Hush (Witches & Warlocks Book 2) (12 page)

Daya tells me that this used to be the place they’d bring the children to practice their healing magic, confirming several things all at once. First, I
am
at the ranch that Luke and Noah survived as children. Second, I was right to distrust Daya. And third, this place probably was beautiful once upon a time. My heart breaks a little, thinking about the children that lived here. What happened that ended up with so many of them dead?

As rain starts to fall, dripping and dropping onto my hair and face, Daya tells me that it’s my job to heal the garden.

I can’t help but make a face. “I’ve done this before, remember?”

“Arrogance is the first step towards failure.” Daya reaches her hands up towards the sky and turns her face upwards. “Pluvia deluvium.” Her harsh voice rakes out across the courtyard and goosebumps run down my back as electricity gathers around us. The hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. “Tonitrui fulgur perdere!”

The sky unleashes a holy fury and rain pelts the ground, matting my hair to my head. Bits of hail bounce off my back and shoulders. Wind whips around me, tries to knock me back. Daya’s still speaking, but the wind and the rain steal her words.

Lightning strikes one of the trees and there’s a massive crack that snatches my breath away and flash of light so bright I’m left blinking and rubbing my eyes. My ears ring and throb as I rub my face and try to swallow.

Rain runs down into my eyes and I swipe it away. Daya’s chanting and the wind is howling and the hail actually really hurts and it all blends together into one heart-pounding moment. How does she expect me to heal the garden when I can’t hear my thoughts over my own fear? How am I supposed to focus on calm and find a place of serenity when the entire courtyard is chaos?

Maybe, if I focus on my breathing, that’ll help drown out all that’s going on. I take a big breath of rain water in through my nose and choke.

“You’re worthless, Zoe!” Daya screams at me over the wind and the rain. “Look at you! Covering your eyes and ears, choking and gagging in fear! You’re lucky Lucy hid you from me because you never would have survived the training here. You’d have been the first to die. You’re weak!”

I crumble at her words, mostly because they echo everything I’ve been thinking about myself. She tells me I’m nothing and I agree. She calls me a failure and I know it to be true. All the magic dies down inside me, the golden light of the healing spell I’d been trying to maintain hardens into a tight little ball of something hard and pointed and ugly. My stomach flips and flops and falls to my feet and my magic seeps out of me, this dripping black sludge, flickering with fury.

The grass at my feet, already brown and brittle, doesn’t just die, it shrivels away until there’s nothing but this big patch of desiccated earth that just keeps expanding away from where I stand. I’d like to say that I hate the way it feels, but I don’t. Not entirely. It’s terrifying. It’s thrilling. I hate it and I love it and I want it to stop and I want to give in.

“Look at you. You worthless little thing. You’re killing it all!” Daya shrieks, a primal thing and the wind finally manages to make me stagger back a few steps. Thunder rumbles and hail bounces and I just want it all to stop.

I want it all to stop.

The thought brings another one hot on its heels. I could stop time. Maybe. I think. Or at least I could slow it a little, give myself some time to think. A chance to calm myself without Daya and the wind and the rain.

The tiger’s pacing and roaring and doing all the things that used to make me so uncomfortable. I call her to my side and place my hand on her head and for just the briefest of seconds, all seems right in the world.

“Tempore prohibere,” I whisper and hope for the best.

Imagine standing in the middle of a maelstrom of rain and wind and hail and then imagine it completely ceasing. No sound. No movement. The ripples in the growing puddles are now just concentric circles gradually increasing in size. The hail striking my shoulder is now just resting there and when I step off to the side, it hovers in the air beside me.

    I have just a second to appreciate what a surreal thing this is before time rights itself. There’s a flash of movement and Daya’s in front of me. “Clever girl.”

And then I’m wrenched from the courtyard and find myself standing next to the cot I woke in this morning. I spin and find Daya closing the massive door. There’s a moment of metal grinding against concrete and then a hollow, metal
thung
followed by the clunk and clank of the lock turning into place.

