Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) (10 page)

This girl knew my mother’s spell.  If this had happened a week ago, it would have intrigued me enough to spend whatever time the girl wanted together so I could pick her brain and find out how she came about using a spell my mother created.  However, it occurred to me my mother, in her mission, would have taught the spell to others, and they would have taught it to still more.  Today, I had other issues pressing on my mental capacity.  I did not have time for game
s.  My headache already wore on my patience, so this girl did not stand a chance.

“I’ll give you a ride in my car, but then you are going to reverse that and leave me alone,” I told
her as I turned and walked in the direction of my car.  She followed a few feet behind me, but I could still feel the pull of the spell.

We approached my beat up Toyota, and I unlocked the doors.  She slid into the passenger seat as I started the engine and shifted the car into reverse.

“Listen,” I said, as I put the car in drive. “I know you’re probably a Guardian.  You know that binding spell, and you probably think I’m an Unknown.  I have been living like one for so long, so it’s not surprising you would assume that.  You may even have a gift for finding Unknowns, but you’re wrong about me.  I’m not an Unknown.  I have simply chosen to live my life this way.”  The spell was still in tact and her lips weren’t moving in incantation or speech.  I sighed and tried to get the tree in my head to retract its roots so I could think about how to get rid of her.

“You don’t have to worry about me.  I can take care of myself,” I assured her.

“There is more to it than that, Jade,” she spoke with confidence, but it reminded me of another witch who used my name before he should have known it.  “I know you’re not an Unknown,” she continued, “I also know who you are, who your aunt was and who your mother was.  I’m not a Guardian, but I am training to be one.  It’s not about you needing protection.  We need you, but we had to wait until last night.  You weren’t ready before that.  We need your help.”

“What are you talking about?  How
do you know about last night?” I stared at her.  This was just too much in a twenty-four hour period.

“Stop sign!” she shrieked.

“What?”

“Stop sign!” Now she was closing her eyes.  I realized I wasn’t really paying attention to my driving anymore.  I slammed on the brakes and listened as my car came to a squealing stop a bit past the
red and white octagon.  Someone swerved slightly and honked at me, but there weren’t any other cars.  My headache plunged to another level, but I pushed the pain back.  I could only deal with two things at a time.  For now, those two things would have to be my driving and getting rid of this girl.  She let out a long breath.

“Turn right,” she said.

“But my apartment is left,” I told her, even though I hadn’t really been planning to drive her all the way to my apartment.

“Turn right,” she said again.  She really wasn’t being very accommodating or polite.  I turned right anyway.  At this point, my curiosity had the better of me.  Besides, I still had to figure out how to get the family book before I could start my training.  I hadn’t wanted it when Aunt Lynn discovered her prognosis.  I didn’t know what she had done with it, but after last night, I now had an idea of where it might be.  Still, I needed to travel before I could get it.  This girl wasn’t going to release me any time soon, so I might as well go along and satisfy my curiosity.

“Okay, so I’ll do
things your way, for now.  Are you at least going to tell me who you are?” I grumbled as we headed away from Gainesville and into the middle of nowhere.

“I’m Stefanie,” she sounded all too happy to share with me.  “My mother is a Guardian.  We didn’t know when you would time travel for the first time, but we knew it would be sometime soon.  It’s been my job to keep an eye on you.  Plus, we had a tracking spell on you.  As soon as you disappeared, we knew it was time.  I just happened to be nearby when it happened.  Now you know you are a time traveler
and
a firestarter; we hoped you would be ready to come out of hiding.  I mean, jeez, you’ve been in hiding your whole life!  That can’t have been fun.  You’ve got to be itching to become a Guardian.”

She had to stop to take a breath.  I stared at her again.  Tracking me?  Me, wanting to become a Guardian?  What was she thinking?
  She and her mother and whoever else she meant when she said “we” did not really know as much about me as they thought.  Becoming a Guardian had never been on my to-do list.  Even knowing the truth about the night my mother died, I still did not want to become a Guardian.

