Sunshowers - Part Eighteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
“Where - did - she - go?” I pant, between puffs on my inhaler.
“And where are we?” Noah asks, stopping to put his hands on his hips and catch his breath.
Nobody answers, probably because nobody knows anymore.
The dark forest around us is shuddering and snapping in the storm, swimming in an ocean of dense fog. Visibility has fallen to basically the immediate area around us, and we’ve had to shout to hear each other even though we’ve kept the group tight. The forest is roaring and moaning under the force of the rain and wind, branches swaying wildly in every direction. Everywhere I look the woods are running with little waterfalls, on the trees, the boulders, the undergrowth.
Even if it was a clear night, though, it would have been near impossible to keep an eye on the Witch. She may be going at less than half of her top speed, but she can still eat up more ground with one stride than the rest of us can with ten. It’s like trying to keep an eye on a shadow, only that shadow can move freely, doesn’t want to be caught, and just so happens to be out in a torrential downpour in the middle of a dark forest.
“I think it’s time to admit we lost her,” Kasey calls down, from where she’s floating a few feet above our heads. “And also that maybe we’re lost?”
“Yeah, okay, but look at the bright side,” I call up, brushing some raindrops off of my inhaler.
Everyone looks at me, and I hesitate, struggling.
“Uh, oh.” Ralph tosses a drenched strand of blonde out of his face, shakes his head like he can’t believe this. “Jamie can’t think of a bright side? We’re in trouble.”
“No, I’ll think of one, just give me a second! Let me have my asthma attack first!”
“How far we’ve fallen,” Noah says somberly, turning to Ralph. “What’s this say about your leadership skills, dude?”
Ralph lets out a sputter of laughter, shoving Noah’s shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Just shut the fuck up and let me think for a second.”
Kasey floats down to join us, gesturing for me to repeat something she wants to say. “What are we even gonna do if we catch her?”
“Sidewind her into orbit!” Noah answers immediately, with total confidence, throwing up two punching fists.
“What?” I sputter, lowering my inhaler. “Um-”
“Okay, here’s what we need to do,” Ralph cuts in, lifting his head. “We gotta go back to the hotel. She led us out here and got us lost so she could go back and try to drain the generator.”
“I wouldn’t touch that generator with a hundred-foot pole, me.” Noah squeezes out two handfuls of his soaked hair, then knots it up into a messy bun. “It’s dangerous to touch one of those even if you’re just standing on something wet. If Wendy didn’t let the delivery van on the property, the generator probably got more wet than it should’ve. Doesn’t matter if it was in a box.”
“The Witch doesn’t know that, and it might not matter for her,” Ralph points out. “If she realizes she lost us, she’ll probably circle back that way.”
“Then we better move fast,” Aiden rumbles, checking his compass watch.
He looks up in surprise when we all groan unhappily. He’s the only one of us who isn’t tired of doing this much sprinting. Even Noah is starting to slow down, although I know he only really does that in small bursts.
We’ve also got a small flash flood to get around, given the only way forward in the direction Aiden seems to want to go is blocked off by a creekbed that was probably dry before, and roaring now. All other ways forward are blocked by thick, tangled undergrowth.
I sweep my eyes helplessly over the dark forest, then stop in surprise when they land on something promising.
“Guys - there’s an animal run over here! Some critters cleared a path for us!”
“Oh, really?” Noah asks brightly, as I lead the way up the winding green path. “You mean like some bunnies? Why are they on our side, though? Aren’t we up against a forest witch?”
“Wh-?” I twist to look at him, blinking hard. “Oh, um - no, I mean this is a path that was naturally formed over a long time, because some species of animal uses it a lot. To get between grazing spots, or something.”
“Oh,” Noah says, taken aback. “Yeah, I - I knew that.”
Aiden grins down at him. “Did you really think some bunnies came out and cleared a path for us, Noosh? Like, to help us out?”
“Well - fucking, I don’t know, man!” Noah protests, blushing a little. “A saucepan showed up and helped us make breakfast, but the bunny thing is beyond the realm of possibility? What are we doing, here?”
“He’s got a point,” Kasey giggles.
“Oh, man.” Aiden exchanges a deeply affectionate grin with Ralph, then folds his arms around Noah’s shoulders from behind. “Your mind, dude. It’s the best.”
Confused but smiling, Noah squirms free from Aiden, and Ralph moves past me up the path.
“Nice find on the path, Jamie,” he comments as he goes by.
I break into a beaming smile, looking up at Kasey like, did you hear that? Compliment from the Warlord, no big deal.
It’s a complex statement to get into a look, but Kasey understands well enough to flash me an answering grin.
We really don’t have time to wait around talking, though. We need to get back to the hotel.
“How far away do you think we are?” Noah calls to Ralph, raising his voice over the rain.
“I have no idea, Noosh! She took us on a fuckin’ run-around. I don’t even know how long we’ve been following her. I’ve got no bearings besides the one Aiden just gave us. I’m just hoping we make it back to the hotel before anything else can happen-”
He breaks off and looks back sharply as Noah clicks his tongue to get his attention. We all go still and silent, listening. Noah is staring off into the trees, his eyebrows furrowed, one hand spread out to keep us quiet.
A distant sound separates itself from the noise of the storm, coming from somewhere in the forest. A repeated, muffled crashing. Like an animal barrelling its way through the undergrowth towards us, taking very fast, far-apart steps.
As one, everyone on the team snaps behind Aiden, then peeks out to have a look.
