Earth (22 page)

“I wonder why we’re never in your dream,”
Steven said, looking at me from the foot of the bed.

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging my
shoulders.

“Well, you said you usually have the sense
that safety is just ahead of you somewhere. Maybe that’s where we
are, but you never make it there,” Jodi offered, not looking up
from the spell book she was studying.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. I sounded doubtful
even to myself. It sounded reasonable enough, but never in my dream
did I think I was racing towards them.

“Ok, so this is the first time you made it to
a road, right?” Steven asked, sitting up Indian style.

“Yeah. I even saw a mile marker. I wrote it
all down in my journal,” I motioned to the book with my chin.

“May I?”

“Yeah, go for it. It’s on the last page
anything is written on.” I picked up the book and passed it to
Steven, settling back into my chair and toying with the pentagram
that I was wearing again. I realized when I woke up I felt
different without it; I felt energy prickling at my skin. I had the
uncontrollable urge to get out of the house and go somewhere, but I
didn’t know where. As soon as I touched the cool metal of the star,
the energy faded away and the urges stopped.

“Um, Shay?” Steven broke into my
thoughts.

“What?”

“Dude, what page is it on?”

“The last one with writing.”

“No, there’s a spell here, and here and
here.” He was flipping the pages showing me all the writing. “Here
you find it.” He reached towards me with the book.

“What are you talking about? That was the
last thing I wrote…” I opened the book and lost my voice. There
were at least ten full pages that I didn’t remember writing, but it
was definitely my handwriting. I could feel the intense wrinkles in
my brow and the frown pulling at my mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Jodi asked, looking up from
her book.

“I don’t…” I scanned through the pages.

“What?” Jodi asked again a little more
insistently.

“Um…” I blinked and shook my head. “I don’t
remember writing any of this…” I realized my fingers were tingling
with energy, like the pages themselves were full of magic waiting
for someone to unlock their secrets.

“What are you talking about?” Steven asked,
sharing a worried look with Jodi.

“I woke up in the middle of the night last
night, probably around 2 a.m., and I wrote this,” I had found the
page with the list of details from my dream, the handwriting sloppy
from darkness and nerves. I turned the open book for them to see.
“And then I went back to sleep, almost immediately. I didn’t write
anything this morning…” I just didn’t understand and now my two
best friends were looking at me like I was crazy. Great.

“So you’re saying you were… sleep writing?”
Jodi asked a little too carefully.

“Stranger things have happened,” I snapped at
her; she recoiled like I’d struck her. “Sorry, but you two look
like I’m crazy or something.”

“We don’t think you’re crazy. It’s just,
that’s a lot of writing to not remember,” Steven said before Jodi
could lash out.

“I know that, that’s why it bothers me this
much. And it feels…” I stopped and glared at the book, willing it
to tell me what it was hiding.

“What?” they asked in chorus.

“Here,” I reached out to hand them the book.
I didn’t want to tell them what I felt; I wanted to see if they
could feel it. “See if you get anything from it.” They looked at me
for a minute, both considering my face. Eventually, Jodi was the
first to nod and took the book from me. She took a deep breath,
closed her eyes, and set her hand above the book, not quite
touching, just like I taught her. Her eyes fluttered and then she
snapped her hand back like she’d been shocked.

“What?” Steven asked.

“That’s a lot of energy. I mean, wow.” She
shook her hand, trying to get the tingling sensation to go away.
“Here, see for yourself.” She handed the book to Steven and he
copied her every move, right down to snatching his hand back and
shaking the feeling out of it.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s residual. You know
how there was so much magic in the air yesterday you could reach
out and grab it. Maybe I just had a lot of stored up energy and
channeled it,” I said with a shrug. It sounded reasonable enough to
me. I was toying with my necklace again absentmindedly. “Anyway,
just flip back like ten pages, Steven, you’ll find the stuff from
my dream.”

I sat back in my chair, curling my legs under
me and sitting on my ankles. I reached for my cup of tea and took a
deep breath, steadying and grounding myself. It was unnerving to
find out I could be doing something like writing spells and not
even be awake. It seemed reckless and dangerous.

