Chapter Thirty-Five
Walker
I n his narrow bed, my dad lay as still as ever. Alone in his room, I stared at him. The heart monitor still beeped, and his chest still rose and fell with breath. In the yellow light of the bedside lamp, his skin was especially pale. Asleep, the harsh lines of his face softened.
“We’ve never gone this long without arguing,” I joked. He didn’t reply.
Of course, he didn’t, dipshit. He’s in a coma.
“Walker?” Thea said from the door.
As my cheeks flushed, I faced her. Her dark eyes were round with concern, though I wasn’t sure it was entirely for me. All this time, my dad had been her charge. She had changed his sheets and cleaned his skin. She had tried endless healing spells to no avail.
“Thank you,” I said. “For taking care of him. I know the others gave you shit for it—taking care of a hunter—but you don’t know what it means to me or Cady.”
I don’t know that I could’ve done it, I thought. After everything he put me through, I don’t think I could’ve taken care of him like you have, even after he finally stepped up.
It was a thought I usually quieted, but standing here, on the precipice of saying a final goodbye or another hello, it raced through my mind.
“Of course,” Thea said. She tucked a long, dark lock of hair behind her pierced ear. “Are you ready?”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Thea walked to my side and squeezed my hand in silent support.
“You moved on from Freya fast,” my sister quipped.
I rolled my eyes but removed my hand from Thea’s. Cady stood in the doorway wearing her usual t-shirt and jeans. Despite her cutting humor, she stared at my dad with a face full of worry.
“I told you,” I said, “you don’t have to be here for this. Watching one family member come back from the brink of death is enough for one lifetime, don’t you think?”
Cady crossed her arms, and chagrin burned in her emerald eyes.
“Family shows up for each other,” she countered. “I’m not going to hide from this, Walkie.”
“Of course you’re not,” I muttered. I strolled to her side and kissed the top of her head. Her straight, sandy hair was still damp from her shower.
After the meeting with the Elders extended later and later, Freya and I eventually convinced them to let us attempt the spell to transform Clyde.
Despite the knowledge we had gleaned from Josephine’s beyond-the-grave message and the worst book to ever exist, we still didn’t know where the High Witch’s court was, which meant we were no closer to finding Elle, whose life hung in peril with every passing second.
The only person who might know how to get to the court was in a coma.
It was time for him to wake up.
“Not to rush you,” Thea said, “but we’re losing moonlight.”
As I wheeled Clyde’s bed out the door and through the short, plain hall, my gaze drifted to my fearless sister. Though it didn’t surprise me that she was involved in some prophecy to conquer the sorceress, it scared the shit out of me. She caught my worried stare and misunderstood it.
“It’ll be okay,” she promised. “If things don’t go well, it won’t be the first time Dad disappointed me.”
I forced a smile at her attempt at a joke. No one had told Cadence about her involvement in Josephine’s message, and I intended to keep it that way. She already possessed too great of a hero complex.
Thea opened the exterior door, and I pushed Dad down the cobblestone path and into the field behind the apartments. The temperatures had dropped, but the air was still, as if even the wind held its breath to see what happened to Clyde Reid. The first streaks of sunlight loomed on the horizon, but the moon remained a watchful eye in the sky.
Freya and her coven were gathered on the expanse of groomed grass. With her jaw set, her gaze focused, and her shoulders squared, Freya was the picture of Coven Mother. I wondered if this was how she had looked when she saved me.
As I pushed Clyde to Freya’s side, the coven encircled my dad, Cadence, and me. Objects surrounded Freya, including pinecones, a framed photo of my family, and butterfly wings.
“Right there is good,” Freya said and gestured behind her. “Join the circle.”
Thea and a blonde witch with a crooked nose and attitude offered their hands. Blondie had sneered at me too many times to count. I claimed the spot next to Thea and Cady occupied the space beside me.
With the circle complete, Freya chanted a spell.
As Freya’s magic thrummed in the air, it tugged at my own power. With a deep breath, I relinquished my hold on my magic, and thunder crackled. Freya used a small, sharp dagger to cut Clyde’s skin on his face and chest. She gathered various magical objects, but I struggled to pay attention to the details. Magic roared in my veins, and fear churned my stomach.
When the blood on Clyde’s body glowed, my already racing heart beat faster. As if he were a puppet pulled by strings, Clyde jerked upright. Magic brightened his green eyes. As he gasped, they glowed like Cadence’s.
He stared at me with wide-eyed horror.
“Clyde,” Freya greeted.
He gasped again, and thorned vines sprouted from his hands. They trailed down his bed like blood. As he struggled for breath, veins popped out of his neck, and his skin reddened. In another life, I would’ve thought he was in a drunken fit of rage.
“You’re safe,” Freya promised. Clyde’s stare didn’t falter from mine. “Clyde?”
She reached for his hand, but as soon as she touched him, he bellowed. Those thorn-covered vines crawled up her arm, and gashes opened where the vines dug into her pale skin. I lurched, but Thea gripped my hand.