“What is that?” I whisper, peering around his arm. “Is it Bigfoot?”
“Yeah, Jamie, it’s fucking Bigfoot,” Ralph whispers back heatedly.
“Well, it doesn’t sound like the Witch!”
“Definitely sounds like it’s getting closer,” Noah points out, with obvious alarm.
Aiden lifts a hand, releasing a spill of golden fireflies. They spread out to float around us. Kasey, remembering she’s no longer mortal, weaves around Aiden, ventures forward into their light. She cautiously sneaks past them in the direction the crashing is coming from, peering off into the mist. Aiden flicks his fingers, and a few of the fireflies follow after her, then sweep out ahead of her.
Kasey stares in silence through the storm, then lets out a sudden, sharp laugh.
“What the f-? Oh my god, it’s-”
She doesn’t even have time to finish before the saucepan comes hurtling out of the fog. Tumbling completely out of control, it bounces against a boulder and lands in a dazed heap in front of Aiden.
It shakes itself off, bounces upright, and begins hopping in urgent circles around us.
“Oh - oh, no!” I gasp, seeing the problem it’s trying to make us aware of. “Hold still little guy, I’ve got it!”
The saucepan stops in front of me and presses itself against my legs as I drop down onto one knee to untangle it. It must have gone poking around in our stuff while we were away from the campsite. My camping backpack has a smaller bag I can detach and wear as a messenger bag, and the saucepan has the strap of it wrapped around its handle, the fabric snagged in one of the screws.
“The poor thing got all tangled up!” I tell Aiden, as I gently free the saucepan. “Aw, and the bag you gave me got all muddy, Aiden!”
“S’okay, Linden, that’s supposed to happen. It’s a camping backpack. It’s not really made to protect things from getting smashed around by a saucepan traveling at high speeds, though. Is the stuff inside okay?”
“I don’t remember what I put in here.” I let the rain wash some of the mud off the zipper, then hunch my shoulders over the bag and open it. “Okay, we’ve got a now super broken flashlight, and - oh.”
Blinking the rain out of my eyes, I draw the embroidery frame out of the bag. Colorful threads in abstract shapes span the fabric, sewn in Rose’s skillful style. Mercifully this survived the chaotic journey here unbroken, unlike the flashlight.
“What is that?” Ralph asks, as he and Noah lean in closer to take a look at it.
“It’s the piece of magic the Witch came from.” Aiden holds out one hand, using a little barrier of Heliomancer heat to keep the embroidery protected from the rain. “This is how Rose created her.”
Ralph and Noah stare down at it in surprise.
“The Witch came from that?” Noah asks doubtfully, then shoots Ralph a baffled look when I nod in confirmation.
Understandable reaction, really. The beautiful, colorful threadwork art looks like it could be hanging up in Rose’s beachside kitchen. It doesn’t look at all like it goes with the Witch. Then again, the Witch wasn’t always the way she is now.
“Keep that on you, Jamie,” Ralph says suddenly. “It’s the only piece of her we’ve got.”
I tuck it back into the bag, then zip it up tight and settle the strap across my chest. The mud all over the bag hardly feels like a problem, given the rain is coming down hard enough to paste all of our drenched clothes to our bodies. We’re practically taking a nonstop shower, at this point.
“So what now, Aiden?” Noah asks. “Can you, uh - weaponize the saucepan, or something?”
“I don’t think so. No. Weaponize-?” Aiden looks over at Noah in alarm. “What?”
“I feel like Noah didn’t totally absorb the hunting to help thing,” Kasey observes, pressing her fingers over her lips. “He’s still in violence mode.”
“Alright, no more fucking around,” Ralph announces, pointing at the piece of kitchenware on the forest floor. “You. Saucepan. Go back to camp, unless you want to come with us to the hotel. Do you know how to get back-?”
He breaks off as the saucepan, apparently alarmed at the mention of the hotel, hops off into the trees as if an avalanche is hot on its heels.
“Hey, if that’s the direction of camp, I think we’re at least headed the right way,” Aiden points out, setting off again. “Hopefully we’re not that far off-”
He stops where he is, staring in disbelief. The rest of us catch up with him, and understand why immediately. Noah takes it upon himself to ask the question on everyone’s mind.
“What in the fucking fuck?”
We all stare up at the hotel with wide, baffled eyes. With all the lights on it stands out brilliantly against the stormy night. A great glowing thing that somehow manages to completely avoid looking like a cozy, inviting respite from the rain and cold. I actually think it freaked us all out, and not only because it doesn’t make any sense that we’re suddenly here.
“We went in a giant goddamn circle!” Noah realizes out loud, his hands outspread before him in disbelief. “We’re all the way back!”
Ralph suddenly puts his arms out, makes everyone take a step back from the treeline that runs along the edge of the hotel lawn. Before I can even open my mouth to ask the question, the answer presents itself, in the form of flashing red and blue lights on the road beyond the hotel.
“Siren isn’t on,” Noah points out. “Pretty sure they just have their lights on because they’re driving slow, and they don’t want anyone to rear-end them in the fog. Be easy to put some real damage in on their less-tanky squad car.”
“Yeah, this one’s not quite as paramilitary as the last one,” Kasey observes dryly.
“Either way, they’re looking for us,” Aiden answers, shaking the rain out of his face. “And the monster. We’ve gotta be careful.”
“Sure, but what’s the plan?” I ask.
