Chapter 42 - Magic Everywhere
Sage woke with a jerk, tired, but feeling more herself than she had in days.
Her thoughts were clear and calm, telling her the demon was definitely gone from the Ula.
The big bay room full of bunk beds was brightening quickly.
The day had begun but most of her family, including Frannie and Paisley, were still sleeping, while Dex was pacing near the door, looking fresh and ready to go.
Sage waved at him, and he dropped her a wink, then motioned he was leaving to get ready to escort Paisley to her grandma’s house.
Sage nodded at him. He waved and plunged outside into cold sunlight.
Sage went to Paisley to wake her but froze when Paisley talked in her sleep.
“You’re funny, Daddy,” Paisley said, smiling slightly, eyes closed, body relaxed.
Sage felt suddenly irritated. Paisley’s father was not around, never had been.
He was a human, an ex that she’d wound up with again for one night during a dark time in her life.
When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d told him, and then she’d never seen him again.
He’d left Serenity without a word to her.
She’d been bitter about it for a while, but now she was just… over it.
“Paisley,” Sage whispered, touching her on the back. “Time to wake up.”
Paisley woke slowly, languorously, like she didn’t want to leave her dream.
“Come on, vi, today’s a busy day. You’re going to your vihvee’s.”
Paisley sat up with a smile on her face and rubbed her eyes. “Yay, vihvee.”
Sage got her daughter up, dressed, and fed quickly, then, holding hands, they walked on a path to the flagpole at the front of the property. Dex was there, with his truck.
Sage stopped before they crossed the road and knelt.
She hugged her daughter, then kissed her on the forehead.
Paisley pulled away and looked her mama in the eyes, then she planted a kiss on Sage’s cheek, and hugged her fiercely with one arm.
She let go, hoisted her backpack on her shoulder and ran across the road.
Dex smiled at her and helped her into the back of the truck.
The front door to the main building opened and Nana White came out, wearing a lilac-colored wool suit, complete with lilac felt hat, lilac pants, and practical black shoes with gold buckles.
She wore her fox stole around her shoulders and gripped her fox-pelt purse tightly in her hands.
She walked slowly down the steps, holding onto the railing, then passed by Sage without looking at her.
She reached Dex’s truck, and he opened the passenger door for her.
She climbed in and stared straight ahead.
She could dim out the entire vehicle if she was inside, and so she went with Paisley all the way to where Sage’s mom lived.
Sage’s mom, Paige White, was mostly foxen with some human in her bloodline.
She could shift, she had a renqua, she could speak ruhi, and she could go dim.
She’d had a one-night stand with a human trucker in the bathroom of a bar, and Sage was the result.
Sage didn’t even know her father’s name.
Even worse, when Sage was born, Paige had abandoned her and moved two hours away, because somehow, Paige’s Tether had been broken when she’d given birth to Sage.
A pure miracle from Rhen, some foxen called it.
Straight-up bullshit, Sage called it, because her mother had left her in Illinois, with Nana White to raise her.
Sage had lived in creepy Kurzwell Manor until 15 years old, when she flat out refused to go home anymore.
She stayed at Mina and Rissa’s, or friend’s houses.
Sage had done her best to get past her mother’s abandonment of her and cultivate a relationship between Paisley and her vihvee and she was so glad it had worked out because it gave her a place to send Paisley when Sage had to go to treatment.
Paisley wasn’t born with a Tether, but she wasn’t in the clear yet.
Sometimes it developed during the teenage years.
Dex ran around the vehicle. He tipped Sage a wink, then mouthed, “Don’t worry,” with his fox rippling over his features. Sage smiled, delighted.
He started the engine and they drove off.
Sage blew kisses to Paisley and Paisley blew kisses back, even turning in her seat and waving madly to her mother out the rear window, until they were too far away to see anymore.
Sage lowered her hand slowly, staring after the vehicle until it was out of sight, saying a silent prayer to Rhen that Paisley be protected.
