between the yellow and white lines of the road through each curve and turn on the way back home.
* * *
—
By the time Liss pulled into Dan’s driveway, they were still silent. Dan sniffed and hesitated before she left the car.
Alexa turned back to Dan. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Dan tucked her hair behind her ear and looked cautiously at Liss. “I’m sorry. I promise, I didn’t mean to do it.”
Liss felt something thick rising in her throat. She swallowed hard against it and turned back to the windshield until Dan had gone.
Outside Alexa’s place, they sat in the car.
“I don’t know if I can let Dan be a part of this anymore,” Liss said.
“Liss, don’t. It was an accident, and you know she feels terrible. I think she’s been punishing herself over it for a long time.”
Liss couldn’t look directly at the chain of reasoning spawned by that thought: they cared about each other so much it destroyed them. Instead, she said, “Is that supposed to be enough?”
“It’s something,” Alexa said.
“Don’t act like you know how this feels. I swear, if you’re about to tell me I have to forgive her, get out of my car.”
“I’m not. That’s not how forgiveness works. But you can give her a chance to earn it. You can’t really think she meant to do it deliberately.”
“No,” Liss conceded. “Dan’s not that kind of monster. I just—I can’t even look at her right now, let alone talk to her. I need some time.”
“I don’t think we have that,” Alexa said carefully. “Tomorrow’s the Winter Solstice.”
“Yeah, it’s the Solstice Parade.”
“And it’s a full moon. That combination means we’ll have some of the most extreme tides all year.”
“Shit.” Liss hissed, rubbing a hand over her eyes. “Which is what we need to get to the Warden’s beach.”
Alexa pushed her glasses up her nose. “Whatever Keith is doing, he’s doing it tomorrow. We need to figure out where that beach is, soon.”
* * *
—
Liss dropped Alexa off, then sped all the way back to Marlena. The only sound she wanted to hear was the reckless roar of the Range Rover’s engine. She wanted it louder than her thoughts, and she pushed the car stupidly hard coming out of the turns. She regretted it when she pulled up to her house: through the fence, she could see her mother’s BMW in the driveway.
Her foot still on the brake, Liss squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could and contorted her face into a soundless scream.
Liss should have been furious at Dan. She was within her rights to feel that familiar scorching rage. But she didn’t. Maybe she’d been burning from the inside out for so long that there was nothing left for the fire. She was a bag of dry ashes.
She pulle
d away from the gate, drove down to the beach, and left the car in the small lot. The sand was thick from the rain, and a dull blue sunset was draining away what little light the day had had. The wind was howling in off the waves in frigid, wet gusts. Liss was exhausted and hungry and shivering, but that was nothing compared to how pathetically alone she felt.
She forced herself toward the rocky outcropping where the cliff rose out of the sand.
She would make him want her, and he would make her forget. She would absolutely not tell him what was wrong. She wouldn’t let him see her cry this time. They’d have sex in the sand. Their skin would be clammy and chilled. The sand would smell like the old kelp and the empty shells of dead crabs that washed up on the beach, and feel terrible against her skin. It wasn’t even fully dark, and dog walkers or all-weather joggers or anybody would probably be able to see them. She could already smell the sourness of his body and the sweetness of the nasty clove cigarettes he smoked. Liss hadn’t even done it yet and already it made her want to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself turn back.
He was going to make her feel good, she told herself, even if it felt like a punishment.
The rocks came into view. She searched for the pathetic little camp, the obnoxious orange tent.
Brodie wasn’t there.
Of course he’d moved on: it was a terrible place to camp, probably completely intolerable even for a darryl now that it was raining.
Liss felt like she was collapsing in on herself. Why did she feel like she was the horrible one, when Dan had done this horrible thing? This was Dan’s fault and yet the more Liss tried to make that matter, the more she recalled all the things she’d done to push them to that point. She had dragged Johnny to the crossroads that night. She had cast a spell for Johnny’s love and rung the bell to seal it. She had insisted they become witches with that first, reckless spell.
A Wicked Magic Page 28