Magical Influence Book One (19 page)

“It's fine, come on,” Jacob turned,
latched onto my shoulder, and tugged me up the stairs. He was a lot
quicker at moving me than I had been at moving him. In seconds we
were up on the second floor.

The second floor was my grandmother's
domain, the third was my own, and the fourth had the attic. Suffice
to say whenever I headed down or up the stairs, I always made a
point of ignoring the second floor. While I kept the kitchen and
the library and the bathroom and the lounge room as clean as I
could, it was a never-ending battle to do anything to my
grandmother's realm.

“Is that a stuffed giraffe with pins in
it?” Jacob secured a hand on the banister and turned around to
survey the junk in the corridor and the rooms sprouting out from
it.

“It's zoo voodoo,” I managed, breath stuck
in my throat as I peered back down the stairs, expecting something
dark to chase its way up them at any moment.

“Zoo voodoo?” he repeated pointedly. It
was obvious he was trying to make a joke, or something like it,
despite the situation. What kind of a man did that? This was no
laughing matter. There should have been no time to pause, point out
the comical stuffed animal with the pins hanging out of it and let
off a little snigger. There should only have been time to race up
the stairs, pile ourselves into the attic, and close the door
behind us.

This guy really was full of
himself, I suddenly concluded
. “Can we move on? Or do you want to invite the
denizens of the dark to feast on our souls?”

“Feast on my soul, you mean; you’re a
witch, you don't have one, right? You've already made a pact with
the devil or something like that, lost your dignity and meaning by
dancing in the forest naked and summoning evil, right?

I started to go pink, very
pink. Dancing in the forest naked? Selling my soul?
“Excuse me,” I
began.

“But we really need to make it up to the
attic. Stop distracting me. You really have no idea how to keep
yourself safe, do you?” he goaded as he turned around, proceeded to
ignore all the weird and wacky junk on the second level, and headed
up the next flight of stairs.

I'd seen some weird things in my time.
Especially living with my grandmother. Jacob Fairweather was
turning out to be the weirdest. People didn't react like this, did
they? Real people, from the real world, had real reactions of fear
when faced with a situation that was as scary and dangerous as
this. There should be no time to make jokes and quips and insults.
There should only be time to run like hell until we got to
safety.

I knew Jacob had seen the skeleton in
the kitchen, and I knew he had pulled that bony hand off my throat.
There should have been no doubt in his mind that he was dealing
with something frankly terrifying here. And yet he was managing to
joke. It was like we were in a movie, or a play, because, god
dammit, real people didn't react this way.

It took me until we had reached
the third floor to
realize that I wasn’t reacting normally either. Instead of
being terrified out of my wits, I was spending all of my mental
energy wondering just what Jacob Fairweather's problem
was.

“This must be your grandmother’s floor.
She’s got good taste,” Jacob nodded, this time not pausing too long
to point out the decor or find another excuse to belittle
me.

Unbeknownst to Jacob, he’d just
offered me his very first compliment.

“Actually, this is my floor. And thank
you, I do like to keep things clean and nice.”

“It was a joke. It's ugly,” he said
automatically.

Ugly?
Ugly?
I'd put my heart and soul into making this
place beautiful. I had picked everything from the carpet to the
drapes to the paint to the pictures. It had been a labor of love
over many years to acquire all the vases and cushions and
throws.

He wasn’t just arrogant, Jacob
Fairweather was far more than that. He was like a playground bully.
Like your first crush who would come up to you in the yard, push
you over, shove worms in your mouth, and run-off.

But at least it kept me distracted.
Until we finally made it to the attic, that was.

Unlike most houses, there was a set of
ordinary stairs leading to our attic. You didn't have to pull
anything down from the ceiling and grab a ladder; you just had to
make your way up the last flight until you reached the door. A
suitably ominous door, because this was the house of two witches.
It was old and creaked something menacing, and the surface was
chipped and scratched. Yet it could withstand a mortar from a tank,
I was sure.

Because behind it was something
special. Years and years and years of Sinclair family history.
Books, photos, stories, letters. All of it was up there in boxes
and stacked on bookshelves. Squeezed between magical books and
objects were teddy bears and old albums, wedding dresses and toys.
Every type of memorabilia you could think of.

“Are you sure it is going to be safe
behind there?” Jacob hesitated, clearly not wanting to reach a hand
out to touch that door.

I was damn sure. To demonstrate this I
shoved my way past him and went to open it.

I latched my hand onto the handle and
tried to muscle it open.

Except it wouldn't work. The handle
was stuck. Feeling a touch embarrassed, I tried to tug
harder.

We didn’t have a lock on this door, so
there was no reason for it not to open. Unless the rising damp from
the storm had shifted the house on its foundations and the door was
a little stuck in its frame, there should have been no reason for
it to get stuck like this.

Bearing my teeth, putting my shoulder
into it, I tried again and again.

“You really are pathetic,” he shoved me
off. He didn't ask me to move aside so he could have a go; he
actually shoved me away. He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed,
not hard enough to make me tumble back down the stairs and break my
neck, but hardly gently either.

It confirmed my suspicions that he was
a playground bully. No doubt if I delved into Fairweather's past, I
would find many girls who had been pushed over in the rain, many
children whose lunches had been stolen at recess, and a whole bevy
of disgruntled, frustrated teachers.

Before I could be too
embarrassed at not being able to open the door, I
realized Jacob
couldn't either.

