23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
SAGE
“She's been trapped in that body since you locked her away twenty years ago. Frozen in time, unable to move on, unable to live, unable to truly die.”
Leanna’s words bounced around inside my head until the reason I couldn’t let them go finally hit me. Who the hell was I to judge Mars when I wasn’t any different? Those words felt like they were meant for me.
The demon’s life had been traded away to save mine. Three witches lost their magic, my grandmother’s life was cut short, and I amounted to nothing that could have made their sacrifices worth it.
I wasn’t powerful or talented or excessively impressive in any way. And yet I was the one standing here with this weight on my shoulders. I was the one who needed to make up for what was taken from the world in exchange for my life.
“Sage!”
My head snapped up from my computer and settled on a rather pissed off Ollie. The second she got a good look at me, her jaw dropped. I knew what she was seeing, and I didn’t care. What was the point in keeping up appearances anymore?
My normally neatly styled blond hair was a mess, and I didn’t even want to know how bad the dark circles under my eyes had gotten. I hadn’t bothered with the slacks and button down and instead walked out the door in the athletic shorts and ratty t-shirt I’d slept in. Who even knew where my glasses were at this point? The only familiar thing on me at the moment were the green chucks on my feet.
“What?”
Her eyes lingered on an old raven tattoo covering half of my lower leg. It wrapped around my calf and was designed to look like a messy drawing covered in black ink blots and scratchy lines. It wasn’t something the Sage she knew would ever get, but I didn’t offer any explanations.
Ollie let my appearance go and held up a few sheets of paper. “What the hell is this?”
I scanned the paper seeing that she’d printed off my most recent article.
“It’s an article about corruption within the Eastbend Police Department.”
“Sage, this isn’t one of your usual vague implications, you basically called them a gang of government sanctioned thugs. This will absolutely put an even bigger target on your back! What were you thinking?”
“Which part wasn’t accurate?”
She huffed. “It’s not that it’s not accurate, it’s that you’re escalating things in a dangerous way. A way that puts things under a human spotlight,” she hissed under her breath.
I shrugged. “If we can’t touch them, then the humans need to be looking at what they’re doing. Do you have a better way to deal with them?”
“What is up with you lately? You know the reason we never did anything like this before! They already had it out for you and you haven’t even finished dealing with the last time you pissed them off before giving them another reason to hate you.”
“Someone had to do something. We keep dancing around the issue, but those specific hunters have too much power and we’ve done nothing about it.”
“For good reason! Even if we were going to make a move, we should have discussed it first. At the very least, it didn’t have to be you. Why would you do this without talking to me first?”
She actually seemed a little hurt, but I never meant to upset her. I didn’t tell anyone about the article because I knew they would only try to talk me out of it. The truth was, I felt like I needed to pull my weight in this fight and that article was the least I could do. The police in this town thought themselves untouchable and after the way they'd treated Luca and Tex and tons of others, I was done playing nice. This was something I should have done a long time ago instead of the gently worded implications I’d written before. And I purposely painted the target on myself so any retaliation was directed at me and not the tavern.
“Sorry Ol, there’s a lot of shit going down in this town and if we don’t start taking it seriously, we’re going to get buried.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you saying I’m not taking it seriously?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I closed my laptop and stuffed it in my backpack. There was no winning this argument and I had a ton of work to do. Between my mother and Chase, I’d been avoiding being home, but the coffee shop was looking better by the second.
“I’ve been a little busy lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still part of this!” She sniffed as I started to walk away. “Just because I’m not here all the time right now doesn’t mean you can’t come to me.”
Tears filled her violet eyes and I froze mid-step.
“Holy shit, what’s happening?”
I’d seen Ollie level buildings, I’d seen her take down monsters twice her size, I’d seen her beaten and bloody and still smiling that evil little smile of hers. But I’d never seen her cry.
Ollie disappeared and in her place was six feet of angry hellhound.
“What did you do to her?” he snarled.
In a blink, Jet disappeared and Luca’s back filled my vision.
“What the hell are you doing?“ he snapped right back.
“Oh my,” Ophelia whispered to Aiden from down the bar. “Someone’s feeling a little protective, hm?”
Aiden snorted. “I’m so glad I came here today.”
I shot them a look from behind Luca’s back. Titus didn’t comment, but he looked ready to protect Aiden and Phee should the need arise. It wouldn’t, though. Protective instincts were one thing, but it wasn’t like Luca and Jet were about to throw fists. I hoped.
“Dammit, Jet!” Ollie snapped. “You cannot go after everything that makes me cry. Gods, first you broke the tv over a fucking animated movie and now you’re growling at Sage? I’m going to start making you stay home when I go out if you can’t control those instincts.”
Jet immediately stopped growling, but he unapologetically continued to stare us down. Ollie stepped around him, but Jet tucked her into his side instead of letting her get any closer to Luca.
“Sorry, we’re both a mess since the baby was born. My emotions are all over the place and his instincts are in overdrive.”
“Go home and get some rest, Ollie,” Luca said. “I’ll keep Sage safe.”
There was something in his voice that Jet picked up because his glare turned suspicious. But Ollie was human, and a distracted human at that, so she simply nodded.
