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I couldn't believe how tired I was after working with Artie in the field. It felt like I had just run a marathon and really, I was just working with my magic.
Azolata and Marcus left with Artie to go back to Azolata’s tattoo shop and Eli volunteered to walk with me home.
"Not that you need it, I think the forest loves you just as much as it looks Artie," he commented as we turned towards my house. He had his hands in his hoodie and I noticed the book sticking out of his back pocket.
Frankenstein. Interesting choice.
"Really? Why do you say that?" I asked.
We entered the tree line and I looked around the forest. Although it hadn't changed, I could still feel a little bit of what Eli was talking about. The forest seemed easier, somehow. I felt almost like I was coming home every time I stepped into it. Having the trees press in close to me was no longer a claustrophobic feeling. Instead, it felt like a warm embrace or a blanket that was just pulled out of the dryer. Although the weather was still cold, it didn't sink into my bones like it used to.
Eli shrugged. "When I'm with Artie, and we are going somewhere, the forest shows him the way. I'm not even sure if he could find his way out if it wasn't for the way the trees point for him or the way the fairies light the way for him. It's always been like that. He trusts everything around him when he's here and everything around him reflects back on that."
I thought about his words for a moment as we continued on the familiar path to my own house.
"I guess I should've known sooner that you were special," Eli said quietly.
I looked over him and he ducked his head. If I wasn't mistaken, he was blushing. I thought briefly of how he tackled me in the field earlier and how he was sure that he took the brunt of our weight and kept one hand protectively around my head.
I was imagining things, I was sure of it.
"Special?"
"When humans enter the forest, they are usually either shoved out almost immediately by something or they get lost in there, never seen again or, if they do come back, they aren't quite the same in the head. But I've seen you and Dante out here. Ever since we were kids. You were never afraid to be out here," Eli said.
I was startled by what he told me. I didn't realize that the forest was so dangerous for regular people. I just thought that some of my classmates were scared of everything and because I had Dante, who was always bigger than the other kids, I knew he would protect me. But I didn't realize that the forest could work against someone so viciously.
"I didn't know that," I admitted.
Eli nodded. "Most people don't. But, from what I'm told, a lot of humans just naturally avoid this place. Something about it being scary or a sense of dread that comes over them."
The rest of our walk was silent and as we neared my house, I turned to him. "Thanks for being here today. I know it's your day off and I'm sure you would have rather slept in or done something else. So, thanks," I concluded lamely.
Eli searched my face, looking for something that I wasn't sure he would find. "I'm here for you, you know. If you need to talk or get away or whatever. Give me a call."
It felt like his words had double meaning but I wasn't sure what to make of it.
Instead, I tilted my head at him and nodded. "I appreciate that. And I can't tell you how much Dante and I appreciate you and your family being there for us. I don't know what we would've done without you guys."
Eli gave me one last adorable, awkward, crooked smile and then turned away. I watched as he disappeared into the woods and the shadows fell behind him like he was never there.
I turned back and opened the back door. My mom was standing there at the stove and she looked up at me.
There was a sly smile on her face but she didn't say anything.
"What are you making?" I asked and stepped closer to her.
She pushed me away and laughed. "You are not as secretive as you would like to think, Lou. Go take a nap. It won't be done for a while."
"Me? Secretive? I don't know what you're talking about," I protested.
Using the spoon in her hand she pointed at the back door. "Elias is a good man. Anyone, man or woman, would be lucky to have his attention. But he is finicky and can sometimes be too quiet. I just want you to know that no one is perfect."
I looked at the back door where Eli had disappeared. "I know that no one is perfect, but he comes pretty close, I would say."
My mom rolled her eyes and shooed me out of the kitchen.
I collapsed onto my bed and within moments, my eyes were shut and I was fast asleep.
*
WHEN I WOKE UP, IT was hours later and my mom was standing over me.
"What?" I mumbled.
"I need you to get up and eat. There’s some dry-cleaning and bills that I need you to take into town."
I stretched and nodded. I followed her out into the kitchen and sat down. She pushed a giant bowl of soup in front of me and I raised my eyebrows at her. "I'm not a teenager anymore. Not sure I can put all of this away."
"We’ll see."
I ended up eating all of it.
With my mother's bills in hand, I headed into town. I stopped at a few places for her and by the time the last one was dropped off and the dry cleaning was picked up, it was getting dark.
Glenwood Lock had a very picturesque downtown. It looked like something out of a storybook. The shops all lined the street were lit with soft lights and they all had a certain look that they had to keep in front of their shops that maintained the storybook quality. There was one coffee shop that was left open and I ducked in to grab a hot chocolate.
Feeling accomplished, and admiring the winter decorations more than I usually would, I headed home. I took a drink of my hot chocolate and noticed that there were more than a few newcomers on the streets. Most of the town's residents seemed to be avoiding them and it wasn't hard to guess why. It seemed like the Ascendancy was bringing in more and more people. I wondered why that was. If Savannah had everything under her control, like it seemed she did, there shouldn't be a need for more people here.
