Storm (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Penelope

I’m in my car when a buzzing sound goes off. But it’s not my phone. I tinker around until I find the large, round, gray communicator—relay—buzzing under the passenger seat. I’d forgotten about that thing. I stare it at it, at the small red blinking button. Did it blink before? I press my finger against the red button, and then the car spins. Literally spins. Or maybe I’m spinning. Then I’m not in the car—I’m on the library floor.

Whoa.

Seak rubs his face against my arm. I’m in the library.
How am I in the library?

“What the heck was that?” I ask.

“Relay,” Poncho says. I look up from the floor toward his rounded face. He holds a hand out. “Hello, Miss Grey.”

I take his hand and he guides me up. “You didn’t tell me it did that.”

“Didn’t I?” he says, and then he shrugs. “It does a multitude of things.”

I stare at the plastic thing and then slide it into my pocket. Half of it sticks it out.

“I’ve been calling you all morning,” Poncho says. I follow him through the library back to the information desk.

“What’s so important?”

He stops and turns to face me. “I have found the cause of your sister’s condition.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “You have? Who asked you to look?”

“Mr. Prescott,” he says.

A sinking feeling falls into the pit of my stomach. If he’s looking into what happened to Connie, how long will it be until he discovers I’m what happened? And if he learns that, then what if he learns that I took the deal with Lia? The nervousness sets my magic on alert, like an arrow taut on a bowstring. “What did you find?”

Poncho leans into me. “Traces of the void.” He pauses. “The void is a powerful magic, much different than the essence. It exists without rather than within. A pure magic that can kill.”

“Kill?”

He nods. “Witches can’t handle such pure magic. The void is a seeping poison to the heart. The contact slowly shuts down the body over days. Most victims don’t survive long.”

Don’t survive… “How long?”

“The longest case was twenty days, but that witch was a halfling. Halflings are still susceptible to the magic. The void and the essence will always battle, since only one can have control. The battle between the two magics is what kills someone.”

This is pretty much what Lia told me. Connie’s been in a coma for eight days. I freeze, eyes on Poncho. I’ve never told him directly what I am, but I always assumed he knew. I can’t tell from his face whether he’s testing me.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I cross my arms, hoping it shows more of whatever point I’m trying to make. I’m not even sure right now. The void stirs within me.

His eyes are on me, and I feel like he’s looking through me. “Perhaps it is a demon seeking to finish what Kriegen started.”

Kriegen. She wanted to convert me and Carter. “Kriegen’s dead.”

“Indeed,” he says, voice very still. “I will continue to look into it, per Mr. Prescott’s request. I do suggest that you keep that dagger hidden. If a demon is after you and your sister, it could be for that, since it too links back to Kriegen.”

He’s not completely wrong. Lia needs the dagger, but she needs me, too. “I will,” I say. My eyes drift to the clock. I’m late for Lia. Poncho stares at me. “Anything else?”

“You should continue with your day. You don’t want to be late for your plans.” I freeze. How does he know I have plans? I start to question him, but he holds up a hand. “You looked at the clock, Miss Grey.”

Right. I glance at it again, directly above his head. He never misses anything. “See you later.”

“I am here should you need me as you are aware that I am here to guide you.”

“Your destiny,” I say. “I almost forgot.”

“Yes, and yours. For it is underway.”

I swallow, nervous and on edge suddenly.

Poncho only smiles. “Have a good day, Miss Grey.”

…

Lia is waiting in the woods off the trails in the same place where I first saw Kriegen use the dagger. It’s a good location, secluded, with open space and not many eyes. At first, I could still see the red-headed witch that died and the dagger releasing her essence into the atmosphere. Now, after four days of meeting with Lia, it seems like a distant memory. It’s not lost on me that this is where everything changed, and now, it’s where I’m changing.

