Spring Rain (17 page)

Not that she would stop searching for the
means to be with him and protect the Light. She was already wading
into territory that left her scared of making yet another mistake
to destroy the lives of those she cared about.

Her gaze went to the sleeping form of her
mother in the seat beside her. Tandy McCloud had insisted on
returning with her. At first reluctant, Morgan felt grateful for
the company. She had rarely seen her mother since the divorce,
which occurred long before she knew about the soul stone and its
impact on the lives of those charged with guarding it. Her mother
was taller than her with fiery hair two shades darker than
Morgan’s. A Dark fire witchling, she was nonetheless a good person,
one whose hidden struggles with the soul stone were revealed only
when Morgan confronted her the day before.

The edges of the anger she felt after the
divorce, the sense of abandonment and helplessness in the home of
her disabled father and abusive uncle, had softened when she began
to understand her own mother’s struggle with the stone. Her mother
suffered bouts of depression and loneliness in a duty she couldn’t
share with anyone. Morgan hadn’t learned what she needed to about
possibly containing it, but she had learned more about the history
of female fire witchlings tasked long ago with safeguarding the
dangerous talisman.

Nothing her mother told her, though, gave
her even the slightest bit of hope or insight into what she was
supposed to do to help Beck. Every woman in her family for at least
three generations before her had suffered in her role as the
caretaker of the stone. The others were sources of bedtime tales
where the truth of who they were was as fanciful as a Disney
movie.

She read Beck’s message again, and her
throat tightened. She wanted to respond, but none of the intense
emotions confusing her would translate into anything she dared send
him.

She locked the screen and gazed at the
highway flying by outside the coach. The soul stone was sucking up
her body heat, and she absently increased her magick to counter it.
The stone was hungry, always hungry.

Maybe we could use the
soul stone to capture Bartholomew.
Decker’s idea
had been swimming
around Morgan’s thoughts, the most recent of her desperate ideas on
how to be with Beck. Nothing Tandy had told her indicated this was
possible, either.

Morgan let her head rest back against her
seat and drifted into a light doze fed by the drone of the bus
engines and road. Whenever she wasn’t actively redirecting her
thoughts, they always returned to Beck, to the sense of belonging
she couldn’t shake and the idea he felt it, too. She let herself
experience the joy of possibly being with him, to fantasize about a
more perfect, less dark world where she was allowed to be happy.
The images in her head refreshed her from the exhausting reality
she faced every second of every day.

Her mother awoke shortly after dawn, and
Morgan shifted in the seat. She was stiff and sore from the bus
traveling, and she yearned for a good, hot meal.

“Can I try again?” Tandy asked.

Morgan took the stone out of her pocket and
passed it over, watching her mother’s face.

Fire leapt across Tandy’s skin the moment
she touched it, along with the tightness of strain in her face.
Morgan’s hope fell further.

“It’s not the same,” her mother admitted and
passed it back. “When you turned seventeen, I knew I had to pass it
off. I guess it’s the way the magick works.”

“That doesn’t help me,” Morgan whispered,
thoughts on Beck.

“It’s more than duty bothering you,” her
mother guessed, studying her.

“Yeah. There’s a guy I like. He’s Light. I
can’t be around him with this,” Morgan rushed through the
words.

“It’s part of the burden. Your grandmother
and great grandmother committed suicide after their duty was up.
Great-great gran ended up in a nuthouse.” Tandy frowned. “I don’t
want that for us, baby, but I don’t think I have the answers you
need either.”

Morgan tightened her fist around the stone
and shoved it into her pocket. “Is there anything at all about our
family that’s special?”

“We’re strong fire witchlings,” her mother
said with a shrug. “It’s all your grandmother ever told me. We were
chosen because of how strong we are.”

“There’s no way to contain it? How did you
keep it hidden from Connor and me? We were into everything as
kids.”

“I kept it in my pocket most of the time.
When you were old enough to go to school, I put it in a jewelry
box.”