“Uh, watch the road, okay?” Stefanie stammered, “If you’re not going to pay attention to where we’re going, you’re gonna have to let me drive.”

“Not a chance,” I grumbled at her, “of you driving or of me becoming a Guardian.”

I kept my eyes on the road this time, but I was sure Stefanie’s eyes were popping out of their sockets about now.  She expected me to be excited and ready to sign up like a dumb recruit who signed up for the reserves without realizing there was a war going on
and that he would be shipped off within days of completing his training.  I certainly wasn’t that dumb.  I had no illusions the war my mother had been fighting had died with her.  We wouldn’t have been in hiding all these years if that war wasn’t still going on.  I just wasn’t a player in any of those battles, and I had no intention of thrusting myself back into the middle of it.  The only battle I wanted to fight was waiting for me in Salem hundreds of years ago.  No way was I telling her that, though.

“What do you mean you don’t want to be a Guardian!?” Stefanie screamed at me.  “We’ve been waiting all this time for you to join us and help win this fight against the Shadow Rulers
and
the Hunters, and you don’t want to join?  Where’s your sense of responsibility?  Where’s your sense of loyalty?  Don’t you care about what your mother died for?”

That was more than I could take in one twenty-four hour period.  I slammed the brakes, and the car skidded noisily, stopping just a bit off the road into the dirt.  A car behind us honked and sped past.

“That’s enough.  You do not have the right to lecture me about responsibility or loyalty, and you certainly do not know me well enough to bring up my mother!  Especially today.  If you know so much about me and you know I’m a time traveler, where the hell do you think I just came from?  You have no idea the sacrifices I’ve already made.” I paused to catch my breath.  Stefanie stared at me.  She looked like she might be forming an apology, but I didn’t really care to hear it. 

“I have my own agenda now,” I continued, “so are you going to release me from this spell or do I still have to go and meet your little group of Guardians?”

“I’m sorry,” Stefanie managed, “I was just surprised…”

“I don’t care,” I snapped back, “Just answer my question so we can either end this or get on with it.”

“I can’t release you yet.  You have to come meet them,” she whispered. 

“Fine.  The only conversation I want to have until then is you giving me directions.”  If the circumstances had been different, I would have felt guilty for putting her in her place, but I honestly didn’t feel a twinge of remorse.  It was bad enough I had to plan revenge on two Shadow Rulers, but now I had to deal with a misguided group of Guardians who for some reason had put their hopes in me.  So, I had two rare gifts—three if you counted reading auras, but they didn’t know about that one.  Big deal.  Maybe that made me special in their books, but I had no interest in their war.  Other than avenging my mother, it had nothing to do with me.  Once I completed that act, I would bow out of my identity as a witch forever.  Maybe I could contract my abilities and gifts over to some Guardian and walk away a normal college student.  Well, as normal as a girl who had been abandoned once and orphaned twice could be.

“Turn left at the light,” Stefanie muttered, pointing to a single blinking caution light hanging in an intersection ahead.  We drove in silence for the next twenty minutes before she told me to turn left again.  Finally, we turned right onto a private dirt road.  My Toyota tossed us around like we were popcorn someone was shaking in a microwave bag.  Ruts, bumps, and divots covered the path, and I swerved once for a tree jutting out into the path and a second time for a raccoon family just finishing their journey across the makeshift road.  I wanted to ask when we would reach our destination, but my anger at Stefanie’s earlier comments hadn’t subsided.

Eventually, the car crept out into a clearing in front of a wood-frame, two-story house that looked worthy of a Harry Potter film.  Ironic, since it served as a meeting place, maybe even a hideout, for a group of real witches.  I slowed the car and pulled next to what looked like a shiny black mustang.  However, when I let my fingers run along its smooth metallic side, I felt the decay and rust of a much older car.  I jumped back with a start, and Stefanie stifled a small giggle.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” she said as I watched her recite an incantation with familiar ease.  The car shifted before my eyes and became an old, rusty Chevy.  My aunt never cast a spell like that.  It seemed oddly self-serving and thrilling at the same time.  An aspect of magic I had never explored.  I felt a little twinge of longing for what I would eventually be giving up, but I remained resolute.  I would not help these witches.  I would avenge my mother.  Then I would give up being a witch.  Forever.