I lower myself onto the cot and hold my shaking hands out in front of me before clenching them into fists and pressing them into my lap. What in the world was all that about? To say I’m confused might be the biggest understatement of all times. Why is Daya hurting me? I check the burn on my arm. I’d forgotten about it in the courtyard what with all the thunder and lightning and Daya telling me I’m worthless. My arm’s fine. Unless you’d been there to see the wound she’d inflicted, you’d never even know I’d been hurt.

My head though? It’s less fine. It’s got too many thoughts and questions swirling around up there and I’m still shaking like a leaf. I survey the room again. Take it all in. Filthy window. One way mirror. Plastic bin with stacks of clothes. Dirty walls. Dusty floors. Door that looks like something out of some prison movie. Folding table and chair.

My gaze settles on the notebook and pen on the table. Every time my thoughts are all out of whack and I can’t make sense of them, I write. Without another thought, I scuttle over to the chair, scrape it back against the concrete floor, fling open the notebook, and start writing. I’ve always written when I’m upset.

I pour out every thought I’ve been struggling since everything went sideways. I write about meeting Noah, about learning my life was a lie, about Luke’s betrayal. My hand shakes and stutters as I try to write about Becca’s betrayal and I end up just writing her name over and over and over, etching her name into the page and dripping hot tears onto the paper.

I write about my time at Windsor, how confused I’ve been, how much I miss Noah’s friendship. I pause and draw us under that tree, that beautiful tree with the red leaves, the day he kissed me and it was perfect and led me to the water’s edge to calm me down with his magic. All the how’s and all the why’s and all the things that I’ve been trying to ignore and deal with, they all come pouring out onto the paper. I ignore the lines, just scrawling in the margins, scraping my pen across the page as my emotions take control of my words.

This whole time I’ve been trying to roll with the punches, to deal with the cards I’ve been dealt. Or at least that’s what I thought. Turns out, I wasn’t dealing with anything at all. I was moving forward like a good little soldier, ignoring all the questions and worries and upsetting thoughts I had. That’s not dealing. That’s … what? Surviving?

Whatever it is, it’s left me with a big ball of sadness locked away in my stomach and now, all alone, locked in a tiny little concrete room, soaking wet and wearing some strange green jumpsuit, it all comes bubbling up to the surface and I cry.

I cry for Becca.

I cry for my parents.

I cry for the old me who thought that all she wanted was to speak.

I cry for the loss of Noah.

I cry for Luke not being what I thought he was.

And in the end, I cry for me.

And when I’m done, I wipe my eyes on my hands and sniffle and run my hands through my hair and maybe, just maybe, I feel a little better.

And that’s when I realize I’m not alone.

Chapter Fourteen

“Why are you crying?”  The voice is as pure as light streaming into water

I spin in my seat, the metal legs of the chair grating against the floor, and find a little girl, maybe eleven or twelve, all knees and elbows and hair so blonde it might as well be illuminated from the inside. She smiles and my tears feel useless. I wipe my face one more time.

“I don’t know.” Of course I know, but there’s something so pure about her, I’d just get her dirty trying to explain it all.

“Sometimes I cry and don’t know why either.” The girl crosses the room and puts a hand on my hand and calmness stretches out all languid and warm into my heart. Her eyes shine with a brightness that reminds me of leaves crunching under my feet and warm sweaters and I realize that she’s a remnant. “But, this time,” the girl continues and I hear her voice in my mind as well as with my ears, “I think you know why you’re crying.”

I don’t know what to do. The last time I was with a light remnant, he ended up twisting around and saying awful things to me until I lost control and nearly killed Tony. I don’t think I’m ready for this little girl to start doing anything that looks like that. Not now. Not when I’m so fragile.

The girl sits on my cot and pulls her long legs up so her knees are tucked under her chin and hugs them tight. “This isn’t a happy place,” she says.

“No,” I finally say, “it’s not.” I watch her while she watches me and I realize that once again, I’m pulling back from the situation and waiting for something to happen. Here I am, rolling with another punch. Maybe, it’s time to start throwing some of my own. Not that I want to punch this little girl or anything, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe I should start participating in the things that happen to me.

“I’m Zoe.”

The girl smiles and I think it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. “I’m Celine.”