“You’re late,” Lia says. Her voice comes from above me and when I find her, she’s sitting up in a tree. I think about giving her a reason, but I don’t think she needs one. She’s not my keeper. Lia jumps down from the tree and lands on her feet.

“Let’s not waste time talking,” she says. We walk to the center of the open space and she faces me. “Start where we left off yesterday. Remember what you did?”

I nod and exhale.

We started out with small things. I demonstrated how I’d been using the void by calling up images in my head and then projecting them out. She told me that was incomplete and weak. I’d always thought the void created from nothing, and it is, but it creates from what I visualize—from conception, to use, to ending. Apparently, there’s a way to use the void without thinking, to have it become part of me and respond. When that happens it—and I—can do way more damage.

Lia said the reason my using the void backfired on Connie was because I didn’t have a clear image of how to stop what happening, and I didn’t have control of my emotions. When I’m too emotional, the void doesn’t know how to respond so it either doesn’t, or it goes too crazy to control. She says it’s better to feel nothing. With Connie, I was scared, and fear is the most powerful of all emotions. The result of that fear is lying in a coma in a hospital bed.

Lia walks around me in a circle. “I want you to call on the void again, and then close it off immediately. Emotions are a liability, but being able to control them makes you powerful. Our goal here is to make the void be completely connected to you.”

Apparently, phenomenal cosmic power requires you to not feel anything. That completely goes against how we’re taught to use the essence. The essence is heightened by emotion, the void hindered by it.

“Feel the strongest emotions,” she says. Fear, anger, worry, the emotions that command decisions. “Then cut it off, let the void take over.”

I nod and focus on the empty space around me. I see an image of a tree falling down, what I want to happen immediately, but no. Not allowed. No images.

Fear.
I have a lot of options, and they all flood through me. I need to pick one moment, so I focus in on when I was a child. Each time I go there, though, back to that moment, I feel myself crack open. Yet I keep going back. For the last four days, I keep going back.

Mommy is singing to me and daddy busts in, and lunges at us. Mommy throws me under the bed and starts fighting him. I’m so scared. I can’t see anything, but I can hear it all. I can hear her. What is daddy doing? Why is he being mean? I don’t want to hear so I cover my ears and mommy screams. A demon grabs at my feet, pulls me from my spot under the bed. I’m crying, screaming for mommy, for daddy, but the demon holds me down. I can’t get away. I can’t get away. Mommy whispers magic words, says my name, says please to the demon. But the demon with the orange eyes laughs at me. “Watch this,” he says to me while his friend tears into mommy’s throat.

I feel the magic building up, that familiar bursting sensation right before it flows from my pores. It wants to come out, but I’m still in my house, still a kid, still afraid.

“Now close off your emotions. Don’t feel anything, Penelope. Let go.”

That’s easier said than done.

Don’t feel anything.

Be a wall. Be a statue. Be solid and unmoving. Close the door. Love no one. Fear nothing. Be nothing.

I force the images of the demons and mom and me away from my head. I try not to see the blood. I tell child-memory me to take a breath, to forget, to release it. I push all of those emotions back down into the box I’ve built in my head. I push and push and try to not feel. To not care.

I won’t care. I don’t. Nothing can harm me.

Then the magic pours out of me in the form of light and wind. Not with the usual force that it carries, but more obedient. I try not to enjoy it. But when I see Lia smile, I break my concentration and the magic stops.

“Good job,” Lia says. “But you need to be faster at gaining control of the emotions and turning them off. When you do that, you’ll be unstoppable. Again.”

That’s what we do over and over. She makes me feel a strong emotion, then makes me close it off. For hours we do this, and when she’s satisfied, she allows me to stop.

“Better, but it still takes you too long.”

“Sorry, I’m not a robot.” It’s hard to shut off that pain. To not feel it. She’s asking me to harness it into the magic, and that’s not done overnight. Not when I’ve had so much of it.

