Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) (5 page)

“Including you?” I seethed.

“No, not including me,” he said.  Again, his honesty shocked me.  “Would you have believed me if I lied?  If I told you I was in danger, too, you wouldn’t believe it for a minute.  But that doesn’t change the facts.  I need your younger self to start a fire here tonight.  She needs to burn the whole place down, and if it doesn’t happen soon, it will be too late.  You may not be willing to agree, but I can’t take no for an answer.”

As far as I could tell, there was nothing he could do to make me help him.  If he wasn’t going to the back rooms and I wasn’t going to get myself to start a fire, we were stuck where we were.  I didn’t care if he killed me; I wasn’t going to help him.  He stood up and walked towards the bar, as if he knew what I was thinking and was going to test the theory out.  He ducked behind the bar, and I could hear him shuffling through things when the course of events took an unexpected shift.

The door to the back rooms opened and in walked Aunt Lynn.  She glanced around the room, and her eyes came to rest on me.

“Well, Jasmine, I’m glad to see you’ve woken from your rest,” she began, as she walked across the floor towards me.

“No!” I yelled, but it was too late.  He was behind her with the ice pick he had found, and before I could make another unsuccessful attempt to stand, he held it to her throat.

“I told you I couldn’t take no for an answer, Jade.  Aunt Lynn here will have to be my insurance policy.”

“Jade?  Aunt Lynn?  Cameron, what is going on here?  What are you doing?” she asked in confusion.  She stopped and began to move her lips in a silent incantation.  She was trying to remove the pick from the equation, thus freeing herself.  Cameron obviously wasn’t lying about removing everyone’s abilities.  The pick did not budge from her throat.  The situation did not change.

“Jade, the choice is yours.  Do I start with Aunt Lynn and wait as one by one people come to check on us?  Maybe I
am
the one who kills your mother.  Or do you drink the elixir and help me?”

“Jade?” Aunt Lynn stared at me.  This was not exactly the way I had wanted her to make the connection.  I could see Cameron’s lips moving.  Slowly, I could see my aunt’s limbs stiffen.  Cameron
lifted her and moved her to the booth.  He positioned her on one of the benches as if she were a giant Barbie doll; her limbs bent to his will, but not her own.  She was motionless and silent, but I could see the terror and strength in her eyes. 

Cameron tossed the ice pick from hand to hand.  His abilities were not hindered.  A witch could not directly kill someone with his or her abilities, except for firestarters, but he didn’t need to be a firestarter.  He had the ice pick, and my aunt
lay helpless if he chose to lacerate her throat with it.  He was right.  I would help him.  How could I be raised by my aunt if I didn’t?  I wasn’t positive I in fact killed my mother, but I couldn’t risk losing both of them.

I used my arms to raise myself slowly to sit on the bench opposite Aunt Lynn.  Cameron did not even twitch a muscle in an effort to help me.  I stared at the shot glass, already knowing what I had to do.  The room
spun around me, but sitting, I could focus in on the shot glass and make it stand still.  I picked up the glass, feeling the weight of it in my hand, and threw it back in one swallow.  Fine.  I would help him, but I would try to save my mother as well.

I could sense the room slowing to a stop.  The strange vertigo that had afflicted me faded into a slight pounding in my head.  I tried to stand, but had to steady myself with the table.  This time, Cameron
rushed to my side, a different person now I had agreed to help him burn his father’s place of business and residence to the ground.  He held my elbow firmly, but I wretched it out of his grasp.  His fingers felt like barbed wire on my skin.

“I don’t need your help.  Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” I gestured at my aunt.

“You’ll need to sit down for a few more minutes.  Elixirs are not instantaneous.” He sounded like a teacher attempting patience while lecturing a fifth grade student on the order of the alphabet. I should know this, but I couldn’t change the fact I had never really been engrossed in my studies of our family history or my abilities. 

