Chapter Twenty-Six
No one said a word on the way back to Bell House.
The four of us bundled ourselves into the car, still soaked through, Jackson blasting the heat in mid-July. Wyn took the passenger seat, leaving me and Lydia in the back.
Once the storm was over, she had walked back from the beach in a daze, allowing us to direct her to the car and strap her in but ignoring our questions, mine and Jackson’s.
Wyn kept quiet, one concerned hand on my shoulder at all times until we were safely in the back of the car and on the road home to Savannah.
Everyone was afraid, everyone was confused.
Jackson concentrated on driving while Lydia slept, twisted up in her seatbelt, her head in my lap.
Wyn spent the entire drive turned around in his seat, eyes on me, leg bouncing up and down and anxiety rolling off him.
When we pulled up outside Bell House, he leapt out the car before it came to a stop, bolting to my side to help me out while Jackson pulled his sister out of the backseat and carried her sleeping body up to the house.
‘Just when I thought I was getting a week to myself,’ Ashley said, ushering the four of us inside, scanning the square before closing the door behind us and turning the lock. I hadn’t realized the front door to Bell House had a lock. It couldn’t be a good sign.
She surveyed the damage as we staggered into the parlour, four messed-up teenagers barefooted, bloody and bedraggled, still wearing our damp clothes and stunned expressions.
My ruined shirt was smeared pink with washed-out blood, Jackson’s too, and Lydia’s crocheted cover-up was ruined, ripped to pieces by the lightning she’d channelled.
‘Well, you all look like shit. Anyone care to tell me what the hell is going on?’
I didn’t. Instead, I collapsed onto the sofa while Wyn stood guard behind me and Jackson laid Lydia down on the chaise longue before allowing himself to crumple onto the floor.
Just being under the roof of Bell House felt like slipping into a warm bath.
I arched my back as the gashes left by the wolf began to knit themselves back together, my home healing me as only it knew how.
‘Never was one for the silent treatment,’ Ashley said. ‘Please tell me y’all got drunk and burned down the Stovells’ house?’
‘Lydia is a witch,’ said Jackson.
‘There was another Were,’ said Wyn.
‘Someone chopped down a bunch of live oaks from the square to spell me,’ I finished up, gesturing towards the window.
‘But no one burned down the house?’
We all shook our heads, no.
‘OK, that’s something, I guess.’
Ashley was at the window in five long steps, opening the shutters to peer out into Lafayette Square. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. I didn’t need to see the stumps to know five trees were missing from the north-west corner of the square.
‘I didn’t hear a damn thing,’ she said softly. ‘How did they take out whole trees without anyone noticing a thing?’
‘Because they’re using magic.’
I covered my face with my hands, trying to pull out the facts, something solid I could cling to, but no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind, I still felt adrift.
‘A Were without a full moon, magic without a witch and the blessing manifests in Lydia. None of it makes sense.’
‘Remind me never to go on vacation with any of you,’ Ashley replied. ‘What a day to be out of whiskey.’
‘It can’t have been a Were,’ Wyn muttered, more to himself than anyone. ‘It isn’t possible.’
‘Didn’t you see it?’ I leaned back my head to look at him as he peeled off his plaid shirt and placed it around my shoulders. ‘You must’ve seen it if you followed me out the gate.’
‘All I saw was the smoke. I couldn’t even see you.’
‘What about the gashes in her back?’ Jackson’s words were barbed and baited. ‘Did you see those? Did you hear her screaming? Because I did.’
Wyn lifted his chin to meet the challenge in Jackson’s voice. ‘I heard it. That’s why I ran out to help her while you were still in the yard.’
‘Boys,’ Ashley chided, a one-word warning. ‘We don’t stand for dick-swinging contests in this house, if you don’t mind.’
Jackson pushed up to his knees and then his feet, one arm on the back of our sofa for support. ‘Seems to me you should’ve been able to tell if there was another wolf out there. Can’t y’all sniff out your own?’
‘Whoever it was, they aren’t one of my own,’ Wyn replied, ignoring the edge in his voice this time and turning to me. ‘Em, this changes things. I need to—’
‘Talk to your pack,’ I nodded, completing his sentence for him. ‘I figured. Go call them.’
He shook his head at himself.
‘They’re already suspicious. If I call to say there’s a Were running around the low country who can change outside of the full moon, the entire pack is going to be here by sunrise, and they’re going to want to talk to all of you.’
‘You’re going back to Asheville?’
The soft blue tones of the parlour walls turned grey.
