Chapter Twelve

Pain shot through my legs like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was hot and cold and unreal. I’d never experienced anything like this. It wasn’t torturous, physical pain. It was energetic. My legs and wrists trembled with mystical adrenaline coursing through every vein under my skin, while my body convulsed from the sparks of pure, unbridled mana.

“Briony!” Alder caught me around my shoulders, his forearm supporting my back. His fingertips traced along the inside of my wrist and his chest pressed against my arm in a sharp gasp.

“Poison ivy,” he whispered. “Oh no.”

Scooping me up, one hand under the back of my knees and the other wrapped around my middle, Alder balanced me easily in his arms. I was so uncomfortable and disoriented from the pain in my legs that I wasn’t even in the right state of mind to be embarrassed. I let out an involuntary cry as my legs spasmed again.

He squeezed me gently in response. “I set you down in it. It had to have been on the tree,” he muttered, words strained with agony. “Where else did it touch you?”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth as another shock sparked through me. Cautiously, I lifted a shaky hand. My vision was blurry, but I could see glowing red welts decorating my hands and wrists and splotches on my calves.

“I—I hadn’t—” Another shudder went through my system and I clenched my teeth, sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth, afraid I’d accidentally bite it off.

“Shhh, it’s okay. I’ll take care of it,” he said, though his voice was coated with panic. “You’re going to be okay.”

Alder cradled me to his chest as he ran through the tulip trees. The wisps followed us, floating like Japanese lanterns and lighting our path.

He stopped at Izzie’s car. “I need the keys,” he said urgently.

Shaking, hardly able to control my arms, I managed to tug the keys out of my front pocket. Alder unlocked the car, threw open the back hatch and lifted me inside, laying me down.

Leaning over me, he turned on the car’s interior lights. Before I could ask what he was about to do, another spike of mana hit the base of my spine, and my back arched. My fingers glowed with a pulsing red energy just below my skin, and I sucked in a breath, whimpering at the aftereffects of the lightning strike inside my body.

“Briony? Can you hear me?” he asked. Light fingers danced across my hot, hot skin.

My very cells seemed to vibrate with all the mana inside me.

Dimly, I nodded, swallowing through the magical adrenaline rush. The welts on my calves, hands, and wrists burned with searing heat and freezing cold, glowing mystically in the stale, halogen light of Izzie’s CRV.

“Just hold on to me.”

Alder took my trembling hands and guided them to his cheeks. The cool softness of his skin under my restless fingers gave me a little…relief.

His hands held my wrists and then ran up and down my skin, his fingers grazing the crook of my elbow, running across the luminous, angry red welts.

Immediately, a feeling of serenity resonated within me. His touch was like a salve against the relentless, mystical energy eating me from the inside out. I blinked, my eyelids heavy with exhaustion, and managed to see light blue mana wind around my arms. Mana drained slowly from Alder’s fingers as they traveled across my arms. Meanwhile the angry red energy from my own hands leached into his neck and jaw.

A whole different kind of panic hit me as I realized what he was doing. Draining the poisonous mana from my hands. Sucking it out of me like snake’s venom.

I tried to move my hands away, but he held them in place. “No,” he admonished, “keep them there.”

“Alder—” I tried to argue but stopped as tremors seized my legs. While my arms felt better, my calves were still in agony. I twisted, my side pressing against the back seat, and ripped my hands away from him, letting out a cry of pain.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured as his hands moved to the back of my calves. “Poisonous plants are stronger in the ethereal plane, and they were bound to affect humans differently. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it.”

I wanted to tell him that we’d both been shaken after the landslide, and that it wasn’t his fault, but I couldn’t. I could only cover my mouth with my hands as I whimpered through the strange sensations of pain and energy spasms down my legs.

But Alder’s mana was soothing. A shudder went through me as his blue mana calmed the mind-numbing sensations of fire and ice, adrenaline and agony, panic and pain.

During it all, I thought: Thank God I shaved my legs last night.

Breathing out, I lifted my arm to lay it across my forehead and squeezed my eyes closed. Only when the poisonous mana receded to a tolerable level of itchy, irritating throbs of soreness, did I open my eyes.

Alder was concentrating on his work, his hand on my leg literally bleeding mana into my skin.

I watched him for a moment before I felt strong enough to speak without my teeth chattering. “I’m okay now—it’s better.”

His brow furrowed and he looked paler as compared to when he’d started. “It’s not all gone yet,” he mumbled.

“Why did you take me to the car?” I asked, my heart rate finally slowing to a somewhat normal pace.

“The forest has mana, too. You needed to get away from all of it, until I could…” His breath stuttered, and I knew then I had to force him to stop. Sucking out the poisonous mana, giving me his had been too much for him. Like I saw back in the earth gate, he had his limits.

