| |
Mackenzie lay on the bed, focusing intently on the way the paint twisted across the ceiling. The cracks had formed in it over its time unoccupied—she supposed they would have even if someone had resided underneath.
Her eyes hadn’t shut since Teo had left her at her front door and she’d climbed the stairs of her empty house and dropped back on the bed. She was vaguely aware the sun had risen, only because the cracks in the ceiling became more visible.
Her cell buzzed on her nightstand, snapping her out of her numb daze. She reached over and checked it, not quite sure what she was hoping for, but found herself disappointed to find an update notice for her phone software. With a groan, she dropped it back on the wooden bedside table and flopped back to the mattress. With her focus finally broken from the ceiling, all the thoughts she’d been pushing down were inescapable now.
Kai had known who she was when they’d met. He’d pretended not to, sought her out, seen all her pain as an orphan, had sex with her, and then gone back home victorious as she unknowingly followed him home to Salem. How dare he! Mackenzie’s hands balled into fists, her nails biting into her palms as the memories of his body on hers turned sour in her mouth, the thought boiling all her insides.
And in amongst all this, Teo had kidnapped her for his cult and “awakened” her magic powers. What sort of chaos was this town festering?
She felt homesick, missing her best friend and her hometown. Even though they were judgmental, it seemed an easier burden than this. Religious cults, murders, and amongst it all, she’d found herself tangled. How had her parents done this?
Like she’d been zapped by the purple lightning again, her upper boy shot off the bed. Her back was straight and alert, her heart pounding heavily, struck by an idea.
As quick as she could manage, Mackenzie vaulted off the bed and down the two sets of stairs, heading for the wall of weapons, grabbing the book from its place strewn on the floor. This had been the only occult indicator she’d found in the house.
As she surveyed the weapons, she felt she was seeing them all anew. Everywhere she looked—blades, guns, swords, daggers—glinted with a purple light. She checked the room around her, expecting to find something to explain the purple, but came up empty. Her gaze flickered to the book in her hand that had been empty, watching the edges of the endpaper noticeably shimmer, robbing her of breath.
Putting it down on the tabletop, Mackenzie glanced it over carefully. She lightly traced her fingers over its cover, gold embossed symbols over it that she’d never seen before. They rippled dimly with purple light until she couldn’t take the anticipation chewing through her gut and pulled the cover open. She hoped the pages would stay blank—hoped that the insanity of it all—was a trick or lie, or some ill-placed belief.
A family tree stretched out on the once-empty page—the Harris ancestry line unfolded in tiny writing and branches, stretching back further than Mackenzie had considered she could have a family.
But her focus lay on the bottom of the tree and the purple glint that wrote her name underneath her parents. She rubbed her eyes, sure it was a trick of light.
When it didn’t disappear or change, she considered whether she could have been drugged. Despite the shock of the situation, she felt too in charge of her mental faculties to entertain that idea further as she stared at her name on the page.
Mackenzie wasn’t sure how her body was functioning and upright when she felt like she was going to puke. She didn’t want to believe Teo’s words, but it was getting increasingly hard to ignore as she stared at the self-drawing tree.
She’d seen the creature in Oregon, unexplainable by normal standards, but she knew what she’d seen with her own eyes.
Teo’s words hadn’t resonated with her until this very moment. Now they gripped her, a stranglehold on her mind that would not release her until she faced it. She glanced at her hands, expecting to see purple lightning or something magic fizzling on her fingertips. She took three deep breaths, waiting and feeling disappointed by the lack of action, then finally turned the page and saw the title “The Magician” glitter back at her.
Her breath caught as she skimmed the page, tears prickling the corners of her eyes at the use of her family name. She couldn’t help the sad smile that stretched her lips as she ran down the page eagerly.
The Magician
Current Family Name: Harris
Traits: Willpower, creativity, action
Power Description: One of the most elusive of the tarot, the Magician’s power stems from the wielder’s willpower and creativity. It relies on manifestation and manipulation and is only limited by the Magician’s mind and imagination.
Mackenzie stared at the page, trying to process how her powers would manifest—how she could make them—if this was to be believed. So she could just will anything into existence?
Shivers passed over her body as she was reminded of her awakening. No one had touched the ropes to free her but she had screamed out for freedom after the lightning had struck her, telling them to let her go and the ropes had complied. Was that her doing or theirs? Was that the willpower manifestation that the book had spoken of?
She’d need to experiment some more on her own before she could be sure.
For now, her curiosity pulled her through the pages of the book to see what other powers existed in the Major Arcana.
She didn’t recognize any of the family names, but she supposed she didn’t know many to begin with. The powers across the families were so varied: influencing emotions, seeing the future, control of the elements, and so many more.
She came to the Devil’s page and scanned her eyes down it, dreading her discoveries about Kai’s family line. Her stomach lurched so violently at what she found that it felt like she’d been punched in the gut when she’d read the page.
The Devil
Current Family Name: Logan
Traits: Primal Instincts, Personal interest, Truth
Power Description: The Devil’s power revolves around primal power and truth. The powers of the Devil are wide-ranging. The Devil can take several forms, depending upon the individual’s inner state, but the most common amongst the wielders of the power is the beast form—a creature resembling that of a hellhound from folklore. (illustration below)
Other aspects of the Devil’s power revolve around the truth. They are the wielders of it and cannot lie to a direct question posed. Can also sense truth and lies in the mouths of others.
