Chapter 4 #2
Trist sighed and removed her hand from my chest a few minutes later.
“Your vitals are fine, but you’re weak. Weaker than you should be at your age.
You need to eat something. And you need to sleep.
The eighty minutes you got last night isn’t nearly enough for a witch to function.
You need eight hours. Every night. No excuses. ”
I just nodded. That may have been true for Trist and Leland, but I didn’t need eight hours of sleep every night, which — for me — wasn’t even possible.
For light witches, channeling the magic in their blood and turning it into a spell required a lot of energy, and the eight-hour rest period was what light witches needed to refresh their spell counts, their maximum daily spells.
Spell counts were determined by the Goddess, and never went up.
Some light witches simply just had higher ones.
I’d read Helen’s was twenty-five, the highest of all the light-witch Echelons.
At that thought, I bit the inside of my cheek and turned my head so I wouldn’t have to explain the change in my expression — that even the smallest thought of Helen dug up that hollow feeling in my heart.
Trist’s hand moved to my arm, injecting it with small bursts of heat around the same temperature as my old heating pad. The sharp smell of her magic accumulated and, worried I might faint from the overwhelming scent of iron, blood, and electricity, I forced myself to breathe shallowly.
Light magic leaves spelltracks, invisible identifiers that smell like flavors of iron, but only to witches who don’t have light magic.
And since I’d never drunk any of the magical sap that gave light witches the power to be either a Creator, Elemental, Enchantress, Healer, Illusionist, Mentalist, or Quantum Witch, while Trist and Leland smelled nothing but fresh air, I drowned in the harsh scent of Trist’s spelltracks.
Leland pushed off the arm of the bench and paced to the front of the porch, where he pulled several lanterns out of thin air and placed them along the rail.
Creators could do that: make things, store them in a pocket realm, materialize them at will.
His magic, however, had no iron smell. It was supposed to.
But it smelled like nothing to me. This time, it might have been because I was already drowning in Trist’s, especially as more of it flowed out of her as she moved her hands down the lengths of my legs.
I watched the way he lit the lanterns with a match then made the match disappear.
His brown hair lightening as the sun shone brighter and highlighted it with streaks of honey.
His hands, covered in those delicate patchwork tattoos, moving with efficiency.
Hands on the porch rail. Hands Summoning nothing out of air.
Hands sneaking a chestnut to Arnie. I wondered what it would be like to watch him tend to an injury, how methodical he would be.
That was when I officially decided it. Leland wasn’t regular.
He had the look and confidence of a demi-God, not that they existed.
The Goddess was the only deity, at least in this realm.
I stopped thinking about the Goddess when Leland’s arm shifted, suddenly recalling where I knew his rose tattoo from.
Death Bonds.
Dark and light, and Leland had multiples of both of them. A dark Death Bond meant he offered his life as collateral for some kind of agreement. A light Death Bond meant he offered someone else’s.
“You’re staring,” Trist said softly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “His arms — I don’t know why I was doing that.” There was no point denying I’d been looking at him. That I couldn’t stop looking at him. How odd it was that he said he wasn’t an Enchantress.
If only to appear interested in something other than Leland, I returned to staring at the lines of the porch, appreciating rare, cleansing notes of cedar between bursts of iron, enjoying the view and shade and whatever else struck my interest, so long as it wasn’t Leland.
In front of us, a giant tree with trailing white flowers swayed over a small bridge, a gentle stream shimmering opal beneath it.
Puffs of small, white flowers floated in the breeze and settled like snowflakes in the grass.
It wasn’t a terrible place to wake up in, even if it was odd that he’d left me on the porch instead of taking me indoors.
With the mobility returned to my neck, I turned to take in the rest of the modest cottage, its lemon-colored shutters, its fuchsia tulips blooming in flower baskets hanging beside small windows.
“Whose house is this?” I asked.
“The Echelon Helen Blackburn’s,” Trist said absently, causing Leland to turn. The thin line of his mouth made me wonder if I wasn’t supposed to know. “And you,” she said to Leland, catching her mistake, “didn’t tell her she was staying here.”
“No!” I scrambled to a sitting position, too focused on getting away to appreciate I could now move my limbs normally. I looked to Leland, pleading. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“Is there a reason?”
“Because.” Because I won’t be able to breathe if I go in there. “Because I can’t live with Helen.”
“You aren’t,” he said, to my immediate relief. “She doesn’t live here. She has another place in Gnarlton with the Echelon Jaxan D’Oron. That’s where she stays. Ash lived here. The wards will recognize you as a Blackburn, you’re safest here, and your mother won’t be around.”
“I still don’t — ” I begged him to read my mind and take me elsewhere. “Helen wouldn’t want me to . . .” be here at all?
“The letterbox under the window is the pair to the one in your kitchen,” Leland said factually.
“It is?” I didn’t really need an answer.
Even if it was hard to believe, I knew it was true because Leland had said it.
Because, somehow, I’d developed some kind of new, internal mechanism that told me the truthfulness of every word he spoke.
I still didn’t want to be somewhere that belonged to Helen, but the letterbox did change things.
I could shut the door behind me, I could write Dad, and this time, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to invite Leland inside.
“See for yourself,” he said. “Trist can help you with anything else if you choose to let her, or you can contact me on the transmitter. Take the lanterns inside and get some rest. We have an early day tomorrow.” With that, he tossed Trist a phone-like object and left, smoothly jogging down the porch stairs.
