Chapter 18 Trick and Tree-t
Flint
It’s hard to believe that it was only twenty-four hours ago that Jaxon and I were tearing into each other in our room at the Curator’s house in Alexandria.
Now, thanks to Remy and his mystical, magical portal ability, we’re racing through a South American jungle on the trail of a bunch of floating lights in the hopes that they’ll lead us to the Bittersweet Tree.
I’ve got to say—I’ve been on a lot of wild adventures since Grace Foster came into my life, but this one definitely has to be the wackiest. Normally, I’d enjoy how absolutely bizarre it all is, but all I can think about right now is Jaxon.
And the way he looked at me, really looked at me, in our room yesterday.
He never said the words, but I saw goodbye in his eyes.
More proof that nothing I say, nothing I want, will ever get through that thick head of his.
I get that he has good intentions, get that he wants to protect everyone he cares about.
I can even appreciate it…to a point. But at some point, that need to protect goes from being helpful and kind to being toxic.
And right now, with me, Jaxon is definitely in the toxic range.
I’ve done all I can to shake him out of it.
If he can’t let go—if he can’t see me as a real partner, then there’s nowhere for us to go from here except our separate ways.
Just the thought has my throat closing up and my stomach dropping to my knees. Jaxon’s been a part of my life—the most important part of my life, pathetic as that may be—since I was twelve years old. The idea of just walking away from that, from him, unsettles everything inside of me.
But love only gets a person so far, and right now, my feelings for Jaxon have gotten me—and him—as far as they’re able to. Time for us both to move the fuck on.
The thought has my knees trembling, even threatening to buckle. But I refuse to go down that easily, so I keep moving forward. If I get hit in the face with enough plants and bugs, surely I’ll be able to stop thinking about him for a little while.
In front of me, Grace skids to a stop. I slow up, so as not to run into her, then freeze as I realize what she’s looking at.
We’re at the edge of a meadow, and in the center of it is a fucking huge tree, one with who knows how many branches stretching out in every direction.
The base is massive—nearly as massive as the ones in Giant City—and some of the branches are so long they stretch almost to the edges of the meadow.
“Holy shit!” I call as the others pull up the rear. “We did it! We actually found the tree!”
“Who would have thought we’d come all the way to Ecuador to find the Bittersweet Tree, and it would turn out to be a simple elm tree?” Grace’s best friend, Heather, says, her brown eyes wide with wonder.
“Is that what it is?” I ask, taking a couple of steps closer. “An elm tree?”
“I’m pretty sure,” she replies. “It’s taller than a lot of elms I’ve seen, but the shape of it is straight elm. Look at how low and wide the branches are. Not to mention the leaves are super distinctive.”
She points at the closest branch. “See how they’re shaped like a lopsided oval, with one side bigger than the other? It’s definitely an elm.”
Jaxon moves toward Heather and me, then stops. I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t think he’ll be welcome in the conversation or if he just doesn’t want to talk to me. Either way, it breaks my fucking heart a little more.
We were best friends for years, then we were enemies, then we were friends and lovers, and now…now I don’t know what the fuck we are. “Enemies” isn’t the right word. It’s not like I want anything bad to happen to him ever. But we aren’t lovers anymore, and I’m not sure we’re even friends.
Acquaintances? I shudder at the word. After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve meant to each other, it seems incomprehensible that we might revert to anything as bland as acquaintances. At the same time, though, I don’t know what else we could possibly handle being to each other.
Not when just being this close to Jaxon makes me feel more than I want to admit, even to myself.
It’s easy to say I’m writing him off, but actually doing it… That’s a million times harder.
I blink the sudden tears out of my eyes—no way am I crying about that asshole one more time—and look around, trying to scope out what we’re up against.
But the truth is, the whole place looks and feels pretty damn idyllic.
A little to our left—and only a few feet from the tree—a small waterfall crashes into a crystal-clear blue lake.
It’s so close that some of the tree’s branches actually dip into the water when a breeze comes by.
Behind the tree, visible only when the wind shakes the branches, is a small rocky cave, and throughout the meadow are thousands upon thousands of wildflowers in every color imaginable.
I take a couple of steps forward into the meadow, closer to the flowers and the tree, the lake and the waterfall. As I do, the turmoil inside me quiets and a strange calm slides through me. A weird feeling that everything is somehow going to be okay.
Considering the shambles that is currently my life, it’s a strange feeling—even an eerie one. But it’s there nonetheless. A tranquility that I can’t fight and wouldn’t even if I could.
“Do all elm trees have so many honeycombs on them?” Grace asks as she moves deeper into the meadow to get a better look. “There have to be hundreds of them.”
More like thousands, I think, right before Macy says the same thing.
Because every available spot on every available branch is covered by a different honeycomb. And since there are hundreds of branches—all of which are super long—it stands to reason that there are ten or twenty times as many honeycombs of all sizes hanging off the tree.
Some are tiny, the size of strawberries, while others are bigger than beach balls.
It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. Which is saying something, considering that in my dragon form I’ve flown around the world several times over.
“I hate to be the naysayer,” Jaxon says in a tone that sounds like he doesn’t hate it at all. “But are we sure this is the Bittersweet Tree? Elms aren’t exactly native to this country.”
