Hush (Witches & Warlocks Book 2) (15 page)

“Leave her alone!”

My words might as well be marshmallows for all the good they just did. The hollows laugh and imitate me and now I’m getting upset, too. Which is probably exactly what they wanted because negative energy feeds the hollows and they’re getting stronger and stronger the more upset I get. My breath puffs in front of my face, freezing as the temperature plummets. Frost shows up on the edges of my chair and the cold concrete floor is ever more painful to my bare feet.

I take a deep breath and call on the tiger. From out of nowhere, she leaps past the hollows and begins a patrol around Celine, leaning against the girl and baring her teeth. Celine opens her eyes when she feels the tiger and her posture softens, if only ever so slightly, and the invading darkness starts to drain from her eyes.

That doesn’t stop the hollows, though. They’ve scented blood and now they’re out for more. “After all you did for your little brother,” gasps a gangly, spider-like thing that might have once been a girl, “and he lets you die.”

“Diiiiiieeee,” says a shadow that hurts to look at.

Celine closes her eyes again. I can’t let this go on. I gather my magic, weave the darkness and light together, and let out a slow breath. Sure, in the past, I’ve always needed a life form to draw from to help remnants pass on, but I’ve learned a lot since then. I listen for their life source, for the energy pattern, but of course, they’re dead, so they don’t have one.

Working on instinct, I let my magic seep out of me. Long strands of purple fog woven together with golden light arch out of my body and work their way across the room. The metal edges of my chair peek through the frost as it begins to recede. The room’s getting warmer again and I take that to mean that something I’m doing is working. A hollow shrieks when my magic brushes against its leg and I quiver in revulsion at the contact.

Never.

I never want to be like that.

I send a pulse of magic out and away from me and the hollows skitter and scatter, some crouching, some jumping back. “Leave,” I say, in my most threatening voice.

In a swirl of laughter and ridicule, they do, but not without stopping to brush against me as they do, leaving me sick to my stomach and desperate to shower.

Celine says nothing. She just rushes towards me and wraps herself up in my arms. Her sobs break my heart. Someone as pure as she is should never feel so much grief and sorrow. She leans into me and I swoop her up and set her down on the cot, brushing her platinum hair from her face and whispering little reassurances into the top of her head. But mostly, I just wait for the storm to pass.

“I miss him,” she says.

“I know.”

“He didn’t mean it.”

I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t and I’m not going to push her for more information than she’s ready to give. Not after that. I can’t help but wonder about what happened, though. Did Noah kill his sister? Did things really get that bad here? I try and take what I know about the guy and just can’t get my head wrapped around the fact that he might be a killer.

Although, maybe if something terrible like that happened in his past, that’d be why he’s been so careful to keep himself under control, to stay so good. If he made a mistake and it ended with him killing his sister … well … that goes a long way towards explaining why he’s so desperate to ignore his dark magic now. My heart breaks for the girl in my arms and for her little brother. I wish I could hug him, too.

Slowly, Celine stops sobbing and begins sniffling, and finally resorts to wiping her eyes. We lean against the wall, our knees tucked up to our chins, and she rests her head on my shoulder. We sit in silence for some time.

“You won’t think less of him?”

What an amazing little girl, worried that I’ll stop liking Noah instead of worrying about herself. “Nope.”

“Promise?”

“Yep.”

“He didn’t mean it.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

She lifts her head from my shoulder and sighs. “We were all in the courtyard …” Her voice cracks and she swallows hard.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

She takes a breath. “I want to. It’s important.” Celine’s eyes grow sad, but the darkness that had encroached on her light doesn’t reappear. “We were in the courtyard. We had to fight. Not to the death, but, just to, like, hurt each other. I refused to use my dark magic, so that made it real hard for me. Bo, he was just as awful back then as he is now. He went right for me. I could reflect all his spells, but I was getting real tired.” Celine looks at me. “Noah was aiming for Bo.”

As the realization of what happened sinks in, my stomach falls into my feet. Celine looks to be only eleven or twelve and Noah is her younger brother. So he was at least ten, maybe younger, when Celine’s life was in danger and he lashed out at her aggressor. Only, instead of hurting the bad guy, he killed his sister.