Lia shakes her head “It’s not about being a robot, it’s about not having connections. Your emotions are still attached to these people. Demons don’t develop feelings. It’s the human emotions that make you weaker.”

“Demons have no feelings?”

“None,” she says. “We have to kill to survive, to continue our population. If we had feelings, then we couldn’t do that. The conscience is a tool of destruction. When a demon is made, the old life is gone—for a Non or a witch. The ties that bind them to this world are removed.”

“Then why do you want to be a human again?”

“Because I remember what it was like,” she says. “The sun on your skin, a first kiss, the way food tastes. I always try to keep it close, and other demons don’t. Remembering makes it hard to be powerful. I don’t remember my life, particularly, but I can almost remember how it was to be alive. I hang out at this bar called O’Malley’s sometimes because being around the living is as close as any of us demons can come to being alive.”

“You’re alive now.”

“Am I?”

I stare at Lia. Her appearance will never allow her to be human again, to live the life she once did. I stand and dust off my pants. That’s when I notice the blackness has spread up my hand and over my wrist.

“It’s spreading,” I say. She takes my hand and examines it.

“You need to master the magic. You have to accept it.”

“I’m trying.”

“You need to be faster. Three hours a day isn’t enough.”

I look at the blackness spreading up my hands. “Everyone is going to see this.”

Lia takes my hand and runs a finger over the vein. “We can glamour it. We’ll have to do it every day, and more frequently as it expands. I’ll show you,” she says.

She calls on the void and I feel it embrace the space around me. She doesn’t say anything, and it’s only a second, and then my marks are not visible. Not even to me.

“How do you do that?”

“The same way you will. Devotion to practice,” she says, crisply pronouncing every syllable.

I sigh. “Then let’s do it again.”

…

It’s nearly three a.m. when I sneak into the house. The stairs creak as I walk up them, and I try to be quiet. My hands are shaky from doing magic all day, and the last thing I need is Gran on my case asking questions about where I was all night. I doubt she’d like my answer of hanging out with a new demon friend who’s teaching me how to use demon magic.

“I’m glad you made it home,” Pop’s voice says. I look up and he’s standing at the top of the steps, staring at me. So much for being quiet. “Deborah went to sleep only an hour ago, so you can expect to speak to her when you wake up.”

Great.
“Sorry, Pop.”

He holds up a hand. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I say.

The relief fills his face. I realize that I should be upset that I worried him, but I’m not. “Where were you?” he asked.

I stare at him. He won’t like the answer, either, so I lie. “With Carter. Sorry, we fell asleep at his house after I went to the hospital.”

Pop’s face snaps up to look at me. “You weren’t at the hospital, Penelope. But it was your day to check in on her.”

I forgot about that. I was supposed to go there, but then Poncho called me in. Normally, I’d be panicky, worried that Pop is upset, but again, I wasn’t. “Pop, I can explain.”

He shakes his head. “Save it for your grandmother.” He rests his hand on my shoulder, and the magic billows near his touch. I step back from his contact, and his eyes seem heavy. “If you’re in trouble, Penelope, you can tell us anything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I snap quickly.

Pop raises an eyebrow at the sudden outburst. I never talk to him that way. “I was at Carter’s, and that’s all. I didn’t go see Connie because I couldn’t handle it. It was a hard day, Pop.”

My skin still crawls even when his face softens, and he pats my back. “Get some sleep.” And then he goes back into his room, leaving me feeling surprisingly okay with the lie.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Carter

I had to go out with the Enforcers for the first markings. This whole idea is ridiculous, but I had to be there. I need to be able to tell my dad he’s wrong. I can’t do that unless I see it happening. So, I join Jordan Stark and Annah Jelowski today.

Jordan slaps me on the back when he sees me. The guy is as big as a linebacker and Annah is this girl about half his size, short and stalky. It makes no sense for Council to appoint this to two brand new Enforcers—they were in my training class—but they did.

