Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
“You’ve called on me again,” Hazel says, but it’s not her voice.
My head snaps to my youngest sister, and the thing staring back at me from inside Hazel isn’t her at all.
Hazel’s head cocks to the right, inhuman, unnatural, and my mouth goes dry. I squeeze Posey and Rose’s hands, and they squeeze right back.
A tear drops from Hazel’s eye — at least, I thought it was a tear.
It’s not.
It drops onto the grass, and fire snakes away from her, scorching a line straight to the lantern.
“I warned you the last time you were here, the last time you called forth the land, the sea, the sky, the earth, that the price would be paid. What price do you offer?” the thing inside Hazel asks.
Another tear drops, sizzling on the ground. This one goes further than the last, scorching a new path toward the center of the circle.
“Is the gift you offer this body?” the thing asks.
The snake on Posey’s leg slithers up further, encircling her waist, impossibly long, impossibly thick.
Blood drips from the huge black bird gripping Rose’s shoulder, and it hits me all at once.
We forgot to do — we forgot to do the blood offering.
I rip my gaze away from my little sister and the thing inside of her and turn to where I can feel Caleb behind us, outside the circle.
“A knife!” I scream at him. “We need a knife!”
He’s frozen in place, face beyond pale, paper white, eyes wide in fear. Dread fills me, and I know I’ve lost him.
But I refuse to lose my little sister.
“Knife, Caleb, now!”
He turns and runs.
It hurts even more than I knew it would.
Fine. I’ll do it myself.
I turn my attention to the lantern we’ve created, and I summon every single trickle of magic I can feel inside of me. It’s usually thick, maple syrup, molasses-like, and when I use it to bake it comes naturally.
Now it’s nothing like that, as if the dam has burst and the magic’s right underneath my skin.
I squeeze my sisters’ hands. “We need a blood offering.”
“It’s too late for that,” Hazel says, an eerie laugh sending a shiver up my spine.
“The lantern,” I say. “We offer the circle our blood. We offer the guardians a bit of our life.”
And I stare at the lantern, and it happens exactly as it did in my vision.
The glass bursts, shards of shrapnel that fling immediately into the air, bouncing off the circle itself, the bubble around us. It happens so quickly, and yet it’s almost as if I see every shard in slow motion.
I wonder if it’s because I’ve already seen this happen once.
I close my eyes against the onslaught, and I hope that none of us are hurt too badly.
I barely feel it as the glass sinks into my skin, and it’s over as quickly as it started.
Fire rips from Hazel’s mouth, a soundless scream.
Watchmere Light blinks back to life, a steady beam on the ocean.
“You’ve done well, child,” a voice says in my head, and I look down to see the kraken’s tentacles slither away from my ankle.
The magic collapses, the bubble bursting, and I fall to my knees, completely exhausted, every inch bleeding — but there’s no sign of the glass.
I look, searching each small paper cut across my arms and hands, even on my face, trying to find the shards, not wanting them inside of me.
“I’m sorry,” Hazel says. She’s crumpled on her side in a fetal position. “I’m sorry. I forgot to write down that part. I messed everything up.”
Posey’s at her side in an instant, shaking her shoulder.
“No,” my sister tells her. “Look. We finished it. We figured it out.”
“Also, what the hell was that?” Rose says.
The albatross and the snake are nowhere to be seen, and the thick, oily, slimy feeling of magic gone to rot, a feeling I didn’t even recognize until now, disappears. It had been slowly choking Silverlight Shore, but in its wake?
Everything feels right again.
Rain pitter-patters against our skin, washing away the blood, and Watchmere Light shines bright across the harbor, a beam settling just shy of the huge glowing eye.
It blinks once and disappears, and maybe it’s my imagination, but it’s almost as if I hear a thank you from deep in the sea itself.
I take a deep breath, reveling in the fact that we solved this problem.
We did it.
“Hazel, you were terrifying and magnificent.”
The raccoon at her feet tugs on her pants. “Ya did good, boss,” it says. “Now give me a snack.”
“Do not give him anymore food,” Hazel tells everyone. “You are a menace.”
“Gunner,” I call, remembering. I drop my face in my hands. “Caleb. It was too much for him. I knew it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Posey says softly.
“Goddamnit,” Caleb swears softly, his warm hand landing on my shoulder.
“I didn’t get back in time,” he says, holding up two different knives, one a pocketknife I recognize, his uncle’s scrimshaw handle giving it away, and the other the huge chef’s knife from his kitchen.
“You finished it up so fast.” His eyes are huge, but he doesn’t look terrified. He’s touching me. He’s not… gone. He’s not even scared. “Hazel, don’t do that again. Seriously, that was freaky. Is that something that happens a lot?”
“I thought you left?” My shoulders heave, and too late I realize I’m sobbing.
“I really want to hug you right now, but I’m holding two knives,” he says slowly.
“Give me the goddamn knives,” Posey says, taking them from him. “Now hug my damn sister,” she says, pushing me into his arms.
Caleb doesn’t waste any time. He wraps me up in his huge, warm arms.
“I can’t believe I missed it,” he continues, patting me while I cry and chatting with my sisters like this happens all the time.