“So, you see, it wasn’t his fault.”

I snuggle into Celine and try to wrap my mind around a place where children are made to fight each other, to hurt each other. A place where they surely learned to kill like I’ve learned to kill. A place where most of them ended up as remnants, haunting vacant rooms and swimming in sadness. This isn’t a happy place.

As Celine drifts off leaning against my shoulder, I begin working on a plan that will get her out of here. She deserves better than this. And I’m gonna be the one to give it to her.

Chapter Seventeen

“Have you tried to reach out to Noah?” I ask Celine. There’s an idea just starting to take shape in my head.

She lowers her eyes to her hands, her eyelashes - so blonde they’re nearly invisible - brushing her cheek. “I can’t leave this place.”

Ugh. My heart just keeps breaking for Celine over and over again. How can this be fair? She did everything she could to live her life the right way, and succeeded more than so many people I’ve met. And now, her reward is being trapped in this awful building for decades with a bunch of nasty remnants that pick on her and make her cry. It really threatens to break my view on karma and that whole ‘what goes around comes around’ thing.

“What about with magic? Can you talk to him?”

She makes a funny little face at me that I don’t quite understand. “Can you?”

That’s actually a really good question because I haven’t tried. I’ve been all about putting my head down and getting stuff done. You know, one foot in front of the other until I found myself in a better place. There’s this little flare of frustration in the pit of my belly, born of the realization that maybe I haven’t changed as much as I’d like to think I have. Why am I so passive?

Or is the reason I haven’t tried to reach out to Noah less because I’m passive and more because he’s not been very happy with me and I’m afraid he doesn’t like me anymore? Or is it because I don’t want to put him in any more danger than I’ve already put him in? Or maybe it’s because I’m tired of needing rescued and want to start taking care of myself...? That last one’s not passive at all.

Instead of saying any of that to Celine, I just shake my head. “I haven’t tried.”

Now Celine looks suspicious. “Why?”

I really don’t want to go into the complexities of my low self-esteem and the strain on my relationship with Noah with his eleven year old big sister. “Mostly because I’m a big silly, I guess,” I say, and hope that’s the end of it.

“Hmm. I thought it was because you were afraid Daya’d put some kind of detect magic spell on the place.”

I should have thought to say something like that. “There is that.”

I hadn’t even thought of Daya watching for any magic spells I might cast, which is absolutely stupid of me. I mean, she had the magic dampening spell on my window at Windsor, the tracking spell on me when I snuck out to talk to Becca. Images of the last time I saw Becca assault me, called into existence by the mere mention of her name - blood draining from her throat, life fading from her eyes, the body of my life-long friend crumpled and discarded on the floor of some grimy college bar …

Nope.

Not getting caught up in those memories.

I’ll find time to grieve Becca when it’s more appropriate.

“Can
you
detect magic?” I ask Celine after swallowing down the big ball of nausea lurching around in my tummy.

Turns out, she can, which is great, but the thing is, suddenly I’m afraid that Daya has this room rigged from top to bottom with magical surveillance. She could be listening. She could be watching. Hell, there’s a great big one-way mirror in the wall. She doesn’t need magic to watch me, she could be sitting ten feet away, on the other side of the glass right now. I want to ask Celine to try and see if she can detect anything that Daya might have left to spy on me, but I don’t want Daya to hear me ask the question or see Celine use magic.

I’m all kinds of creeped out thinking she might have been watching us this whole time. I just took the mirror for granted. I mean, I recognize that it’s a one-way mirror, that whoever’s on the other side could be looking right in, taking notes, I just never let that thought play all the way out to completion. What if Daya’s been watching everything? The tears. The talks. The hollows picking on Celine. Hell. What if it’s some other, non-Daya person? Just because I haven’t seen anyone else around here, doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone else around here.

Oh, I am
so
not cut out for all this conspiracy stuff.

