Spirit (21 page)

I was anxious
for Jacob to go to sleep so that I could pull my looking glass out again and
check on Steven and Jodi’s progress, but long after we’d finished eating and
the animals were dozing, Jacob was still awake. He lay on the ground, one arm
under his head as he looked up at the starless sky.

“Why do you
suppose there are no stars here?” Jacob asked.

“Probably the
same reason why the moon never moves or changes,” I replied, adding another
couple of small branches to the fire.

“Huh,” he said,
shifting his head to look at the pale moon. “Never thought about that.”

“How could you
miss it?”

“I didn’t say I
missed it. It just hadn’t struck me. Curious.”

“Yeah, curious,”
I said, tracing my finger in the dust, drawing inconsequential designs.

Jacob rolled to
his side to face me, propping his head up with his hand. “How did you know your
horse’s name?”

“The brownie man
that tended the horses told me,” I replied.

“Hmm,” he said,
glancing at the horses. “Probably be good if I knew mine’s name.”

“Yes, it would,”
I agreed. “Had you been riding him or did you just take him that night?”

“No, I’d been
riding him,” he said.

“And no one told
you his name?”

“No.”

“Maybe he’ll let
you give him a new name,” I suggested.

“Let me?” Jacob
turned his confused face back to me.

“Well, you
wouldn’t want someone to start calling you by a new name without asking, would
you?” I shook my head at his still confused face before throwing my hands up in
the air and getting to my feet.

Jacob pushed off
the ground and hurried to follow me. I walked over to the nameless horse, took
the loose reins in one hand, and scratched his muzzle with the other.

“You have to
remember we’re not in our world anymore. Everything here is different.” I spoke
to Jacob as I looked at the horse, running my hand over his muzzle. “Fearghus
understands me when I talk to him. I’m sure this handsome guy is just as
smart.”

The horse bobbed
his head down and up as if in answer to my comment, making me chuckle, but when
I saw Jacob’s eyebrows shoot up, a full-bodied laugh burst from me.

“All right,” I
said to the horse, catching my breath. “We don’t know your name; would it be
okay if we came up with a new one for you?” The horse whinnied, blowing out a
breath that blew the loose strands of my hair back. But in another moment, he
bobbed his head again in consent.

“Blimey,” Jacob
whispered behind me.

“See?” I glanced
at him over my shoulder. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Um, well…”
Jacob stepped forward and placed his hand on the other side of the horse’s
muzzle, mimicking my movements. “How about Angus?”

“Cool name.”

“Yes,” Jacob
said, watching the horse’s reaction. “That was the name of me grandfather’s
horse. He had a farm near the coast and me mum would send me there on holiday.
Angus was the only horse that would let me ride him even though I was so
nervous. Miss that damn horse,” he whispered at the end.

“Well,” I said,
turning my attention back to the horse, “how about that? Do you like Angus?” He
leaned his head into Jacob’s hand, huffing gently.

“I guess that’s
your answer. Angus it is!” I stepped back to give Jacob and his new friend a
moment.

We rode for
nights in amiable silence. I had started to really get the hang of my weapon of
choice, even managing to take down a bird when our meat ran out. I couldn’t
bring myself to clean it, but luckily, Jacob volunteered to do it. I didn’t
have to see the poor dead thing again until it was on a spit over our fire.

So consumed in
finding the edge of the Outlands, we rode as long as Gwyn had pushed us,
leaving me exhausted when we broke for camp. I hadn’t had a chance to check my looking
glass and see what Jodi and Steven were up to. As a matter of fact, the thought
to check the looking glass hadn’t cross my mind in two nights.

I chewed at the
leg of the charred bird, pulling strips of meat off, staring blankly into the
fire as the shock of that realization hit me. Having practiced magic for my
entire life and having had dealings with faeries and their word games for so
long, I knew there was probably more than one way to be caught by the Hunt – I
couldn’t forget my purpose. I had to remember my home, my friends, what I was
riding for. If I didn’t, I would slip into the spell of the Outlands and be
trapped there forever, taking any hope of my friends’ magical recovery with me.

I tossed Balor
the bone and watched him pounce on it like a cat with a bird. His simple-minded
joy warmed something inside of me the fire hadn’t touched. When I tried to give
him a few of the root vegetables I hadn’t finished, he sniffed them
distrustfully before huffing hard enough to cause a puff of dust to rise.

“Fine, picky,” I
said, “but don’t come whining to me later when you’re hungry.”

Balor cocked a
white brow at me, tilting his head to the side, making me laugh. His jaw
dropped open and his tongue lolled out in that silly dog grin. I reached out
and ruffled the fur on top of his head before standing and walking over to
Fearghus. I fed him and Angus vegetables that looked close enough to carrots.
Jacob was already snoring lightly by the fire, his head pillowed by his crossed
arms. Here the river was shallow and slow. The sounds of the water babbling
over the clusters of rocks was enough to soothe anyone, even that grumpy old water
sprite woman back in Gwyn’s camp.

I fished my looking
glass out of the saddle bag and took it over to a tree near the horses. I
propped my wrists on my bent knees, holding the looking glass up to gaze into
the black glass, feeling a stitch form in my chest. The sprite woman was right;
staring into this thing, seeing my friends and family, gave me some small
measure of hope, but not being able to reach them was wearing me down, slowly
but surely.

“But it reminds
me,” I whispered to myself. “It reminds me where I belong, and that isn’t
here.” And with that thought, I held my breath and closed my eyes.

Chapter 12

Steven sat
cross-legged on the floor of my tree house with a white candle held in front of
his face. Jodi sat with her back against the trunk that held our spelling
supplies, an amethyst crystal ball in her hands. Either they snuck up there or
my parents had let them go up. Through the open windows, I saw the bright blue
sky of midday, so I assumed they probably asked my parents.