“C’mon,” Stefanie beckoned, “It’s time for you to meet my mother.”  I stared up at the house, which seemed to tower above me like a watchtower.  They may have placed a spell on the car to make it appear more modern and fresh-off-the-lot new, but the house did not appear to have any spell on it. 
An older home, it had been awhile since anyone had painted it.  It had once been white, with a brown trim around the windows and doors, but the paint cracked and peeled at every knot or splinter in the wood.  It looked as if you could simply peel away the paint like sunburnt skin.

I followed Stefanie onto the steps of a wrap-around front porch.  The steps didn’t audibly creak, but I could feel them bend to the pressure of each step in protest of too many years of use.  I ran my hand over the porch railing and watched as flakes of paint fluttered to the ground like ashes.  I shuddered, remembering the smoke and later, a memory not quite so fresh, the smoldering remnants of a place that was once a safe haven turned tomb.

Before we reached the front door, it opened and a familiar face appeared in the doorway.

“Jade, we are so glad to finally have you here,” Madilyn greeted me.  She looked older.  I had only placed my child self in her arms hours ago, and although I knew I looked exactly the same to her, she had aged over the years that had passed since that moment.  Still, she looked
much the same.  Her deep brown eyes had not changed.  Her hair had an auburn tint to the brown it had been, but it looked like a dye to add some pizzazz to her normal hair color.  She couldn’t have been more than twenty or so when I first met her, so she was probably in her mid to late thirties now.  How strange.  We met for the first time only hours ago, and we were roughly the same age.  Now she was older than me.  Yet another surreal effect of time travel.

My resolution ebbed slightly.  It was easy to imagine denying a group of strangers my help, but much more difficult to deny the last person my mother had tried to help.  I forced a smile so as not to reveal the conflict I felt.

“Hello, Madilyn.  I would say it has been awhile, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

Madilyn
smiled and touched my shoulder with compassion.  She knew what the last twenty-four hours of my life had been like.  Her rose-colored aura matched Stefanie’s almost exactly. I wondered if Stefanie was younger than me or if Madilyn never got around to revealing she had a daughter that first night.  She may not have known whether Stefanie would be safer wherever she was that night rather than in a bar full of strangers revealing themselves to be witches trying to protect her.

Madilyn
kept her hand on my shoulder and ushered me into the house.  Sunlight filtered into the living room through lacy curtains.  There was no television.  Several mismatched couches and chairs made a circle in the living room, incorporating an old fireplace.  I secretly laughed every time I saw a fireplace in Florida; they served more as a novelty than a necessity.  At least in a house of witches it might be useful.

Amy stood up from a couch covered in floral print.  I recognized her immediately.  Her blond hair only skimmed her shoulders now, and she, too, had aged, but she still resembled the girl I had last seen being dragged from
the burning barroom.  Her eyes held the same compassion as Madilyn’s touch held.  She, too, knew what I had just been through, and even though it had been years ago for her, I could see the night my mother died still held pain for her as well. 

Stefanie came in behind us and closed the door.  Only the four of us stood in this room, but I could hear other people elsewhere in the house.  Amy approached me and wrapped her arms around me.  I didn’t want to, but the tears came against my will.  Before I knew it, I was sobbing into Amy’s shoulder with Madilyn calmly rubbing my back.  Although my mother had died when I was only three, she also died just last night.  Almost as devastating, seeing my aunt one last time brought up all the emotions I had been suppressing for almost two years now since her death.  So I stood there, crying alternately for my mother, for my aunt, and for the position I now found myself in.  A double orphan.  A witch.  Alone.  Both burdened and driven by a mission of revenge.