41. Adrian
Adrian
“ C ori, what’s wrong?” Adrian walked briskly behind her as they hiked up the dirt road that led to the cliffside. She was hyperventilating, and her legs moved in short frantic steps over the road. The beat of her heart drummed through him, even though he was not physically touching her. Adrenaline in her veins fueled his own.
“I’m scared to say it out loud,” she said, out of breath. They turned the corner onto her street as the cottage came into view ahead of them.
As they rounded the path, she held out her arms, willing the front door open magically with a hushed spell. She waited until he was inside before she walked through the house, locking the windows and doors, carefully spreading magical reinforcements over them.
When she finally stopped moving, she held out her shaking hand to him, revealing the note.
He drew in a breath. “Who is it from?”
“My mother.”
He took a step back. “What does it say?”
She opened it and presented it to him.
“Just a phone number?” His brow furrowed as he turned the paper over in his hand. Anxious tension bubbled over in Cori as she turned the charm bracelet on her arm.
She paced. “I need to call her,” Cori said.
“Are you nuts?” he bit out, perhaps a bit hastily. “What if this is a trap?”
“It’s her handwriting, Adrian,” she said quickly, growing irritated at his hesitation.
“What if your brother…” He took a steadying breath, his shoulders tightening as the thought of Enzo sent rage through him. “What if your brother forged her handwriting?”
“It’s from her,” she said simply.
“OK, fine. Maybe it is from her. What if someone forced her to write it. What if they’re trying to get your phone number? Or worse, your location?”
His words bounced off her. Her eyes widened as though possessed, her pupils dilating, transforming her already dark eyes into black voids. “I’ll call her now.” She made her way to her purse and searched for her cell phone.
Adrian grabbed it from her.
“Cori, stop!” Her eyes were completely opaque. Something wasn’t right. “At least let Prudence and Alfie look at this note first. Please,” he pleaded with her. “Don’t do anything yet.”
She slammed her hand down on the table, glaring at him. A shiver of fear ran across his skin. “We don’t have that kind of time!” she shouted at him. Despite the stern tone of her voice, her expression was empty. A blank void. “I’m sorry, Adrian,” she said in an otherworldly voice. A whispered incantation escaped her lips.
An intense pressure built on his arms.
He reached for her but, before he could touch her, ropes materialized from thin air, binding his arms to his sides. They coiled and spread over his legs, tightening around him with magic that was so fierce his heart hammered with dread.
The tension of the ropes bore down on him, and his chest became tight as it became harder and harder to draw in a breath. Rough fibers scratched his skin, coiling onto his neck.
Cori turned slowly, as if she were sleepwalking, and headed toward the old rotary phone on the wall.
“Please,” he called out with a strangled breath. Ropes were squeezing the air from his lungs while they cut off his air supply at his throat. Her hand drifted up as though she were suspended by strings. Her fingers turned the numbers on the dial, releasing them one by one.
The phone rang once, twice. The blank look on Cori’s face was replaced with one of confusion, her eyes widening as the color returned to them. Adrian gasped for breath when the ropes released him. He untangled the coils, now loose around his limbs. Before he could make his way to her, a click sounded in the air followed by a soft, panicked voice.
“Hello?” someone whispered quickly. A flash of recognition echoed in her eyes.
“Mama?” she breathed.
“Cordelia, listen to me.” The voice on the phone echoed over the receiver, loud enough to be heard across the room. “You need to hide. Now. They’re trying to use me to get to you, but I won’t let them do it. The coven is corrupted. Your brother—” A deep, baritone voice called her mother’s name from a distance on the other side of the receiver.
The muffled sounds of raised voices on the other end of the line were washed in static as there was a struggle for the phone. A definitive click reverberated through the cottage as the phone went dead in her hands and the call dropped.
She froze, staring at the rotary phone in shock.
Dread shrouded him. It didn’t matter what Astrid had done. She was Cori’s only family, and now she was in trouble.
“Take a breath,” he said.
“Your arms.” She traced her fingers over the ligature marks the ropes had branded on his skin.
“That wasn’t you, and you know it.” Her eyes met his, brow furrowed. “It was almost like you were possessed or something.”