The whole group turns to Ralph, who pushes a hand through his drenched hair, giving his shoulders a helpless shrug.
“Should I even bother to make one, or is everything just gonna go completely out of control before-?”
He looks up sharply as a flash of lightning lights up the sky, followed by a deep crack of thunder. The rain and wind swell, and the hotel groans under the onslaught like every wooden piece is grating against all the others. A tarp over part of the area under construction rips free and escapes on the wind as we watch.
Then all the lights in the hotel go dark at once, with a groan of dying electricity.
We all stare blankly at it for a second. As one, we all turn to look at Noah.
“Well,” he says slowly, “Normally I’d guess that was caused by a lightning strike forcing an overload of a transformer on one of these electrical poles. Given what we know, though… either that was because the generator got fucked up by the rain and poor set-up and it failed, or… or it was because…”
“The Witch just stole all of the power,” Kasey says, closing her eyes.
“At least Hanely and Grimm didn’t see what happened,” I point out gingerly, glancing at the bend in the road their squad car just disappeared around. “There’s - there’s that.”
“Did she…” Ralph stares at the hotel, his shoulders slowly falling. “No, come on… you gotta be f… did she really take all the… after all th…”
He trails off, blinking hard as we all hear a distant crashing sound.
There’s some movement happening by the treeline at one of the far edges of the hotel lawn. Team Ghost Office turns as one to look. We all gasp and grab each other at once.
“Holy fuck - it was the generator failing!” Kasey sputters.
It must have been, because the Witch is at the treeline, preoccupied with something else. She’s darting around in circles, like she’s confused, or - chasing after something?
As we watch, the saucepan bounds out onto the lawn of the hotel in a panic, fleeing from the Witch. She races after it, reaching out a spindly arm.
She knows she missed her chance at the generator. She’s trying to take the magic from the saucepan.
Ralph slaps Aiden’s arm. “Come on, let’s get her! She’s distracted-”
“Wait!” Aiden cuts in urgently, his blue eyes wide with concern. “Noah, what does it mean if the generator did get fucked up from the rain? Is that an electrical nightmare, or-?”
“What? An electrician nightmare? That’s not really a thing. Guess I’ve had ones about Raj falling off my ladder, but generally speaking-”
“No, I said-” Aiden raises his deep voice over the rain. “Is the generator dangerous, if people are in the hotel?”
Noah takes a second to weigh things up in his head, then bites his lip. “I don’t know what kind Wendy got, but it - it’s possible-”
“Fuck,” Aiden mutters beneath his breath, clearly deciding he doesn’t need to hear anymore. “Someone’s gotta go get Eduardo and Wendy out of there!”
Ralph is shifting impatiently from foot to foot, watching the Witch chase the saucepan in circles on the dark hotel lawn. “Noah, you go, you’re the one who knows what you’re doing! Take Jamie! Kasey, you’re with us! No arguments, go!”
I roll up on my toes, and Aiden, who I guess knew what I was thinking, leans down to meet me halfway. We brush a fast, intimate little kiss onto each other’s lips before we rush off in opposite directions. Aiden, Ralph, and Kasey tear off towards the Witch, while Noah and I bolt for the hotel.
I lose sight of the others almost instantly in the downpour, but I have enough time to see the saucepan desperately rush back towards the treeline, and the Witch streak after it as she realizes Ralph, Kasey, and Aiden are at her back.
No time to think. Noah throws open the door of the cafe, and we both rush inside, catching the counter so we don’t slip on the floors in our soaked hiking boots.
Eduardo pokes his head out of the kitchen, startled at the sudden crash of noise. He’s got a flashlight in his hand, but he quickly lowers it when me and Noah squint and throw our hands up over our eyes.
“Oh - it’s you guys! What’s-?”
“Eduardo,” Noah cuts in urgently, “Did Wendy have you put a generator somewhere earlier?”
“She had the delivery woman set it up. She said it was supposed to be outside, but Wendy thought the storm might mess it up, so she made her put it in the renovation construction area, beneath some tarps. But it must have gotten fucked up anyways, since as you can see the power-”
“Jesus Christ!” Noah sputters, his grey eyes very wide. “Everything about this is wrong!”
“The delivery woman said that she’s no electrician, but she felt like it was, too.”
“Why didn’t Wendy just hire a pro?”
Eduardo shrugs his shoulders, coming out to stand behind the counter. “Hotel’s getting expensive to keep up and keep fixed, dude. More and more every minute. We’ll see how it’s looking after this storm, you know?”
“Yeah, that’s the only way you should see it, dude,” Noah says urgently. “Right now you gotta go home. Like you said, the generator got fucked up, and it’s dangerous for you to be in here.”
“Shit, really?” Eduardo draws back in alarm, then quickly reaches for his bag. “Alright, well, fuck this, I’m outta here! Where’s Wendy?”
“We’ll go get her, you just go home!” Noah calls over his shoulder, already headed for the lobby. “And careful out there, the cops are driving around, and they got their eyes everywhere but on the road!”
Without waiting for a response, he sprints out into the lobby and cups his tattooed hands around his mouth.
“HEY, WENDY!”
The sheeting over the broken window that got torn away hasn’t been replaced yet. Rain is fluttering into the dark lobby, along with gusts of wind that make all the curtains snap and wave around. I sharpen my Vision, catch Noah’s arm before he can trip over the downed chandelier, and lead the way to the stairs, adding my voice to his.
“MS. MORDEN! WHERE ARE YOU?”
