B00AO57VOY EBOK (23 page)

“Casper was as good as his
word,” Blake said as I stood there and stared, walking in with still more boxes
followed by Tyler who was toting a load of his own.  “What you see here is just
the stuff that was marked ‘Demon’.  You should
see
that attic.  When we
first teleported in, I thought we had landed in an episode of Hoarders.”

“Yeah, someone put a lot of
work into this little collection,” Tyler agreed, winking at me.  “I don’t know
whether to admire such dedication or be completely terrified.”

Looked at that way, it
was
kind of scary.  Given the amount of research stacked around me it looked almost
like Charles’ mom had been…obsessed.  With demons
.
  That was just
creepy
.   

“And where did all of this
demonic research
come from
?” Nathan asked, giving me a narrow-eyed look.

“I made a new friend today,”
I told him, smiling at the fruits of my bargaining abilities.  “His mom was a
witch, but she also researched everything.  We made a deal.  In exchange for me
helping him out, he gave me all of his mom’s demon stuff.  It’s a win-win!”

“Yes, but what,
exactly
,
was your part of the deal?” he asked, sounding exasperated.

“Oh, my part’s easy.  I just
have to tell the girl—well, I guess she’d be, like, almost sixty now—he was
madly in love with that his death wasn’t her fault.  He gets to move on, she
gets peace, and I get free demon research that doesn’t include mold and dead
bugs.  Do you even
know
how many bugs crawl into books to die?”

“Why do I feel like there’s
more to it than that?” Nathan asked on a sigh.

“Because you’re paranoid?” I
suggested, rolling my eyes.  “Seriously, that’s it.  Cross my heart and hope
to…”

“
Don’t
. Say it,” he
said, shuddering and clapping his hand over my mouth in case I decided to be
rebellious and do it anyway. 

Kissing the palm of his
hand, I backed away from him with a grin and went in search of Grams.  I
finally located her in the kitchen, hidden by a stack of research.  She was
sitting at the table with one of the boxes on her lap going through a handful
of aged, photos.  She looked up as I wound my way toward her, and I watched as
the smile of welcome on her lips slipped a little more with every step I took.

“Something happened,” she
said, sounding worried.

“No, Grams, nothing bad
happened.” 

 “Oh, that’s good,” she
said, not looking like she was buying it.  “Considering we have so far to go in
your training…”

Her voice trailed off and I
scowled.  Every minute I hadn’t spent in the library I had spent with Grams
learning as much as I could about how to be a witch—in fast forward.  It was a
lot easier than it had been for my first lesson in Witch 101…and a lot harder. 
Instead of struggling to make even the most rudimentary power manifest, my
powers now had a tendency to be extremely easy to access. 

That would have been great if
they hadn’t also been totally out of control. 

The only power I seemed to
be able to control effortlessly was my ability to make my element, fire,
manifest.  I could go from human to torch in seconds and put myself out just as
fast.  I had been terrified at first, but now I loved the feeling I got every
time I did it.  I felt free.  I became a being of light and warmth, beautiful
to look at and dangerous to touch.

Teleportation: I’d say I
ranked a D, a C minus if Grams was being generous.  It wasn’t my favorite form
of travel and never would be.  And I definitely didn’t consider it the reliable
method of transportation the others believed it to be—an opinion I had formed
when I ended up standing in the middle of the food court at the mall instead of
the back yard during practice.

Witch Fire: Big. Fat. F.  I
could summon it—sometimes—but I couldn’t control it.  My fear for Nathan’s bank
of windows had been realized over and over as I tried to control the volatile
electric-like power Kim wielded with such ease and accuracy.  Grams’ glass
mending abilities had probably saved Nathan a fortune in window replacements
alone.

And don’t even get me
started
on my lessons in healing.  My failure in that area was just embarrassing.

So, pretty much all I could
do reliably was catch fire.  Oh, and let’s not forget the talent to predict my
own death.  Yeah, my powers were
so
awesome.   

“I don’t know how we’re ever
going to go through all of this,” I said, staring at the boxes surrounding us,
in an effort to change the subject.