“And she’ll be fine as long as you keep your end of the deal,” Cameron added as an after thought.  I sat in the booth waiting for the pounding in my head to subside.  I looked at Aunt Lynn, sitting stiffly in the opposite side of the booth, completely unmoving.  She wasn’t even blinking her eyes.  It was eerie
, like being alone with a mannequin and feeling like someone was watching you.  But Aunt Lynn was watching me.  I didn’t know what to say to her, so I looked away at Cameron, sitting across from me in a wooden chair from one of the tables.  He muttered another incantation, and I froze in fear for a moment.  He stared at me as he reached to my right and grasped a glass of water that had made its own way to the table from behind the bar. 

“This will help with the headache,” he explained, “Don’t worry.  It’s only water.  I need you to be clear headed when you go back there.”  His eyes never left my face.  Something was not clicking here, but Cameron would have to remain a mystery until I could
deal with him.  I might not have all the knowledge I needed as a witch, but I had my special gift.  That would be enough.  I would make an exception for the man who threatened my family and possibly killed my mother.  I knew he had to be involved in her death one way or another.

After staring at me in silence for what seemed like enough time to read a Harry Potter novel, Cameron stood up.  He said nothing, but grabbed my arm again and pulled me up from my seat.  Luckily, my headache had subsided, or I might have dropped to the ground again like a lifeless doll.

“It’s time,” he said, pushing me towards the black-painted door leading to the house behind the bar.  “Burn the place down.  Burn the books.” 

I walked purposefully towards the door, stopping just as I reached it.  My hand grasped the cool metal handle.  I could picture how hot this handle would be within an hour. 
It would glow like a lantern inset in the dark wood.  It would burn an imprint into the hand of anyone wanting entrance to this hell.  That was what I was about to enter.  If entering the bar had been like entering a nightmare, entering the back rooms was my own private hell.  Who enters hell willingly?  I should be kicking and screaming and being dragged into its pits by vicious demons, but I knew my vicious demon was a Shadow Ruler, and he didn’t need to drag me, just coerce me by threatening the existence of my past.  He held my past in his grip with an ice pick and my petrified aunt.

“You’re running out of time,” I heard him urge me on. 
Hell didn’t make a difference to him.  I took a deep breath and turned the knob.

I imagined the door would creak open and reveal a dark hallway with mystic lanterns and cobwebs.  Instead, the door swung easily and opened into a restaurant kitchen.  Stainless steal glinted at me from every angle.  Pots hung from the ceiling, and the tile floor gleamed as if it had just been mopped for a Mr. Clean commercial.  I stepped into the kitchen and let the door swing
shut behind me of its own accord.  As I heard the latch click, I had a brief memory of how this worked and shut my eyes as pots and pans and cutlery appeared to fly in all directions. 

When I opened my eyes, the kitchen had vanished and was replaced with a long hallway, but it was neither dark nor gothic in appearance.  I stood in the hallway of a slightly above average American home.  The painted black door
stood like a sentry behind me, and I knew if I opened it, I would once again find myself in the kitchen, staring at the black door to the bar.  A witch would shut off the portal during business hours so kitchen staff would not be alarmed as witches appeared and disappeared through the doors.  When business closed, as it would be from this night forward, the portal stayed open.  Of course, after tonight, the portal would not exist either.

Overhead electric light fixtures hung from the ceiling instead of mystic lanterns on the walls.  The
calming yellow walls appeared as if someone had decorated with the intent to sooth any inhabitants.  I looked down at the beige Berber carpeting and could remember sitting on this floor, both hiding and playing.  I looked back up to see two sets of interior doors on either side of me and a turn in the hallway far ahead.  On my left, there were two doors, three on my right.  I remembered a kitchen and living area of sorts around the corner in the hall.

I placed my hand against the wall.  I
no longer felt dizzy from the elixir, but I had to reassure myself this really existed.   Only hours earlier I had been in the middle of a party in a college town, celebrating the end of my first year of school.  Now I had an enemy, and I was in the midst of pursuing a mission for that very man.

