Richard and I stopped at an abandoned gas station at the edge of town to hash out a plan. I squinted against the sun that was peaking through the trees, low in the sky but not yet touching the horizon. He parked close to the tree line and got out to survey the damage on the car. I hopped out and continued to hop, keeping one hand on the car at all times. The pain had gotten so bad I couldn’t walk even with the splint.
All that remained of the windshield was fragments of sharp glass around the edges. The rest had been cleared away after it became too difficult to see through. The front bumper was warped from the stairs we’d driven up and down… and the person we’d run over. I looked uncomfortably at the blood smeared across the left headlight.
“Was that guy we ran over still moving after?” I asked quietly.
Richard started to rub at a smudge on the hood with his thumb before realizing the futility of what he was doing and dropped his hand. “Dunno. Didn’t bother to check. Hopefully not. Then we’d have one less gun to worry about.”
I looked away. “That’s cold.”
“It’s how we get out of this alive. Where’s your conviction? I thought you wanted to rescue Nell.”
Instead of responding, I turned and started to hop towards the tree line. Richard hurried to catch up and lend me a shoulder. “You have a plan, right?” he asked.
“Somewhat. If we drive around, I might get lucky and enter her range. I can’t imagine even Organ having an easy time containing Nell if she’s uncooperative. I could ask the crew to search for clues as to where they might be holding her. But I think it’s more important that none of the crew get swept up in Sullivan’s new deal. If he gets most of his Ring to take Dice… that could spell some really bad things for the city.”
“They may get dragged into it anyway,” Richard said darkly. “But I can’t imagine Graham being on board for such a thing.”
We made it to the trees and I tapped Richard to let me go. He pulled out his phone. “He still hasn’t responded to my texts. AJ, Zola, and Vanessa have. Leave it to the younger generations to be quick about it.”
I rested a hand on the tree, running my fingertips over the rough and flaky bark. It hasn’t rained in a while, I thought idly. “Let’s not meet with them just yet. Tell them to lay low, at least until we’ve heard from Graham. If Sullivan really goes through with it, there’s a good chance that the secret of Shaping doesn’t stay that way. This could turn into an international event. The army might get involved.” And more likely, H.E.S.P.
It was possible that Mac would be deployed to help handle the mess. Did I need to warn him? I suspected that the city was already being closely watched by H.E.S.P.. There were too many Aberrants, even though they may not have heard about the Cloven. Sullivan had gotten that cleaned up. Most of those in attendance at the nightclub likely thought it was just a psychopath with a weapon. That’s what had shown up on the news outlets.
“There’s so much I don’t know,” I said while letting the sensation to consume play out across my skin. The bark began to melt into my fingertips. “It’s hard to construct a proper plan when I don’t know what the full picture looks like. Did they capture Nell just so that she wouldn’t interfere? Or are they going to try to get her to do something?”
“Why would they?” Richard asked, backing up with a frown. “Don’t they have Helen already? What would one more Witch do?”
“Nell is more powerful,” I answered, closing my eyes in concentration. “Her range and level of influence are much larger than Helen’s, I can say that with confidence after our encounter. Helen doesn’t seem to actually do much physical Shaping. And even though she messes with the brain, she didn’t just kill me by warping my brain, even though that was a much simpler and easier plan. There are things she can’t do that Nell can.”
Richard fell silent, fiddling with his gun.
I pushed my palm deeper and deeper into the tree until I fell forward, hands hitting the grassy ground. Thin branches orphaned from the trunk scattered down around me. The feeding flame lashed out further, pulling everything towards me. As I ate the forest, energy poured into me. I focused on my leg. Return to what I was.
“To continue the metaphor, I’ve been staring at all these puzzle pieces for so long but I still don’t know how they fit. Organ, Helen, the Tree, Dice. But there’s one piece that’s been wiggling this whole time, like it’s the key.”