Noah and I rush up the stairs together, then stagger to a halt as one of the hallway doors is thrown open. In the darkness we can barely see her as she comes storming out of her room.
“What on earth do you think you're doing?” Her eyes are perfectly round with shock. “How dare you come into my hotel in the dead of night-”
“Listen, you’ve got a serious problem,” Noah cuts in, quickly and urgently. “I’m an electrician, and I’ve got to tell you there’s been-”
“You have a job?” Wendy interrupts, narrowing her eyes at him in a skeptical kind of way.
“I'm a card-carrying member of the IBEW, and I’m telling you that you’ve had a dangerous electrical failure with your generator, alright? It was set up completely wrong, you’re lucky it didn’t mess up the power lines outside!”
Wendy draws back indignantly. “Well, it’s a temporary set-up for one night! The electrician will come fix it tomorrow! Do you expect me to stay here tonight with no power?”
“No, I expect you to grab a few things and leave and maybe get a hotel room in town or something, because your place isn’t safe right now.”
Maybe she can hear the seriousness and gravity in Noah’s voice, because she hesitates, staring up at him suspiciously. Then she sighs deeply, turns to go back into her room.
“Wait here. I’ll need you to carry my suitcase.”
Noah flashes me a disbelieving glance over his shoulder. “There’s really no time for you to pack up a whole-”
He breaks off as the sound of a suitcase being zipped up comes from Wendy’s dark room. She rolls it into the hallway, places a huge handbag in my hands, then goes back inside. After a moment she comes out with one of the hotel’s vases in the crook of her arm, her umbrella and purse in her other hand.
I have a feeling that she was already on the point of leaving her hotel to stay at someone else’s. The storm, the broken windows, all the strange happenings around the forest, and now the power outage… I think we only sped things up.
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” she tells us icily, as we descend the stairs. “And if I find that this was a ruse, and you boys stole anything from me, you can be sure I’ll give those two foolish police officers something to do. Understand?”
Noah scowls with his whole face behind Wendy’s back, lugging her heavy suitcase down the stairs. He opens his mouth to answer, and I quickly flash him a look that says: not the time.
We step out through the lobby doors together, and my fucking heart nearly stops in my chest.
For a second I thought I’d glimpsed a burning purple eye in the corner of my vision, but it was one of the two lights on either side of the lobby doors. They must be powered by batteries, because the power outage didn’t put them out. This is the first time I’ve seen them switched on this whole trip. Maybe Wendy turned them on tonight in anticipation of the storm.
They’re fake plastic candles, encased in antique purple glass lamps as old as the rest of the hotel. The glass turns their light a grim, dark purple. Placed the way they are, it’s like the hotel is staring down at us with them.
Shivering, I turn away to look at Wendy again. “Do you want one of us to go get your car? If you give me the keys-”
“Oh, I don’t think so!”
She snatches her hand back in response to me offering her mine. Then she hesitates, seeming to realize she’ll have to walk through the storm if I don’t bring the car around for her.
Mercifully a solution presents itself. Red and blue lights have appeared around that bend in the road again, slowly crawling towards the hotel.
“I’ll have them drive me to my car,” Wendy decides. She reaches for the light switch and flicks it on and off, flashing the purple lights at Hanely and Grimm. “They owe me that much after all they’ve done!”
“Sounds good!” says Noah, who’s clearly at the end of his patience. He sets down the suitcase beneath the roof overhang, then snatches the handbag from me and puts it on top. “We’re gonna go check on the generator, bye!”
“No you won’t! Don’t you set foot in my hotel ever again!” Wendy turns around and sticks her key into the lobby doors, locking the place up tight. “I’ll have a proper workman out to take care of it tomorrow! You won’t get in, so don’t you dare break anything! I have the keys, everything is locked, and the doors will set off alarms if you touch them!”
Noah and I exchange an amazed look, but he shrugs it off, beckons to me with a toss of his head.
“We get it, warden!” he calls over his shoulder, as we set off running along the front of the hotel.
“What was that?” Wendy calls sharply.
“I said we get it, Ms. Morden!” Noah shouts back, catching my wrist and pulling me along faster.
“What are we doing, Noah?” I ask, as soon as we’re far enough away from Wendy.
He’s taking me around to the side of the hotel that’s half-covered in tarps, strewn with renovation equipment. Mercifully the storm and the darkness swallow us up as we steal along. There’s no indication that Hanely and Grimm have spotted us as their squad car pulls up in front of the hotel to see why Wendy is flagging them down.
We circle around to the door at the side of the hotel that’s under construction. I gasp and fling my hands over my mouth as Noah draws back, bounces twice on his heels, then gives the door a hard, forceful kick.
It bursts open, swinging into the hotel hard enough to smash into the wall on the other side.
Noah seizes my arm and drags me inside before the cops can spot what we’ve done through the storm. He shuts the door after us, all without an alarm going off. I guess without any power running to the building it’s doubtful that the door alarms are working.
We stumble into a dark hallway. We can’t see anything without the light, but we must be somewhere close to where a portion of the hotel roof caved in, based on where we ran inside.
“Jamie,” Noah pants, pushing past me, trying the handles of all the doors in the hallway. “Find me a fire extinguisher!”
I sharpen my Vision and race back towards the kitchen, where I saw a fire extinguisher yesterday. After a few frantic minutes I come skidding back into the hallway where I left Noah. He’s leaning into the rooms one by one. I’m not sure why, because there’s no way he can see anything in any of them. It’s too dark.