It made me reconsider if Savannah really did have everything under her control.
After passing the sixth new person, I was worried that there was more to it than I thought.
Deciding that it wasn't my problem, I continued home.
As I turned the corner, there were three men standing there. It didn't take more than a look at their faces for me to know that I wasn't going to be able to go down that street. I turned around and made to backtrack and then go north one more street and head home. It was an inconvenience, but I liked my face the way it currently looked. And I didn't trust my magic, not quite yet, to not spiral out of my control and kill a bunch of people.
Halfway down the street, there were four more guards. This time, there were two women and two men. I looked at them and sighed.
"Come on. I just want to go home," I said.
They didn’t move. I turned around and realized that if they were blocking both ends of the street, there was no way for me to get home. I looked across the street and saw that the shops were closing down.
Mr. Patton, who owned a deli, gave me a sympathetic look as he shut his lights off.
A look wasn't going to help much. If the Ortegas were at home, they were too far away to help me. When I left earlier that day to run errands for my mother, Dante hadn’t returned. I had no idea where he and Celia disappeared to that day. Azolata’s tattoo shop was also too far away to call.
As I considered all of these options, I was pushed roughly into an alley and my hot chocolate fell from my hand and splattered onto the ground.
I stumbled into an alley between Mrs. Henderson's quilting store and Ms. Martinez’s taco shop. There wasn't anything at the end of this alley except for a red brick wall. There was a dumpster for the two shops at the very end and a single light post far above my head. The light didn’t illuminate nearly enough and threw more things into shadow than not.
I turned around and braced myself for one of the people that cornered me and accepted the fact that I might have to seriously injure some people to get out of here, but it was only Savannah that stood there.
I relaxed a tiny bit. I was at least comforted by the fact that Savannah wouldn't outright shoot me.
At least, I hoped so.
"There are these cool, new things you might have heard of? They’re called phones. People use them to talk on," I said.
"You wouldn't have answered if you knew it was me and then you would have blocked every single number that I was calling from," she reasoned.
She was right.
"So what you want? Because I feel like we have had this conversation already. Several times. Do I need to recap?”
Savannah stared at me, like she was trying to figure out what kind of interesting specimen I was.
“Come on. We’ve been here, remember?”
The shadows on her face made it hard to see her face when she shifted from one foot to the other.
“Now that you and your henchmen have me cornered, you can lecture me one more time on how dangerous the Ortegas are and then I can tell you you're crazy and then we can both be on our ways," I said.
She shook her head at me and she looked so sad. "It's so much more than that, Lou.”
I remained silent and crossed my arms and then uncrossed them when I realized that I was going to wrinkle my mom's dry-cleaning that I still had in my hands.
"I don't know how to tell you this, but..." Savannah looked like she was at a loss for words.
"Just tell me."
"They are werewolves," she said, in a rush.
I stared at her for another long moment and then raised my hand to my chest and gasped theatrically. "Say it ain't so, please. Tell me that they aren't the dreaded werewolves of Glenwood Lock."
"I'm serious, Lou!"
"I know you are. And I am also serious when I'm telling you that you need to seek professional help. They have wonderful drugs nowadays–"
"They hunt and kill innocent people during the full moon. They eat their organs and leave the bodies behind, split open like they were a Thanksgiving turkey. That's what your friends do," she said.
I raised my eyebrows. "Have you ever actually met a werewolf?"
The way I changed the subject so rapidly, seemed to throw her off guard. "I don't need to meet a monster to know that they are one."
"I mean, they do eat a lot. And it's pretty consistent, throughout the day. It's just a constant stream of food. It's kind of disgusting. However, they don't eat people. And I don't know where you got that idea from, but you need to consult your sources again," I said.
"You knew?" She asked.
I took a moment to reassess the conversation.
Savannah looked like she was ready for a fight, with words or with fists, it didn't matter. She wore tight dark jeans and a loose gray shirt. I couldn't help but notice that her hair wasn't as well-kept as it usually was. I wasn't sure, but I thought that I could see the outline of a gun underneath her shirt tucked into her pants. She should have been wearing a jacket, it was too cold to be outside in just jeans and a T-shirt and calf high boots. Upon even closer inspection, I noticed that her lips were chapped like she was chewing on them constantly. She had dark circles under her eyes as well.
"Of course I knew. I'm the son of the High Priestess. How would they keep that from me? And Marcus? He knew from the beginning. He was the one that was able to tell us everything when the time is right. I don't know how you would think that people would keep them from us all this time," I said. I had to lie, to keep the Ortegas innocent. Marcus seemed like the most likely person that could tell us if he were so inclined.