‘I’m going back to Hilton Head,’ he replied. ‘Alone.’
Jackson snorted.
‘Convenient.’
‘That’s enough from you.’ Ashley grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and directed him towards the door. ‘Come help me make tea before I let him rip you a new one. This ain’t the time to be making matters worse.’
‘I don’t want any tea.’ He grunted, shaking her off and standing firm, but Ashley wasn’t going to be so easily dismissed.
‘Cute that you think I give a shit what you want,’ she said, giving him a shove. ‘Get your ass into the kitchen and hush up.’
As their voices faded away down the hallway, the parlour slipped into near silence, only Lydia’s heavy but even breathing audible.
‘It’s not safe for you to go back on your own,’ I said uselessly. I knew he was already as good as gone. ‘She’ll know you’re there.’
‘She?’ He raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘You know who it is?’
‘It has to be the woman I met this afternoon, the one from the magic store. There can’t be many Weres who understand the blessing well enough to use it to disarm a witch.’
‘Weres don’t use any magic other than the gifts we have. It’s one of our fundamental laws. Breaking it would be a high crime.’
‘The kind of crime that might get a wolf expelled from their pack?’
Wyn stood in front of me in his blue jeans and grey T-shirt, the toes of his desert boots darkened with a sea salt stain. I pulled my shredded shirt closer to my body and the walls of the parlour shifted almost imperceptibly from pale blue to pale grey.
‘I can’t tell you.’
The string that tied me to him pulled tight, straining with the weight of secrecy. Necessary, or so he thought, but I couldn’t help but worry about what it meant for us.
‘You can’t go back on your own,’ I said, my body fully healed and my mind clearer than ever. ‘Either call your pack and get them down here or take me with you. One way or another, I’ll have to face them eventually. The longer we keep it a secret, the more it looks like a lie.’
Falling to his knees, he rested his hands on my thighs, staring up at me with pleading grey-green eyes.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, words written on his face he was struggling to say. ‘If they find out you’re a witch, they won’t let us be together. If they find out you killed Cole, they’ll kill you. I can’t live with either of those outcomes.’
‘Then what’s the plan?’ I dropped to the floor beside him, clutching at his hands.
‘How does this work after the summer? You’re going to lie to your pack for the rest of your life?
Keep me hidden in Savannah while you live a double life in Asheville?
We can’t spend forever counting down the days until we have to say goodbye again, Wyn, it doesn’t make sense. ’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, falling back onto his heels and pulling his hands away, knotting them up in his own tangled, damp hair. ‘I don’t have an answer yet, but there’s no way I’m going to let them take you away from me. There has to be a way I can fix this.’
‘Find it,’ I said, snatching him back, pressing his hands to my heart and holding his gaze in mine. ‘Do whatever you have to do, because I’m not letting go of us.’
The determination that flared in his eyes reflected the passion in mine and when he kissed me, I kissed him back harder, staking my claim.
‘Em?’
On the chaise longue, Lydia’s eyelids flickered open, her gold-white irises returned to their natural deep brown.
‘I’ll go help Ashley with the tea,’ Wyn said, rising to his feet and squeezing Lydia’s shoulder on his way past. ‘Good to see you back in the land of the living.’
‘Yeah, sure, can you get me a Diet Coke?’ she replied without missing a beat.
‘It’s almost midnight.’
‘Which is why you should hurry up and get it while we’re still young.’
I felt my shoulders drop in relief. If nothing else, she was still herself.
‘So,’ she said to me, holding out her hands to examine her fingertips as Wyn slipped out of the parlour. ‘I’m a witch.’
‘Looks like.’
I sat down at her side, inspecting her palms when she turned them over for me. There was nothing to see but I could feel the same thing she could, the tingling in her fingertips, the prickling sensation on her skin.
‘It came out of nowhere,’ she said, gazing at her hands with wonder. ‘One minute I was in the backyard with Jackson, the next I was walking out to the beach, no idea what I was doing. I saw the fire but something told me to go in the opposite direction, like I needed to get to the water.’
‘You were lucky. Manifesting right by the ocean like that could’ve been so dangerous.’
‘It didn’t feel dangerous.’
She fingered her silver locket and I automatically reached for its twin around my neck. ‘I stood at the edge of the ocean and the waves kind of went around me. Then I heard you screaming and everything went white. The next thing I remember is waking up here.’
‘Good news, you saved my life.’
‘Fuck, yeah.’ She pumped her fist through a yawn. ‘Bad news?’