I grabbed his hands and tugged them away from my spirit rash, forcing his gaze to mine. “Alder. You’ve done enough.”

Backlit against the car’s overhead light, his features were impossible to discern. “No, you’re wrong.” The way he contradicted me sounded like it hurt him. “It’ll never be enough. What I’ve taken from you…”

Taken from me? Was he referring to my memories?

The pain and regret in his voice seemed to pull and tear at the void in my chest, making it expand until it threatened to swallow my heart as well. How could I feel such anguish from someone I’d met just yesterday?

My fingertips skimmed his soft, silvery hair as I took his cheeks in my hands and pulled his face closer. Close enough for his cool autumn breath to fan against my cheeks. “You haven’t—”

A bright light hit our eyes and we both threw our hands up against its onslaught. Squinting, I pulled myself up on my elbows to find the high beams of a pickup truck shining at us like we were two criminals caught sneaking out of prison.

My organs seemed to rearrange themselves as a slim figure with brown skin and coiled curls stepped out of Gran’s old pickup truck. Son of a sea biscuit.

“Briony Margaret Redwrell,” Izzie called, slamming the truck’s door, “you better not be making out with some guy in the back of my car!”

Alder jerked back so fast he bumped his head against the car’s roof with a thud.

I sat up straight, ignoring the residual sparks of pain, to watch my best friend stomp across the gravel and come to a halt. I glanced back at Alder to find that he had resumed his human disguise. He was all blond hair and green eyes again. I wondered if Izzie had noticed his ethereal form.

Something about the way she had her gaze honed on me told me she hadn’t.

“Iz, this isn’t what it looks like,” I said hurriedly.

She got two feet away from the hatchback and stopped. “Really? Because it looks like you were just about to kiss him.”

“I wasn’t! Listen—” I said, trying to keep my voice calm as I swung my legs around to jump out.

Izzie gasped, her eyes glued to my calves and wrists. “Girl, you are covered in poison ivy.”

Frowning, I looked at my skin. The red welts weren’t completely gone yet, and they still glowed subtly. I was surprised Izzie wasn’t screaming about glowing skin, then I caught Alder’s eye, and he barely shook his head.

Izzie couldn’t see the mana like I could. All she saw was a rash.

“I know. Alder was helping me,” I said.

Izzie’s eyes narrowed. “Helping you? How? Mouth-to-mouth doesn’t work on rashes.”

“For the last time,” I groaned, “we weren’t kissing.”

“Briony, I’ve been worried sick about you all day. I finally got so scared I took your Gran’s truck to look for you at your old house—my next stop would’ve been the sheriff by the way—and then I find you tangled up with some Ralph Lauren model? I would like answers. Now, please.”

“We…” My words trailed off, unable to keep up with the lie any longer. I couldn’t think of what to tell her that would make sense, but more than anything, I was tired of lying to my best friend.

I looked over to Alder and he seemed to be staring at me, somewhat alarmed, as if to say, you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.

“Is there a way you could show her, please?” I asked him.

Bathed in the yellow glow of the headlights, Alder opened and closed his mouth, his gaze jumping from me to Izzie.

“Show me what?” she said.

“Briony…” Alder trailed off, clearing his throat, his eyes silently communicating to me that this wasn’t a good idea.

“You said you trusted me. Well, I trust Izzie. Ipso facto you can trust her.”

Alder and I locked gazes, a silent war going on between us.

“Will someone please tell me what is going on?” Izzie hissed, stomping her sneaker into the gravel.

“Where is Gran?” I asked.

“She fell asleep watching Dateline,” Izzie said, folding her arms. “Now what is going on?”

“So yesterday, when I went to my old house, I hadn’t exactly gotten lost,” I started.

“No shit, Brye.”

“I met Alder, and he…” I directed my gaze back to Alder, pressing my palms together and pleading. “Please will you just show her? It’ll make this so much easier.”

Heaving a large breath, Alder took a cautious step forward, thrusting out his hand. “Hi, I’m Alder. Um, Briony’s childhood friend.”

Izzie cocked an eyebrow at me as if to say are you for real with this?

“Iz, please.”

Lip curling, Izzie stepped forward and shook his hand.

At once, silver mana roared up and off his skin, merging into Izzie’s. She gasped, tearing away from Alder and stumbling backward. She waved her hands as if trying to shake off the sensations that I knew she’d just felt.

“I can hear hawks and smell pine needles and taste wild honeysuckle—” Izzie rattled off, her breath coming out in short quick bursts. Then her gaze swiveled toward me, and she squeaked. “Brye! You’re glowing!”

No question she could now see the red mana rash luminous on my skin.

Isabelle Jennison now possessed a small dose of nature spirit mana.

“Oh my God. What is happening?”

“Iz.” I glanced down the lone dark road and back to my friend. “Why don’t we get off the side of the road? This could take a while.”