“I go for one minute to get a knife, which I didn’t know was needed, or I would’ve had it on me, so next time don’t even worry.
I’m gonna have the pocketknife. Heck, I might get a fancy special knife just to be ready if you forget that you have to do part of the spell. ”
He’s rambling a little, and I can tell that he’s is slightly panicked, but it’s not because he’s afraid of me.
He’s afraid for me. For Hazel.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he tells me. “And my God, did you guys fix the light, too? I was going to automate it. Shoot, what am I going tell work?”
“You know what?” Posey steps closer, a gleam in her eye I know all too well. “I can do it with you. I can create a mechanism that will trap whatever magic is in the ward that’s firing it, and we can meld it with your automated system.”
“Can we not do this right now?” Rose says. “Posey, seriously, they’re having a moment. Shrimp crackers,” she swears. “Hazel, Posey, let’s go inside. Maybe we need lasagna and maybe we need an exorcism, but we definitely need lasagna before the exorcism.”
“Don’t forget the cannoli,” Hazel says weakly.
“I’ll eat your lasagna,” the raccoon says.
“You are awful,” Rose tells him. “I would like to register a complaint with whatever sent this raccoon to you.”
Fig chitters her agreement from where she sits on Rose’s shoulder.
“Did you turn into an albatross?” Rose asks.
“Oh yeah, I think that is what happened,” Posey says. “So freaking weird. Ferrets are kind of snakey though.” Oatmeal bares her teeth in protest.
Their voices trail off as they head for the lighthouse, holding each other up, the familiars all talking at once.
I hold onto Caleb.
“You’re not mad?” I ask.
“Why the hell would I be mad?” Caleb says, pulling back to look at me. “Not at all.” He stares at me. “The hell was that thing at the end?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea. I feel like I’ve said this to you a hundred times, and I will say it again, but that is not my expertise. I do candy and food magic. Whatever is going on with Hazel is so far out of my wheelhouse it might as well be another state.”
“I did not like that.” Caleb shakes his head.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have to deal with that again,” I say, but the minute the words leave my mouth, I realize I’m not sure. “Probably.”
What if that is Hazel’s magic? What if there’s something darker in her than just candy or creating mechanical objects and repairing them like Posey, or music like Rose?
A little tendril of dread curls up my spine.
Caleb presses a kiss to my forehead, and the fear dissolves under his touch.
“I’m still here,” he says. “Whatever it is that’s going on with Hazel, I’ll be with you. We’ll figure it out. I’m not going to get scared away so easily.”
He cocks his head slightly, looking up at the sky as he considers that fact.
“After that, I’m not sure what could scare me away.”
“What if I had explosive diarrhea in the bathtub?” I ask him.
“What the fuck?” he asks.
“Yeah, or what if I turned into a worm?”
“Are you seriously asking me the worm question?” His eyebrows rocket up, rain dripping down his face. “It is so overdone.”
“Listen, I haven’t had anyone to ask the worm question, so answer it.”
A heavy sigh meets my demand, and then he gives a serious nod.
“If you turn into a worm, I would take you to your sisters and tell them to take whatever curse is on you off, and if they couldn’t, then I’d put a little pink bow around your little worm neck, and I’d try to figure out a way to keep you away from Fig. ”
I have to laugh at that. “I’m not planning on turning into a worm.”
“I’m really glad, because I, you know, I can find the pink ribbon somewhere, but it’s not at the top of my to-do list. And the general store only stocks ribbon at the holidays.”
I stare up at him, overwhelmed, fully cooked emotionally and physically from the ritual, and I just melt.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“So you’re saying we’re getting married?” he asks.
“That is absolutely not what I’m saying,” I tell him with a laugh. “Not right now, but this is not the minute to talk about that. But I do love you.”
“I know you do, Ivy,” he says, brushing some hair out of my eyes then wiping a tear away with his thumb. He kisses the other side where another tear tracks down my cheek. “I know you do, and I love you too.”
“I’m glad you came back,” I tell him.
“I’m glad you were here when I came back,” he says, “and I’m not going to leave again.”
“Good,” I tell him, “or I’ll turn you into a worm.”
He barks a laugh at that.
“Well, I don’t want to think about future me as a worm,” he says.
“Oh, don’t worry, you won’t be one long. I’ll feed you to Fig—”
He gives me a long kiss on the lips. “Would you turn me into a worm if I told you I bought the house down the street from you? The Douglas place?”
“No.” I narrow my eyes. “Probably not.” Inside, though, I’m delighted. “I love that house.”
“Phew,” He puts a hand over his heart. “And to think I’d be one with wormdom if you’d said no.”
“I would never.”
“The scariest part about that is I think that you might be able to do it if I really pissed you off. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you in pistachio lattes and new clothes.”
“Caleb!” I protest. “No more new clothes.”
“No promises,” he says with a devious grin. “I like those lacey little bras. And I like taking them off you even more.”
“I give up. I can’t stop a man determined to buy me pretty things.” I sigh, shaking my head.
“Good thing you love me.” He gives me another kiss.
“It’s a good thing I love you,” I agree.