“What’s wrong?”
“I have a headache.” I opened my mouth to say something, but quickly shut it. My teeth clamped together with a loud snap.
“What’s wrong?”
“We may never find the receptacle. Halloween is in three weeks.”
“We’ll find it,” Ethan said. “It’s in Salem. I know it is. We just have to figure out what it could be. Tell me about the dream again.”
I’d recounted the dream a million times, but each time, my father intently listened to every word. I told him about Venice, Italy during the Bubonic Plague. When Liam stored the object in a worn leather bag roughly three inches by two inches and how the beautiful woman stole the bag from him in the middle of the night.
“Whatever was in that sack made its way to the New World in the late 1600s.” Ethan turned up the heat. “The object was in Salem during the Trials in 1692.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “That was over three hundred years ago. How do we know it’s still there? How did Grandma Claudia know that?”
“I don’t know. Claudia was sure. Dead sure. And no one ever questioned your grandmother regarding her research. Liam came to Massachusetts in 1692 and then went north into Canada, presumably, to search for the receptacle.”
We turned out of the Hallows and drove down Main Street. Most of the trees had turned beautiful shades of orange, yellow and red. Halloween decorations covered lawns and porches. The feeling of fall was palpable. It was my favorite time of year. A deep sadness filled me - it was probably the last fall I’d ever live to see.
Ethan patted my hand. “Tell me more about what I missed.”
“The Red Sox finally won the World Series.”
“I mean about you. Was it awful living with Victor?”
“It was okay.” I didn’t want to talk about my stepfather.
“Are you sugarcoating it for me?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past, right?”
“It matters to me.”
I tugged my coat zipper. “It wasn’t horrible. Victor provided for us. We had a nice house, cars, clothes and food. Victor and mom argued a lot - explosive fights - and then he’d buy her an expensive gift to make up with her. I think deep down Victor loved her, but she was so far gone that I don’t think she noticed.”
Ethan threw me a sidelong glance. “Define ‘gone’ please.”
We turned onto Pennington Drive and the Hazel Cove Cemetery sped by my window. I said a prayer for the departed souls and an extra one for Grandma Claudia.
“Mom drank a lot. She was bitter. Angry. Even mean sometimes. But mostly, she just checked out of life, you know? She was sad and depressed. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but now I do. She missed you.” I smiled at him.
“But what about you? Were you happy?”
I twirled the emerald ring that Peter had given me for my birthday last year. “I was happy.”
“Because of Peter?”
“We made it through together. Ever since we were children, he was always there for me. No questions asked. Peter was the one solid, good thing in my life and I don’t know where I’d be without him.”
Ethan nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
We entered our neighborhood. My dad turned the corner and slammed on the brakes. He twisted the volume down on the radio. The AC/DC blaring from the speakers had tuned out all of the outside noise, but now we could hear it. Sirens. The flickering red and blue lights flashed from behind the row of houses. The commotion came from the next block over - from our street.
My heart leaped into my throat.
Emma. James.
Ethan smashed his foot on the gas pedal. My head snapped back against the headrest. The Jeep peeled down the street. A swarm of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks lined the road in front of my house.
Or what used to be my home.
My little white house with navy shutters was missing the entire front wall. The siding and framing were gone. I could physically see into my living room. The furniture was overturned. Concrete and wood covered the floor.
Something - or someone - had smashed open the front of my home. Literally.
I jumped out of the car before my dad could park the Jeep. The putrid smell of gasoline filled the air. I sprinted over the front lawn. A police officer moved to stop me, but I threw him a murderous look.
“You can’t go inside,” the man said. “We believe the explosion was caused by a gas leak.”
“My mom’s in there.” I swear I’d blast this police officer through the air if he tried to stop me. I didn’t care who saw my powers. Magic sh’magic.
“The woman inside was moved to the ambulance.”
“What about the boy?”
“What boy?”