Mackenzie stared at the drawing at the bottom of the page, the back of her neck prickling as though the drawing were watching her through the page at that moment. She didn’t realize she could be gutted anymore by Kai’s behavior until her knees buckled to the floor.
The book stayed on the table as she fell out of sight of it, but she couldn’t help the paranoia in her system, running through her body as though she needed to bolt at any second. Her breathing and heart rate came in so quickly that she feared she’d have a heart attack or feel her heart explode, and her mind froze for a moment in time, replaying the memory over and over.
The day she’d met Kai in Oregon, the feeling of it growing more bitter and rotten with every second as tears slipped down her cheeks. She hadn’t even thought she was capable of crying, but her body had raced ahead of her mind.
How had she been given such a feeling of hope by this guy, only to have it dashed less than twenty-four hours after finding him again? How had she missed every sign that this was only going to hurt her? How had she cared so quickly? Why did this hurt so bad? How could she have been so stupid and naïve?
But she knew the answer and hated herself for it. He’d brought her to life at a time when she was determined to live again. She’d started falling for him hard when she knew—deep down—she shouldn’t have, and she’d let herself do all this without really knowing him.
She hadn’t even known his last name, for god’s sake. If he had been the creature in the woods that day, as she supposed he was, how long had he been watching her search for her mother? How could he pretend he didn’t know her when he’d been stalking her in beast form...
Beast form...
Shivers crept up Mackenzie’s spine again as she took deep breaths and forced herself to calm down. She dropped her face into her hands, straining to breathe slowly through her fingers as she shut her eyes tightly and tried to ignore the image of the creature—Kai’s beast form.
Focus on something else, she told herself, pushing her body up slowly and painstakingly to get back to the book.
Flicking past the family pages, she stopped short when she came to pages of handwritten notes. Kai slipped from her mind as she spun through pages and pages of handwritten notes by multiple different people—all ancestors of the Harris name—leaving behind ways they had used their power differently.
The full extent of power explained in the book was incredible and her heart swelled when she reached notes written by her father.
“The willpower of movement,” he’d written. “Manifest a wall into existence—invisible, slim, paper-thin but strong as steel, and then like you are the wind and it is a piece of paper, push it to the desired location.”
On and on his notes went, more descriptive than anything written before until she came to a dated entry—the last entry.
My daughter Mackenzie,
You are barely born and I already know my time with you is coming to an end.
I have made some very powerful people angry and they are coming for me.
I know that they won’t break the Magician’s line so for now, you are safe. I have no doubt you’ll be awakened eventually and you will find your way to this book, and so I leave for you, everything I know in this book.
For the awakened eyes of the next Magician only.
Rely on yourself, and find your true power. If you’re anything like your mother and me, you will have the willpower and creativity to be the strongest Magician our line has ever known. Use it to your advantage and be wary of others; no one in this world will give you the real truth, that is something you must discover for yourself.
Please be safe and strong. I’m sorry I couldn’t be around to see the woman you will become.
From your loving father,
Brian Harris
Mackenzie ran her fingers over the words, trying to imagine him etching the markings into the page, the tears she couldn’t seem to dry falling again. And yet, despite everything she’d experienced so far in Salem, these tears warmed her face. They were bittersweet, providing her with a small amount of solace in an otherwise overwhelming life.
Mackenzie picked the book up and hugged it to her chest, careful not to let her tears fall onto the page. While the book and the ink might be magical, she could no longer imagine allowing any kind of harm to befall what had almost instantly become one of her most prized possessions. It rested close to her breastbone, pressing the necklace pendants of her parents closer to her heart. The weight of them both was a calming agent on her mind and body.
Climbing the stairs, Mackenzie moved into the living area with the book, finding an armchair by the window showered in comforting sunlight.
She slouched into the chair, curling her feet up under her as she dropped the open book and flicked the page all the way back to the start. Calm took over as she stared at the book, no longer frightened or nervous about the information it had to offer. A slight smile danced across her lips as the sunlight warmed her skin and the sense of belonging to an actual family warmed her soul. She ignored the painful boiling sensation in her gut as she passed Kai’s tarot page and instead focused on the positive.
Despite what she’d seen lately and knew she couldn’t explain, her belief in the magic that Teo and this book spoke of was still a struggle. But slowly she could feel herself opening to the prospect and she knew her father’s and ancestors words were the cause. She moved through the start of the book, dedicated to each in the tarot and the magical family that represented them. Mackenzie realized how blind she felt, staring at the surnames as though time staring could provide her with answers on the individual wielders of the powers.
She took note of the others in the Major Arcana, hating the idea of ever coming up against them, feeling the cold snake of dread ice through her fleetingly as she took stock of the magic around her. Control of blood, emotions, nature, and luck as well as prophecy, flight, and illusion all stuck out at her from different pages.
But what bothered her more was that Amari and Teo were involved with the Major Arcana—with powers of their own, she supposed—and she had no idea what they were. Her new “friends” had pulled her close and learned so much about her, but she didn’t even know their surnames. She had no idea what her kidnapper’s powers even were. All she knew was that they weren’t the Devil or Death powers—which didn’t eliminate much.
The jingle of her ringtone drifted down the stairs, but Mackenzie stared out with a tight frown as though she could see its caller, making no effort to move. Turning her attention back to the book, she focused her annoyance down on it, wondering how she was going to prepare herself against magic society cults, murderers, and people who probably had more control over powers she still wasn’t entirely sure existed.