“You can’t break the circle,” she hissed.
Flames destroyed the vines, and to my relief, more didn’t grow in their place.
“No,” Clyde said. His horrified eyes bored into mine. “No, no, no!”
Not even in his most drunken, obnoxious states had Dad ever looked less human. Magic flared under his skin and moved like glowing worms through his body. It reminded me sickly of how it had writhed under Josephine’s skin, but unlike Freya’s goddessmother, Dad didn’t welcome the power. He shrieked and thrashed like a cornered animal.
“Make it stop!” he yelled. “ Make it stop!”
Vines wrapped over his legs and tore into his skin. As terror froze me in place, they wrapped farther up his body, until they covered everything up to his chest. Beside me, Cadence shook. Soon, Dad barely breathed under the weight of the vines, but he didn’t struggle against their hold. As I realized what he intended, I screamed.
“Put him back to sleep!” I screamed. My magic swelled like a tidal wave. “Stop him!”
Dad froze and so did the growth of his vines. Cadence broke free from the circle to point her hand at the vines. Her magic ripped them off Dad, and he took heaving breaths. Freya murmured a spell, and her coven quickly mimicked it.
Dad’s eyes rolled back in his head, but his breaths became smooth and steady, and the roar of his magic quieted.
???
Apparently, watching your dad—with whom you had a complex relationship with, to say the least—try to kill himself because of a spell you wished upon him and be forced back into an endless sleep was enough to get even an enraged werewolf to cut you some slack.
Silently, Ryder paced the small length of Freya’s apartment. The hostess perched on the couch with a thoughtful expression. She had showered again, and her still slightly damp braid hung over her black, long-sleeved tee-clad shoulder. Despite her pensiveness, her jewelry still glittered around her throat. Cady, pale and with red-rimmed eyes, sat by her side.
“I just don’t understand,” Freya said again. “Everything was the same. Maybe it was the Blood Moon? Was that what gave me the power to transform you?”
“I don’t know if I ever told you this,” I said, “but I heard you call for me to return, Freya. I heard your magic. Maybe Dad…maybe he just didn’t want to come back.”
“He’s been lost for a long time,” Cady agreed, “without anything to anchor him.”
Freya’s gaze met mine, and my realization was mirrored in her eyes.
“Anchor,” we said at the same time.
“That’s what Marie called you!” Cady said. “She said you were Freya’s Anchor.”
“But from what we learned in the Warlock Cave,” Freya countered, “Anchors are magically bound witches and warlocks. How was Walker my Anchor before he ever became a warlock?”
“This is all wildly interesting,” Ryder interrupted, “but can we get to the task at hand? Sorry about your dad, rugrat, but we’re no closer to finding the ripple.”
I guess his patience had a two-minute time limit.
“You’re right,” Cady agreed and raised her chin. “We can figure that out and help Dad later. Right now, Elle needs us.”
I admired her strength and forced myself to mirror it, not matter how badly I wanted to sink into my despair over the monster we had transformed Dad into.
I’ll find a way to fix it, I vowed.
Cadence had been right. At the end of the day, Dad was family, and family showed up for each other.
I just needed to find Elle before I showed up for him again.
“Okay,” Freya conceded. “Any thoughts on where a magical ripple in the universe might be hiding on your property?”
“Is there a border somewhere?” Ryder asked. “The lake between the wolves and the vamps is ripe with power.”
“Our only bordering supernatural neighbor is the wolves,” Cady said.
Ryder scratched his chin. “Yeah, there’s nothing there.”
I cleared my throat. “Was there a reason why Josephine chose that spot to, um, to—”
“To kill my mother?” Freya said and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think it’s just where Mom intercepted her before Josephine could get to Cadence.”
“There must be something we’re missing,” Cady said. “I mean, there was a whole basement hiding under the house that we didn’t know about.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “not to mention the creepy, locked closet.”
As my words settled, we shared disbelieving looks.
“You don’t think,” I said.
“It’s possible,” Freya interrupted and rose to her feet. “There was a lot of magic emanating from that thing.”
Ryder nodded. “Mara agreed when I suggested it was on the property, but she never said it couldn’t have been located in the house itself.”
“Or directly beneath it,” Cady agreed.
Disbelief and hope warred inside me.
“I guess we’re going home, Cady,” I said.
Though I missed the farmhouse and the memories of Mom it held, guilt ate at me for returning without Dad.
“I know it won’t be easy going back there,” Freya said. “If you’d rather Ryder and I check it out by ourselves—”
“No,” Cadence and I said at the same time.
“We’ll go,” I said. “Who knows? It might be another Warlock Cave situation, and you can’t get in without some Reid magic.”
I cringed as soon as the words left my mouth. We had all just witnessed the destruction Reid magic could wreak. Cady took my hand.
“That wasn’t him,” she said quietly.
I nodded and shook off the lingering remorse for conjuring whatever monster had replaced Dad.
Forward, I told myself. Just keep moving forward.