“Dude, I got it!” I proudly shove the fire extinguisher into his inky hands, then realize with cold horror what I’ve just done. “Noah, listen to me, if you spray me with that just for fun right now, I’m gonna-”
He flashes me a grin, pulling the pin on the extinguisher. “I’ll have to save that for another time! Can you use your special eyes and read the label, tell me what class this extinguisher is-?”
He breaks off, having opened a door to the smell of burning plastic. He peers into the room, looking intently at something, then quickly steps back out and closes the door again.
“Yep, nevermind! Fuck this, let’s just go!”
“What? But what if there’s a fire, shouldn’t we-?”
“There might be a fire later, but trust me, we shouldn’t get anywhere near that thing right now, it’s way too dangerous! Fire department and electrical company can deal with it once we’ve dealt with the Witch!”
I hesitate anxiously, twisting my fingers together. I’m worried about the potential fire spreading to the forest, but then again the rain is pouring down, the air so full of moisture that it can’t absorb any more, hence the fog blanketing everything outside. Besides, I don’t really see what else we can do…
“Okay, fine, then let’s just get back to the others! No, Noah - leave the fire extinguisher!”
He pretends not to hear me, and he makes a swerve towards the stairs to try to get the massive hunting horn once we burst back into the lobby, the bastard. I have to grab him by his shirt and drag him towards that door that Eduardo leaves unlocked for when he wants a smoke break.
I wrestle the extinguisher from Noah’s hands just before we reach the door. In the moment it takes me to set it aside, the state of the hotel really sinks in. It’s creaking and snapping and groaning, the curtains thrashing around in the wind, which is strong enough to send the smallest of the broken crystals from the chandelier skidding across the lobby floor. It’s like we’re in the hull of a sinking ship in a gale. Going outside, back into the storm - it’s actually going to be a relief.
I open the door, and find myself face-to-face with the Witch.
My heart does a backflip. I drag in a shuddering gasp, throwing myself backwards as the Witch sweeps inside and straightens up to her full, towering height.
“Yo, what the fuck!” Noah shouts, and hurls the fire extinguisher - which I guess he’d already recovered - directly at her.
The Witch doesn’t even notice. She’s too busy chasing the saucepan, which frantically bounces ahead of her. The fire extinguisher sails right past her, bounces off of the wall, and lands with a crash on the tile floors. It must be jammed, because it immediately begins spinning in a circle, propelled by the force of the foam spraying out. The Witch spins around in confusion, right as Aiden and Ralph come sprinting up to the open door, out of breath and drenched.
They stare in bewilderment at the spinning fire extinguisher, then look up at the Witch.
She was only distracted for a few seconds. She makes a dive for the saucepan, which flings itself at the wall, trying to smash right through. It doesn’t make it through, but it does put a perfectly round crater in the painted face of M.N. Morden.
The Witch reaches for the saucepan, and Kasey suddenly appears from nowhere, streaking around the Witch like a cone of white and silver light, buying a few precious seconds of time.
The downed saucepan recovers from its daze and realizes it didn’t escape. It springboards off of the wall, and out through one of the windows.
The Witch rounds on us in a rage, the flames of her purple eyes growing bigger and bigger, the darkness of her presence thrashing around her. She lets out another one of those deafening shrieks, so loud that it seems to ripple the very air, shattering the glass out of more of the windows. We all freeze in terror, even Kasey, who reforms as herself with her fingertips pressed over her mouth.
Aiden shoves me behind him, then flings up two glowing golden hands. A beam of golden sunshine spills out from his palms, lighting up the darkness of the lobby, throwing off a cascade of dancing lights as it glitters on all the broken crystals and glass. The Witch stumbles backwards, snarling. With a sharp swipe of her hand Aiden’s sunbeam disappears, but she must have had to spend magic to get rid of it.
In the renewed darkness, we can all see the glowing green crack as it spreads across her face.
She turns and staggers to the broken window the saucepan went out through. Vanishes through it like a phantom.
There’s an instant of frozen silence. Then we all sprint for the lobby doors. They’re locked, but Ralph and Aiden shoulder their way right through them, and we all burst out into the stormy night.
The Witch is making for the forest, recovering, picking up speed.
“Don’t let her get away again!” Ralph roars, breaking into a sprint.
The Witch suddenly changes directions and streaks across the road, chasing some tiny thing vanishing into the trees on the other side. The saucepan.
We all race across the street after the Witch, stopping for a second to hear what Noah is shouting.
“-cops!” is the only word I can make out over the storm.
Further off down the road, I spot blue and red lights approaching through the fog. They’re not going slowly this time, either. Wendy must have told them she saw us at the hotel. Fuck.
We all race into the cover of the forest on the far side of the street from the hotel, right as the saucepan, realizing it’s been spotted, makes a wild attempt to flee from the Witch closing in on it.
The saucepan bursts out of the treeline and hops for the road again, making to go back to the side with the hotel. The Witch is close behind, though, and getting closer.
The saucepan desperately flings itself across the road, hurtling and spinning through the air like someone impossibly strong threw it at full force. Team Ghost Offices freezes, staring in horror as it goes flying directly past Hanely and Grimm’s windshield, missing it by about a foot.
We have a split second to see them stare at it in blank, open-mouthed shock before the squad car suddenly goes shooting forward. In his panic Grimm must have slammed his foot down on the gas instead of the brakes. The squad car flies out of control down the road, disappearing from our sight in the darkness of the storm.