“A teenage boy. His name is James Van Curen. Dark hair. Dark eyes. He should’ve been inside the house, too.”
The police officer shook his head. “We didn’t see anyone else inside. Only the woman and the dog.” Emma and Scooby were alive, but where was James? His red Range Rover was parked in the driveway.
Bad sign.
Scooby barked in the arms of a paramedic. I scooped up the small Chihuahua and dashed toward the ambulance, but something stopped me in my tracks.
James’ worn Boston Red Sox hat sat on the front lawn amidst all of the debris of my former house. I snatched the hat from the grass and followed my dad into the back of the ambulance.
Emma laid on the gurney. Her head was bandaged and her eyes looked glassy, but she was alive and breathing.
“Where is he?” My chest heaved. “Mom, where’s James?”
Ethan hovered over her. “Emma, can you hear me?”
“Mom?” My world was shattering with each passing second. “Where’s James?”
“Alexandria,” Emma whispered. “They took him.”
My heart stopped.
Ethan rubbed Emma’s hand. “Sweetie, who took James?”
“Five or six men.”
I leaned closer to the gurney. “Do you remember what they looked like?”
Emma closed her eyes. “I recognized one of them.”
“Who? Who took James?”
“Victor.”
CHAPTER 2
I was going to kill Victor Van Curen.
Plain and simple. I didn’t care if he was still technically my stepfather. I didn’t care that I’d called him dad for seventeen years. I’d kill him the second I had the chance.
An eerie quietness filled Emma’s hospital room. It was so quiet that the dripping IV bag pushed me closer and closer to insanity. The sound was maddening and I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened.
Victor and his henchmen physically tore down my house. Who knew what they were doing to James? Drip. Drip. Drip.
My irritation grew with each passing second. We hadn’t taken any action. Zero. Zip. Nada. James was in Gamma’s hands. He needed us. He needed me. We should’ve been doing something, but instead we were at the hospital watching my mother sleep.
“Maybe he’s at the Gamma Farmhouse?” Peter LaViollette pulled me to him. “Stop pacing, Lex. You’re making me nervous.”
Drip. Drip.
“I am nervous.” I shook my hand away from Peter and cracked my knuckles. “Why is that IV bag so loud?”
“Take a deep breath, Lex.”
I shot Peter a warning glare. I wasn’t in the mood to relax or for people to tell me to relax. I exhaled. “Dad, let’s go to the Farmhouse. Let’s do something. I can’t stay here anymore.”
The Farmhouse was a kind of base camp for the local members of Gamma and had been Victor’s home since last fall. Would he be stupid enough to take James there knowing that I knew where it was located? Probably not. Where else could we look? The Gamma church in Boston? The Hazel Cove Cemetery? Some random spot in the woods?
Ethan stood from the chair beside Emma’s hospital bed. My mother had a concussion, a few bruises and a black eye. Yup, a black eye. One of them
had actually hit my mother in the face.
In the face.
The corner table rumbled against the scratched linoleum. The overhead light fixture flashed on and off like a strobe light in a nightclub.
“Lex, calm down.”
Ethan joined us by the window. “James could be at the Farmhouse, but we don’t know for sure. We shouldn’t waste time driving around. Let’s do a location spell. Do you have something that belongs to James? One of his possessions?”
I pulled James’ Boston Red Sox hat from my purse. “Will this work?”
“That’ll do.”
“We’ll find him, Lex,” Peter said. “We won’t stop looking for him until we do.”
I hoped so. But I wasn’t graced with Peter’s perpetual optimism. I felt numb. I wasn’t there to protect James. I’d let him down. Now Gamma had him and there was no telling what they were doing to him. Or even if he was still alive.
“I don’t understand why Victor was with Gamma,” Peter said. “I thought Gamma kicked him out?”
“They did,” I said. “At least that’s what Victor told us. He had a bounty on his head and James had an even bigger one. Which means -”
“Victor sold James out,” Ethan finished.