“Why are you here?” I can’t help but look at the girl and feel sad. If purity had a face, it’d be hers. I think of the things that Luke and Noah alluded to, all the terrible things that happened here at the ranch, the eight kids who dwindled down to only two and I want to wrap this little girl up in my arms and apologize to her for the world in all its cruelty.

Celine smiles. “I keep thinking that if I stay, I’ll be able to tell everyone not to feel bad for what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I think you know.” Celine unwraps her arms from her legs and stretches out on her back, kicking one leg up to rest on the wall, letting her head fall off the edge of the cot so she can look at me upside down. “Everyone who came here cried, you know.”

“Why did you cry?”

“I cried because I couldn’t stand to watch my friends do bad stuff. I couldn’t do it and they all yelled at me, but I just couldn’t.” Celine raises her hands up to face and taps her fingers together. “I wish my friends couldn’t either.”

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as inherently good as this little girl. I wonder what would have happened if I’d been here with her. Would she have cried for me, too? Would she have been disappointed in me? Could I have been as strong as she was at such a young age?

I don’t think so.

Celine kicks her foot off the wall and does a little back flip off the bed and dances over to stand behind me. She gathers my hair into her hand and piles it onto the top of my head, fluffing it up and arranging it into something that feels like a bun. “You have pretty hair. It’s like my mom’s. Her hair always looked like a sunset to me.” She lets it fall and gathers it into three sections and starts a braid. “So, why are you crying, Zoe?”

“This isn’t a happy place.” I purposefully use her words and hope she’s lived here long enough to read between the lines.

She lets go of my hair and places her hands on my cheeks - I expected them to be cold, but they’re warm - and tilts my face back so I’m looking up at her as she bends over to meet my eyes. “I know that. You know that. All the others know that. Tell me what happened to make
you
cry.”

When she releases my cheeks, I keep my head tilted back so she can see me smile, before I sit up straight and spin around to face her. “I should have been here with you. Here at the ranch. When I was little.”

“Why weren’t you?”

“Someone hid me.”

Celine’s face lights up and she claps her little hands together. “That’s great!”

I almost tell her that it’s actually not been great. I think about all the frustrating times I had growing up, being forced into silence, embarrassed more than I was ever comfortable, learning my life was a lie, but I stop short. Sure. Because whatever it was I dealt with, whatever it is I’m currently dealing with, at least I’m alive. At least I didn’t watch my friends turn against each other. At least I didn’t end up haunting an abandoned building, filled with the ghosts and memories of terrible things.

“Ya. I guess it is.”

Celine’s face grows serious and I see the beautiful woman she might have become. “Why are you here now?”

“I guess that’s part of why I’m crying. I don’t really know. I didn’t know I was magic until just a few weeks ago. I’ve been kind of getting the crash course on this whole witches and warlocks deal.”

“And you’ve got too much magic, right? That’s why you should have been here?”

“Ya. Except, at first, I was supposed to hide my dark magic. But now, Daya has me here and it’s like she’s trying to draw it out of me. I don’t know.” I explain to Celine all the things that happened leading up to me being here, just lay my life story out on the line for her. When I tell her about what happened today, her little face clouds over.

“She wants you to use both magics at the same time.” There’s something she’s not saying. Something that has her light burning out and her little body folding in on itself, arms wrapping tight around her stomach, shoulders hunching forward.

“I think so.”

“You’ll get lost just like the others. Just like my friends.”

“I have no intention of getting lost, Celine. I kind of think I might actually find myself.”

The girl just shakes her head and slinks into the corner. Her colors dim, like, she’s slowly fading into black and white and then, from there, into plain old gray. I squint a little because I kind of think I can see through her. But then she sighs and swallows and her light flares bright and her colors return, more crisp and clear than they were when she first appeared. “You know what?” she cries, unwrapping her arms from their post around her middle and springing up onto my cot. “I’m going to help you.” She widens her eyes and leans forward like she’s just told the greatest of truths and smiles. “You’re gonna be a-ok, Zoe, ‘cause it’s going to be me and you here.” She hops off the cot and starts running her hand through my hair again. “I’ve got you and you’ve got me, right?”