“Hey, question,” Steven said, marking his
spot on the page with his index finger before looking up at me.
“You have the word ‘highway’ written here and a mile marker.”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, so you were in the woods, but you could
hear the ocean nearby and then you broke out onto a highway.”

“Yeah.”

“Could you see the ocean when you hit the
road?” Steven asked.

“Actually… yeah.” I said realizing I hadn’t
thought to note that. “But it was so dark in the dream I didn’t
realize that was the ocean. So… that can’t be Ojai then.”

“No, it’s Malibu,” Steven said, looking from
me to Jodi. “At least on the way to Malibu. It’s probably around
County Line.” County line is a very popular surf spot in between
Ventura County and Malibu.

“Dude, you’re right,” I said sitting up
straight. The picture fell into place in my mind like the last
puzzle piece. “But that’s so far away from the original spot! Why
would he give up all that power out there?”

“Do you remember what you said when we were
scrying and saw the ceremony site?” Jodi asked.

“What?”

“You said they were amateurs, remember? Maybe
they really are, maybe they don’t realize that they raised power at
that place that they could tap into and are just moving because of
the attention they attracted.”

“That does make sense, Shay,” Steven
agreed.

“Yeah, probably.” I chewed the inside of my
bottom lip, my eyes unfocused as I remembered last night’s dream.
“Well then, maybe we have the site for tomorrow night, or at least
the location. We can go and stake it out and when we see who ever
it is and who ever the girl is, we can stop it.”

“What about the beast that chases you?” Jodi
asked.

“What about it?” I looked at her a little
confused.

“Aren’t you worried about it?”

“I guess not. I mean, you guys aren’t ever in
the dream, so maybe the dream was also a warning about what could
happen if you didn’t go with me. But you’ll be there. That’ll
probably change some of the outcomes.” I shrugged. “Besides, the
beast may not even be real. It could be my subconscious warning me
about getting hurt by the guy that’s doing this.”

“Yeah, I guess…” Jodi didn’t sound so
sure.

“What would make you feel better?” I
asked.

“Maybe we should go tonight and try and find
the place he’s gonna be and do some preemptive casting for
protection?”

“How can we cast against something we don’t
know what is? Or if it even exists?” Steven asked.

“Yeah, that does seem kinda dangerous,” I
said. “Besides, I’m a little worried going near Malibu today,
anyway. There were probably landslides or something from yesterday.
It’s not much, but one more day for the ground to settle would make
me feel better.”

“You mean you want to go down there blind?”
Jodi’s voice rose dangerously high.

“We’re gonna be blind anyway,” Steven said,
putting a hand on her knee. “We don’t know who we’re looking for or
where he’ll be coming from or where he’ll be starting out when he
first goes into the woods.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon devising a
plan to save this anonymous girl, knowing that she would follow the
guy into the woods willingly, but not because she knew why. The
girl in my dream had no idea where they were going or why, but she
was definitely following. Apparently, all the horror movies in the
world don’t teach everyone.

We each agreed to bring our athames. We were
also bringing a supply of consecrated water. We agreed that since
this was going to be an ambush we didn’t need to be weighed down by
a lot of tools. We could tap into each other’s power without the
pomp and circumstance of an altar. I was worried, but there wasn’t
anything for it. I knew in my heart of hearts this was going to
happen tomorrow and we had to stop it.

Chapter 13

I was in the kitchen, all the lights were
out, and everyone had gone to bed. The only light came from the
glow of the inside of the refrigerator as I held the door open,
leaning in to look for something. I had no idea what I was looking
for. I wasn’t even sure I was hungry. I started to reach for a can
of whip cream when I heard the lightest of knocks on the front
door. My hand was frozen in the air, shaped like a claw reaching
for the can, I turned to stare in the direction of the front
door.

