Fox #2
Thorne holds up his hands full of flames in his last warning before Asher’s screams. It bubbles to the surface and fills the study with gurgling rage. He drops me unceremoniously, and I crumple to the floor as the wave of water splashes around us.
Asher holds his head high above me. He flexes his arms with his fists at his sides. The puddle collecting around us doesn’t seep into the two-hundred-year-old rug beneath me, nor does it find its way into the seams of the wood planks. It stays at the ready just in case.
“You’re both idiots,” Thorne barks. “This is what she wants. You're giving her exactly what she came here for again!”
“You think you know her so well,” Asher snaps back at him, his quelled anger rekindling.
“Maddox and I know her better than you do.” Thorne crosses his arms over his chest then delivers his last blow. “We’ve certainly fucked her longer.”
Asher raises his fist, and I’m already gathering another arsenal of water to throw at the two of them when Maddox says, “I’ve got it. I know the connection!”
We all turn around to look at him. He doesn’t move or start to explain what it is he found that’s more important than stopping the three of us from killing one another.
Instead, he bustles over to a bookshelf near the fireplace and pulls another large family tree portfolio from its eternal resting place.
I reach over to the edge of the couch to pull myself up, and Asher extends a hand down to me.
“I don’t forgive you,” I say, taking his assistance.
“The feeling’s mutual,” he grumbles, and we join Thorne and Maddox at the desk.
Maddox taps his fingers down on the page then looks between us all like he’s already explained his erratic behavior.
“The trials?” Thorne lifts his brow at him.
“The other night. Remember?” The tip of Maddox’s finger slams down onto the fragile paper again and again. “You said their name.”
“Yeah, but Elsbeth can’t be a Hale. She can’t be a Noyce either, for that matter. You just told us—”
“I never said she couldn’t be a Hale.” Maddox sounds triumphant, but his face is crestfallen.
“Mads,” Thorne hedges. “She can’t be a Hale. There are no Hale witches left. Our ancestors made sure of that.”
I swallow hard at the reminder. Not only was the Hale line ostracized, but they were victims of abuse and vitriol until the coven could dispose of the remaining heirs to the Hale legacy.
Maddox knows that just as well as the rest of us.
It’s one of the only secrets the legacy families have kept from the coven at large.
“Montgomery Ernest Hale was the last Hale legacy. He was killed in 1942.” Asher slides his finger across the decades-worn paper and settles on the box with Montgomery’s details crossed out with a single red dash of ink.
“And her last name is Noyce. Why are you looking at the Hales anyway?” Thorne roughs the back of his neck, his patience wearing thin.
“You can check that, can’t you?” Asher nudges Maddox’s shoulder, ignoring me and Thorne.
“It makes sense. It finally makes sense,” Maddox declares with no other explanation.
I walked into this room days earlier to see him pouring over endless words and accounts of those long passed. The only answers that our ancestors can provide to us live between thousands of pages, but with one-sided voices, he could be locked up in the study for days without any resolution.
“How are you so sure she isn’t leading us on another wild-goose chase?”
“I’m not,” he admits, finally breaking the trance of ink and history. “But what choice do we have? You felt it. We all did. She . . . She . . .” He grabs at his still dirt- and blood-covered shirt.
“She doesn’t know what she is,” Asher finishes what Maddox couldn’t. “The magic she has been using has never been her own. She’s never had it straight from the source.”
“So, we’ve circled back to the real mystery.” Thorne leans over the desk, the heels of his palms bracing against the polished wood. “Who is waiting for her outside these walls?”
“And what are they waiting for?” I pan from one man to the next.
Silence falls as all wheels between us thrust into gear, only to come to a grinding halt when no new answers come.
“Whoever they are, they’re closer than we realize. And if it’s blood they want, then it’s blood they’ll get.” Asher turns and leaves us with, “Let us die standing.”
“I’m right here, baby.” My mother’s voice drifts from the hallway outside the study. “Mama’s right here, Fox.”
I fell asleep on top of a pile of books, surrounded by even more.
Somewhere in the disarray, Maddox is curled up under an old knit blanket.
Thorne gave up and went to bed shortly after midnight, but I couldn’t leave Maddox alone to go over every birth, death, and court record we could find.
Somewhere between the second and third dead end, Maddox had finally drifted off.
“Fox, I’m here,” my mother repeats, but there’s another voice hovering just below her familiar resonance.
I’ve had this nightmare so many times, but I get to my feet and embrace the inevitable torment if it means there’s a possibility of seeing my mother for a brief moment.
The hallway extends to three times its normal length to get to the stairs.
On the other side, the path has become overgrown with blackberry brambles.
“Come find me.” It’s not my mother’s voice that has me climbing dozens of steps until my muscles ache.
I know where the stairs will take me. My anxiety-riddled mind has wandered up to her room thousands of times since I saw her last.
My bedroom door is ajar and a soft, warm glow spills out in a gilded path.
I follow it for what feels like miles, until my hand flattens on the solid oak door.
The chalk sigil I drew is broken, with a new one etched into the wood’s grain.
I follow the jagged lines with my index finger in a large circle.
The markings in the middle resemble a protection symbol that I’ve seen before but can’t place.
Memories try to surface and remind me, but all I see is old, cracked leather.