Trist handed me the phone device called a transmitter and showed me how to send messages, which wasn’t necessary. Though fueled by magic instead of Wi-Fi and cell towers, its design and function worked exactly like a phone in the human realm.
Trist made sure I was able to open the front door, then asked to be invited in to help me bring in the lanterns, but I told her she didn’t need to stay. She left shortly thereafter.
I had so many questions. Why was Leland assigned to me? What did he mean by We have an early day tomorrow? How could I find the portal to the human realm?
At that moment though, all I wanted was to write Dad the things I didn’t say, the words that were always so difficult.
Goodbye. I love you. Knowing I could do at least that much today, I breathed a little easier and entered Helen’s house — or Ash’s, or what used to be Ash’s before she was exiled to Alchemia.
* * *
The inside of the cottage smelled like history and old family secrets.
Floorboards creaked as I walked across the jam-packed living room and bumped my shoulder against a shelf overflowing with texts, trinkets, and glass bottles filled with spices and herbs.
There was a lumpy couch; a coffee table, nicked and scratched; and a small place to eat centered before the front window, facing the letterbox.
I thought the front of a house was a strange place to keep something you never used, but the place was small. Maybe there wasn’t a better spot.
I found what I assumed was Ash’s room — the tidy space small and organized down to essentials. A second bedroom connected to Ash’s by a Jack-and-Jill washroom, but it was empty and without furniture, and I didn’t want to enter it.
Returning to the living room, I searched an armoire for a pen and parchment, where I found a stack of Ash’s old letters preserved in bundles of cloth. I closed the drawer and hauled open the next, not surprised that the pictures I once drew and sent to Helen were nowhere to be found.
After scouring several cabinets, I eventually found what I needed.
I sat at the small table and wrote Dad a letter, then pulled my legs onto the seat and rested my chin on my knees.
I stared at the letterbox, thinking of all the times Ash got a letter from Helen, how every time had felt like Christmas, how I’d stay up late reading and rereading, then return it to Ash’s trash.
Did you take my letters again? she’d ask.
Nope.
It worked for a while. Or so I’d thought.
By the time Ash started writing from Everden, I’d lost interest. All I cared about was her — if she was safe, happy.
I asked about plumbing but not about magic, the fantasy of a realm for witches dead to me.
I couldn’t bring myself to care about the magical things I once found interesting.
And Ash being Ash, she never answered more than I asked.
All this time I thought she was a Mentalist, like Helen. I had no idea why she wouldn’t want me to know she was an Allwitch.
I stared at the lantern in the center of the table, waiting for the letterbox to chirp, watching the lantern’s large flame dance to a slow rhythm. Eventually, I left to bathe in the washroom, leaving the door to the living area open.
Hot water scalded my skin, and I sighed and sank deeper as I felt my muscles gradually relaxing.
I listened to the faucet’s slow drip until it became so regular I stopped hearing it.
I closed my eyes and imagined myself under cool sheets, across from a cracked-open window, lying in bed with Gray.
For a long time, I thought about us like that.
When at last I heard it, I leapt from the bath and quickly dressed in all I had — the same leggings and sports bras from earlier.
I didn’t pause to dry myself. I hurried to the living room with thick drops of water falling from my hair to the hardwood.
Droplets sliding down my arms, I reached into the letterbox and pulled out Dad’s letter.
It was short and sweet, written like he still hadn’t finished his coffee, and mostly entailed his disbelief at sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours.
Which he hadn’t, but it seemed he didn’t remember anything about what had happened.
Not me leaving, not Leland, not his panic attack.
He understood why I didn’t say goodbye. He said he knew it was because I never believed I’d have to leave.
That’s how he was. Too understanding to waste words over it.
My transmitter lit up then, eliciting a concerning, blood-pounding response that made no sense. Perhaps it was only learned from always being on the waiting end of Gray’s messages. I flicked open the message from Leland.
Leland Stray: You have everything you need?
Ember Blackburn: Yep
Leland Stray: Really?
Ember Blackburn: Yep
Leland Stray: Why do I find that hard to believe?
Ember Blackburn: I don’t know, Leland. Perhaps because you need more things than me
I didn’t know why he cared. I didn’t understand why he, of all witches, had to steal me away to Everden. Why he thought seeing me through the paralysis he caused now meant he could check up on me.
Ash wasn’t given a guide when it was her turn to come here. Or if she was, she never told me. And I didn’t know enough about Everden to know if this was typical — if I was on some kind of half witch watch list — so I worked up the nerve and asked.
Ember Blackburn: Is every half witch monitored with a guide like this? If Trist is available, I would like to switch my guide to her please. She was nice. Didn’t stab me.
Leland Stray: The only half witches I know are Blackburns. So, no. Everyone is not monitored like this. Nor do I want to be doing it. No to a new guide. You can always contact me if you need anything.
I tossed the transmitter aside then took on the task of moving several tall stacks of books from the couch.
All cleared, I sat on the lopsided cushions that appeared to have once been red before dust settled in.
I curled up under a crocheted blanket and itched my nose at the resulting dust cloud.
The house was totally silent. I steered my thoughts to Gray, finding a happy memory and watching it like a film.
Which was how I spent the rest of the day until it was dark, Leland’s flickering lanterns were my only light source, and, finally, I went to sleep.