The Witch's Consorts: The Complete Series, page 100
“I can take another look at them too,” I offered. “Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes…”
He nodded with a grateful glance my way. “I appreciate that, Jin. Although I think I’d better handle any final adjustments. Maybe one of the other workers slipped up without me noticing. We’ve got to be so careful with this.” He rubbed his mouth.
“With all these records of the faction’s dealings with the demons, you’d think there’d be something else in here we could work with.” Ky grimaced at the laptop’s screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “If I could get into the private areas of the Assembly network—of course, they’ll be even more pissed off with us if I hack in.”
“You don’t think they’d let you in if you asked?” Gabriel said.
Ky shook his head. “Already did. They weren’t comfortable with it. Said there couldn’t be anything in there that’d relate to the demons anyway, since they never even knew the demons existed. I just want to know everything there is to know about the community, about magic—the more I understand, the more it’ll all come together.”
“What do they care about what you might see in there?” Damon said. He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the room. “There’s a fucking monster on the horizon and they’re too busy looking down their noses at us to give us the tools we need to fight it. If I could just give those smug pricks a piece of my mind—”
Gabriel clapped his hands, straightening up into an authoritative posture. “We’ll work with what we have. We’ve made it through plenty of horrible situations in the past with a lot less than we’ve got now. We just keep working to our strengths, and there’ll be an answer somewhere.”
His words jarred loose something in me. For a second, it felt as if the glow inside me had seared right up to my eyes. I blinked, taking in the room, the four guys I’d known since we were little kids, and all I could see was how predictable this all was.
There was Kyler, digging up every fact he could. There was Seth, plotting a thoughtful careful course. There was Damon, trying to slam and blast his way through the mess. And Gabriel, always the leader, trying to corral us.
But maybe this wasn’t the right corral. Were we playing to our strengths or just stuck in a rut? We’d been spinning our wheels just like this for days, and the demon was still out there. Rose still felt that stopping it rested on her shoulders alone.
The realization struck me like a jab to the gut. Words collected and jarred in my throat. Who the hell was I to tell the rest of them they were doing things wrong?
Oh. That was my rut, wasn’t it? Jin the optimist. Going with the flow, letting the worries roll off my back, always looking on the bright side, like Rose had said.
Maybe it was time I pointed out some other sides to this situation. If I wanted to see us all out of our ruts, I had to start with myself. Even if the thought of criticizing my best friends to their faces made me wince inwardly.
I squared my shoulders. Damon was just launching into some more of his rant. “We’ve got to stop letting them push us around. We have to demand we get what we need. March right back into that office and—”
“No,” I said, loud enough that my voice filled the room. I did wince then. But the gazes of the other four guys snapped to me, startled, and I knew I’d gotten their attention. I forced myself to keep going.
“Look at us,” I said. “We’re doing the same old things we always do. Approaching this problem the same old ways. But it’s not enough. Can’t you see that?”
“What are you saying, Jin?” Gabriel said, quietly but without any hostility.
“Just that—Rose is pushing herself to her limits, stretching herself in ways she never had to before, to tackle this thing. Because it’s not like anything we’ve ever had to tackle before. If we want to support her, we’ve got to do the same thing. Think outside the boxes we’re comfortable in. Look at what’s really happening and where we can make a difference even if it’s hard—with eyes wide open, without any blinders. Stop running in circles we already know haven’t gotten us anywhere.”
For several seconds, the others kept staring at me. Then Ky let his hands come to rest on the desk. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m just covering the same ground over and over again here.”
“So what does that mean?” Damon demanded, but even he looked a little subdued compared to his earlier furor. “What exactly should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just think it needs to be different. Bigger. Better. Maybe… Maybe we need to start by getting out of this room and actually interacting more with these Assembly people. They’re the ones Rose has to be working with. We’re pissed off that they don’t respect us, but we haven’t encouraged much of an alliance between us either, have we?”
“No,” Gabriel said grimly. “We haven’t.”
Seth pushed away from his blueprints. “I’ll find out which of the officials are overseeing the cage reconstruction and start from there.” He glanced at me. “Did you want to come with, or…?”
“I think that’s as good a starting point as any,” I said. The glow in me ebbed again, but the flicker of it was more buoyant now. More hopeful. “I’ll just have to see where I can get to from there.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rose
Normally when I ventured into the side hall where the Assembly had set up rooms for the recovering witches I was met by only quiet stillness and maybe some murmured voices. The women who until recently had been virtual slaves to their consorts and the demons weren’t really the boisterous sort. So my heart started beating faster the moment I heard footsteps rushing over the floor. A sharp sobbing carried all the way to the stairs. I hurried out of the stairwell and around the bend.