I stood up straight, gently closing the
refrigerator door and turned to look at the clock on the microwave.
It was after eleven o’clock. I’m a very paranoid person. Most
people don’t think maniacs will knock on the door, but what easier
way is there to get past a locked door than having someone on the
other side unlock it for you?

I tiptoed on sock covered feet towards the
front door. Every nerve in my body was tingling with tension; the
pent-up internal energy sparked inside me and flowed to my fingers,
rushing to set the tips on fire, raising the hair on my arms. If it
were Jodi or Steven, they would’ve called. The person tapped on the
front door again, no louder than the first time. I froze. I was
only steps away from the front door and the windows by it. I looked
to the hallway and contemplated getting my dad, but something held
me in place. I wanted to open the door. I thought of all those
horror movies where the girl is home alone in the middle of the
night and stupidly opens the door for the crazed killer. I always
yelled at those girls and thought they deserved to die for being so
stupid. Was I going to be that girl?

I made it to the window to the left of the
front door; you could see who was at the door without them noticing
you were looking. I lifted the very corner of the binds less than
an inch away and peered through the darkness at the figure. It was
a man, tall by my standards, dark hair that was probably lighter
than it looked now. He was huddled in a thick coat, his hands
shoved into the pockets, rounding his shoulders forward. He scuffed
his toe on my doorstep and looked up at the overhang above the
door. He reached out, balling up his fist and started reaching for
the door again, but hesitated this time. His hand fell and he
turned away from the door just as a car with its high beams on
rounded the corner in front of my house, throwing the bright lights
across Jensen’s startling features.

I scrambled for the door. I forgot that I was
in silly stripped socks, oversized flannel pajama bottoms, and a
sweatshirt that was probably three or four sizes too big. I flipped
the front porch light on first, the fastest thing I could do to
signal to him. I fumbled with the deadbolt and finally was able to
wrench the door open. It was swollen from all the rain, but with
one firm tug it gave. Jensen had stopped at the very edge of the
front step when I turned on the light and was facing the door when
I opened it. His skin looked luminescent in the darkness, making
his blue eyes stand out in stark contrast, like an ocean just after
a storm and the skies have opened up with brilliant sunlight.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, happy
to hear my voice was steady, if not suspicious.

“I was hoping we could talk?” he had the
courtesy to whisper too.

“It’s after eleven o’clock, my parents…” I
made a vague gesture to the house behind me.

“Oh right… we could sit in my car.” He
mimicked my motion behind him towards the road.

“Um… I don’t know, Jensen. I mean…” I let my
voice trail off. There wasn’t much that I’d like better than to sit
in a dark private place with him where no one would interrupt us. I
mentally blinked, realizing I hadn’t even admitted that to myself
yet.

“Please?” His voice sounded a little
strained, like it was very important that I say yes. I sighed and
looked back towards the hallway. I could hear my father’s distant
snoring and the rest of the house was quiet. If my parents woke up
and found me out of the house without permission – in a car with a
boy no less – I’d be grounded for sure. I knew I shouldn’t risk
that with our plans for the next night, but a bigger part of me
really wanted to go to him.

“Ok, hold on.” I put up one finger and then
closed the door silently behind me as I stepped back into the
house. I dashed as quietly as I could back to my room and grabbed
my rain boots and my house keys. I kept them cupped in my hand to
keep them from making any noise and made it back out the front
door. Jensen had gone a few steps down our front walk and was
staring out at the road with his back to me. I realized my stomach
was tied up in knots that made it hard to breath. Me, nervous?

I locked the door behind me in case anyone
woke up; I didn’t want them to see an unlocked front door and get
suspicious and go looking for me. I scuffed my feet a little as I
walked up behind Jensen so he’d know I was there without needing to
say anything. I was a little afraid of how my voice would sound. He
turned and gave me a small, almost sad, smile and motioned towards
the car with his head. We walked side by side across the front
lawn. I was horribly aware of the fact that he was dressed quite
well for a spur of the moment meeting, whereas I had lost any hint
of a figure in my baggy clothing. At least I was warm. Yeah, sure,
that made me feel better.