Through the fog and the rain we hear a distant crash, and then, after a moment, the sound of two voices shouting angrily at each other.
We’ve all been watching in dumbfounded silence, but everyone whips around at once, realizing the Witch is still here in the forest with us.
Right as we all spin around, a crack of purple magic snaps through the air at us like lightning. Ralph shoves me out of the way, with so little time to spare that I feel the spell shoot past me.
Ralph had to fling himself out of the way, too, and we both lose our footing in the deep wet mud. Before I can blink we’re both rolling and falling down a steep slope in the forest floor that we didn’t see in the darkness. I desperately try to catch onto something, but there’s a miniature flash flood spilling down the hill with us. I stop trying to grab on, and just try to keep my hold on Ralph instead.
Gasping for breath, we crash to a stop at the bottom. I’m completely disoriented, half covered in mud, and I can’t see beyond a few feet through the storm in any one direction.
Ralph sits up, panting hard. Still clutching each other, we look around, trying to get our bearings. I’m not even sure which of these hills around us we fell down. I can’t see all the way to the top through the fog.
Realizing that Ralph’s cheek is bleeding, I lift a hand to it, and - no words come out of my mouth.
He was about to say something, too, I think. We stare at each other in confusion when it doesn’t work, when we don’t even open our mouths. Like we - forgot how to talk, or something -
I see the realization happen in Ralph’s dark green eyes right at the same moment it happens in mine. That spell didn’t quite miss us, after all.
“RALPH!” comes Aiden’s shouting voice through the storm. “JAMIE! WHERE ARE YOU?”
Ralph and I both sit up to answer, then remember we can’t. Ralph swiftly starts to get up, grabbing my hand to bring me up with him. Then he freezes, staring at something past me.
The Witch followed us down the hill. She’s right behind us, panting hard, painstakingly lifting her hand to cast a spell.
Ralph yanks me to my feet. We turn together and sprint for our lives, plunging into the darkness of the forest with no thought to which way we’re going.
Even at her slowed rate, though, the Witch is so much faster than us, and her spells travel even quicker than she does.
Ralph shoves my head down just in time, so the first one misses us. But the second one hits me in the back, and I know that it caught Ralph, too. We both go falling limply to the forest floor as we forget how to move. Invisibly immobilized, once again.
We land with our faces turned towards each other. Our eyes meet as we lay there panting in the mud. We can’t see from this angle, but we know the Witch is slowly staggering towards us. Ralph is trying to think, and so am I, but I just don’t fucking know what we can do…
My eyes catch on a streak of silvery white light behind Ralph. I could nearly cry with relief as Kasey stops beside us, her dark eyes wide with panic.
“Oh my god, there you are! What happ- holy shit, are you okay?”
With a huge force of effort, I manage to slightly lift my head, using mine and Kasey’s well-honed silent communication skills.
“What - can you not talk?”
All I can do is twitch my mouth a little, but that’s answer enough.
“Oh, shit,” Kasey stammers hoarsely, spotting the Witch. “Jamie, what do I do? I don’t know where the others are, and no one’s summoning me! How do I get them?”
I can’t answer, can’t even move. All I can do is look up at her desperately, at a loss.
“JAMIE!” comes a sudden shout, from somewhere in the trees. “RALPH! WHERE ARE YOU?”
That was Noah. I meet Kasey’s eyes urgently, then remember the problem. She doesn’t remember right away, though.
“NOAH!” she shouts back, but - he can’t hear her, of course. “NOAH, WE’RE-”
She breaks off, remembering, then stamps her foot.
“No, no! Goddamnit, just fucking hear me! Sometimes it drives me crazy that nobody but you and Aiden can fucking hear me! HE HAS TO HEAR ME!”
Suddenly Kasey is shouting at the top of her lungs, her voice rising and rising in frustration. She’s rising, too, floating higher and higher in the air, her light growing brighter and brighter until it lights up the air around her. Her short inky hair is blowing around her face like the wind is somehow affecting it, and her clothes are fluttering, too.
“NOAH! AIDEN! AIDEN! N O A H!”
I stare at Kasey blankly, my eyes perfectly round with shock. She just threw her head back and opened her mouth and took a huge breath like she was going to scream for the others, but nothing came out of her mouth.
Instead, the pine trees around us all shook as if swept by a powerful wind unrelated to the storm, and an echoing, distant, ghostly version of Kasey’s voice seemed to whisper out from their branches.
Aiden, Noah… over here… we’re over here!
“What the fuck!” I hear Noah shout, from somewhere out in the forest.
Ralph heard that, too. He’s staring up at the trees with very wide eyes, just the same way that Kasey is staring down at herself in thunderstruck shock, like she’s wondering if that was really her. Her dark eyes have gone ice white, glowing brightly.
That’s all I have time to see before a clawed, spindly, frostbite-cold hand closes around my ribs, and lifts me off of the forest floor.
“No, Jamie!” Kasey wails desperately.
Helpless to move or make a sound, all I can do is let the Witch lift me all the way up into the air until I’m eye-level with her, then turn me around until I’m facing her. I can’t look down, but I know the ground is far below me.
I stare helplessly into those huge, terrifying eyes, blazing with purple fire so hot it spills off purple smoke. Beneath them, the glowing green crack has fractured and spread. There are a few more cracks in the fingers closed around me.