Thalia was hustling between one of the rooms and another, her brown-and-silver hair flying astray, her frown digging furrows at the corners of her mouth. She stopped when she saw me, one hand on the doorframe. The sobbing was fading, but someone else was speaking in a low frantic babble I couldn’t make out much of.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Word went around that the demon is coming toward the city,” she said. “That it looks like it’ll be here soon. And if that wasn’t frightening enough, I think some of the witches most recently in contact with them can already feel its approach. They weren’t ready. It’s brought a lot of the fear and anguish back up. I’m doing what I can.”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded with a jerk of her chin. “I’ve had a few weeks longer to get my head on straight compared to everyone else here. A good thing, I suppose. Not that I’m pleased about the news, but I’ll cope.”
She slipped into the room, and I followed. The space had been set up like my and the guys’ room upstairs, with six cots in two rows. Lesley was already inside, kneeling next to one of the cots where Eloise was sitting, hunched over and hugging her knees. The middle-aged witch had her gnarled hands clenched together in front of her calves, and her shoulders quivered, but she was quiet right now. Lesley wove patterns in the air over her back at a soothing rhythm.
Thalia made for a bed in the corner, where Crystal was perched with her head in her hands. The young witch was muttering a jumbled stream of words, none of which strung together to make any sense that I could decipher. “The Cliff—they would—if it sees—feel it now—can’t stay—where—coming, coming—I wanted—oh—”
“Hey, now,” Thalia said in a soft voice, sitting next to Crystal. She squeezed the other witch’s shoulder and then moved her hands in a calming spell of her own. Crystal’s muttering slowed, but Eloise started crying again with hitches of breath. Across the hall, someone let out a brief thin shriek.
The other two witches who were in this room looked all right, if unnerved. I darted to the second dorm room. Caroline’s bright blond head was bent next to Selena’s, the elderly witch rubbing red-rimmed eyes. Caroline cast an uncertain glance toward a younger woman who’d pressed herself against the opposite wall.
“It wants us,” the other witch said, in a thready voice that made me suspect she was the one who’d shrieked. “It won’t stop until it’s completely consumed us.”
I skirted the cots to reach her, taking her hand in mine. This situation didn’t require the same sort of magicking as the kind I’d been working with the recovering witches before, but I knew forms for relaxing, for settling nerves. And there was plain old human comfort. I squeezed her fingers in what I hoped was a reassuring grip and looped my arm through the air to draw a shimmer of calm down over both of us. Because I was going to need plenty of fortification to be at my best too.
“We’re not going to let it hurt any of you,” I said in my most confident voice. “Every witch in the country will stand up to protect you. It won’t have you. I swear it.” And if I broke that promise, it’d be over my dead body.
The witch bowed her head, her breath still coming out ragged. “You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t felt it the way I have.”
I hadn’t and yet I also had. I knew what it was like to taste the essence of that monster from the inside out.
“I know how far we’re willing to go to stop it from getting to you again,” I said. “We can beat it.” We just have to figure out how.
She didn’t look completely convinced. On one of the other beds, another witch rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. A tremor ran through her body. My gaze locked with Caroline’s where she was still sitting with Selena. Caroline didn’t speak, but her wide eyes asked enough of a question on their own. How in the name of the Spark could we help all of them even now?
Inspiration tickled through my thoughts. “There are magicking supplies down here, aren’t there?” I said. “Get me powdered lavender and chalk—whoever’s up to it.”
A witch near the door hustled out. I kept weaving my spell of calm around the woman with me until the other witch returned. I grabbed the bag of purple-gray powder from her and motioned Caroline over.
“Mark glyphs on the floor around all the beds,” I told her. “Protection and easy sleep. Tie them together if you can.”
Caroline nodded, her eyes gleaming nervously, and accepted the chalk. As she crouched down to start drawing, I pulled out a handful of the lavender powder. Its dry pungent scent filled my nose. I set the bag with the rest of its contents down by the wall and stepped into a larger form.
My feet carried me from the foot of one bed to the next, around Caroline and her hastily drawn glyphs, the movements partly drawn from forms I’d learned under my tutors’ eyes and partly coming together on instinct. The brilliant light of my spark flooded my limbs as I moved, as if eager to bring my intentions into reality. My arms swayed with my magicking dance, wisps of lavender powder slipping through my fingers.
Let peace settle over this room, I thought, willing that hope into every gesture, every step. Let their thoughts settle and their bodies quiet. Let them drift off into sleep if that’s the soothing they need—a soft soothing sleep. Let nothing touch them—not fear or pain or the claws of an enemy.
A stillness crept through the room, silence falling over us. Nothing reached my ears except the whisper of my feet over the floor and the faint rasp of the chalk as Caroline drew the last few glyphs. Selena leaned back on her hands, her white hair streaming down, the tension in her face seeping away.
The witch by the wall sank onto her cot and curled up there, her eyes drifting shut. The one who’d clung to her pillow rolled onto her side. Her gaze followed my movements dreamily.
I spun one more time after Caroline finished the last glyph, and then I eased to a stop. My own limbs felt comfortingly heavy, as if they’d been wrapped in a cozy blanket. The worried sympathy that had wrenched through me minutes ago had melted into sorrow-tinged relief.
Caroline straightened up, her stance more relaxed now too.
