Destruction: The December People, Book One (37 page)

Xavier looked at him for the flash of a nanosecond, then shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it, I guess.”

The house of cards tumbled as if a blast of wind Patrick didn’t feel came through the kitchen.

“Why’d it fall?” Patrick asked.

“It happens sometimes,” Xavier said.

Mom thundered back down the stairs with Evangeline and Samantha at her heels. She should leave Samantha alone. Of course, Samantha would agree to whatever Mom wanted her to do, but that didn’t mean Mom should ask. Mom and the girls sat down at the table with them, making Patrick and Xavier unwilling parts of a circle of wizards. Patrick could feel the subtle increase of magic, but the magic didn’t feel as clear and cold as it had on the Solstice. The magic still felt cold, but had unexplained warm spots, like in a lake. Their magic felt as they did. Distressed. Erratic. Desperate.

Samantha had sat on Patrick’s left. Whatever he said would be wrong, so he didn’t say anything at all. She placed her hand on his.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said.

He should comfort
her
.

“How are you?” he asked tentatively.

“I want to do magic,” she said.

“She should,” Evangeline said. “She’ll feel better.”

Patrick didn’t know much about magic, but he knew enough to know magic didn’t make people feel better.

“We’re casting a spell,” Mom said. She said it with the no-nonsense Mom tone she might use to say,
We will be cleaning out the garage.

“Whatever,” Patrick said.

“No whatevers,” Mom said. “This is very serious. And dangerous. You need to give it your full attention.”

“Why do I have to do it?” Patrick asked.

“Because you love your sister.”

“I used to.”

“Is that really the choice you’re making?” Mom asked. “That’s not the kind of person you are.”

Was.

Patrick didn’t respond. He didn’t fully understand his choices or why they mattered at this point anyway. He glanced at Samantha. She had the stringy hair, red eyes, and sunburned skin of someone who had spent the day at the beach. It would have been lovely if they
had
just come from a romp on the beach, but on someone who had stayed inside all day in winter, it just looked wrong.

“You want to help her?” he asked Samantha. “After what she did… or what she
didn’t
do.”

“I think you’re more angry than I am. Bad things happen. It’s done.”

“I don’t know if you’re really tough, really crazy, or just in denial.”

“Maybe she’s all three,” Evangeline said. “What are you picking on her for?”

“I’m
not
,” Patrick argued, but the accusation shut him up. Not only had he failed to comfort her, but now, apparently, he had picked on her.

“I understand there is a lot to be upset about right now,” Mom said. Her attempt at “calm” came out as strained and stilted. “But there is only one thing that can currently be changed. Three of you have been practicing magic for your entire lives. There has to be something helpful you can come up with.”

“Why don’t you just use the spell you used to find Dad,” Evangeline said to Xavier. Everyone’s head whipped over to him, Mom’s the fastest. Xavier gave his sister a
look
.

“What?” Mom asked. “I thought he just got a phone call. Or was he lying about that too?”

“No,” Evangeline said. “But how do you think spells like that work? They work through people and events and things. They change what happens.”

“Okay. Perfect,” Mom said. “Xavier?”

“It’s not a good idea,” he said.

“I try to be patient with you, Xavier, but sometimes you make me want to pull my hair out,” Mom said. “I can’t even begin to fathom why you don’t want to help. Tell me, in plain English… in full sentences… why you can’t or won’t perform this spell.”

“I won’t do it,” Xavier said. A streak of rather Vandergraff-ish stubbornness broke through his barely-there demeanor.

“It was a complete sentence spoken in English,” Patrick said.

Mom turned her sights on Patrick, but Samantha intervened.

“I think I know the spell. I’ll do it,” Samantha said. Even now, she wanted to neutralize the situation.

“It’s simple, really,” she continued. “At least… I think it is. I don’t know if it’s different for winter wizards, but it’s so simple, I don’t see how different it could be. My parents never taught it to me. They didn’t allow me to do serious magic. They said you shouldn’t alter the world to get things you want because people are too stupid to know what they want. And they don’t believe in doing magic to earn things you don’t deserve, like to get money or promotions and stuff. If you did, it would be jinxed anyway. But… I think the same concepts would apply here, and it’s not about getting something you shouldn’t have. It’s for a good purpose. So, I don’t think it would be jinxed.”

“Tell us,” Mom prompted. She tapped her foot against the table.

“Like I said, it’s really simple. All you have to do is think about what you want to happen and it will.” Samantha glanced over at Xavier as if she wanted his confirmation, but his non-expression provided so little information, he might as well have been invisible.

“That’s it? That can’t be right,” Mom said.

“It’s not as easy as it sounds. I mean, it’s really like all other spells. You do them with your mind. You visualize what you want and find the correct current of energy to make it happen.”