I blinked.
Ethan’s jaw hardened. “Victor probably hand delivered James in exchange for his own life. Gamma wanted James more than they wanted Victor.”
Peter shook his head. “That’s messed up on so many levels. James is his nephew.”
“That sounds exactly like something Victor would do.” The blood in my veins turned to ice. “I bet he didn’t think twice about handing James over.”
A plump blonde nurse tapped on the doorframe. “Hello, I need to do a quick round.”
“Sure,” Ethan said.
The woman walked over to Emma and took her blood pressure and checked the IV bag. She hummed lightly to herself and scribbled on her clipboard.
“My name is Tina and I’ll be Emma’s nurse until tomorrow morning. Let me know if you need anything.” She blinked and the familiar thick red fluid seeped over her eyes until it covered her pupils like a well of blood. Her body slacked and her mouth opened.
Ethan’s shoulders stiffened.
“What’s going on?” Peter asked. “Are you okay, lady?”
I didn’t have the patience to deal with a red-eyed spirit. Not now. I was sick of Liam following my every move. I walked over to the poor possessed nurse and brought my face a few inches from hers. A thick gooey layer of blood covered her eyes. She didn’t blink or move a muscle.
“Hey! You in there.” I waved my hand in front of her face.
No response.
She still didn’t blink, even with my hand inches from her crimson eyes. “Get out of that woman right now and tell Liam to leave me alone. Do you hear me?”
“There’s a spirit in the nurse?” Peter asked Ethan.
Ethan nodded.
I leaned in closer.
Emma’s hospital bed clattered against the floor.
“Alexandria,” Ethan said.
“Get out of her now,” I whispered viciously. My nose almost touched her nose.
The nurse blinked. The red dissipated from her eyes and returned to their natural shade of blue. She took a step back. “Uh, goodbye.” The nurse turned on her heel and hurried out of the room.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “That was…effective.”
“I don’t have time for Liam’s bullshit.” I exhaled. “Sorry. I don’t have time for Liam’s crap. Can we please go find James now?”
“I can do a location spell, but I’ll need a map.”
“I have an old atlas in my truck,” Peter said.
“Great,” Ethan said. “Let’s go out to the parking lot. I don’t want to do the spell in here. There are too many prying eyes.”
Emma was asleep, so the three of us headed down the hospital’s long hallway. The white walls, floors and overhead lights were too bright for my temperament. We walked through the automatic doors and into the night. The darkness seemed better suited for my mood at the moment.
We walked to the far side of the parking lot to Peter’s truck. Ethan’s Jeep was parked beside it. Peter unlocked his door and dug behind his seat.
I zipped up my jacket. “Do you think they’ve already killed James?” I hadn’t wanted to verbalize the question, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind since we discovered Gamma took him.
Ethan grimaced. “If I know Gamma, I’d say no.”
“But they’re hurting him.”
It wasn’t a question. I already knew the answer. Of course they were hurting him. James was the ultimate traitor in Gamma’s books. Tears slid down my cheeks.
“Here it is.” Peter held up a worn atlas.
We unlatched the truck gate to use as a makeshift table. Ethan flipped through the atlas and stopped at the map of northern Massachusetts. He scratched his stubbly chin.
“What’s the matter?” I tapped the coffee stained map. “Will it not work?”
“No, it’ll do.” Ethan turned to me. “Do you have any juice left?”
“Why wouldn’t she have any magic left?” Peter asked.
“She exorcised the spirit from Claudia’s mirror this afternoon.”
“The silver mirror? Holy -”
I grabbed my dad’s hand and linked our magic. My body was still reeling from the effects of the exorcism spell, but my father was only half-blooded. His magic wasn’t as strong as mine and he needed my help. Ethan handed me the Boston Red Sox hat and I clutched it to my chest with my free hand. He raised his right hand over the map and whispered a phrase in a language I didn’t recognize.