“This is the first one,” Annah says. She rings the doorbell, and Jordan smiles at her. She smiles ba
ck. I feel like I’m imposing.

With a shuffle, there’s a face in the window and then the door unlocks and a woman appears. “Mr. Prescott, what a nice surprise.”

“Mrs. Arthur,” I say. The nice old woman from the hospital. Jordan and Annah look pleased that she knows me because this will make it easier for them. Harder for me. “Sorry to intrude.”

She
tsks
and opens her door wider. “You and your friends, come on in. I’ll make some tea.”

“We actually don’t have—”

Jordan pushes past me. “Tea sounds great, ma’am.” He gives me a dirty look before he goes into her house. We have to mark this old woman. Last time I saw her she didn’t even have power, but I told her the Triad cared about her. They don’t. I lied. My dad has made me into a liar.

Lindley Arthur’s house is full of books. Annah takes a few minutes to look at them all. There are books on shelves built into the walls around the house, on the floor, on the steps. Anywhere and everywhere. I pick up one that’s a compilation of three of her novels.

Mrs. Arthur comes back and notices me looking. “I hate that cover,” she says. “A pirate series without pirates on the cover. Dreadful. You can take it, dear.”

“You have a lot of books,” Jordan says.

She snorts. “My to-be-read pile seems to constantly be multiplying.”

Jordan smiles, and we all sit, crammed next to each other on her floral couch while she keeps talking about books. Annah nods along, adding a comment. Finally, Mrs. Arthur looks at me. “Why are you here? Is this about the Observance? I have my parts in the Static play all memorized.”

“It’s not about that,” Annah says.

Jordan sits straighter in his spot. I stare at the wall. “Mrs. Arthur, we’re here on official business. Reports have indicated that you have manifested with this new magic.”

Mrs. Arthur looks at me. “I didn’t ask for it, it just happened two days ago, I woke up and there it was. Clear destroyed my whole bedroom wall.”

“Yes,” Annah says. “We’re aware. The Triad has sent us to here to remedy the problem.”

Mrs. Arthur jumps up, knocking her little coffee table out of place. “Remedy? Nothing’s wrong with me. You go. The lot of you.”

She moves across the room, eyes wide and on alert. Jordan takes a step toward her, but I hold him back. Last time I saw a spooked Static, it was Taylor Plum—right before she killed Maple. “Mrs. Arthur,” I start. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

Her head shakes so fast that her hair falls out of its bun. She backs into one of the stacks of books and they fall to the floor. “Leave.”

“If you sit down then this will be less painful,” Jordan says.

That’s the wrong thing to say. Her eyes give her away first, abnormally large and bright, then Mrs. Arthur goes ballistic on the room. The magic shoots from her fingers, knocking a chandelier from the ceiling and Annah has to jump to avoid getting hit. I move toward Mrs. Arthur, but she shoots more magic at me.

“I trusted you.”

The words sting, because yes, she did. And I trusted the Triad to do the right thing for once. We were both wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Before I can act, Jordan zaps her with magic and holds her in place. He and Annah start chanting the same words and the whole time Mrs. Arthur fights against their hold. Around us, the whistle of the tea kettle starts in a low tone. The lights flicker between bright and dim, and her magic shoots out from her hands, bouncing off anything, hitting anything. It’s chaos.

“Don’t do this to me,” she yells, and then the words drift off into screaming. Then her body starts to convulse against the bookshelves.

That’s not right. “Let her go,” I yell to Jordan over the high pitched, impatient whistle of the tea kettle.

He and Annah stop chanting, and Mrs. Arthur falls to the ground. Her body still moves on the ground and I rush over to her. Her face is stiff, eyes bolting back and forth, but she’s unresponsive to me when I say her name or touch her.

“What’s wrong with her?” Annah asks, her voice frantic.

“Call someone,” I yell.

But when her body stops moving, her face is white, and she’s ice cold.

Lindley Arthur is dead.