She glanced back down at the note, now crumpled in her hand. “I don’t recognize the number. Or the area code. ”
She had been bewitched somehow, and she had not been in control of her body when she summoned the ropes. Someone was using her as an extension of their magic. Dark magic.
The feeling of panic deepened as he inhaled the sting of burning wood. His eyes watered, and he turned toward the source of the smell. The old rotary telephone on the wall was being enveloped in wispy tendrils of smoke.
The smoke poured into the room as eerie blue flames curled from the wall. Adrian walked to the sink, attempting to summon water, but none would come.
“This has never happened to me before,” he said through gritted teeth, his chest heaving as he used all his energy. Still, nothing came.
“We need to get out of here!” she yelled through the hiss of the smoke as the wall set ablaze. The fire curled and cracked through everything it touched with an unnatural speed.
They ran toward the front door and turned the handle, but it didn’t budge. The magic of her earlier charm was heavy on the door, sealing it closed. She tried to reverse the spell, touching the door, yelling the incantation into the air, but again, nothing happened.
Adrian looked around in a panic. “The fire is keeping us from using our magic somehow.” He ran through the room trying every window that he could. Every single one of them was sealed tight. “Cori, is there any part of the house you didn’t use a security charm on?”
She spun on her heel, racking her brain for a solution. “The window over the kitchen sink!” The antique, wavy glass didn't open the way a traditional window did, and she had never sealed it because there was no way to physically get through it.
“We have to break it,” he said to her.
She nodded, pulling her shirt over her mouth. They made their way through the building smoke to the window in the kitchen, pulling open drawers. “We won’t be able to use magic to get out of here,” he said, grabbing a rusty hammer out of the top drawer. “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Stand back!”
She shielded her eyes as he drew his arm back, thrusting the hammer at the window. Glass shattered onto the countertop. He grabbed a towel, coughing into the smoke, and cleared the glass quickly before he hoisted her toward the now open window.
She leaped out of the window, a large boxwood on the other side breaking her fall, as she slid into the sharp, waxy leaves and brambles. Adrian followed behind her, blood dripping down his arm from where the glass had shattered against his hands, leaving red splatters on the green leaves that broke his fall.
They scrambled to the path that led away from the house as they saw the smoke rising above them. The roof was completely engulfed in the eerie blue flames now as a thick column of black smoke snaked up into the sky.
Adrian pulled out his phone as he heard a yell from the path.
Hannah and David were running toward them. Hannah ran to Cori, embracing her as David approached the house. “Are you OK? We saw the smoke.” David looked for signs of life from up and down the road. The neighboring houses were dark and quiet.
“Adrian, over here! Help me with the hydrant.” The cap of the hydrant popped off magically as a gush of water came pouring out. David concentrated his force onto the water, diverting it to the house as Adrian directed the spray to the roof. Despite the intensity of the spray, the fire grew.
“What the hell kind of fire is this?” David yelled to them through gritted teeth.
Adrian’s concentration over the water faltered at the sound of his mother’s panicked voice. “Oh Goddess. What is she doing here?”
The dark figure of a young woman was walking toward them. As she came closer, Ariel was drawn to the fire like a moth to a flame, curiosity etched into her features.
As she approached them on the path, power and intensity pulsed from her as she regarded the fire with a look of amusement. It was jarring to see her walking so calmly toward something so chaotic.
“Ariel, no!” Hannah called to her.
If Ariel heard her mother’s voice, she didn’t acknowledge it as she stopped in front of the house. She planted her feet on the ground and raised her hands high into the air, cocking her head slightly to the side. A small smile curled from her lips as she lowered her hands slowly.
She moved. The fire responded. Like a stove burner that had been turned down to a simmer, it died. A smile spread on Ariel’s face as a deep, red glow burned in her eyes. She bent her knees slowly, pulling her body to the ground as the fire was muted to a smolder.
By the time her hands reached the gravel below, the once ferocious fire had been extinguished completely. A sizzle of electric energy intermingled with the charred smell of wood in the air as thin wisps of smoke dissipated.
Hannah was frozen in space as she watched her youngest child rise slowly off the ground. After a few moments of stunned silence, Ariel laughed—a slow, deep cackle that turned somewhat maniacal after a few moments. But Ariel silenced, her eyes blank.
The last thing Adrian heard before his sister’s lifeless body collapsed to the ground was a scream from his mother’s throat.