A tiny flame - the size of a cigarette lighter - sprouted from the center of the map. It spilled to the right, but miraculously didn’t burn the paper. The flame glided east toward the Atlantic Ocean. It stopped on a highway bordering the sea and then moved north. It curved into a tight circle. The flame dissipated and left a perfectly black smoldering ring.
Ethan tapped the map. “James is there. About twenty miles north of Hazel Cove. Right on the New Hampshire border.”
“Could you’ve done that location spell to find your dad?” Peter asked me. “Because that seemed a lot easier than how we did it.”
I looked at my father.
Ethan shook his head. “I doubt it. Vanessa would’ve had something in place to counteract any type of location spell.”
Peter shoved his hockey gear to the corner of his truck bed. A high powered bow was hidden underneath the giant bag.
Yes, a bow. With a quiver of arrows. Seriously.
“Uh, what’s that?”
Peter held up the contraption with one hand. “Bow and arrow set.”
“Why do you have a bow and arrow set?”
“I told you I was training on the side, too.”
“I thought you meant running extra miles or doing extra pushups. Something normal.”
“And practicing magic in the woods is normal?”
“A bow? Really, Peter? Do you even know how to use it?”
Peter made a face. “Of course I do. I’m a good shot.”
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to shoot, whoever I need to shoot,” Peter said calmly. He tapped the weapon. “With my bow and arrow.”
I turned to my dad for help. Maybe I was the only one that thought this was ridiculous.
Ethan conveniently turned the other way.
“Peter, I need you to stay here.” I squeezed my hands together. “Please watch over Emma in case something happens or someone shows up. I can’t be in both places.”
He opened his mouth to protest.
“There’s no time to argue,” I said. “I have to save James and I need my dad’s help. I need his magic, but someone has to protect Emma, too. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. My dad won’t let anything happen to me.”
“That’s a guarantee,” Ethan said.
Peter exhaled. “Fine. But be carefu
l.”
“We will.” I rose onto my tiptoes and kissed him quickly on the lips.
“Are you ready, Alexandria?” Ethan asked.
“I am.”
Ethan slipped on his jacket. “You know this will be a nasty fight, right? We’ll be outnumbered. Probably pretty significantly.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“I just want you to know what you’re getting into.”
I gave him a weak smile. “Welcome to my life.”
* * *
Highway 1A hugged the Massachusetts coast. Dark waves crashed onto the sandy beach. Ethan veered off the road and parked on the small strip of grass that bordered the shore. The small Cape Cod styled homes along this stretch stood back from the highway and faced the water.
Ethan pulled the keys from the ignition. “See that brown house down there?”
“Yeah.” Three cars were parked in the driveway. Victor’s Rolls Royce wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean anything.
“According to the location spell, James is in there.”
It was dark outside, despite the street lamps placed along the highway every two hundred feet. The orange glow was too bright for sneaking across the road undetected. And that’s exactly what we needed to do. I leaned forward to get a better view out of the windshield. One by one the lamps exploded like a row of dominos. Glass cascaded onto the pavement and the street went black.
“Pretty good work, kiddo.” Ethan rested his hand on the door handle. “Stay behind me. We’ll go in from the back. I love you. Let’s be really careful, okay?”
“Love you, too.”
I quietly shut the door and jogged across the street behind my father. There was a small inlet of woods directly across from us. We darted into the forest like thieves in the night.
Ethan moved swiftly in the tree line. I was on his heels even though I couldn’t see a thing. I followed the rustle of my dad’s jacket until the small brown house came into view. The lights were on inside.
We rushed to the house and crouched beneath a bay window next to a ratty back door. Ethan peeked inside and immediately slid back down.
“There’s a man sitting on a chair in front of a door. He’s holding an AK-47.”
Obviously, it was a type of gun, but I didn’t know what kind. By the look on Ethan’s face, I’d say it was a pretty serious one. “Did you see anyone else?”