The spirits danced in the air. I could hear them. For once, I could make out what they said.
Too soon…
Strong hands hauled me back, and my hands finally detached from the child. I stared down at the very alive little girl, and tears sprung from my eyes. I’d done it. I had managed.
Lennon held me tight against him. “Mika, you just got better. Too much. Too soon.”
I turned around in his arms, not caring who saw. I clung to his shirt, letting my powers go away, letting them travel somewhere else, off to wherever they went when they weren’t with me. “I didn’t choose it. The girl was here. I had to.”
“I know.” He sat back on the ground, taking me with him in his lap. “But let’s just… be here for a few minutes and breathe. Anne’s very powerful and smart, right? She’s in charge. She told you to stop. So stop.”
“I couldn’t. Now, I have.”
“Good.” He stroked my back. “That’s good.”
There was a little girl who would grow to be a woman, and I had saved her. Things really were good.
7
“I’m really okay.” I stared at Lennon across the table. He’d been fussing. I had water, I had some sort of soup I’d never tasted before—and didn’t really care for but it was so sweet he’d made me something—and I had a blanket. None of which I needed.
He pointed at me. “You were fading away.”
The other four guys had all poked their heads in to see me and then left after I assured them I was fine. Lennon, by contrast, seemed in no hurry to go back to work. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”
“What were you doing? It wasn’t like when you went transparent with that first demon. This was different.” He was like a dog with a bone. Well, I’d never seen a dog. But that was an expression people used. It seemed to apply.
I sighed. “I was giving her my energy.”
“Your own? You were… healing her by killing you. That’s what it looked like. Until I ripped you back. Anne was trying. Even Bryant had given it a go. You were like a statue. But you moved when I grabbed you.”
I couldn’t explain that. “Up until that point, I don’t think I could have moved if I wanted to. I was sort of committed.”
“And how are you feeling now?”
I stood. “Fine. I was going outside to see the girls and find out how their studies were going. I’ll just get back to doing that.”
“Fine?” His eyebrows shot up so high I was surprised they didn’t fly off his head. “How can you be fine?”
I headed toward the door. “Everything is relative. After burn out, this is nothing. This clearly fell within the range of normal use of my powers.”
The spirits had even spoken to me, which they never did. I guessed I wasn’t quite done with my time here, which was good. Despite my willingness to give the girl—Alicia—my life for hers, I wasn’t really looking to die anytime soon.
A crack of thunder sounded, and a second later, large drops pounded on the roof of the guesthouse. I jumped a foot and Lennon grabbed me into his arms, holding me tightly against him. “Whoa, there.”
I shuddered. “I hate the rain.”
“You took down a demon in the rain. You didn’t seem at all frightened.”
He was right. “Sometimes I can fake it.”
Lennon pointed out the window just as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a loud crack that made me jump again, this time into his arms. “We can get you over there to the main house. We’ll run. It’ll be fine. Just a little water.”
“It’s never just a little water. At my old home, I swear the lightning used to aim for us.” But he was right. I would run for it. I had to get over this issue with the dang weather. I fought demons.
Lennon whispered in my ear. “Would it kill you to wait until tomorrow? You could stay here with me. The guys are under the house. Unless it starts flooding, they’re not going to come out for hours. You’d be doing me a favor. I have to get under the house if I’m not here hanging out with you.”
I laughed. “Thank you for not making fun of my phobia.”
“Well, we’ve all got our things.” He let go of me but only long enough to take my hand and draw me away from the window. “I’ll tell you mine. But you can’t tell anyone. Not even the guys. They don’t know.”
He rocked back on his feet, and he was so adorable I had to giggle. “You keep secrets from each other?”
“Well, maybe just ones that I think would make them come after me mercilessly. There are these rats, they’re huge. When I say huge”—he demonstrated with his hands exactly how big the rats were—“I mean huge. When I see one, I can’t move. Like I quit breathing for half a second. I have to mentally pull myself out of the stupor.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist. I was trying to get used to the hugging thing. They did it so easily. He took the affection as though it was perfectly normal, so inwardly, I grinned. I’d done it. I hugged him. “We’ll keep this our secret.”
“Thanks. Ren would probably go and get one of those rats. He’d travel back to Peter’s and return with the rat. I swear he would.” He grinned like that was funny. “Then I’d have to figure out what scares him and go get that. A giant mess.”
“Sounds that way.” A thought dawned on me. We’d moved all the boxes of books into the back room now that it’d been converted from broken loft to library. “I’ll start putting things away in the library.”
Lennon nodded. “I’ll help.”
That was how we spent the afternoon. I redid my organization three times before we could really start to put the books away. In the end, I followed the same alphabetizing scheme that they’d used in the Sisterhood to the South. It was simpler, and we all knew how to find what we needed.
Lennon hummed to himself while he worked. It seemed to be an unconscious thing, and I smiled at the sound. He probably had a nice singing voice. I wondered if he ever sang. I didn’t want him to stop, so I didn’t draw attention to it.