The pain lessened and I felt something hot burning at the wound. It felt like a drop of molten metal was being drawn from the bone of my leg. It reached the surface and I felt immense relief. Gasping for breath, I opened my eyes.
“Alek,” I said.
I kneeled in a flat plain of dirt. It expanded twenty feet before greenery abruptly took over. The nearby trees were gone and I could see the gap in the treeline, where Richard stared at me with a mix of revulsion and awe. A shiny bullet lay in the dirt by my leg, licked clean of my blood. I felt a twinge of guilt at the sight of the earth, stripped of life.
“I have this feeling that both Alek and I hold piecemeal bits of info. We’re both being left in the dark. We might not be on the same side, but Alek wants to find Helen as badly as I do. I think that counts for something. It’s possible that if we shared what we know, we might get a clearer view of the entire picture.”
“Could be dangerous,” Richard said, shoving the magazine back into his gun.
“What isn’t now?” I muttered. “But I agree. There’s something I have to do before we go to Alek. In the meantime, you should try and get a hold of the rest of the crew. See who wants to help and who wants to stay out of this. I won’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of this. Especially not B, Vanessa, or AJ.”
Richard nodded, his expression growing distant. I cleaned myself up and retrieved some cheap clothes I had bought on the way here to replace the ripped up stuff I was wearing, listening to the sound of the occasional car passing by on the nearby but out of view freeway.
“Do you think Nell could heal my wife?” Richard asked, breaking the silence.
I froze with my shirt halfway on, caught off guard by the question. “Um… if I’m being totally honest, probably not. Nell doesn’t specialize in healing humans. I’m a bit of a special case, since I’m her Wolf. If she tried, she might just make it worse.”
Richard cleared his throat and spoke quickly, “Yeah, of course.”
“But I think the chances of there being a Witch out there who could do that… it’s entirely possible, maybe even likely. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, with all the incredible things I’ve seen Shaping do.”
Richard nodded and cleared his throat again, looking away.
After a while, he spoke, “I’ve been meaning to ask that for a while, just couldn’t bring myself to. I think I was afraid that the answer would be no. But I was even more afraid that the answer would be yes. Cause that might mean that I’ve been wasting time that I could have spent looking for a cure.”
I nodded.
“But thanks.”
I stared up at the evening sky. “I get stuck in that sometimes. That feeling that every choice I make is the wrong one and that the reason everything sucks is somehow my fault. I wish I had a better answer than to just carry on.” I was dreading what came next. “I really do…”
—
An hour later I stood in front of my house. The lights were on in the living room but the blinds were closed. Richard had dropped me off with the promise to return once he had met with the crew.
My feet were rooted to the spot. I didn’t want to move forward, knowing what it meant. But no other option made sense. The front door of the house loomed tall. Painted blue with an old brass doorknob that my dad had taken from his childhood home as a keepsake, since that home had burned down.
This could be the last time I opened this door. My parents would know the truth.
I couldn’t tell you exactly when I made it to the doorstep. My hand was shaking as I placed it on the doorknob. It felt like my heartbeat was banging on the door on its own.
Do it. Take the next step. Just like you took all the ones before this one.
The door shut softly behind me. I stared down at the rug that lay in the entranceway, trying to collect my thoughts. Not coming to any satisfactory conclusion, I removed my shoes and walked into the living room.
The golden evening light shone through the half-drawn curtains and splashed across familiar furniture. Memories seemed to spring forth from them easily. The couch was the oldest piece here. It had a slipcover on it because Nip, our cat, had taken a liking to scratching the armrests. I’d been afraid that my parents would give Nip away because of that. They’d simply laughed and gotten a scratching post at the same time as the slipcover. A relatively new rocking chair sat in the corner. The old one had broken after being well-used by my grandmother and then my mother for an eternity. But Mom wasn’t the type to hang onto broken things for sentimentality and Dad didn’t have a single handyman bone in his body.
