Hush (Witches & Warlocks Book 2) (11 page)

“Sometimes, my dear, you just have to accept that there are people who know more about what’s going on than you do and trust them to make the right decisions.”

“Right. Except the ‘what’s going on’ deal? That’s me. And the decisions being made? Those affect me, too. I want to know more about
me
and it seems like you keep hiding all the answers. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation?”

Daya swallows and her jaw clenches against whatever it was she wants to say to me. I watch her fight her thoughts back into line, close off the swell of anger at my words. “You’ve grown brave as you’ve grown stronger. Just remember, girl, that while your potential is magnificent, you’ve been a witch for all of three weeks now. You will not out-think, out-power, or out-match me. You still don’t know what you’re up against.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I do know what I’m up against. I’m up against Lucy.” Take that Daya. I’ll show you what you do and don’t know.

“Tell me. Just how do you know it’s Lucy you’re up against?”

“Because Becca told me, right before the sweet little girl who’s actually a crazy vampire ripped out her throat.”

Well, that takes Daya off balance. Her lips tighten up and she cocks her head to the side a little. “I thought you snuck out to meet Luke.”

“No. I snuck out because Becca asked me to meet her so she could explain everything that happened to me. Since I’m not getting any answers here at Windsor, you know, in fact, all I find here are more questions, I thought ‘gee, I’d love to know why Becca pretended to be my best friend my whole life and find out who set her up to keep me hidden.’ So I met her. We had fun. She told me Lucy was the one behind the whole conspiracy deal, and then a vampire killed her right in front of my eyes.” Daya’s seething, but I’m on fire. “So, not knowing where else to go, because you know,
you
might be in league with Lucy, I go to Luke and ask for help. And his idea of help is trying to get me to kill vagrants with him.” My hands are shaking. “I’m done, Daya. I’m so done. I don’t know which way is up and what’s right anymore.”

Daya watches me and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Her face is completely shut down. A smarter person probably would have censored what she said just now during that little diatribe. Daya’s right. She’s infinitely more powerful than I am and I have no idea what side she’s on. I should probably have used a little more finesse, but I’m so out of my comfort zone it’s not even funny.

“If Lucy is your enemy then it’s amazing you’re not already dead. I find it hard to believe that Becca - knowing that Lucy would kill her the moment her secret was out - would even consider telling you the truth about her being behind your captivity.”

Since every time I’ve opened my mouth today the wrong thing has fallen out, I take a cue from my old book and stay silent.

“Although,” Daya tilts her head and shrugs, as if conceding a point, “the fact that Becca died almost as soon as she told you says a whole hell of a lot, even if it does look like a coincidence.” She stands.

My eyes grow heavy and start to flutter closed. The room spins and the air is so thick - like being inside a locked car in Florida in August. I swallow and realize that my head is tilted towards my shoulders, so I pick it up and it wobbles around on my neck.

“You want things to get real?” Daya makes her way around her desk to stand in front of me. She leans down and places her hands on the arms of my chair, her nose just inches from mine. “Things will get real, my friend.” Just before my eyes slide all the way closed, Daya laughs. “Just remember. You asked for this.”

********

When I wake up, I have no idea where I am. All I know is that I’m cold and my body aches. A little bit of sunlight has managed to make it’s way through a filthy window high up on the wall beside my bed, illuminating a tiny gray upon gray room. The bed I’m in is no more than a cot. I sit up and rub my throbbing head.

Where the hell am I?

I survey the room, looking for clues. There’s a folding table holding a pen and a notebook, with a metal folding chair in front of it, both a utilitarian green-gray. There’s a cheap plastic bin, with stacks of clean clothes inside. There are four walls, one with a door, one with the filthy window, one with a huge mirror embedded into the concrete, and one that’s just stark and plain.

I’ve got a rough blanket pulled up to my chin, held tight in my clenched fists, but I shiver anyway because I know where I am. This has got to be the ranch. The place they took Noah and Luke and all those other children. The place I should have been when I was a little girl. The place where bad things happened and most of those kids ended up dead.