Savannah was shocked. She took a step back and for a second I was worried that she was going to reach for her gun. But as she did, she remembered who she was talking to and her hand relaxed by her side. She shook her head. "You knew and you’re still friends with them?"
"Other than Dante and Marcus, who else would I be able to be friends with in this town that wouldn't disgust you?" I asked. I was hoping that she didn’t know that Dante was changed and I wanted to reinforce that belief as much as I could.
"Then why don't you leave?"
"This is my home. This is where my dad died. Actually, if you think about it, this is where a lot of parents died," I said softly. I didn't want to explicitly state what I was getting at if she didn't know already.
Savannah's confused expression turned so quickly to anger that I was surprised. "The Ortegas came for us first. They were breeding a new child, someone that was so powerful that they would be able to take us out, once that child found their student. How were we supposed to stand for that?"
I shuddered. I was the new student that she was talking about. I was the one that she couldn't stand for. I was the one that she would ultimately want to kill.
The way she said the word breeding also made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Did she really consider these people to be animals? How far had the brainwashing gone?
"That's the weird thing about prophecies, don't you think? They will come true, whether you're trying for them or not. And I find it particularly interesting that when you came for Artie, he was fifteen. He hadn't hurt a soul. And yet, based on some prophecy that you got from who knows where you were willing to kill him. A perfectly innocent person. A child."
Savannah shook her head. "Something like that is never a child. They are born and they grow up and they may look like a child, but deep down they aren't. They're a monster. And you are letting them go free. You are letting them come for us."
"Come for you? The only time that any of yours has ever been hurt was when they came for him. Your people willingly step into this town and threaten us and torture us and beat us and yet still, you were surprised when we fight back? I thought you were a lot of things, but stupid was never one of them," I said.
"We are the last line between the monsters in the night and the rest of humanity. We have to protect them because no one else will –" The words came to her so quickly, they sounded memorized.
"Bullshit. That's just some line you've been fed since you were a kid. And how long have you been able to shoot that gun? How long have you known how to kill a person? Or a nonhuman? You've been able to do that since you were a kid. So were you ever a kid? Or were you always the monster that you keep accusing us of being?"
The dumpster behind us rattled menacingly. I prayed that it was a raccoon rooting around in there, but if I was being honest with myself, I knew that it wasn't. I could feel the magic inside of me rising up like a black tidal wave ready to crash down on wherever I directed it.
"That's not fair. I had to train since I was a child so that I could protect those that were helpless against them," she said.
"And those that didn't need protecting. Those that were innocent, and those that didn't raise a hand to anyone or anything? Because of who they were born, you still felt like you had the right to take their lives. I'm glad that we found out what you are before Dante ever got serious about you. I wouldn't want your hands anywhere near him. I can see it from here, that you ruin everything that you touch," I said.
"Why are you protecting them? They aren't even your kind. You are ready to put your own life on the line, and Dante's too, to protect these things that aren't even like you," she snarled.
"I would rather be like them, than like you. You aren't a protector, you aren't a hunter, you are nothing but a murderer. And if it's the last thing I do I'm going to see you driven from this town," I swore.
Behind me, the dumpster slammed into the opposite wall. Savannah jumped and her eyes widened. She looked up to me and opened her mouth, but she was interrupted before she could say anything.
"Luz. Step away from the girl please," Azolata said politely.
I looked behind me and Azolata stood there, with a cigarette in his mouth, and a lighter in one hand. I marveled at how he looked exactly our age but I knew he was impossibly older. I felt the ground roll beneath my feet and Savannah stumbled. Azolata took a long drag from his cigarette and the light above us blew out and for a moment, all I could see was the burning end of his cigarette. Azolata was a shadow against shadows, barely discernible in the dark.
"Now, Luz."
I stepped back, away from Savannah, and closer to Azolata.
He put a hand on my back and took a long drag from his cigarette before passing it off to me. I had never smoked anything before but I put it between my lips and took an equally long drag from it. It felt like I was tasting candy and sunshine. Immediately, the magic inside of me receded and Azolata squeezed my shoulder before he dropped his arm.
"I will take you home. And I recommend, Ms. Plata, that you keep your distance from Lou. I won't tell you more than once. Consider this your one and only warning," he said.
He didn't raise his voice but the threat in his words was very clear.
"You don't have control over me. You don't get to tell me what to do," she called out.
"I don't know if you know who or what I am. Or if your books even go back that far. But if you choose to come for Lou one more time, I promise you, that it is your own life and the lives of those around you that you take in your hands. And that will be for you to wear on your conscience for the rest of your days. Come, Lou. Your mother is waiting for her dry-cleaning," Azolata said and urged me to turn around.
Instead of a brick wall, there was an open path that led us into the forest. I started to walk towards it but Azolata paused and turned around.
"Children should not play with weapons beyond their control," he told Savannah.
Then, he followed me down the path and I could feel the wall bricking up behind us once more.