Morgan had left the stone out on top of her
dresser at the boarding school once. It was how Beck ended up
touching it. She couldn’t imagine keeping the stone out of reach of
children. “So nothing there,” Morgan said, shifting in frustration.
“What about … fire witchlings? I didn’t learn much at school before
being tossed out. What is special about a fire witchling?”

“Fire burns, warms, purifies. It’s a
powerful element, one that is also difficult to control, which is
how most fire witchlings go Dark.”

“Are there any Light fire witchlings in our
family?”

Her mother was pensive. “One. The first in
our family to be charged with the stone. It was a very long time
ago. Do you remember me telling you kids about Elsa when you were
little?”

Morgan nodded.

“She’s the only Light fire witchling in our
family and pretty much the only one of any distinction.”

“What was special about her?”

Her mother shrugged. “She was stronger than
the other fire witchlings. The story goes that her father was
Hessian, which was a warrior tribe in Germany. He was a Dark air
witchling who used his magick in battle to defeat other tribes.
Elsa’s mother was struck down in battle, and her father went crazy
and defied the Rules of Dark and broke them all to try to bring her
back to life. She was sixteen, and there was no stone in our family
yet. So she buried her mother and went to confront the Master of
Dark, ready to burn him to a crisp if he turned down her pleas. The
women in our family are fireballs,” her mother said with a
smile.

Morgan returned the smile and leaned her
temple against the seat, listening. She’d heard the story before as
a child, minus the part about the soul stone, but paid as much
attention as possible this time around for any clue as to why her
family was special.

“When the Master of Dark came for him, Elsa
begged for his life, knowing his fate was death. The Master of Dark
felt sorry for her, but he couldn’t exactly let her father live
after what he’d done,” her mother continued. “He was the son of
Bartholomew-the-Terrible, the brother of the Restorer.”

“So, Elsa used her magick to turn her father
from Dark to Light,” Morgan recited the end of the story.

“And the Master of Dark realized he now had
the right person to safeguard the soul stone he and his brother
didn’t know what to do with.”

“How much of it is true?” Morgan asked. “It
sounds crazy that Elsa could turn someone from Dark to Light. How
is that possible?”

“Stories are exaggerated
and twisted as they pass from generation to generation,” her mother
agreed. “But … how hard is it to
want
to believe it’s possible? I
tried it with your father.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I was already Dark when we met, and
he went Dark soon after. I wanted to save him. It was stupid,
teenage angst and emotion, but I tried to burn the Dark out of him.
It did not go well.”

“You didn’t cripple him!”

“Oh, no!” her mother exclaimed. “That was a
workplace incident. He was in the burn trauma unit for a few
months, though.”

Morgan stared at her.

“Fireballs,” Tandy said again. “I was a
stupid, idealistic kid.”

But what if it could
work?
Morgan fingered the soul stone in
her pocket. A solid piece of Darkness was very different than
someone with a fleck of Dark in them. It almost seemed easier to
burn Darkness out of someone than to mess with the soul
stone.

It wasn’t going to help her find a solution
to being with Beck and safeguarding the stone. But for Dawn … she
considered.

Why couldn’t it work? Beck had once claimed
she could help him with the Light, and Decker seemed to think she
was supposed to be doing that as a counterbalance. Was this how? By
frying the Dark out of Dark witchlings?

Elsa was a Light fire witchling, one
powerful enough to pass down her magick through a thousand years of
witchlings at least.

“What happened to Elsa’s father?” she asked
finally, tossing new ideas around in her head.

“Not sure. The story Grandma told me never
said.”

Morgan chewed on her lower lip, pensive.
“You’re right. I want to believe it to be possible.”

“It’s a nice thought.” Tandy dug out snacks
from her backpack.

“How much damage did you do to Dad?” Her
mind went to Dawn and the baby. She didn’t care at all about
hurting Dawn, but Beck’s daughter was a different story.

“Third degree burns over most of his body.
There was an earth witchling with me who was healing him as I
burned him. I lost control at one point and the earth witchling
couldn’t keep up, so your father bears some scarring.”