I note these things distantly, as if I’m watching from very far away. I’m so afraid gazing down into those eyes that I can’t even think. Is she going to eat me?
A comet of streaming golden light slams into the wrist of the Witch, sending her fingers flying open. I fall right through them like a ragdoll. In the corner of my vision I see some flash of movement, and a flash of gold.
Two strong, powerful arms close around me, snatching me right out of the open air. We’re so high up that we have time to spin all the way around in midair, but a blast of golden magic softens our fall when we hit the ground.
Aiden lands on one knee, holding me against his chest with one arm, his other hand planted on the forest floor. The illusion keeping me locked up dissolves on contact with him, as if his body heat melted it away. I take a huge, coughing breath, seizing a tight handful of his shirt as I look around.
Ralph is back on his feet behind us, flanked by Noah and Kasey on either side.
I can see them clearly, because Aiden is glowing. Shining from head to toe with golden magic, glittering blue stardust fires burning in his eyes. His hands are so charged up with power that they’ve turned molten red and tangerine all the way up to his forearms, like he just drew them out of lava.
The wind is whipping through his chestnut hair, pulling at his clothes. The rain is hammering down on his face, but he keeps it turned up to the Witch, unflinching.
Their eyes meet, and lock.
Aiden slowly straightens up, draws me to my feet, and places me behind him.
The Witch stares down at him through the storm, panting. The veins of glowing green light have spread down her face and onto her shoulders, making audible cracking sounds whenever there’s a new break.
Without warning, the Witch’s spindly fingers light up shining purple. She hurls a spell at Aiden, so fast that I barely see it happen. Going for the element of surprise, since her magic is running low.
But the thing about Aiden is, he’s fast.
His hands are up before the magic can hit him. The bolt of dark purple light hangs in the air halfway to us, violently trying to push through the delicate wall of gold suddenly blocking its way.
Aiden is fighting hard to hold his magic in place as it fights to hold the Witch’s magic back. Spilling off so much magic that it pushes him off of the ground to hover with his hiking boots just above the forest floor, he grits his teeth, breathing hard.
Without thinking, I spread my hand on his back and let the connection open up. The force of Aiden’s magic nearly knocks me out, but I only hold on tighter to him, making sure he’ll have the connection open for anything it could help with.
I sense Aiden’s magic drawing something from me, but not energy. I wouldn’t know what he was taking, except as his energy touches it, it all flashes before my eyes again. The memory of sitting with Nolan on the steps of the forest ranger’s outpost, talking to him about the imaginary friend he had when he was little. The one who used to come visit him and take his nightmares away. It’s like Aiden’s magic is taking an imprint of that memory.
Aiden suddenly draws all of his magic back into himself, like the ocean pulling away from the beach before a tidal wave.
The barrier of gold brightens, then wraps itself around the bolt of the Witch’s magic it was holding back. With a deep roar of effort, the Heliomancer sweeps one hand up and forward.
The golden comet hits the Witch so fast that her huge hollow eyes don’t even have time to blink.
The spell explodes against the Witch, having taken her right in the chest. The spell was huge. It hits all of us, and it sets off a shockwave blast of magic that nearly knocks everyone flat. For a split second, the grove is overflowing with Heliomancer sunshine, as if we’re in the middle of rainy summer day.
The Witch falls to her knees, pressing her crooked hands to either side of her head as the memory that Aiden’s spell knocked loose returns to her mind.
The spell hit all of us, so we all remember with her.
~~~~
For a long time after the Tree fell, she wandered aimlessly around the forest, lost.
She just could not understand. She had been designed and created to one specific, exact purpose, to protect something special and sacred… and still, she had failed. They, the Six, had all failed. How? How could it have happened?
And what now?
The years passed and she had no answers. Eventually she took some comfort in the forest, her home. One day she sat down in her favorite grove and leaned back against a tree, and there she sat watching the woods for years and years. Until finally, one day, something touched her senses and roused her from what had become a waking sleep.
It was something small, and far away, too. At the very edge of the forest, certainly. She wandered to the edge of her territory, and with the power conserved over the years of her silent meditation, spoke to the magic trying to hold her back until it moved out of the way.
She was excited, and excitement was a feeling she’d forgotten, so she was excited to experience that, too. She was out into new forest, and, she sensed with some surprise, younger forest.
What was that little thing she sensed? She came to the edge of the forest, and cautiously watched the long black road that ran alongside it. It led down a hill to a small gas station, dusty and empty in the summer heat. She hesitated, aware that she was venturing much closer to where the humans resided than was technically allowed.
But the thing she had sensed was down there. Her curiosity led her to go further down the hill, weaving along through the trees until she could see around the side of the gas station.
A small cluster of children were walking together up the street, rolling their bicycles alongside them. Her attention went right to the one at the very back of the pack. He was very pale, with dark circles around his eyes. Small for his age, assuming he was the same age as the other boys. He was walking some twenty feet behind the others, but whenever he picked up speed and tried to catch up, the others would just walk a little faster.
“Ugh, stop following us, Morden!” one of the boys shouted over his shoulder. “You’re not hanging out with us!”
The little one stopped for a second, looking very upset. But then he gingerly started following them again, with pleading eyes, like a faithful puppy who’s just been smacked across the nose with a newspaper.
She winced inside, sensing the loneliness that was driving him helplessly after the others. It may as well have been a hurricane wind pushing him.
“Go away, Morden!” one of the other kids shouted. “Go back to your creepy hotel! Creepy just like you are!”