After a while, I did miss the sound of his voice. Out of the five of them, Lennon and Wayne were the most talkative. I was used to being alone with my own thoughts, but things lately had gotten noisier, and I didn’t mind the buzz.
“Have you ever seen a dog?” I knew that was random, but I’d sort of had them on my mind since I thought about dogs with bones. It seemed an innocuous question. What I really wanted was to know all the small details of his life and who he was without prying.
He put down the book he’d been shelving. “Sure. We had three growing up. Wait? Did you ask have I ever seen a dog or did I ever have a dog?”
“Seen a dog.” Now I wished I’d thought of something else. How little I really knew of the world never ceased to grate at me. “I’ve never seen one, ever.”
“Ah.” He picked me up in his arms and swung me around to sit me on one of the tables. Then he leaned over me. I couldn’t resist. This close to him, I gave in to the need I’d had since meeting them—one I had even resisted when he’d spent the night in my bed—and I touched his thick hair. I sighed. It was as soft as I’d thought it would be. Silky, too.
He’d been about to say something, but he abruptly closed his mouth. After a second of awkwardly petting his hair, I stopped. He hadn’t told me I could do that. Maybe it was… off that I had.
Lennon grabbed my hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the top of it, and heat shot through my body. Were we going to say anything about the fact that I’d been petting him, or we were just going to breeze past it? I gathered from his response that either he didn’t mind it too much, liked it, or was trying to make me feel better for having done it in the first place. Why were men so difficult to understand?
His mouth pressed to mine in a move so quick I hadn’t seen it coming. I closed my eyes and breathed in the sweet smell of oranges on him. He must have had some earlier in the day. He tasted sweet. Lennon didn’t force anything more, just stayed there with me, touching our lips together like we had ever
y right to do so.
Eventually, he sighed and pulled back. “Mika.”
I waited for him to say more, but I guessed my name was all he was going to utter. “Lennon.”
His grin was fierce, and it lit up the library. “You like me.”
I nodded. He’d not asked it as a question—my kissing him back and touching his hair probably gave my feelings away—but I answered as though he had. I’d been honest with Neil. I had to do the same here. “I do like you, a lot. I have to tell you that I’ve sort of fallen into some kind of zone of liking all five of you. Neil knows that, too.”
Lennon ran a hand through the strands of my hair that fell near my face. “I thought that you did. Or I hoped I was in that place with the others. I think it’s kind of standard here, right? You Sisters fall for more than one guy.”
I put my hands on his shirt to feel his heart beat beneath the material. “It’s more complicated than that. I don’t know that there’s usually a falling for anyone kind of a thing. For the others, there are fated people. Five is the number divinity set. Maybe it’s a protection thing. Maybe it’s so everyone covers some element of the battle that the Sister needs. I’ll likely never know. But am I used to the idea of more than one person being the normal way around here? Sure. I guess I am. You five swept in. Getting to know you, figuring this out, it’s different. You’re leaving. We’re not… decided from afar.”
He kissed my forehead right then. “We have weeks. I’m not going to think about the leaving right now. Not while I’m alone with you in a library and you are you.”
“While I am me?”
Lennon shook his head. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t.” He kissed me, this time pressing deeper. I didn’t resist, instead melting against him. Lennon made a sound in his throat that moved right through me.
A bang sounded outside, and we pulled apart. He pressed his forehead to mine, and we both sat there, just breathing.
I had to say something. “I can’t be broken. When the five of you go. I can’t have to put myself back together. Maybe this is why Sisters have this fated thing that never happened with me. Because we can’t do what we do with the demons and deal with heartbreak at the same time. I can’t go out there and face the assault of evil while I mourn for the loss of the five of you. I’ve started to fall for you, but I can’t tumble headfirst. I just can’t.”
He didn’t speak again for a moment. “So probably no more of this for each of us. We’ll have to figure out how not to do this again. Just be friends.” He sighed loudly, and then he stepped back. “I’m going to have to keep my hands off you, Mika. Just figures. I finally meet the most amazing woman, who I can’t stop thinking about, and I can’t have her. All right. We’ll always have had this, right?”
Lennon was right. If life was made of moments, we’d really just had one together. I’d never forget it.
When the rain went away, I walked back to the house. It was quiet, which wasn’t surprising. When we weren’t all fighting for our lives, Anne and Daniella tended to retreat back to their various rooms. That wasn’t surprising. They had families, and they wanted to spend time together. There were children to raise and lives to live.
I stopped in the kitchen. Krystal sat alone at the table, sipping tea. I hadn’t seen her in too long. Without a word, I sat down across from her. She leaned back in her seat. “I’d do just about anything to have my powers back.”
That was quite a statement as a greeting. I needed to respond, but this was one of those moments where it was really important I say the right thing. “Not just about anything. There are some things, I imagine, it would be important you don’t do.”
“Like what?” She sipped her tea again.
“Like… go back to Katrina and do her bidding.”
Krystal raised her eyebrows. “Yes, that I wouldn’t do.” She set down her cup. “The way those five guys look at you? It’s pretty intense. They’re enamored with you. You don’t suppose they’re your Guards, do you?”
