Magical Influence Book One (17 page)

I could hardly see. The blackness now
encompassed me.

Before I could slip through the floor
and probably end up in hell, I heard a shout.

Something was pulled off me, I was
yanked to my feet, and the pressure on my throat finally
subsided.

It took seconds for my vision
to return, and as it did I felt a comforting arm around my middle
pulling me backwards
. “You are alive, you are alive,” my grandmother's voice
soothed my wild heart.

“What's going on?
What the hell is
that?”
I
heard Jacob. Heard the exact note of fright in his
voice.

“Get back to the lounge room,” my
grandmother commanded.

Finally my vision returned in full. As
it did I caught a glimpse of something. Something in my kitchen.
Something perilously close to my dishwasher.

That something was a
skeleton.

I only saw a flash of it; as my
grandma hauled me through the kitchen door, it closed on its own.
Then she passed a gnarled, old, sun-kissed hand over it and chains
appeared from nowhere, locking it in place.

But I'd seen it. A vision of that
skeleton standing there, a sword in its hand, its eyeless face
turned my way.

I was no stranger to magic; I had seen
some terrible things, but wholly hell, there was a skeleton holding
a sword in my kitchen.

I screamed, but it was a crumpled,
choked affair, and it did more damage to my throat than was worth
it.

“What's going on, what's going on?” Jacob
kept on repeating.

“Get to the lounge room,” my grandmother
began.

Then there was a bang. From the front
door. I turned in my grandmother's arms to see the thing buffet
inwards.

We all paused for a moment. Maybe the
house paused. Because it felt as if we were on a precipice. As if
that which had been building was finally here. The tower was about
to crumble.

The door banged again, and the whole
thing jerked in against its hinges. Yet it held.

“Take her back to the lounge, do it now,”
my grandma whirled around and pushed me at Jacob.

I still couldn't stand; my
ankle felt like it had been cut through with acid, and I could
hardly breathe. Yet my darling
nana had just chucked me towards Jacob,
even though he was still holding his gun, and didn't look like he
wanted to help us, let alone believe us any time soon.

That being said, he caught
me.

My grandma turned and headed straight
for the door. She did not reach out a hand and trace calming
symbols on it. She did not lean towards the coat rack at the side,
pull out her umbrella, and get ready to use it like a sword.
Instead she walked straight through it.

I felt Jacob shake behind me. An
intense, full-bodied move, it was a surprise he managed to keep on
his feet and not drop me.

Yet that arm of his was still locked
around my middle. Coughing, my chest shaking, I couldn't deny one
uncomfortable fact; I felt safer pressed up against him then I
would on my own two feet.

Then my brain caught up to the
situation. My grandmother had just walked through the door.
Outside, to face them. Though our house no longer offered much
protection, it still offered more than the wild storm outside. I
just knew instinctively our yard would be crawling with creatures.
The dark, the dead, the damned. They would all be after me. My
grandmother had just walked out, unarmed, to face them.

I began to struggle against Jacob,
trying to get towards the door. I didn't know what I wanted to do,
but the fear of my grandmother facing those creatures alone pounded
through me.

Jacob resisted. He did not let me go.
He didn't take his arm back, push me forward, and tell me he was
happy to be done with me and my crazy, crazy house.

Instead he pulled me towards
the lounge room
. “Stop struggling, stop struggling.”

I didn't have much struggle left in
me, to be honest. The cold touch that skeleton’s hand had left
against my throat and ankle seemed to haunt my mind. Every other
sense was subdued in comparison to it. It was like the damned thing
was still holding onto me.

Jacob managed to haul me back, and
soon we were in the lounge room.

He didn't let me go until he closed
the door. Then he headed over to the couch and pushed it in front
of it.

I crumpled. I could have stood, but I
didn't want to. I let my knees buckle out from underneath me, and I
landed on the carpet with a thump.

Jacob took several steps back from the
door, his gun still in his hand, his face directed away from
me.

Everything was going to hell,
literally.

Something that had been an academic
fact this morning, was now inescapable.

We were being attacked. And it was
very, very unlikely we would make it through the day and into the
night.

Finally he turned back to
me.

I could barely raise my chin to glance
his way.

“You okay?”

His question washed over me, and it
took me too long to register and comprehend the words.

I shook my head. Then I began to choke
and splutter again, bringing my hand up to my throat, making a
motion as if I was trying to pull something away from it. It still
felt as if that skeleton’s hand was around me.

Jacob took a shaking step my
way, eyes darting over my face, down to my throat and then back
again
.
“What...?” He trailed off.

No doubt he had been about to ask what
was going on here, what the hell was happening, who we were, etc.
Repeating the litany of questions he had been bombarding us with
for the past half-hour.

But he just stopped.

His cheeks twitched and then
became slack and white. He looked back at my
throat
. “How
do we get it off?”

I looked up at him, startled. I didn't
understand his question.

He nodded at me
again
. “Do
you have... anything in here we could use as a tool?” he turned
around, surveying the bookshelves, old dressers, and general junk
in the room.

“What are you talking about?” I kept
clutching my throat, trying to pry away the sense of the skeleton’s
hand.

He ignored me, walked over, and knelt
by my side. Though he seemed reluctant at first, he set down his
gun, then brought his hands up.

