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Celia
I was at home by myself. Everything had calmed down relatively quickly and once again, I was surprised at how our lives went back to normal.
Savannah got better before she got worse. One night she showed up at our house, dripping wet. Her eyes were wide and her movements were frantic, jerky. It was storming outside and thunder cracked overhead. She drove her small white car and it was covered in mud. There is no way he could have gotten it that dirty just in the drive over to us.
"What's wrong?” I asked when I pulled her inside.
She held her hands up to her head and I couldn't tell if she was crying or if it was the rain on her face
At the top of the stairs, Eli and Artie were watching us. Eli and I exchanged a look but she had gotten through the runes that Artie put up when Eli repaired the door. They were stronger and better than before. She meant no harm to us, so I felt that it was okay to bring her inside.
Even still, it was hard to look at her and not see her sister's face, standing over me with a gun in her hand.
She put her hands to her head and slid down against the wall. "There’s something wrong with my head. All I hear are whispers. I can hear people talking and I don't know if it's real or not. I don't know what's wrong with me."
The last sentence was hard to understand because she started sobbing.
Artie rushed down the stairs into the front room. Eli was right behind him.
I stepped aside as Artie stepped forward.
"Where does it hurt?" He asked.
It was the most ridiculous question I had ever heard. She was abandoned by everyone and everything she knew and thrown into a place full of strangers in a society that she was taught from birth was evil and dirty and wrong. She had to be hurting everywhere.
Savannah looked up to Artie and she put one hand to the right side of her head. "Here. It feels like they are drilling into my skull right here."
Artie nodded and stepped back. He looked over to me. "Make her go to sleep."
I wanted to ask him what his plan was but there was time for that later. Savannah was in serious pain.
I stepped forward and as I did I raise my hand. At the last second, Savannah stopped me with a hand on my wrist. It wasn't harsh and she barely touched me. She looked me in my eyes and said, "I need you to look in my car. Everything I have in there, you need to hide from me. Don't tell anyone where it is and especially not me."
I nodded and then pressed my hand to her forehead. A second later, Eli caught her as she slid down to the floor.
We carried her through the forest to Lou and Dante's house. I knew we were going to go to see Miss Maricel. The similarities from just a month before were paralyzing.
And just like before, Miss Maricel was waiting for us at her door. This time she had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and behind her, Lou and Dante stood.
They let us in and led us down the hall to Dante's room. Eli put Savannah down on the bed and stepped away. Artie, Lou, and Miss Maricel surrounded her, Dante at the foot of the bed.
Miss Maricel shook her head as she stared down at Savannah. "We should've seen this coming."
"What is it?" Dante asked.
"There is a dissonance inside of her. She was born and trained for one thing, possibly even fated for something entirely different, but now she's fighting it. She might be killing herself to not do what she has to do. What she was supposed to do," Lou said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Miss Maricel gestured for Dante to bring a chair from the corner of the room. He did and she settled down next to Savannah's head. She took one of Savannah's hands in her own and brought it to her lips. For the first time, that serene expression was gone and she looked genuinely worried.
"She was supposed to be our enemy. She was supposed to bring chaos and death down on us. On us, not her own organization, her blood family. She fought it, and gave you all the upper hand," Miss Maricel said and looked up at me.
I nodded, unsure of what to do with this new information. I knew what she had done, what she had sacrificed.
"She's an orphan and she's a human, surrounded by magic that doesn't understand her or want her. I don't know what we can do to help her," Miss Maricel said.
I was at a loss. This was unfair. She had sacrificed so much and now the magic that she had almost died to protect was going to drive her insane before it killed her.
Eli spoke first. "There has to be something. There has to be some way for her to survive this. Can we send her away?"
“It’s already done. She carries a piece of us inside of her and with that, the magic will always reach out to her," Artie said.
"It’ll reach out to destroy her?" Dante whispered.
Miss Maricel nodded.
"Then what can we do? What can we do to accept her?" I asked.
I couldn't help notice that Lou and Artie silent and suspiciously motionless. Artie had never been anything but helpful towards Savannah since that night. Lou was the same. Neither one of them held a grudge, so it made no sense why they weren’t offering any solutions. When I looked up, across Dante's bed to Lou, he avoided my eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. When I looked down at Artie, who was kneeling by the bed now, he did not look back at me like he normally did when he felt me watching him.
"You guys know. You know how to save her," Eli accused.
Neither one of them said anything.
"Don't let her die. Not after everything," Dante begged.
Outside, the rain came down harder and thunder crashed. The lights went out. Miss Maricel waved her hand and light flickered to life around us.