“Where's the key? Is it locked?” he tried
to wrench it open, but to no avail.

“It can't lock.”

“Well then I've got news for you, witch,
it's not opening.” He stopped trying to open it, letting his hands
drop, and turning over his shoulder to check down the stairs.
“Great, we’re trapped up here. Fantastic plan. We can't get into
the attic, and if we head down the stairs, we’ll be an easy target.
Is this your idea of going somewhere safer?”

I ignored him. Instead I
reached a hand out and nestled it onto the wood
. “Come on, open,” I said under
my breath.

“It's a
door
, it’s incredibly hard to negotiate
with. I've got a better idea,” Jacob grabbed my arm and pulled me
back.

There was no asking me to move to the
side, there was no waiving me on, there was only him moving me
around like you might a piece on a chessboard.

Before I could snap at him to respect
my personal space, he took a step back, raised his gun, and no
doubt got ready to shoot.

I jumped in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he
shouted.

“You can't shoot this door! You'll make
the whole house angry. It will try to kill you,” I shook my head,
bringing my hands up and waving them about.

“Don't jump in front of somebody's gun,
are you mad? Do you want to die?”

“You can't shoot the door,” I didn't move
from where I was.

“Fine, but don't jump in front of my gun
again. As irritating as you are, I really don't want to kill you,”
with that he turned around and stared back down the stairs. “Can
you hear that?”

“You mean the storm?”

“I mean the patter of feet. Sounds like
there's a whole army down there,” Jacob slowly straightened up,
resting one hand on the railing as he kept the other firmly gripped
on his gun.

A whole army, great. And no, I
couldn't hear it, which meant Jacob was either pulling my leg, or
once again he could sense things I couldn't.

It was one thing being the witch in
this relationship, it was another being the lesser magical
creature. Because if my grandmother was right, then Jacob seemed to
have a natural talent to see things beyond which I could. And hell,
I'd been training for years.

It just wasn't fair.

“You might want to wipe that pout off your
face; we have to head back down there. Can we make the lounge room
safe? Or is there somewhere else we can go? What about your
bedroom, would that be safe?”

I slapped my hand on my chest,
blushing the
color of magma. “My bedroom? Why do you want to go into my
bedroom?”

“Don't get too excited,” he said
sarcastically. “Presumably anywhere you have a lot of your magical
books or junk or whatever is safe. So I just concluded, considering
your character, that your room would be full of all of this magical
trash. But answer the question, would it be safe?”

Feeling my heart thumping through my
chest and vibrating my hand, I was suddenly distracted by how tall
and broad chested Jacob was. If you got past the arrogance, he
really was handsome. Now was not the time to think about that. Now
was the time to come up with a new plan.

“Would you stop blushing; it was no
compliment, just tell me if it would be safe?”

Ha, no.

Staring up at him coldly, I
shook my head
. “There is nowhere here that is safe. If we can't make it
into the attic....I guess we have to leave,” the thought came upon
me at once. As soon as I said it, I realized how true it was. There
was no longer anywhere in this house that could protect us. If I
wanted to see this day and night through, I had to get away from
here, take my chances elsewhere. I could head to my Auntie Tessa’s,
beg her to stay in the office, or head back to her own house.
Presumably it would offer me a great deal more protection than I
could receive here. Plus, Tessa was such a bulldog that I doubted
most evil magical creatures would bother trying to take her on,
even if I was up for grabs.

I nodded to myself.

“Care to share? I'm not sure if you've
forgotten, but you, through you're careless actions, have gotten an
innocent man involved in this situation. Now it's up to you to see
the both of us get out of here safely.”

I screwed up my face at the
term
“innocent man.” Jacob wasn’t innocent; he was a jerk, but
unfortunately he was right. I did owe it to him and myself to get
us both out of here safely.

“We have to get out of the house. It is
not going to be easy, especially when we get to the yard, but if we
make it to my car.... We could properly go and see the rest of my
family. We’d be better off there.”

“We? If we manage to get out of the house,
you're on your own,” he nodded my way.

For some reason that startled
me. Though I had spent a good part of the last hour thinking about
how arrogant Jacob was, he didn't seem
... to be the kind to leave somebody
in the lurch, especially when that someone was in as much danger as
I was.

“Surprised?” he challenged me.

I glowered down at
him
. “Not
really; you're a jerk. It’s exactly what I would expect you to say.
Now unless you want to become fodder for the damned, follow me,”
feeling a rising anger take hold, I pushed past Jacob, and managed
to stay ahead, despite the fact I knew he would take any
opportunity to grab at me, push me behind him, and make another
arrogant quip.

Well I wasn't going to have anything
more of it. I wasn’t going to hide behind this man anymore, and I
wasn't going to let him bully me.

I started to tug up my sleeves.
And it felt
... good. Don't get me wrong, a spa and a nap on a sunny
bed would have felt better, but at least I was taking charge of my
own fear.

I settled my senses back into the
situation. I tried to understand the peaks and troughs in the
magical currents around me.

I could feel how much had crammed
itself into this house. Underneath it was the same sense my home
had always given me, but at the edges, on top, like a stifling
blanket, was the dark side.

I'd never been particularly good at
distinguishing magical creatures, and it wasn't that much of a
surprise that Jacob was better at it than I, even though he was
untrained. But I knew enough to know what was dangerous.

I could sense something
clambering up the stairs towards us. Yes,
clambering
. It felt like it had many legs, and
if I strained my hearing, I could discern each one of its pattering
footsteps.