I actually twitched back. I
didn't know what he was doing. Then I caught his eyes, settled into
his glance, and
realized there was no anger there. Just a strange,
confused, pressured concern.

“You can't see it?”

“See what?” I could hardly push my words
out. I still felt like I was choking. My throat was coarse, rough,
narrow.

He brought his hands up. I saw the
skin, the knuckles, the fingers. He latched them, not around my
throat, but around something I could not see.

Expression crumpling, he tugged at
it.

It took a moment, where he clutched
his teeth in frustration, but a second later he pulled something
off.

He let it go immediately, and it fell
to the ground.

In a snap, it was visible.

A skeleton hand. Locked in a gripping
motion.

It had been around my throat. Yet I
had not been able to see it. The presence of that had filled my
mind, but the fact of it had eluded my senses.

I immediately fell back, scuttling
away from it, choking again.

Jacob however did not share my fear.
He did grab up his gun, and seconds later poked the bony hand with
the toe of his boot.

“I have to get outside to help her,” I
pushed myself to my feet. Now that the skeleton’s hand was no
longer around my throat, I could breathe. And with every lungful of
air the grim reality of the situation pressed in on me.

She was out there, alone, and though
she was powerful, no one could take on that amount of concentrated
evil and live to tell the tale.

“Don't be crazy; you can't go out there,”
Jacob stood up, walked over to the door, and stood firmly in front
of it.

Coughing, I tried to move
around him
.
“Get out of my way. You don't understand what is happening
here.”

He spluttered through a
laugh
.
“You're damn straight I don't understand what is going on here. I'm
still convinced I am hallucinating. But I just pulled a skeleton’s
hand off your throat....”

He didn't appear to be capable of
finishing his sentence. Fair enough; he wouldn't have much
experience uttering sentences like that.

I didn't know what to do. I knew what
I wanted to do; rush outside, try to find my grandmother, and try
to help her. But I also knew that would be certain suicide. The
only reason she had gone out there would have been to protect me.
By rushing out to find her, I would just make a liability of
myself.

“I....” Apparently I couldn’t finish my
sentences either, as whatever I had wanted to say got stuck
somewhere around my croaky, damaged throat. I patted a hand to my
neck, turned, and stared at one of the massive velvet
curtains.

“We safe in here?” Jacob walked up slowly
behind me.

Of course we weren't. For now, maybe,
but it sounded as if the storm was only just getting
started.

I simply shook my head.

“What do we... do? Is there someone we can
call?”

I turned to face him. He was
taking this
... better than I would have expected. The first time I had
clapped eyes on Jacob Fairweather, I’d assumed he was a by-the-book
kind of man. What was happening right now, would be unlike any book
he had ever read. He would have no grounding for this, no
understanding, no rules for how to behave.

I shook my
head
. “We’re
on our own.”

He spluttered; a bit of that
frustration and anger was back
. “And who exactly are you?”

I rolled my eyes. Despite the
situation, that tone of his was so damn grating. Plus, he'd already
been told this several times. I couldn't spend the rest of the
night reminding him my grandmother and I were witches; presumably I
would have to fight for my life, and that would no doubt take up a
lot of time and energy
. “I'm a witch,” I snapped.

“I need a real answer,” he
began.

I turned around and pointed at the
skeleton hand on the ground. He stopped.

It should have been a moment of mild
victory for me. Here was Jacob Fairweather, out of his depth, the
same Jacob Fairweather that had deliberately tried to make my life
hell for the past several days. Shouldn’t I be enjoying taking him
down a notch or two?

Yet here I was, staring glumly at my
hands, over to the curtains, and then back at him.

If I wanted any chance of
getting out of this, I had to
... well, think. More than that, I had to do as my
grandmother had been suggesting all day long. I, Esme Sinclair, had
to start acting like a powerful witch. The kind of witch that
thought ahead, that knew what to do when there was a skeleton with
a sword in her kitchen, that wouldn’t blink twice at turning to the
Agent, explaining the situation, and asking for his
help.

Because I would need his help,
wouldn't I? He had already proven that he could see things I
couldn't. How, I didn’t know. And I was more than sure it was a
fact that would come to annoy me in the future. But right now I had
to use it to get out of here.

I turned to him slowly. It was
one of the hardest things I'd ever done
. “I know this is hard for you to
understand.”

“I'm hallucinating, I have to be
hallucinating,” he pressed his fingers into his brow, and the move
looked hard and pointed.

“You aren't hallucinating,” I used my
softest, most gentle voice. “This is real. If you honestly believe
you are hallucinating, then why did you pull that skeleton hand off
my throat? Why did you take me in here when my grandmother asked
you to? If you really think this is a hallucination, why don’t you
dive out that window, and see what’s waiting out there? Or find a
way to get back in the kitchen and see if the skeleton has
conveniently disappeared?”

It was a risk. If Jacob Fairweather
honestly thought he was hallucinating, then there was nothing to
stop him from doing as I’d suggested.

He wavered. He looked at me,
over to the window, then back at me
. “That proves... nothing.”

“Listen to yourself, you're trying to
rationalize with me. If this were a hallucination, why would you
bother? Jacob,” I began.

“Agent Fairweather,” he chided
automatically.

I glared at
him
. “Agent
Fairweather, the window is right over there. I won't stop
you.”