Mom nodded now, drinking in her every word.

“But it’s easier when you want something simple to happen, like fire to appear in your hand. It’s easy to picture in your head. If you’re trying to manipulate complicated things, it’s hard to find the right thing to focus on. You can’t be too specific. There are a limited number of possible things that can happen. And if you don’t pick something that’s in the range of possibility, it won’t work. You have to let the magic figure out the details. But if you’re too vague, you might not get what you want, at least not in the way you expect.”

“That’s the thing,” Patrick said. “We can’t picture what’s going to happen. We don’t even know what state she’s in. Like when she jumped off the roof, we knew exactly how it would look for her to slow down before hitting the ground, so we could picture it.”

“That’s why this spell is more dangerous than jumping off the roof,” Xavier said unexpectedly.

Mom cocked her head to the side to consider what he had said. She stopped tapping her foot.

“It really is simple,” Mom said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it that way. And if all seven of us… or six… five… all focus on the same outcome while in a circle, it would be extremely powerful.”

Samantha nodded.

“What if we simply focus on protecting Emmy? Is that too vague?” Mom asked. “I know it is vague. But perhaps we could make it into a visual. Imagine a bubble of protection around her, or something like that. What do you think?”

“It seems okay to me,” Samantha said. “I’ve never done this before.” She looked at Xavier again.

Xavier got up from the table and left the room.

“Xavier,” Evangeline called as he walked away. He didn’t turn around. Patrick expected Evangeline to follow him, but she didn’t.

“He’s not going to come back,” Evangeline said. “We should do it with four.”

“Why won’t he do it?” Mom asked.

“I think he’s worried about Dad,” Evangeline said.

Mom furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t understand. I mean, I’m worried, too, but I don’t even think he’ll even get within fifty miles of that man. He has absolutely no idea where to go and he’s driving around Texas randomly. If he’s in any danger, it would be a car accident, but that’s just as much a danger when he commutes to work, probably more since he’s driving in Houston.”

Evangeline shrugged one shoulder. “Well, Xavier won’t do the spell. I can tell.”

“Four is the most powerful wizard circle anyway. Am I right?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be one from each season,” Evangeline said.

Mom swatted the thought away. “This is as close as it gets. We have three out of four. A summer wizard would never sit at a table with a winter wizard.” She looked at Patrick. “Are you in?”

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “It seems simple enough. Just like prayer.”

ight had fallen. And, in between towns in West Texas, night fell hard. If David cared to look at the sky, he knew he would see all the stars he missed in Houston. No streetlights lit his path. Nothing but his headlights illuminated the patch of black road ahead of them.

In Ozona, Jude had said they shouldn’t take the exit toward Odessa. He wanted them to keep driving West on I-10 at ninety-five miles per hour. David didn’t think it would make sense for Colter to stay in Odessa. He had successfully faked his own death there, and going to the local grocery store would risk exposure. A logical man would flee to Mexico, but David didn’t think Colter did that. Frankly, he had no idea what Colter would have done. He assumed logic played no factor in his decision. He could be anywhere.

However, David couldn’t fairly criticize anyone’s logic now. They currently searched for a person in the place where, statistically speaking, a person was the least likely to be. The country areas they drove through had an average of one person per square mile. They were not far from Loving County, the least populous county in the United States, with eighty-two official residents. But David thought Colter would like that. The man had gone well out of his way to avoid people and society. He would want to be that one person per square mile.

The total darkness made it easier not to talk to Jude. Without seeing him clearly, David could almost believe his son didn’t sit there next to him.

At least, until he talked.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“I didn’t hurt her or anything. It wasn’t like that.”

David made a disgusted sound.

“I mean, I didn’t hit her.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re really mad at me, aren’t you?”

“No, Jude, I’m
mad
at you when you break curfew.”

“So, what are you then?”

“What was going through your head? What makes a person think that’s an okay thing to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know it was wrong, right? You must know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have left. You wouldn’t have said you were sorry.”

“Yes.”

The blue light from the digital display illuminated Jude’s face, but David couldn’t read his emotions. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell his eyes were blue, let alone see any hints as to the emotion behind them.

“Then why did you do it?” David asked.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I really don’t know.”

“I don’t remember most of it. I was wasted. I don’t remember starting; I only remember stopping.”

“What made you stop?”

David hung on to the silence, waiting. In the end, it made no difference. It didn’t matter to Samantha anyway. Or Emmy. But maybe it meant something good had remained. Jude still had a conscience somewhere in his drunken, magic-ravaged brain.

“Emmy said my name.” Jude turned to the window and covered his face with his hand, as if only that part of the story shamed him. “And I saw her there, watching me.” He paused. “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”