"I don't know the rules and what you have to do, to do this, but there is a way," Lou said.
Eli and I exchanged a look before we looked back at Lou.
"Take her into your pack. Make her one of your own. You don't have to bite her, but you do have to claim her. You have to make sure she yours as much as Eli and Artie are. Your magic, your protection, will extend to her and she should be fine."
Artie shook his head. "That's not all. We’re going to have to offer her more protection than that. She's human, through and through. She won’t survive here long without more than that."
"What's more?" I asked, exasperated. I would do it, of course I would do it. She almost died for Artie, this girl could ask me anything and I would do it for her.
Artie was staring at Savannah and the glow from a nearby candle made his face look much older than he actually was. He was studying her like she was a particularly hard math problem before he sighed. "We would have to do something that I've never done before. I'm not sure it's ever been done before. It will take time."
“She's dying right now though. Do we have that time?" Dante asked. There was an edge to his voice that made look up at him sharply. He took a deep breath and nodded, the apology in his eyes.
"We have time. As long as Celia accepts her and gives her protection, we have a little more time," Lou said quietly.
So I did.
That night, only Artie and I returned home. I didn’t question why Eli wanted to stay, I just didn’t want details.
When we walked out of the woods, I saw Savannah’s car in the driveway. The door was open and the keys were in the ignition. I looked over at Artie and we both approached the car. The front was meticulously clean, but the back seat made me draw in a sharp breath.
There were weapons of all kinds in her backseat. Guns, knives, I even spied a mace and a few grenades.
Artie inched forward and pressed the release to open the trunk and pulled the keys out of the ignition to stop the incessant ringing. We both went around and this time we found ammo alongside even more weapons.
“We have to hide all this,” Artie muttered and scratched his chin. I was soaking wet but he was using his magic to keep the rain off of him.
“Where?” I asked, horrified at what I was staring at. She could do so much damage with all of this and I knew why she didn’t want me to know where I hid it.
“I’ve got an idea,” Artie said and looked over at the woods.
Azolata was standing there, staring at us.
“Look who joined the party, you motherfucker,” I spat.
Artie tossed him the keys.
*
ONCE MARCUS WAS RELEASED from the hospital, he came over. It ached to have him so close but he needed to say something. We sat on the porch that day and he talked. He talked about how he hated the nonhumans because of what happened to his parents. He talked about the last four years and what happened to him. It sounded as lonely as my own last four years had been.
I understood and I told him so, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to accept him back into my life, not like he wanted to be.
That day, he nodded, accepted my decision, and drove away. It wouldn't be the last time I saw him.
But that day, two weeks after everything happened, I was sitting on my porch with Marcus at my side. We hadn’t talked much during that visit, instead just sat and listened to the sounds of the forest around us. It felt like everything was on edge, but every time I checked in with someone, they were fine.
Then, Azolata walked out of the forest.
He wore the same leather jacket, the same cigarette tucked behind his ear. I still wanted to strangle him, but I didn't. I watched him walk slowly to the two of us.
It was only when he was on the porch that I realized if I did do anything to him, Marcus wouldn't stop me. I knew, actually, that Marcus would help me hide the body. It was just a crying shame that Azolata was near impossible to kill.
There was a strange comfort in that.
As he approached, Azolata pulled out a thick envelope from his jacket. He handed it over to me and leaned against the railing.
I looked down at it. It was thick, creamy, and heavy in my hand. On the front, it only said my name. I turned it over and glanced at the wax seal.
I would know that seal from anywhere. I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands before handing it over to Marcus. He took it from me and I didn't need to see the look between him and Azolata to know that it was a curious one.
"Read it out loud," I said.
I heard him open the envelope and unfold the single sheet inside.
“Dear Alpha Ortega,
It has come to our attention that you have recently come into a new pack. Your pack now exceeds the maximum number of members of three. At last count, we were told that you have six members in your pack. Please advise. You will need to reduce the number of members in your pack or the Council will have to take steps of their own. Should this issue be handled quickly and quietly on your end, then no repercussions will be imposed on you.
For now, consider yourself exiled. You do not have our protection or the Queen's favor. If this matter is not handled within the month, then your status will be stripped from you and your entire pack hunted.
Signed,
The Ascendancy
and
The Convocation of Nights."
Lou
I was in the woods and walking swiftly toward the center. Artie had not been the one to guide me here. I found it myself. I didn't know if it was the same place I woke up in after I killed the guard, but it felt familiar to me. It felt like the one place I could retreat to that no one else knew about.
No one else until now.
My hand tightened on Eli's fingers when I looked over at him. "Almost there."