My mom’s cross stitching hoop sat on the rocking chair. Usually she would be sitting here around this time, working on it to pass the time while she listened to a podcast. I walked over and picked up the cross stitching frame. A half-finished flower in bloom splayed across the fabric in purple and blue thread. My hand crept up to my shoulder.
I heard footsteps coming down the hall and felt a cold chill.
Those aren’t my mom’s footsteps.
Antlers itched to burst to the surface but I held them back and waited.
A tall shadow passed the living room and stopped as he saw me.
I took in a shaky breath and let it out.
“Nick,” my dad said sheepishly. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He was wearing jeans and a wool sweater.
There was a flicker of internal fire and my fingers twitched. “So how long has this been a thing?” I asked abruptly.
“We were just talking.”
“Better to hear that from her, so it doesn’t look like you’re a home invader,” I said, feeling how cold the words felt on my tongue.
“Right.” He looked down and shuffled. “Honey?” he called down the hallway.
“It’s back to honey now, huh?”
My dad winced and he pushed up his glasses. “Nick, it’s an old habit. I’m not trying to…” he trailed off, gesturing aimlessly.
“What? Connect the dots for me.”
He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, stupidly. A softer set of footsteps came down the hall.
“Nick,” my mom said, entering the room and giving me a hug. It was cozy and warm and I had to set my jaw to stop the shaking.
She pulled away and looked me in the eyes. Her hair was held back by bobby pins and a hairband. Guilt turned my head to look away.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“Hm?” I uttered distractedly, giving myself a once over. I had been careful to absorb all of the blood. The wounds were healed. There was no way to tell I’d been shot. “No, Mom. I’m okay.”
She placed her hands on my cheeks and I met her eyes again and felt something break down inside of me.
“You’re hurt.” It was a statement, not a question.
My throat closed up. “Yes,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said, glancing back at Dad. “It seemed like things were getting better between you two. You were talking. You seemed happier.”
My shoulder ached. The flower was still.
“Sorry,” Dad blurted out, casting his eyes down. “I’ll… I’ll go.”
“No,” I said, closing my eyes. “No, it’s fine. That isn’t what this is about. I… it just surprised me. But it’s fine. Really.”
“You look like you have something to tell us?” Mom said hesitantly.
My hands grabbed my shirt and twisted it. Stop fucking shaking.
“I have something to tell you both. It’s going to sound crazy, but nothing I’ve ever said to you is more true and important than this. So I’m asking that you two take every bit of goodwill you have in me and use it here. I won’t ask anything of you again.”
Dad gave a cautious smile. “No need to be so final about it, Nick. We’ll always listen to you.”
“Because we love you,” my mom added.
Every word was an effort. I almost couldn’t hear myself over the thundering in my head. “For a while now, I haven’t been going to classes, at least not very consistently. That was a horrible indecision on my part, but I have money to pay you back for that.” I stopped here, struggling with how to say the next part. How could I soften the blow? There were no answers. Not now, not the hundreds of times I had ran through this conversation in my head in the past.
“Okay,” Mom said slowly. She looked way more worried now. “Do you want to explain?”
“I’ve changed. I’m not the Nick you knew,” I whispered hoarsely. “I feel like the only way to do this is to show you. But I’m afraid it’ll be too much.”
“Oh honey,” she said, reaching over to rub my arm. “Nothing you could change would make us stop loving you.”
A dark voice whispered in the back of my mind. Oh yeah? Well why don’t we put that to the test?
“Please don’t scream,” I said. Then I let the bones out from beneath my skin. They creaked and groaned as they slid out from my clothing.
My mom shrieked and my dad pulled her away from me. His eyes bulged, staring burning holes into my soul. Tears rolled down my face. The antlers finished their slow embrace of my body. They felt cold. I felt cold. But there was also a terrible feeling of relief. This was my last string. Cutting this was freeing in a way, like the small moment of catharsis you find in smashing something valuable. This is the only way. Even if it means saying goodbye forever.