“One box at a time, that’s
how,” Grams said, sounding as tired as I suddenly felt.  “In the meantime, I
would like to try something, if you feel up to it.”

“Sure.”

Reaching into the box next
to her, she brought out a small velvet bag with a handwritten label dangling
from it.  I watched as she got up and walked over to get one of the big white
pillar candles she kept to help me focus when I was training. Tucking it under
her arm, she walked back to me and held out her hand for mine. 

I followed her out the back
door and into the cold November evening and let her lead me to the middle of
the back yard.  I shivered as a gust of wind blew over me, penetrating through
my thick fleece pullover as easily as if it had been the thinnest silk.  After
I sat down on the cold ground and folded my legs comfortably, Grams sat down
across from me and placed the candle between us.

“Light it,” she said,
softly, gesturing toward the candle.

I did as I was told, barely
concentrating on the candle before it sparked to life.  The first time we had
practiced with those candles, I had been a nervous wreck.  Instructing me to
sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, Grams had set two large red pillar
candles in front of me and instructed me to concentrate on the wicks.  When I
refused to even try, Grams looked highly irritated.

“You can’t fear fire your
entire life, Ember,” she said sharply, when I shook my head at her for the
third time.  “Fire is warmth and light as well as death and destruction.  You
must learn to see the good in all things, even those things that frighten you. 
You have to embrace your element, Ember.”

Embrace a burning candle? 
Uh-huh, that was going to happen.

“Yeah, I think I’d rather
not,” I grumbled, getting up and dusting off the seat of my jeans with sweaty
palms.  “Let it go, Grams.  I’m not playing with fire and that’s that.”

“Then you’re never going to
be strong enough to save yourself,” she said sadly, “Or Nathan.”

Two days later, I was
lighting candles like a human Bic.

Now, sitting on the ground
with that cold November breeze blowing my hair back, I watched the flame
dancing in the wind, letting it focus me as she had taught me to do.  I let my
mind become part of the light, feeding the flame all of my negative emotions
until all that was left inside me was a quiet kind of stillness.  Only when I
had reached that peaceful place in my own mind did Grams place the velvety soft
bag she had taken from the box in my hand, closing my fingers around it. 

“Many witches who have
precognitive abilities have retrocognitive abilities as well, meaning they can
see flashes of the past,” she explained.  “Most of the boxes I have checked
contain personal objects that belonged to either the demon’s host or his
victims.  I would like to see if you can get anything from them.

“Close your eyes and find
your center,” she continued, almost mesmerizing me with her calm, even tone. 
“Feel the power of the earth beneath you, the water that cleanses you of all
negativity, the power of the air that breathes life into you, and the warmth of
the element that guides you.  Now open your mind as far as it will go.”

For a few minutes, nothing
happened at all.  Then my whole body jerked, muscles going taut, and I found
myself standing next to a man at a small table in the darkest corner of an
opulently decorated room.  A man holding the very bag I was holding.  He was pouring
a white, crystal-like powder into the palm of his hand.  The smile on his face
was sinister, the anticipation in his cold black eyes sickening. 

As I watched, he dumped the
powder into one of the two crystal goblets before him and filled both goblets
with wine just as a tall, plain-looking woman entered the room.  He turned and
offered the doctored goblet to the woman and I wanted to scream at her not to
drink it.  But, the stupid twit took it anyway. 

I watched as she brought it
to her lips and took a drink.  And then I watched as she died.

Snapping my eyes open, I
dropped the bag and started wiping my hand on my jeans like I could wipe away
the memory if I could get every trace of the feel of that bag against my skin
off my hand.  A cold sweat had beaded on my forehead, and my heart felt like it
was trying to jump out of my chest.  I felt sick and dirty, violated on an
emotional level so deep that I hadn’t even known it existed.  Trust me, it
wouldn’t go down as one of my more pleasant experiences.

“What did you see?” Grams
asked, still speaking in the mesmerizing way she had when she was helping me
fall into the trance that had forced me to see that woman die at the hand of
her demon lover.

“He poisoned her,” I
croaked, realizing my throat was as dry as a bone.  “He poured some kind of
powder out of that bag into her wine and she drank it without batting an
eyelash.”

