Chapter Thirty-Four
‘This is bad, Em, this is really, really, really bad.’
Wyn hadn’t stopped pacing up and down the parlour floor since he pushed me inside, refusing to let me go out and clean up the front door. He shook his head over and over, his whole body a blur of constant movement.
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ I said, a picture of stillness compared to his perpetual motion. ‘Do you know for a fact this is a message from the pack? Maybe it’s a threat from Astrid, maybe she knows we’ve been asking questions about her.’
‘No. It’s the pack.’
All the energy pulling us together moments ago now pushed us apart. He was full of conflict and I felt the thread between us fraying in real time.
‘It means you’ve been declared prey. The pack has officially accused you of Cole’s murder and this is to let you know there will be a trial.’
There would be a trial. The time-slip at Hilton Head. Only that wasn’t a trial, it was a witch hunt.
‘I always walk in at the best moments,’ Ashley said, strolling into the room with a southern woman’s eternal answer to bad news, sweet tea and cookies.
‘There I was, thinking I had a blissful afternoon all to myself. City council meeting delayed, Armageddon brought forward. Not an equitable exchange. What is going on here?’
‘It’s good that you’re home,’ Wyn stalked over to the window, closed the shutters then yanked the curtains closed for good measure. ‘Everyone needs to stay inside.’
‘Wyn thinks the pack knows I killed Cole,’ I told her as he pulled out his phone and turned it off before picking up a pen from the coffee table, poking at a tiny hole in the side, until the sim card popped out. He tucked both items into his back pocket.
‘They can track me the regular way anywhere else,’ he explained, ‘but not here. Gramps mentioned it last time I was home: magic creates blank spots and they exist all over Savannah, that’s one of the reasons they were having trouble keeping tabs on Cole.
I don’t know how far Bell House’s wards reach, but we don’t need to make things any easier for them. ’
‘If they know about Em, surely they know about you?’ Ashley reasoned. ‘The two of you are never apart for more than ten damn minutes.’
‘I don’t know,’ he moaned, head in his hands as he sank down to the sofa. ‘I don’t fucking know.’
‘Tell me about the trial,’ I demanded, crawling up beside him on my knees, I had to keep him on track. ‘They’ve accused me. Is anyone else in danger?’
‘Anyone considered to have aided or abetted in the death or the cover-up. Even if they don’t know about her magic, they’ll snatch Lydia just for being in your inner circle. They’ll take Ashley and Jackson too. Catherine, if she were still here.’
‘Take or …?’
He looked at me, grim and afraid. The birds painted on the walls began to circle, slowly at first then in more erratic orbit as my panic spiralled.
‘Just tell us what you can,’ I said, taking pains to sound calm when I was flailing inside. ‘We need to be prepared.’
‘It isn’t much. I had one month with the pack.
We’re not much for sitting around and giving lectures, and if there are books to study, I haven’t seen them,’ he said, pressing his fingertips into his temples, trying to squeeze out more knowledge than he had.
‘There’s a council, my mom is the leader, they meet once a month to discuss problems and issue punishments.
Mom wanted me to sit in and someone mentioned a trial when they were discussing what happened to Cole … ’
‘When he tried to kill Emily and Catherine, thus getting himself stabbed in the throat and dumped in the river?’ Ashley offered before leaning forward to grab a cookie and snap it in two. ‘What? Am I wrong? Continue.’
‘They didn’t know who killed him then, the debate was whether or not an accidental death would still warrant a trial.
Most folks figured he got himself shot by a hunter and was too badly injured to heal himself,’ Wyn continued, paler than I’d ever seen him.
‘From what I recollect, it happens on the night of a full moon, early, before the moon reaches its peak.’
‘So before the phase?’
He nodded. ‘There will be another message, from an emissary, telling you where to be and when. The pack leader will be the judge.’
‘Your mom.’ My lips shaped themselves around the words but no sound emerged from my mouth. Wyn didn’t respond in any way.
‘You know for sure it’s your pack?’ Ashley asked. ‘It could be this lone-wolf asshole trying to scare us into making a mistake.’
‘It’s them.’ Wyn looked sick to his stomach. ‘I wasn’t sure at first, the magic around the house threw me for a loop, but I can smell it now. It’s my pack for sure.’
‘What if I leave?’ I suggested. ‘Savannah, the US, what if I vanished?’
‘Not possible. They have your scent, all the other packs will be informed. You aren’t a Were, you can’t go to another pack and ask for clemency like an exiled wolf.’
‘What if she happened to have a still-beating heart party favour?’ Ashley asked.
‘I don’t think many Weres would look for much of a reason to execute a witch,’ Wyn said, stammering out the last couple of words.
‘They’ve given you seven days’ notice, they want you to run – it’s considered an admission of guilt.
Chasing you down is just another part of the hunt. A part they’ll enjoy.’
‘You can’t leave town anyhow,’ Ashley said. ‘Hate to be the one to point this out, but Lydia’s Becoming has to take place on the full moon next Sunday or she loses her magic.’
‘So I go through with the trial,’ I said, working through my non-existent alternatives in real time. ‘And I have to win. Or I’ll persuade them to move it or at least to let me complete the ritual before they come to a verdict.’
‘Emily, they’ve already come to a verdict.
’ Wyn pushed his hands through his hair, frustrated.
‘They have declared you responsible for the death of a wolf and the only acceptable retribution is a life for a life. That’s why the trial takes place on the full moon.