Behind her, the door to the main building opened and Frannie bounced down the stairs, something clutched in her hand.
She reached Sage and the look on her face made Sage ask, “What?”
Frannie revealed what was in her hands: an oversized antique key. “Mina wants me to get the phones,” she said.
“They’re in the passage?”
“Yeah. I’m scared of the passage.”
“I know you are, vix. Hand it over, I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I work today but I don’t start for an hour.” Sage was one of the many assistant managers of the Inn. She worked only four days a month, which was the minimum Nana White allowed. She’d been working there since she was five and could do every job with her eyes closed.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Frannie chanted. She dropped the key in Sage’s hand.
“Mmhmm.”
Sage picked a golf cart from a row of them and drove it to the entrance to the passage, which was a partially collapsed cave that ran along the steep side of the bluff like a tunnel.
The entrance was situated in the woods just west of the Inn itself and bricked over, with one tiny door placed directly in the center.
Sage unlocked the door, found a flashlight from the bin just inside, and shone it around, looking for phones. The cave ceiling was low in this part of the passage, only a few feet above her head. All around her was crap—Nana White’s military surplus collections—but no phones.
Thinking the phones were probably at the other end, Sage grabbed another flashlight and walked in, her lights playing over the walls.
It was dry, cool, and quiet in the passage, and definitely creepy.
Three-quarters of the way through, an unfamiliar noise caught her attention, something faint and repeating.
She stopped walking and listened but couldn’t tell what it was, so she started walking again.
Ahead, light streamed in at an ancient cave-in, which marked the end of the passage.
Sage walked around and through several piles of rocks under open sky.
Trees and bushes grew for a short way, and then Sage stepped into another cave, filled with nothing but fox statues, most of them twisted or damaged in some way.
Sage moved away from them all, walking directly in the center, feeling repulsed by them and not knowing why.
Nana White had a place in the forest somewhere that she took the statues, trying to turn them into the bofox with magic.
Sage spotted the phones in a box on the poured concrete floor right away. She went to it, flipping through each one, looking for hers. It wasn’t there.
“Damn,” Sage said, looking all around the box on the floor and finding nothing.
She hoisted the box up under one arm and turned to leave, but her attention was again caught by the strange, soft noise, making her wait a moment, head down, listening.
The sound was muffled, but the longer she listened, the more certain she was that someone was calling her name. The sound was muted and far away.
ay, ay, ay
Sage moved around the area, listening. She put her hand on the cave wall, gently grasping the rock there. She pressed her head close.
‘Sage. Sage. Sage.’
It was her name!
“What?” she said softly. “I’m here.”
The noise stopped, and she thought she heard a whisper of a sigh inside her mind that said, ‘Close your eyes.’
Caught up in the moment, Sage did as she was told.
‘Now open them.’
Sage opened her eyes, feeling open and curious. The box of phones in her hands was suddenly covered with a thick white-silver substance that looked like slime!
Sage stared at it, alarmed, wondering if the phones were damaged.
She put the box down and knelt to put a finger to the stuff, expecting it to dissipate at her touch, but instead, it pulsed a pretty emerald green and thickened, climbing up her hand.
Sage shook her arm in reflex and the stuff flung off, hitting the wall with a squishy sound, where it stuck, leaving a smell like burnt popcorn in its wake.
Mystified, Sage looked around. The slime-smoke stuff was all around the foyer in various places, but it was most pronounced on the phones and the box.
Sage ran her whole hand through the stuff on the phones, turning it emerald green and stirring up more burnt popcorn smell.
It wasn’t hot or cold; it didn’t shock or hurt.
It felt like smoke, but it clung to her, making her rub her hands on her jeans.
Sage stared at it for several moments, thinking hard about what it could be. Magic, she decided. Or maybe the leftovers of magic. She plucked some from the door and pulled it between her fingers. It puffed up at first, then slowly disappeared.
Sage took one last look at it, then lifted the box of phones and hurried back through the passage, her mind working over what she had seen… and heard.