“Exactly,” Hudson tells him. “The Curator said it’s never in the same place twice—which means it’s likely not from this forest, yes?”
“And now it wants to be here,” Heather says softly. “Surrounded by wildflowers of all colors on the bank of this amazing waterfall. That’s kind of beautiful, when you think about it, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Eden answers hoarsely. “But I’m thinking we need to hurry before the tree decides to relocate again.”
She makes a good point. “Do you think the nectar we need is really honey?” I ask, crossing my arms as I try to figure out which, if any, of the honeycombs we should go for.
“I thought it was sap,” Grace admits, shooting me an I don’t know look. “But I think you’re right and it’s actually honey.”
“Why did the Curator tell us that we need a vial to collect it?” Jaxon asks, looking a lot more uncertain than Grace did. “Can’t we just break off a piece of the honeycomb?”
“Maybe it’s fragile,” Eden answers. “Besides, how much will leak out if you’re just carrying it in your pocket all the way from here back to the Shadow Realm?”
Her words give me pause, not because I’m worried about the honey leaking out between here and the Shadow Realm, but because something doesn’t seem right about this whole situation. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s definitely there, niggling at the back of my mind.
“It can’t actually be this easy, can it?” I ask, pointing to one of the largest honeycombs on the tree. “The honeycomb is right there, waiting for anyone walking by to grab it.”
“Does everything have to be hard?” Heather counters.
I glance at Jaxon, who is very determinedly not looking at me. Fine, I’ll be the lone naysayer this time around. “In my experience?” I shake my head. “Life has taught me that the only answer to that question is hell yeah, it does.”
“It can’t be,” Eden agrees from several feet away. She’s squinting up at the tree so hard that I half expect it to spontaneously combust.
“It could,” Heather insists.
“Doubtful,” Hudson chimes in, and it might be one of the first times he’s ever actually agreed with me. But even as he says it, he starts moving cautiously toward the tree.
“What do you see that I don’t?” Grace asks, her eyes searching the tree.
“It’s not what I see,” he answers. “It’s what I heard.” And that’s when it hits me what’s making me so uneasy. Not the tree itself, but the high-pitched sound that’s been resonating inside me since I stepped into the meadow.
I glance at the others and realize Jaxon and Eden have picked up on it, too. All of us with extra-sensitive hearing have picked up on the strange, repetitive vibrations.
“Fuuuuuck,” I breathe when it finally registers what we’re dealing with here.
“What is it?” Macy demands. Witches don’t have special hearing.
I open my mouth to tell her, but Jaxon beats me to it.
“Bees,” he says. “Thousands upon thousands of bees.”
“Seriously? That’s what has you guys so upset?” Heather asks with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t even hear them.”
“You can’t hear them because they’re really high-pitched right now,” Hudson explains. “Kind of like ten thousand dog whistles buzzing at the exact same time.”
“Ten thousand?” Heather asks, looking a little more appropriately freaked out.
“At least,” Eden tells her grimly. She shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it, and boy do I feel that on a soul-deep level. “I think there’s more.”
“Well, I don’t think ten thousand bees are a match for a bunch of paranormals,” Grace says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, what’s the worst that happens? We get stung a few times?”
“Only one way to find out,” my ridiculous, impulsive, too brave and way too protective for his own good ex-boyfriend says as he walks forward about ten feet.
Nerves crawl through me as we all watch him use his telekinesis to break off a corner of the closest honeycomb and float it several feet across the meadow straight to us.
I look around, heart in my throat, as I wait for a swarm of bees to fly out of nowhere and attack Jaxon for daring to mess with their honeycomb.
But nothing happens—at least not at first. But the moment Jaxon’s fingers touch the honeycomb, something very weird and non-bee-related happens. He shifts into slow motion.
Like super-slow motion. Like instant replay slowed down at least a thousand times per second. Maybe more.
He starts to lower his extended arm, then keeps lowering it. And lowering it. And lowering it at the rate of about a centimeter every thirty seconds. Maybe less.
But even more concerning than his sudden slow-motion problem is the fact that the buzzing suddenly gets a million times worse. I glance away from Jaxon, back toward the tree, and try not to freak out as I realize that every single honeycomb is now covered—and I mean covered—with bees.
Eden makes a joke about Jaxon’s lack of speed, and I try to go along with it, try to convince myself that something fucking awful isn’t about to happen.
But then Grace pulls out a vial and walks up to Jaxon to try to collect a few drops of honey, and she glares at Eden and me. “Hey, can you guys stop giving Jaxon shit and look around for a stick or something to knock the honeycomb out of his hand?”
She’s right, so I start looking around the ground close to Jaxon.
I could probably find something if I went a little ways back into the jungle, but the alarm bells are going off inside me, warning me not to leave him alone.
It could just be because he’s really vulnerable right now, which he is, or it could be because something really bad is about to happen.
Either way, I’m not just walking away from Jaxon when he can’t take care of himself.
I’m still looking for a branch or something else to knock that honeycomb out of Jaxon’s hands when the buzzing changes in pitch and intensity. Alarm shoots through me, and I look up just in time to see a massive swarm of apple-size bees heading straight for him.