Even if they give you a chance to explain how it happened, the outcome will be the same. They confirm it’s you and you die.’
The words echoed around the room, the birds and the trees and the vines and the clouds all whipped up into a frenzy, despairing at the thought. If I died, the Bell family magic died along with me. Wyn reached a hand towards me then hesitated, afraid to make contact.
‘From the outside, the Weres might look cruel. From the inside, they’re vicious. That’s the reason they’ve managed to stay hidden for so long. Zero tolerance, no mercy. Asking permission to bring another witch into the world before they take you out will only get you killed faster.’
They. Them. As if we were talking about some strange enemy and not his actual family, his blood relations.
‘And what about you?’ They’re in Savannah, you’re in Savannah. You can’t hide from them forever.’
‘If I leave here,’ he whispered, words thick with tears we were both willing not to fall, ‘I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back.’
It was like watching someone tear him in two.
I nestled into him, pushing his arms up until he had no choice but to let me in, and rested my head on his chest. Tremors of pain ricocheted from his heart and into mine.
He was so lost, so churned up inside, and I knew he was searching for a way out, one that would keep us all alive and the two of us together.
‘You have to leave,’ I said.
‘What?’
I extricated myself from his arms and it felt like pulling my own soul from my body. Wyn looked up, blinking, the threat of tears still clinging to his golden lashes.
‘Members of your pack are here in Savannah, right now. You don’t think they’re looking for you? To warn you about the big bad wolf killer?’
‘And that’s best-case scenario,’ Ashley added as Wyn clung to his denial. ‘Seems to me if they know so much about Em and her part in Cole’s death, they might have a notion about the two of you being such good buddies and all.’
‘No, I would know, I would know, I would know,’ he said over and over again, convincing us or convincing himself, I wasn’t sure. ‘They wouldn’t allow it, they wouldn’t have let me come back. They would’ve acted before now.’
She looked at him with her head half-cocked to the side.
‘You’re one hundred per cent sure about that? Completely certain you know what these vicious wolves would do? Your words, Wyn, not mine.’
His shoulders slumped, head hung low.
‘You have to leave,’ I said again, more forceful, less certain.
What if he went and never came back?
‘You told them you met someone down here, right?’ I reminded him, pulling what scraps of energy I could find in myself and pushing them into him.
‘Go home, tell them we broke up and you don’t want to talk about it.
If they know about us, if they know what I am, tell them I lied to you and you had no idea.
If they don’t know, you don’t say anything at all. ’
‘I won’t. I won’t leave you to save myself.’
Shaking his head again and again, he screwed his eyes shut, as though the gesture was causing him as much pain as the idea. I placed my hands on his thighs and squeezed.
‘You have to,’ I insisted. ‘You staying here makes things more dangerous for both of us. Right now we don’t know anything, not really, only that the pack believes I killed Cole.
Why do they think that? What do they know?
If you go home, you could ask questions, find a way to let me know what to expect.
You staying here puts me in more danger. ’
‘If you care about her as much as you say you do, you’ll get into that little red truck of yours and get the hell out of Georgia,’ Ashley ordered, much less interested in coddling his feelings.
‘You run your ass right back to mama wolf and start listening in, otherwise Em here is as good as cooked.’
He gripped my wrists as though he were hanging over the edge of a cliff and I were the only thing keeping him from falling.
‘Please don’t ask me to go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’
I noticed the change right away. Before he said he wouldn’t leave. Now, he said he didn’t want to.
‘This is the best chance we have. Me, you, Lydia, all of us,’ I told him, nodding. One more push, that’s all it would take, and then the worst part would be over. ‘Please, Wyn, do it for me.’
‘Maybe they’d listen to me,’ he mumbled but I shook my head, pressing my fingers to his mouth to stop that thought in its tracks.
‘And maybe they’d put you on trial alongside me and kill us both.’
He cupped my face in his hands and wiped away our mingled tears with his thumbs.
‘I won’t let anyone hurt you, not the pack, not Astrid, not anyone.
I don’t know how, not yet, but I swear it on my soul.
They lied to me my whole life, they held me captive when I wouldn’t listen.
But if they won’t listen to me, I don’t have to listen to them.
The pack may be my family but you are my life, Emily, without you, everything else is meaningless. ’
‘This kind of feels like a conversation you could be having in private,’ Ashley said, turning away awkwardly in her seat. ‘But I do like the energy.’
‘We will figure it out,’ I agreed, forcing a smile that hurt more than slicing myself open with a knife. Scars I’d thought healed tore open, raw and red and real, on display for all to see. ‘I love you, Wyn Evans.’
‘I love you, Emily James.’
Words were never supposed to hurt so much.
We were always on a clock but it ran down early this month and I wasn’t ready. Would I ever really be ready? Would I ever get used to the pain of watching him leave and hoping he’d come back only so we could do this to each other all over again?
He kissed me one more time, deep and strong, and for a beautiful, fleeting moment, I believed everything was going to work out. Then, without another word, he stood up, walked out of the parlour and through the bloody front door.
‘Seems as though the two of you are always saying goodbye,’ Ashley said, joining me on the couch and stroking my hair. ‘Call me crazy but I’m starting to think love ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘You’re crazy,’ I whispered, tears enough to drown an ocean finally falling free when I heard his truck door slam and the engine roar into life.