Chapter 10
Aunt Sofia arrived at Jake’s house at eleven forty-three on Saturday morning carrying three things.
A red overnight bag.
A grocery sack full of herbs.
And a deck of tarot cards wrapped in black cloth.
Jake opened the door and looked at all three.
Then at her.
“You’re Noah’s aunt?”
The woman was maybe forty, with dark curls pulled into a loose knot and sunglasses large enough to hide half her face.
“No. I sell suspicious herbs door to door.”
Jake nodded.
“Okay. You’re definitely related.”
She lowered the sunglasses.
“You’re Jake.”
“That sounded accusatory.”
“It was observational.”
Behind him Noah shouted, “Sofia?”
Her entire expression changed.
She pushed past Jake.
Noah met her in the hallway.
For one second neither moved.
Then Sofia wrapped both arms around him.
Noah broke.
Not dramatically.
His shoulders simply collapsed, and the frightened boy Jake had found beneath the oak appeared again.
Sofia held him.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered.
Jake looked away.
Some moments did not belong to him.
Twenty minutes later, Sofia had taken over the kitchen.
Lisa Miller tolerated this with the wary patience of one woman recognizing another woman who was absolutely going to rearrange things.
Sofia spread rosemary, salt, a small iron key, black thread, and three stubby candles across the table.
Lisa looked at Jake.
“You said werewolves.”
“I was working with available information.”
Sofia snorted.
Noah sat beside Jake.
“She does protection work.”
Jake looked at the herbs.
“Witchcraft?”
Sofia stopped.
Then pointed a sprig of rosemary at him.
“Careful with that word.”
Jake immediately straightened.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t say it was offensive. I said careful. People hear witchcraft and imagine one thing. My grandmother called what she did household work. Her sister called it prayer. My mother called half of it nonsense and still put salt under every new baby’s bed.”
Lisa smiled despite herself.
Sofia continued.
“Some practices came through family. Some were learned later. Some are simply things frightened people have done for centuries because doing something feels better than doing nothing.”
Jake nodded.
“So does it work?”
Sofia looked at Noah.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
She tied black thread around Noah’s wrist.
Three knots.
Then Jake’s.
Jake watched her fingers.
“What does this do?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you believe my grandmother or my mother.”
“What did your grandmother say?”
“That three knots confuse anyone following your spirit.”
“And your mother?”
“That it keeps nervous teenagers occupied.”
Jake looked at the thread.
“I like both.”
Sofia smiled.
“So did I.”
Then she placed the tarot deck on the table.
Noah groaned.
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You said you stopped reading.”
“I said I stopped reading for idiots who wanted to know whether their ex was coming back.”
Jake leaned forward.
“Did the ex come back?”
“Usually.”
“See? Useful.”
Noah elbowed him.
Sofia unwrapped the cards.
The deck was old.
Not theatrical-old.
Used-old.
Soft edges. Faded pictures. One card had been repaired with clear tape.
Jake had expected skulls and pentagrams.
Instead he saw suns, cups, people carrying sticks, a guy hanging upside down, and an alarming number of swords.
Sofia shuffled.
“Tarot doesn’t give me tomorrow’s newspaper,” she said. “It gives me patterns. Sometimes patterns are enough.”
She looked at Jake.
“Cut.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the question.”
Jake cut the deck.
Sofia laid down the first card.
The Moon.
Noah swore.
Jake stared at the picture.
“That feels a little on the nose.”
Sofia did not laugh.
Second card.
The Tower.
Jake frowned.
“Is that bad?”
“Yes,” Noah said.
Sofia shot him a look.
“It means upheaval. Structures falling. Truth arriving whether invited or not.”
“Still sounds bad.”
Third card.
Two of Cups.
Noah went very still.
Jake looked between them.
“What?”
“Connection,” Sofia said.
Jake glanced at Noah.
Noah suddenly found the refrigerator fascinating.
Jake smiled.
“Oh.”
“Don’t,” Noah muttered.
Sofia laid a fourth.
Judgement.
Her hand stopped.
The room changed.
Jake could feel it.
“What does that one mean?”
Sofia stared at him.
“Awakening.”
Nobody joked after that.
Sofia gathered the cards except one.
The Moon remained on the table.
“You said hunters called him awake?” she asked.
Noah nodded.
Sofia looked at Lisa.
“Did Jake’s father ever talk about his family?”
Jake’s stomach tightened.
“My dad?”
Lisa frowned.
“Not much. His parents died before Jake was born.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Sofia looked at Jake.
“Names.”
Jake gave them.
Sofia closed her eyes.
“No.”
“What?”
She stood so quickly her chair scraped backward.
“Noah, get me the red bag.”
Noah obeyed.
Sofia dug through it and pulled out a battered notebook held shut with elastic.
Pages fluttered.
Names.
Dates.
Symbols.
She stopped.
Jake leaned over her shoulder.
There.
MILLER.
Not his name.
His grandfather’s.
Beside it was the same three-line symbol the hunters had carved outside Jake’s window.
Jake felt cold.
“What is that?”
Sofia looked at him.
“Your family wasn’t unknown to the hunters.”
“Then what were they?”
She turned the page.
A handwritten word appeared beside the Miller name.
WARDEN.
Noah whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Jake looked at him.
“Would everyone please stop saying that immediately before my life gets worse?”
Sofia closed the notebook.
“Wardens weren’t hunters.”
“Good start.”
“They protected boundaries.”
“Between what?”
“People. Wolves. Things older than either.”
Jake stared.
“Things?”
Sofia ignored that for now.
“Some Wardens could sense wolves. Some could suppress a change. A few could trigger one.”
Noah looked at Jake.
Recognition.
Jake remembered touching Noah beneath the oak.
“What if I didn’t catch anything from Noah?”
Sofia’s eyes met his.
“You didn’t.”
Jake’s mouth went dry.
“What if finding him woke up something already there?”
Sofia nodded.
“That’s what I think.”
Noah whispered, “Then why can he shift?”
“I don’t know.”
Sofia picked up the Moon card.
“But somebody does.”
That evening Sofia made Jake and Noah walk the property with her.
Salt went across the doors.
Rosemary above windows.
Small iron nails were pressed into soil at four corners of the yard.
Jake carried a candle inside a glass jar.
Noah carried another.
“This feels like the beginning of a horror movie,” Jake said.
Sofia walked ahead.
“In a horror movie you’d ignore the knowledgeable woman and investigate the basement alone.”
Jake looked at Noah.
“We don’t have a basement.”
“Excellent,” Noah said. “We’re already surviving.”
Sofia stopped at the backyard fence.
“Quiet.”
Jake listened.
Nothing.
Then whispering.
Very faint.
Beyond the fence.
He stepped toward it.
Noah caught him.
“Jake.”
The whisper came again.
His name.
Jake.
He knew the voice.
His father’s.
Jake’s blood turned cold.
His father lived three states away.
Sofia threw a handful of salt across the fence.
The whisper stopped.
“What the hell was that?”
Sofia’s face had lost all humor.
“Not your father.”
“What was it?”
She looked into the dark woods beyond the neighboring houses.
“Something the hunters woke up.”