The door scrapes open and I stare wide-eyed as Daya fills the doorway. “Get up. Get dressed. There are clothes for you there.” She indicates the plastic bin. “Knock on the door when you’re done. I’ll be in the hall waiting.”

The clothes are nothing more than some olive green jumpsuit things and I get dressed without thinking, kind of numb from the inside out. A million questions are bouncing around in my head. The normal ones: Why am I here? What’s going to happen to me? Am I in trouble?

But there are some others as well.

Is Daya working with Lucy or against her?

Why
would
Becca risk her life to tell me who my enemy is?

And then one question, one that keeps floating back up to the top of my consciousness no matter how hard I try to ignore it. What would it have felt like if I’d killed that guy?

I find a hair tie on the desk near the notepad and pen and pull my hair back - scraping my fingers through the tangles and knots - and knock on the door of my cell to let Daya know I’m ready. It’s really funny how quickly we can adapt, you know? Here I am, in some strange place, dressing in strange clothes, following orders like I’d signed up to be here. I’m not blubbering in the corner or banging my fists against the walls, leaving little bloody smears when the concrete tears at my skin. Those are things for people in the movies, I guess.

Or maybe those are things for someone stronger than me.

There’s the thunk of a heavy key turning in the lock and the door swings outward, revealing Daya in all her psychedelic, grandmotherly glory. Her eyes brush over me and I get the feeling that I passed some kind of test I didn’t know I was taking. She leads me down a long hallway and our footsteps echo all around us. But ... I don’t know … it’s like more than our footsteps echo. The place is huge. Made for a horde of people. With just the two of us here, wandering through the dingey hall, dirt grinding under our heels, dust tossed around by our movement, catching in spider webs and floating through the flickering florescent lights, well, it feels like the whole place is an echo.

We are interlopers. Intruders.

And I’m scared.

Turns out I have every reason to be.

After passing who knows how many identical doors and turning down too many new hallways, Daya comes to a stop in front of a heavy set of double doors, sealed with thick chains and a padlock.

“Unlock it,” she says and I just stare at her.

My mouth opens and closes a few times, another chance for me to make my best impersonation of a fish gasping for air while I try to work out what to say. “I don’t have a key,” I finally manage.

Daya just widens her eyes and sits back on her heels. She rests her hands on her considerable hips and blows air through her mouth. “Are you really as worthless as Becca said you were?” Her words hit me in the chest and I can’t catch my breath. Just hearing Becca’s name has me reeling in images of an entire life spent at her side, loving her like family, trusting her implicitly. And then she betrayed me and now she’s dead and I might just dissolve into big puddle of tears and regret and grief if I don’t lock those thoughts up lickety split.

“You are a witch, you dumb little girl.” The scorn in Daya’s voice chafes at my self-esteem. “Open the lock.”

Right. I’m a witch. A very nervous, slightly terrified, not sure what’s going to happen witch. “Why are you doing this?”

“Do as you’re told.” With a slight wave of her hand, Daya sends a jolt of magic into my arm. I’ve never been physically hurt on purpose before and I’m not sure what’s worse: the pain in my body or the pain in my heart. I look from the blackened skin on my forearm - cracked and seeping some kind of sticky fluid, raw skin peeking through, angry and red, screaming as the air hits it - and then back to Daya, both managing to be the scariest thing I’ve seen in all my life.

“Now, you get to heal your arm
and
open the lock.” Daya watches me with lifted eyebrows and I realize how much I don’t know about this woman.

I focus on the lock and imagine the tumblers inside, lining up all proper. It’s hard with my arm screaming obscenities at me and my heart jackhammering away like it is. There’s another jolt of pain in my arm as Daya’s magic sears my flesh.

“At the same time,” she says as if I’m an imbecile of not thinking of it first. “Things are going to be hard for you if you can’t figure out how to follow directions better than that.”