“We should do the magicking in the other room too,” I said. “They all need some peace.”
“I’m just glad we can do something,” she said.
I snatched up the bag of lavender powder and ran into Thalia in the hall. “Good thinking with that spell,” she said. “I can handle it for these girls.”
I might have protested that I was happy to do it, but I could tell from the set of her jaw that she desperately wanted to be the one providing that comfort. These women were like her sisters, fellow prisoners who’d come through the same torment she had. I handed over the bag without a word other than, “Of course.”
The witch who’d gone to the supply room had brought a few pieces of chalk, so Lesley and I joined Caroline in marking the floor around the second dorm room. As Thalia continued her magicking of the space, the three of us relative intruders retreated to the lounge room where I’d helped encourage the circle of recovering witches before.
Stepping into that familiar space, my gut twinged. How much was this threat going to set back their recovery? They’d been starting to move past the horrors of their experiences, and the demon’s approach had brought all that pain back again.
“How close is it?” Lesley asked, looking to me. “Do you know?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. Lady Northcott didn’t think it could reach the edge of the city until sometime tonight.” Of course, the demon could start moving faster. I decided not to point out that fact. We had enough to be depressed about as it was.
“That far away, and it’s affecting them this much…” Caroline shuddered.
“It’s horrible,” I said. “It just… doesn’t belong here. I can’t imagine how easily you must start to sense those energies once you’ve been exposed to them over and over.”
“I still can’t believe—” Lesley cut herself off and swiped her mousey bangs away from her face. “I’ve only been able to find out a little. Everyone’s too busy to tell me much. But it sounds like my father got sucked into this ‘faction’ just a few years ago. I don’t even know why. What mattered to them enough that he’d decide it was worth doing that to me? It could be me freaking out with them right now if I’d given in to his pressure.”
“I’m sorry,” Caroline mumbled. “If I’d had any idea this was what my parents were involved in… If I’d stood up to them earlier…”
“It’s not your fault,” I broke in. “It’s theirs. They made the choices. They hurt all those witches for their own gain, and they got very good at hiding it. My father was part of it from before I was born, and I didn’t realize until I was almost twenty-five.”
If I hadn’t, I could have been one of these disturbed witches right now. Queasiness bubbled in my stomach.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be calling the demons evil,” Lesley said. “They don’t have any reason to be kind to us. They’re like… like wild animals, following their natures. We’re supposed to be a community, and look at what we do to ourselves.”
She looked so exhausted that I touched her arm. “Not all of us. Not even most of us. Those who committed those crimes will see justice when this is over.”
She nodded, but she didn’t seem all that comforted. Maybe because we all knew there was no telling when this catastrophe would be over—or whether any of us would survive it.
A thump sounded from the room Thalia was in, followed by a cry. The three of us dashed back to the doorway.
Crystal’s cot was tipped on its side. The young witch was clinging to Thalia’s arms, tears trickling down her face.
“The gate,” she said in a strained whisper. “They’re pushing at the gate. They want out—all of them. They’re trying to scrape their way through to come here.”
Thalia’s panicked gaze meet mine. “She was the last one the demons fed on,” she said quietly.
The one with the rawest wounds. My throat tightened.
“Do you think it’s true?” I asked, and Thalia shook her head, not in denial but in confusion. I stepped closer to the two of them, resting a tentative hand on Crystal’s shoulder. “Crystal, what do you feel?”
“I can feel it,” she said shakily. “The one that’s coming closer. And it can feel them. There’s so many of them, behind that doorway in the Cliff. So many of them. And they know now that there’s a way to break free.”
Chapter Nineteen
Rose
My footsteps clattered down the hall toward the meeting room. I didn’t have the wherewithal to try to walk more conscientiously, not with the possibilities whirling through my head.
“Rose?”
I turned to see Gabriel down the hall. He strode to meet me, his eyes dark with concern. “What’s wrong? I saw you go by—you look like you’ve got a wolf at your heels.”
More like a demon. I swallowed a burst of hysterical laughter. “The witches the faction used are sensing things from the demon. Things the Assembly really needs to know about. I’m about to crash one of their meetings so they do.”
“Do you want back-up?” he asked, without a second’s hesitation. Despite my panic, my spark flickered with pleasure at his support.
“It can’t hurt,” I said. Whatever the Assembly officials thought of me, they thought it whether or not they could see any of my consorts immediately on hand.
I motioned for Gabriel to follow me, and we hurried the rest of the way to the room number I’d gotten after badgering the Northcotts’ secretary. I didn’t have much space in me for frustration right now, but I couldn’t say it didn’t irk me that less than an hour after I’d come to Lady Northcott offering even more help than I could have managed before, she’d gone off with who knew how many other officials to discuss strategy without me.
I didn’t regret that I’d been able to soothe the recovering witches a little while I was down there, but did she really think I’d have been some kind of hinderance to this discussion rather than an asset?
As I reached the door to the meeting room, I swallowed down that irritation. Without breaking my stride, I shoved inside.