Aware - now - of the one-way mirror, I smile and shift so that it’s at my back. There’s got to be a way I can communicate to Celine without speaking up. I purse my lips together and pull down my eyebrows, tilt my head as if I’m trying to ask a question. Her eyes light with a smile … a confused smile. Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything.

I try to indicate the mirror behind me with just my eyes, kind of using them to look over to the left and raising my eyebrows again and again. Celine just giggles and bounces off the bed to stand behind me and start braiding my hair.

“Those are some weird faces you’re making.”

It takes me a minute to realize that she didn’t speak out loud. That, in fact, her words were only in my head.

“You trying not to sneeze or somethin’?” Again, her words are only in my head.

I’m hesitant to answer, mostly because I don’t know how I’d say anything that would both manage to answer her question and not sound suspicious to anyone watching or listening.

“I can hear your thoughts, silly. I’m not a real girl. I’m not even a real ghost. I’m a remnant. I’ve got all kinds of magical tricks up my sleeve.”

Right now, it’s a very good thing that the mirror is behind me because a huge smile is spreading across my face and I couldn’t do anything to stop it if I tried. Apparently, she’s one big magic detector. She just sees it. Anything that’s been spelled, anything that can cast spells, there’s this aura for her that gives her a sense of what kind of magic she’s dealing with and how powerful the magic is.

“And you’re, like, the most powerful thing I’ve ever see,” she says, not out loud.

“So I’ve been told,” I think back to her and can’t keep my thoughts from darkening. She sends me a comforting thought and I take a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you could read my mind?” I’m suddenly uncomfortable.

“I thought you knew. What witch doesn’t know? Plus, I’ve agreed with thoughts you never said out loud, I saw that you loved Noah and you didn’t question how I knew. You’re a big old open book to me, silly.”

There’s this strange feeling of vulnerability and a little bit of violation, but I push that feeling away. If there’s anyone I can trust with my most basic thoughts and desires, I think it’s Celine.

“And Noah.” Her voice in my head is clear and pure and so young and so full of hope that I can’t help but smile. She loves her little brother. I think I could, too. If he’ll let me.

Turns out, Daya does have some detect magic spells around my room, but they’re set for me, not for Celine. The moment I do anything other than wake up and follow orders, Daya knows. As far as listening and watching, yep. Those things are happening, too. When I ask why Daya can’t detect the conversation we’re having Celine just giggles.

“Because I’m the one who opened the channel, silly. She doesn’t care about
my
magic.” Well, that’s just one more thing that makes it pretty damn clear I’m
so
not cut out for this. I didn’t even know there were channels or that it mattered who opened them.

I’d love to say that I’ve got some grand plan to get Celine out of here. Unfortunately, what I’ve got in my head is way more simple. Sometimes there’s elegance in simplicity but this isn’t one of those times. My plan is to reach out to Noah and see if I can get him to come here and talk to Celine. Maybe, if she can see her brother and finally, after all these years, tell him not to feel bad for what happened, she can pass on. And if I can’t get a hold of Noah, then I’ll find Luke and ask him to take a message to him.

Celine flinches a little when I think of Luke. I can’t see it, but I sure can feel it. It’s like my thoughts are hot and she’s pulling her mind out so as not to get burned. I turn to look at her, concern pulling my features together.

“Do you remember Luke?” I choose to speak out loud for several reasons. I don’t want to look suspicious to anyone watching us since we’ve never been silent for long periods of time. And I want to watch her expression as she answers. I take so many cues from physical reactions, communicating purely through thought feels a little like flying blind. Plus, it’s a little creepy having someone in my head.

Celine nods and starts chewing on her bottom lip. “Ya…” She draws out the word and can’t meet my eyes.

“What is it? Why don’t you like Luke?”

“It’s not that I don’t like him.” She still can’t meet my eyes and I see Noah’s distaste for him mirrored on her face. I wish someone would just tell me what happened with him, already.

“Well, then why have you gotten all weird?” I hear Becca in my question.
There you go, getting all weird again.
I immediately miss the comfort of the pre-everything going to hell era, even if I did hate it when she’d say that to me.