Fire burns. Earth
heals.
An odd sensation drifted through
Morgan. Beck was the Master of Light, which meant he was the most
powerful earth witchling alive. And there was Sam, the forest yeti
who healed her when her leg was broken trying to flee
Dawn.

So there were people powerful enough to heal
the damage she caused. The question wasn’t if they could protect
Beck’s daughter, but if she could burn hot enough to char the
Darkness out of Dawn.

“Am I stronger than you, Mama?” she
asked.

“In many ways, if what I suspect about your
uncle is true.”

Morgan flushed and ducked her gaze, not
ready to discuss that topic. “I mean magick-wise.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Strong enough to burn the Dark out of
someone?”

“I don’t know what that’d take, Morgan, and
I don’t think it’s even possible. I know Elsa was said to have done
it, but that’s just a story. We can’t verify any part of it.”

Morgan fell silent, unable
to let go of the idea. If it became her only option, she didn’t
know how she wasn’t going to try it. She had to try
something.

“How did Gordon find out about the soul
stone?” she asked.

“I told your father after we got married,”
Tandy said sadly. “I think, after the divorce, he was angry and
wanted to hurt me. He took you and told Gordon my secret. Gordon
threatened to tell others if I kept fighting in court to get you
back, but I did it anyway.”

“Did he tell?”

“As far as I know, he didn’t. But there’s no
telling. He’s unstable.”

I already know that
much.
Gordon’s lack of action eased
Morgan’s concern for her father. Perhaps her uncle was all talk
when it came to other people and he wasn’t alone with
her.

“You know our flame colors?” Her mother’s
hand ignited, each finger flickering with a different color
flame.

Morgan nodded. “Red is warm, blue the
hottest.” She tapped her mother’s flames.

“There’s a color hotter than blue,” her
mother said. “Grandma said Elsa had flames that burned purple-black
before turning pure white. I never really gave that much thought,
though. Can you imagine how pretty a purple flame would be?”

Purple. Morgan had seen flecks of purple in
her white flames, those brought on by extreme emotion. It wasn’t
the first time she’d seen purple, either. The first time she met
Sam in the forest, before the events of December, she’d summoned
flames that randomly burned purple. She hadn’t though them special
before, just a new expression of her magick.

She held her mother’s hand an inch from her
face to study the flame colors. Her mother’s blue flame had no
trace of purple or white. She didn’t have her mother’s control yet
to try to summon a single flame that was hotter than blue. She’d
have to try it somewhere away from anything flammable.

“Mom, my candy flames were always pink,” she
said, referring to the bursts of warmth she often handed to others
that needed the comfort.

Her mother raised an eyebrow. “When did you
start making them? After the divorce?”

Morgan nodded.

“Morgan, a normal fire witchling’s flames
don’t range from outside the colors of a natural fire.”

Morgan willed a candy flame to appear in her
palm and held it out.

Her mother summoned one as well and placed
her hand beside Morgan’s.

Tandy’s flame was orange, while Morgan’s was
brilliant pink.

“It’s beautiful, Morgan.” Her mother took
the pink fire, a smile crossing her features as the flame melted
into her skin and gave her a hug from the inside out.

I’m special.
Morgan’s mind began to race down a different
track. Whether or not she had an earth witchling to help her, if
she could burn hot enough to turn Dawn Light and possibly remove
the threat of her using Darkness to hurt others, would that be
enough? Or did she need to find a way to deal with Bartholomew
first, and Dawn second?

Or … were they the same thing, and she
needed to purify Bartholomew, not Dawn?

“You’ve been with your father since you were
ten,” Tandy said. “I hardly know you anymore.”

“I’m still me, Mama,” Morgan said, touched
by the sadness in her mother’s voice.

“I should’ve kidnapped you and run long ago.
Looks like you had the same idea.”

Morgan laughed. “I didn’t kidnap you! You
volunteered!”

“Of course I did! I haven’t spent more than
half a day with my little girl in four years. After hearing you’d
died in December …” Tandy’s eyes watered. “You think I was going to
let you face whatever this is on your own?”