This would be so much easier if Cameron hadn’t suppressed my gift.  If I didn’t have to convince
my younger self, I could just light this fire, find my mother, and be done with it.
  I concentrated on my breathing and pushed my hair back, trying to decide which door to open first.  The haze of a dozen years and a subconscious repression clouded my memories of this place.  I had never wanted to remember it.  I felt a deep regret at forgetting now that I needed this knowledge.  I knew it would come to me, but it would be slow and fragmented, possibly not enough or in time to do me any good.

I slid my hand along the wall as I walked quietly forward.  I
toed the first door on my right, peeking through the small crack.  Inside, I found a bedroom—simple and comforting.  The same shade of yellow crept through the doorway and bathed this room in its warm glow.  The dimmed lights cast eerie shadows on the walls, and I could hear the television’s low murmur.  Jeffrey lay on top of the neatly made bed.  His eyes were slightly open and concentrated on the television.  He didn’t notice me, and I didn’t feel the need to talk to him.  Quietly, I pulled the door closed.

I took another deep breath and moved forward.  Immediately, another door loomed on my right and further down the hall stood the first door on my left.  I would search methodically in each room I came across until either my memory kicked in or I found my mother or my child-self.  Something felt familiar as I turned the small round knob of
this door.  I inched the it open and peered into a small study.  I couldn’t make out the color of the walls in this room because floor to ceiling bookshelves obscured them.  Bulky, leathery, and over-stuffed furniture filled the room like grazing cattle.  Against the wall to my right lounged a claw legged, polished leather couch.  In the corner closest to the door lay a matching armchair.  A large, oak writing desk stood grandly across from the couch.  A fireplace took up the majority of the wall opposite the door with only room for a skinny bookshelf on either side of the fireplace.  The built-in bookshelves looked as if someone had pressed them into a molding of the wall, and various books on witchcraft and history seeped from the overcrowded shelves.

At first, it appeared no one occupied this room.  I let the door swing open and stepped
inside.  Here were the books Cameron wanted burned, but I couldn’t do it by myself.  My powers were useless, at least for now.  I closed the door behind me and began to run my hand over the various books. 
Why did Cameron want these burned?  What did he have against his father that he wanted these books and this place burned?

I rested my fingers on an older, leather bound book, a spell book like the family book I attempted to study in my youth.  I pulled it gently off the shelf and sifted through the pages.  This wasn’t just like the spell book I studied; it was the very book I studied, but the pages my aunt had added were missing.  She wouldn’t add to this book for a few more years.  My mother must have been keeping it safe in this room.  Well, this book would not be burning tonight.  I would have to get it to my aunt when all this was over. 

I glanced around the room and found a backpack in the corner by the armchair.  I took three quick strides from the bookshelf to the armchair and set the spell book down.  Average school supplies and college books filled the backpack.  I emptied the contents onto the floor and shoved my family spell book into the bag. 
Was this what Cameron wanted destroyed?
  I may have disliked being a witch, but I wasn’t about to burn my family’s history.  As I zipped the backpack up, I laughed.  Of course, I didn’t burn my family history and spell book tonight.  I studied from it years after the fire, after all. 

Setting the backpack on the floor, I reached for another book from the closest bookshelf.  This one looked ordinary—a college American History book.  I flipped through the pages and a loose page of paper fell to the floor like a butterfly landing gingerly on a twig, twisting in a slight breeze.  I squatted on the floor to pick it up—probably notes some poor college student had taken before being plunged into this “wonderful” life of witches and wars.  I stayed on the floor as I examined the paper.  It was not notes after all.  It appeared to be a contract of some sort.  A contract tucked between the pages of an American History book. 

I sat on the floor and rested my arm on the chair with the contract between my hands.  It held a simple statement.  The words, written in a beautiful script with flowing loops, dripped down the page, followed by two signatures at the bottom.

“I, Megan Harper, do hereby relinquish my abilities from now until the end of my life or the end of the life of this contract, whichever comes first, to Evan Michaels.”