“I think they would know, don’t you? I mean, Anne’s, Daniella’s, and Teagan’s were all actually Guards. Milo used to talk to the spirits. Teagan’s hear from the ravens. Daniella’s can see the spirits. Those five wonderful men are just passing through and not part of this mess. I think the idea was that Sister Superior and Brother Raven sent them to the Sisterhood for us.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. “Do you suppose ours ran for their lives?”
“As fast as they could.”
We both laughed even though it wasn’t at all funny. Maybe some things were so awful there really was no choice but to laugh at them.
Krystal finally wiped her tears away. “I will get them back. I’m not going to let the team down.”
I squeezed her fingers. “I’ve come to believe that whatever happened and whatever will happen, we have little to no control over it. We make choices, they determine outcomes, but some of this was always going to be. That’s why Teagan can see futures. It’s hard to move from one destiny to another. Maybe this is your dark time. Taking away your powers is the darkness you have to go through.”
“Yeah?” She shook her head in a negative, against the word she’d spoken. “Anne gets locked in a cage for a year and possessed, Daniella loses parts of her fingers in a possessed factory after a year, and Teagan spends five years being emotionally destroyed in a mine with demons assaulting her. But, gee, Krystal, live a little while without powers? They must think I’m very fragile.”
Okay, she had a point. To that degree, I’d also not really suffered. We’d both been cursed, but it was a very short period of time. And the only one who had rescued us was Teagan. “Who knows?”
“I’d like us to be friends. I mean, I know we’re Sisters. I like you, Mika. I like how centered you are.” Had she missed the part where I lost my cool on the chaos demon? “I like how you see the world. I’d like us to be… friends.”
I nodded. “I don’t really have friends. Except lately. I guess I do all of a sudden.” Just took thirty years. “Yes, let’s be friends.”
When I left Krystal, she was going to have a nap. The not having her powers thing seemed to be exhausting. I hoped I never had to find out. I made my way to Daniella’s quarters and knocked on the door. She poked her head out and grinned at me.
“They’re going to come out and find you tomorrow. They’re ready to leave the rooms.”
Well, that was certainly easier than I’d thought it was going to be. “Great. I’m glad. I think it’ll be good for them to get back into studying Sisterhood stuff. I mean, presuming they have the powers we all think they do?”
I’d never straight out asked her, and I didn’t know if anyone ever had before either. “Mika, what will happen to them? There’s no place for them to go for training. We’re going to have to do it here, amid all the fighting.”
There had been benefits to that Sisterhood in the South. A place where we had been secluded, though not loved, while we figured ourselves out. That might be the only benefit. But it was real.
“I guess we’ll just have to figure it out as we go along. What would you have done if you hadn’t been called to come here? What would you have done about their powers?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Well, that was a problem.
I made my way back to my room. We needed to know how things had gotten the way they were, why had they decided to train the young Sisters the way they did. Katrina couldn’t be blamed for that system, it had gone on a long time before her. Tomorrow, I was going to spend my day with my head in the books. I hadn’t been the best student, but nor had I been the worst.
And at some point, I was going to have to tell Anne I might be the Oracle.
Lots of things to think about.
I entered my room and almost collided with Ren. He steadied me with a laugh. Things had changed in the weeks we’d known each other. When we’d first met, I’d thought he didn’t smile
a lot. I’d either been wrong, and he’d just needed time to get used to being here, or something had altered. I suspected the first.
“Oh good.” He hugged me. That was funny, I would have thought that Ren wasn’t much of a hugger either. “Come try the water.”
I blinked. “It’s hot.”
“It’s hot.”
I jumped out of his hold into the bathroom and turned on the water. It sputtered for a second, but then, yes, he was right. There was hot water.
I whirled around. “You did it. There is hot water. When Lennon said you were under the house, I didn’t even think about it… you were under there with a demon without a Sister. I’m so grateful, and I’m also… terrified that you did that.”
He shook his head. “There are three Sisters here with powers. I did not go under the house without one. I’d really rather not have to do that with Anne and five Guards following her every move again, but that is what we did. Bob didn’t talk to Anne. Her powers turned on, but he never made a move.”
I turned to hug him. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome.” He grinned. “I didn’t do it alone. Everyone except Lennon was under there with me. He was with you. You know that.” Ren cleared his throat. “Well, I mean. It’s late. I can leave you alone.”
A crack of thunder sounded. What was going on with this weather? Ren raised both his dark eyebrows. “You hate the thunder? The lightning? The rain? The whole bit?”
“The whole bit.” I shook my head. “Don’t mind me. The hot water—it’s going to make such a big difference. You’re just amazing.”
He sat down on my bed. “Are you going to be able to sleep tonight? With this happening?”
“No.”
He yawned. “Okay, go take a bath. I’m going to go be here when you come out. We’ll hang out until the rain stops.”
I nodded. That sounded like a great idea. The hot water filled the tub, steaming the mirror, and eventually, once I dropped my shoulders beneath the water, drowned out the sounds of the storm outside. I stayed in too long, considering I had Ren waiting for me in my room with nothing to do, unless he was interested in reading about different kinds of demons and their particular powers.