I close my eyes and tears I didn’t know where gathering slide down my cheeks. The healing spell is too similar to the unlocking spell. They both need me to focus on moving things into their proper places, fitting pieces together like a puzzle. Both spells are born of light magic. Daya lifts her hand, magic coalescing around it’s edges, and I really don’t want to get hit again. On a whim, I focus on my tiger, harbinger of my light magic, and ask her to heal my arm. She flares into existence and begins licking the wound, her tongue warm and soothing against my burned flesh.

I focus on the lock but with the tiger channeling my light magic, I don’t have enough to draw from to work the spell on the lock.

Shit!

Panic flares too hot in my throat with anger right on its heels. I could get caught in a big long tirade of why me’s and what now’s but I don’t. The anger flips a switch and I clench my jaw and focus on the lock. I may not have enough light magic to heal my arm and undo the lock at the same time, but locks can be broken. My dark magic is seething, feeding on the pain and fear and anger and grief that I’ve been pretending not to feel.

I touch the chain and focus on fire, hot and bright and filled with all the fury I’ve pretended not to feel for a long time now. Red-hot heat oozes from my finger into the metal which starts to sag and bend, distorting out of its original shape before it drips to the floor.

Chapter Thirteen

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Daya asks as she presses on the door. It swings open into a large courtyard and she gestures for me to enter ahead of her.

Good
is an understatement. My dark magic swirls inside me, this big ball of frantic thoughts and energy and it’s like I’ve been set free. Like I can finally breathe naturally after trying to fight my breath into a strange rhythm for years. The tiger pads into the courtyard beside me, her whiskers twitching and her tail swinging. I reach down to scratch between her ears and half expect her to take a big swipe at me. She’s the personification of my light magic. Surely, with my dark magic raging inside me like it is, she’d see me as an enemy of sorts.

Instead, she presses her great head into my hand and sits back on her haunches, her bright blue eyes closing in pleasure. “At least you’ll take me the way I come, won’t you?” I press my forehead against the wide space between her eyes and breathe in her scent, feeling comfortable for the first time in days despite my strange surroundings.

Once upon a time, this courtyard might have been beautiful. There’s a couple trees in the middle of the space, and while now the branches are like skeletal fingers reaching towards the sky, barren and stripped of life, they were sure to be lovely when they were alive. There’s a man-made pond in the corner, covered in muck and murk and smelling of decay. The stone benches surrounding it are broken and the grass is dead. Despite all that, it’s easy to see what this place must once have been.

“We’re gonna start easy today, but it’s still going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. Just remember, you asked for this.” Daya waddles towards me, her gaze turning up to the darkening sky.

“You keep saying that, but I don’t think I asked for anything.”

“Oh, Daya,” she says in an insipid little voice, part whine, part pout. “I need to learn about my dark magic in order to control it.”

I realize she’s mocking me and I’m livid. I straighten and magic crackles around my edges, a strange combination of dark and light, of hope and fury. “Right.” The word is hard and doesn’t sound like me. “But I guess what I’m saying is that I never asked to be what I am. I never asked for
this.
” I sweep my hands over my body and can’t help but smile when thunder rumbles in the distance. Couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried.

“Aren’t you tired of whining about what you are, complaining about things you can’t change? Aren’t you ready to finally take some responsibility over who and what you are?”

I want to lash out and tell her that’s the exact thing she’s been making fun of me for. That each time I tried to learn more about my dark magic, that was my attempt to take control, but a tiny little part of me kind of thinks that Daya’s trying to manipulate me. That she wants me to struggle with my thoughts and emotions.

I’m not going to give her the pleasure.

So, I sigh and purse my lips, biting back all the words I’d love to say to her. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m
choosing
not to speak rather than wishing I
could
speak. “I’m more ready than you know,” I say, careful to keep my voice level and hold eye contact.

Something - satisfaction maybe? - flashes across Daya’s face. “Wonderful.”

And this time, we both smile when thunder rumbles, closer now.