“Thanks Luca. Sage, I’ll call you later. You better answer this time!”
When they were gone, I turned to Luca. “What’s up with you and Jet?”
“Nothing. But keep your distance for a while. Especially when I’m not around.”
That really didn’t sound like nothing. But I had enough to deal with and whatever drama they had going on would probably settle down once Jet figured his shit out anyway.
“Right. Well, thanks for the assist, see you later.”
“Where are you going?”
Luca was on shift and the sun hadn’t set yet, so it wasn’t like he could come along.
“I’ve got more work to get done.”
“Did Chase get ahold of you? He wanted to see you before he left for the game thing he was going to.”
Chase had tried to call before I was even awake, but I never called him back. It didn’t occur to me that he would track down Luca when he couldn’t reach me, but it should have.
“He’s long gone by now. It’s fine, I already told him I couldn’t go. He’ll probably find his way back in a week or so.”
“Isn’t the event over tomorrow? It sounded like he was planning on coming right back.”
“You’ve gotta give him time to catch a ride from someone heading in the wrong direction, try to take a bus back, get completely lost and wait for someone to take pity on him and help get him back to Eastbend.”
“I take it he doesn’t leave home often?”
“Actually, he travels all over for his conventions. He loves it all, sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, anime, role play games, and most of all, people who get just as excited over all of it as he does. But no matter how many times he does it, his sense of direction never gets any better and that’s always the process, unless he can rope someone into going with him.”
“So getting into a car with someone named Crash is a common occurrence? How is he still alive?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s because he’s just too damn likeable. He’s one of those people who’s never met a stranger, and he makes friends everywhere he goes. It’s like that thing in his brain that’s supposed to warn him a bunch of rough looking strangers named Crash and Tricky and Spider aren’t the best travel buddies is broken. All he can see in any stranger is the thing that makes them cool in his eyes. A group of randos living in a van and traveling all over would be immediately interesting and he’d be first in line to hear their stories. He’d want to know about the cool things they’ve seen and what they love about being on the road.
“Chase doesn’t have a lick of common sense, and he might be even worse with book smarts, but he’s not really dumb. It’s just that what he’s a genius at is people. He’s got this passion for passion and it’s contagious. No matter where he goes, he always manages to find someone to take him under their wing and keep him safe from any real threats. He’s like an excited puppy and people can’t resist wanting to protect him. I used to worry about him everywhere he went, but after witnessing the way he makes things work every time, I just let him do his thing. If anything, he’s probably safer there than here with August’s interest in him.”
“That’s probably true.”
It was obvious that Luca didn’t want me to leave, but I wasn’t going to get anything done if I stayed. It felt like everyone was watching me constantly since the night I’d tracked down Mars. I’d slept through the meeting Silas and Luca held where they let out the truth about my family’s fight with the covens and the demon hiding inside of me, and now it felt like everyone was waiting for the moment I lost control. Like their trust disappeared the second they discovered I wasn’t the person they’d assumed I was.
I didn’t really blame Luca for telling them. After the wolves had to be called out to deal with a fiery castle filled with undead bodies, it was a little late to shove the cat back in the bag. But I would’ve preferred to have been awake for it. Not being able to put a spin on my own story was frustrating to say the least.
Whatever the demon did with my body while everything went down had wiped us both out, and I’d been down for hours along with him. Luca told me the demon saved his life because it thought I would blame myself if he’d died in that fire. Which was probably true, but I didn’t know how I felt about this demon knowing me that well, especially when I knew nothing about it or its motives.
This wasn’t the time to focus on my problems or Chase’s either. The reason I’d come to the tavern in the first place was to find Maddox, but since Tex had been the one to come in and take the stool at the door, there was no point in staying any longer.
“I gotta get going,” I finally said, heading for the back door.
“Sage,” Luca called at my back. “Ollie wasn’t wrong. Be careful out there, okay?”
“Just off to see the wolf pack,” I answered without raising my voice, knowing he’d have no trouble hearing me.
The constant attention was getting to me, but it was hard to snap back at Luca the same way I did everyone else after I’d done the same thing to him for months. What excuse could I give him for the distance I kept trying to put between us that he hadn’t already tried with me? Luca had all but disappeared while he dealt with his issues and yet, we never let him get far. In the end, I decided it was easier to take a different approach and hide in plain sight.
If their sweet, innocent Sage disappeared completely they’d go looking, just like we did with Luca. So I made sure they could see that I was alive and functioning, but I stopped bothering with the Sage they’d come to accept. If they got something they didn’t know how to deal with along the way, all the better. So far, aside from the occasional comment and the curious stares, the others seemed to be giving me space. While it was surprisingly annoying, it was what I’d been aiming for. And everyone except for Luca had cooperated just as I’d expected them to.
But Luca was always a different issue entirely. And while it would be better for him to take a step back from the disaster my life had become, part of me didn’t want him to even now. It was stupid and selfish. But even as all my dark secrets were exposed to everyone around me, including things I hadn’t even fully come to terms with myself, the fact that Luca hadn’t turned away yet left a tiny glimmer of stupid hope. The concern in his expression never once turned to fear or mistrust. Everyone else watched me with cautious eyes, but his hadn’t changed.
At least, not yet.