Eli nodded. He wasn’t out of breath and easily kept up with me. The moon was high above us and I probably didn’t need its light but it was nice anyway.
"I would never venture this far in," he muttered.
"I know. Trust me. It's worth it."
"I trust you."
Those three words warmed me probably more than the other three words would have. When we got to the clearing, there was a hush throughout the forest. I didn't know what kind of lights were in the trees, but as I looked around, they lit up, one right after the other until it was bathed in soft, silver light.
Eli stepped forward and he looked dazed. I wish I could see what his eyes saw.
"This is where I come when I need to be away. Sometimes, it still feels like I'm drowning, but I'm learning to swim. I just wanted to show you that this is the place that I feel the safest," I explained.
I felt dumb. It wasn't anything special, just another spot in the woods. Eli was wandering around the small clearing like he was searching for something special. But there wasn't anything, not really. It was just soft grass and tall trees around a circular clearing and maybe a fairy or two would sweep by. But in our forest that wasn't anything special.
Then he turned to me and strode towards me quickly. I prepared myself for him to demand that we leave, go do something else. Instead, he pulled me into a kiss.
This was only the second kiss we had had since the first one when everything went so wrong. It felt possessive and sweet and grateful all at once. When Eli pulled away, I gasped. Then he stepped in close so that our foreheads were touching. I looked down at our hands tangled together between us.
"Thank you for this. Thank you for trusting me with this." Eli said.
"The first night in the woods, you found me, didn't you?" I asked. I wasn't clear on the details but this felt right somehow.
He nodded. "Celia went after the other one. I found you."
And in this world, nothing felt truer than those words.
He found me.
Artie
There is a lot about magic that I could teach you; facts, historical figures, and events, potions. But it would be useless to you unless you had it in your blood. It would be like reading something from a history book from another planet. It would be useless and far away, a made up story about a faraway land. In fact, unless you are born with the talent, there is nothing I could teach you. And sometimes, there were things about magic that only revealed themselves when it was time.
When I was born, a book showed up on my parent’s doorstep. They were terrified of what was in it, worried that someone found out about my birth. It was a package wrapped up in plain brown paper that was only addressed to me. At first, they tried to get rid of it. They threw it away.
The next day it showed up, back on their doorstep.
The day after, my father drove it out of town and through it in a dumpster somewhere in San Diego.
The next day it showed up again.
That night, they burned it in the fire.
Like clockwork, it showed up again.
It took several weeks of this before they gave up and kept it. After that, nothing was ever said of the plain brown package until I turned five years old.
I remember something calling me, something in my father's library. I found it tucked back in a cabinet, buried under papers and other books. It was dusty, still wrapped, with my name written in elegant script on the outside.
I unwrapped it and saw a thick, heavy book. The book looked older than any book that I had ever seen. Even if I was just five years old at the time, I knew this was important. I took it up the stairs, put it on my small desk, flipped on the light, and opened it.
It was a history, a story, and a workbook all wrapped up into one. The cover told me the name of it was Magic of the Honored. When I opened it, I saw the words and read them out loud even when no one else could.
When anyone else opened it, including Azolata, they couldn’t see anything but blank pages.
New words were written in it as I got older. There were spells, lessons, everything that I might have needed, in this one book. I asked Azolata what it was, but he said he had no idea.
Two weeks after everything happened, I pulled the book down and opened it on my desk. It was like greeting an old friend after a long trip. I flipped towards the middle of the pages, where I last left off. Half the pages were blank, but I was used to that. The time would come when I would see what it was that I was meant to see.
The very last page, before the writing stopped, I studied the words. I heard a high ringing in my ears and felt lightheaded as I read the words over and over.
After a moment I carefully lifted the page and tore it from the book. I had never done that before and was unsure if it would even work.
Eli showed up at my door right then. He saw the book open and watched as I ripped the page from the book.
What are you doing?" He asked.
I floated the paper up into the air and lit it on fire. I didn't reply until the paper was nothing but ashes.
"What was that?" Eli asked and stepped into my room.
I looked over him and for a moment I felt so very sorry for my older brother.
"The Death of the Power and Virtue."
Just like I knew he would, Eli went pale. He and Dante were good friends now, but he and Lou were laid out as clearly as a path in the forest would be laid out for me. They found each other when nothing else made sense. Eli couldn't know everything and I couldn't either. But I could see it. Miss Maricel could see it too.
"Is that it? Is it gone?" Eli asked.
I looked down at the book.
The same words looked back up at me in the elegant script, words appearing as I watched.
The Deaths of the Power and Virtue.