Steven drew in a
long breath through his nose and held it for a moment; his eyebrows were drawn
together as he glared at the candle as if it had offended him somehow. Finally,
when his lungs must be burning, he blew out the breath through his pursed lips.
The wick didn’t light, but a tiny tendril of grey smoke curled into the air,
whisked out the window by the cross breeze.

“Gah, damn it!”
Steven swore. His arm jerked as if he was about to throw the candle away but
thought better of it.

“That’s better
than the last time,” Jodi said calmly. She rolled the purple crystal from hand
to hand, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. I wondered if she could
still feel the crystal’s quiet power.

“I could do this
when I was a kid,” Steven grumbled, wiping the trickle of sweat from his
forehead with the back of his hand. “Hell, I did it the other week!”

“I know,” Jodi
replied.

“What, do I have
to draw a circle and call on the powers of the South anytime I want to light a
freaking candle?”

“No,” Jodi said,
“you could always use a match like the rest of us.”

“So damn funny,”
Steven shot back. He held the candle up again and drew in another breath, the anger
etched on his face in the pinch of his eyes and the crease formed by his
eyebrows.

“Imagine the
fire inside of you,” Jodi intoned softly. “See it burning steadily. Let it grow
with the air you breathe. Draw it up through your body until you feel the fire
burning in your lungs.”

Steven’s face became
red with the effort of holding his breath and trying to reawaken his natural
powers.

“Now, breathe
fire, Drake,” Jodi directed in a voice that should have rung with power but
didn’t.

The wick
smoldered under Steven’s breath. The coiling tendril of smoke lifted in the air
and became thicker and thicker until the wick finally burst into flame. A
relieved laugh burst out of Steven and threatened to blow the candle out.

“Good job,” Jodi
said with a nod before dropping her head back to the edge of the trunk, closing
her eyes and concentrating on the crystal.

“I don’t
understand why we lost so much power when Terra” Steven stopped, the word
caught in his throat, refusing to be spoken aloud.

“Takotsubo
cardiomyopathy,” Jodi said without so much as stumbling on one syllable.

“Come again?”
Steven asked, arching a brow at her.

“Tako-tsu-bo cardio-my-op-a-thy,”
Jodi repeated, her honors science knowledge making Steven and me feel totally
clueless. Jodi lifted her head and twisted at the waist to put the crystal back
in the trunk. “Broken Heart Syndrome.”

“Is that a
thing?”

Jodi nodded,
rolling her shoulders to loosen the muscles. “It’s kind of like a heart attack,
and people can die from it.”

“I haven’t felt
like I’ve had a heart attack. Have you?”

“No, and I’m not
saying that’s exactly what happened, but it’s my best guess,” she said. “When
people lose a loved one, they can develop Broken Heart Syndrome, and it causes
heart failure, chest pain, low blood pressure, shortness of breath.”

“Like a heart
attack,” Steven offered.

“Right. So their
body has a physical, detrimental reaction to the loss. I think we may have
suffered something similar but on a metaphysical level.”

“Like, Broken
Magic Syndrome?” Steven teased, trying to lighten the mood, but Jodi didn’t so
much as crack a smile.

“Yeah, like
that,” she said, blinking slowly at Steven, who shrank under her look.

“Sorry,” he
mumbled.

“Anyway,” Jodi
said, ignoring the apology, “Shay always said she was worried about what might
happen to us if one or more of us…” She trailed off at the end, the word
sticking in her throat just as it had with Steven.

Steven nodded,
giving her a chance to get past the moment, that word. “So,” he said, clearing
his throat, “this Broken Heart Syndrome can kill you, but not always, just like
a real heart attack, right?”

“Right?”

“So I guess the
same thing is happening here? If we allow it to, this can kill us if we’re not
careful.”

“Maybe,” Jodi
agreed. “You’ve lost more magic since I last saw you; you could still light
candles with your breath then. What happened?”

“More of my
power slipped away after I banished Shay from Anthony’s apartment,” he said,
dropping his eyes to study an invisible spot on his knee. Jodi made a sound of
understanding.

“Funny,” she
said.

“What?”

“You called me
over that night, right after,” she said.

“Yes,” Steven
prompted, leaning toward her.

“Remember, at
the beach, I still had the feral wind?”

“Yes.”

“About an hour
before you called me, it just stopped.” She lifted her dull blue eyes to
Steven’s face.

“But when I came
back in, there was a breeze…” Steven’s voice trailed off.

“That’s because
I was really angry.”

“About what?”

“Everything,”
Jodi said with a sigh. “But that was the last bit of feral wind I had left.”

“Oh,” he said as
he realized what she meant. “Well I guess there’s no question it really was
Shay I banished.” Steven turned his face away from Jodi’s stare, squeezing his
eyes shut, trying to stop the tears, but his breath caught. Before he could
stop himself, a sob escaped him. I saw the guilt slam into him, and he curled
in on himself, clutching his knees to his chest as the tears ripped through
him.

Jodi’s mask of
indifference cracked. She pushed herself away from the trunk and crawled the
short distance to Steven. She put her back to the wall next to him and put her
arm over him. A few moments went by before he turned to her, slipping his arms
around her waist, and laid his head on her chest, tucking in under her chin.
Jodi wrapped her arms around him, petting the back of his head in slow, light
movements.

I watched them,
curled into each other, Steven crying and Jodi making soft comforting sounds,
with an ache like none other burning in my chest. My cheeks were wet with tears,
but I didn’t bother to wipe them away. I was almost afraid to let go of the looking
glass and lose this vision.