Picking up the bag I’d
dropped, Grams calmly removed the tag I’d noticed before and handed it to me. 
Reading the words written there by the light of the candle between us, I felt
my blood turn to ice.

Taken from the catatonic
body of Reynaud Crom

Contents:  Unidentifiable
powder.  Believed to be poisonous.

January 7, 1898

London

“Catatonic,” I whispered
aloud.  I gulped hard as I thought about the real Jack again, wondering if that
would be his fate once the demon using him for a vacation home was through
playing with him.

“He didn’t remain that way,”
Grams said, though the look on her face said he hadn’t really recovered,
either.  “When he finally snapped out of it and found out he had poisoned his
wife, who he was rumored to have actually loved very much, the poor man went
mad and had to be committed to an asylum.  He killed himself a year later.”

I dropped my eyes back to
the candle, blinking back tears.  Things were looking worse and worse for Jack
by the second.  If the demon possessing him didn’t kill him, chances were good
he would end up in a psych ward pumped full of antipsychotics and talking to
himself.  Honestly, I didn’t know which one would be worse.

“Do you feel up to trying
again?” Grams asked quietly, after I had sat there without making a sound for
several long seconds while visions of Jack’s possible future branded themselves
into my brain.

“One more,” I whispered,
really wanting to scream and run away as fast as I could.  “I’ll do one more,
Grams, just to see if it was a fluke, then I’m done.”

Nodding her agreement, she
got up and disappeared into the house for another cursed relic for me to play
with.  I turned to watch her go and found Nathan seated in one of the patio
chairs, watching me with his face set in taut lines of tension.  Slowly, he
stood up and walked toward me, locking my gaze in his.

“Are you all right, baby?”
he asked, kneeling next to me. In a sweet gesture of real concern, he brushed
my sweat-dampened curls back from my forehead, his eyes roaming over my face in
search of signs that I had gotten in over my head.

I started to nod, to tell
him I was fine, my habitual reply to that question, but I stopped just as
suddenly.  I wasn’t fine and I was tired of trying to be.  I reached for him on
instinct, my buffer against the circus of horrors my life had become.  His arms
had become my safe haven, his love the healing balm on my soul that made the
whole nightmare bearable. 

He picked me up, settling me
on his lap, and I tucked my head beneath his chin and took a deep breath.  The
scent of his skin, the scent that was his alone, trickled peace through me,
blurring, if not really erasing, the nasty scene of death I had just
witnessed. 

“You don’t have to do this,
Em,” he whispered against my hair. 

“It’s just one more,” I
mumbled.  “Will you stay with me?”

“Always,” he whispered,
tilting my face up.  There was a soft look in his eyes that was so beautiful I
felt tears sting my eyes.  “I will always stay with you, Em.”

He brushed his lips across
mine, sealing his promise into my skin, into my heart.  Before I could take
full advantage of the moment, Grams walked out with my next nightmare in the
making in her hand.  Reluctantly, like he actually had to make himself do it,
Nathan pulled away from me and stood up.  As Grams took her place across from
me again, I felt him move to stand behind me, leaving several feet of space
between us.  Still, just knowing he was there helped give me that illusion of
safety I so desperately needed.

I held out my hand for the
demon souvenir in Grams’ hand and she placed a small oval locket in my hand. 
Before I even closed my fingers around it, I knew something was very wrong.  My
whole body started to convulse and my eyes rolled back in my head.  The smell
of smoke and burning skin filled my nostrils, choking me and making me gag.

It wasn’t the same as the
vision before.  Unlike the previous vision where I had only been a spectator,
this time I was getting to be part of the show.   I suddenly found myself
sharing the body of another girl, a young woman with long blonde hair who was
tied to some kind of…tree.  A tree that was surrounded by fire.

Her pretty face was waxy
with fear, her deep blue eyes darting around wildly as she screamed.  I could
feel the flames as they licked at her full skirts.  I felt her fear like it was
my own.  And when the fire finally claimed her, I screamed with her, feeling
the terrible, inescapable pain of being burnt alive.  I heard a roar of agony
that drowned out my own screams just before I heard the dark sound of laughter
ring in my ears.