The little one stopped, squeezing the handlebars of his bike, his lip trembling.
“I just-” he began, then stopped abruptly when one of the other boys threw a rock at him.
“Get lost!” the biggest of the other boys shouted, swinging onto his bike as the little one stared down in silent, frozen surprise at his suddenly bleeding knee. “Don’t follow us, we mean it!”
They rode off, leaving him there. He stood still for a while, then silently got onto his bicycle and rode up the hill, back in the direction of the forest, away from town.
She silently followed after him from the safety of the trees, every now and then casting a glowering glance over her shoulder in the direction that little pack of humans ran off in. She had half a mind to show them a glimpse of herself in her second form, but she decided against it. Little ones make mistakes, and besides, she wouldn’t want to give anyone nightmares.
Instead she followed her particular little one up the winding forest road until he reached a large human building constructed just beyond the boundaries of the forest, placed on a flat grass lawn. The energy around the building troubled her. She shivered, then went to move past it. But the boy hopped off of his bike, like he planned to stay.
He put the bicycle into a shed against the side of the building, replacing it with such care that she suspected he was not supposed to take it out in the first place. He tried to straighten out his clothes, wiped off his tear-stained face, wiped off his bloody knee, and reluctantly opened the back door.
She heard a scathing, scolding voice call out as soon as the door swung open.
“Nolan! Come here right now!”
Drawing his shoulders in and down, hanging his head, the boy disappeared into the building.
She wasn’t sure what to do. She sensed the little human needed some sort of help, but he didn’t seem to be in any imminent danger. She settled down in the trees to watch, but he didn’t come out again.
When night fell she stole out onto the lawn and did a cautious lap of the place. She decided against approaching the front, as it had two bright lights at the entrance, their purple glow all but unavoidable. She circled around to the back, and paused, hearing a muffled scream.
She swept up to one of the dark windows on the second floor, gliding silently up on a little rush of magic. The window was open, and from inside she could hear strained whimpering and sobbing noises.
She peeked over the window, and found the little human in his bed, having what looked like a terrible nightmare.
She fell back, waiting for his parents to come, but the boy was sleeping with his face against the pillow, all but silencing himself. Weren’t there any adults here who he trusted to keep him safe?
She fought with herself, turning her staff around in her hands, then sent her magic into it, weaving together the silent web of a spell.
A sudden breeze swept through the forest behind her, sending up a rush of whispering noise in the otherwise very still summer night. The curtains at the windows fluttered, and the wind turned the pages of an open book on the night table. The inky pages, half-full of handwritten words, shook loose a pen that clattered to the floor.
The little boy stirred in the bed, then sat up with a jolt, panting hard, staring around wildly. He froze when his gaze fell on her, his green eyes going perfectly round. She had to suppress a chuckle at the expression. Like one of the little fawns from her forest, he was.
“Don’t worry, small human,” she whispered, using her voice for the first time in decades. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
He knuckled his eyes, then sat up on his knees, crawling closer to stare at her. “Am - am I still dreaming?”
“You tell me. What’s that nightmare you’re having? I can still see it in your mind. Let it go, now, or you won’t be able to sleep.”
And she could sense how much he needed to. He was tired to his little core, poor thing.
He shuddered, falling back and shaking his head.
“I can’t go back to sleep. I can never forget the nightmare when I wake up, and I know if I fall asleep I’ll just have it again.”
She stared down at him, holding her staff tightly, suddenly overcome. Here he was, a tiny piece of the world who sincerely needed her protection. Even if he was just one, even if he was small, even if all he needed protecting from was his own nightmare.
She could spin a little memory magic, couldn’t she? She’d never tried before, but it was magic like all the rest.
She let her staff float beside her, and settled her elbows on the windowsill. “Go on, then. Tell me. You’ll forget by the time you’re done.”
Clearly he’d been waiting to tell someone, because he did, with only that much persuading. He seemed grateful to have someone to talk to about anything, based on how often he went off-track to talk about his other worries. Choking back his tears, he let spill the whole nightmare, along with all of his other troubles.
She listened silently, resting her chin on her palm, and drew his words into her staff as he spoke. Floating beside her, it gently disregarded any irrelevancies, pulled in the nightmare, and released in exchange a peaceful memory of her own, from one of her endless days sitting perfectly still in the peaceful forest. The butterflies, the sunlight, the frogs chirping, the slow falling of sunset and night and the stars.
It all danced softly along invisible lines of magic until it settled into his mind, filling the place where the memory of the nightmare used to be.
The little human trailed off, suddenly looking very drowsy and peaceful and tired.
“Do you want to go to sleep now?” she asked, and he nodded, slumping down into his pillow.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, his soft little voice full of earnestness, even in its exhausted state.
She smiled down at him. He was a sweet one.
“Oh - wait-” Struck by a sudden thought, he rolled over onto his stomach and reached down to the floor, rescuing his pen from the ground. He sleepily pressed it to an open page of the book on the night table, leaving behind a streak of ink with his drowsy, clumsy movements. “What’s your name? Will you come back…?”
He fell asleep like that, with the pen in his tiny fingers. She used magic to finagle it free, then used her staff to gently nudge his hand back onto the bed. And to add some warmth to the bed, too, after noting with some disapproval that these sheets didn’t seem to hold much on their own. With her staff she made them toasty and drew them up over him. He snuggled deeper into the bed, his fingers folding around the top of the sheet in his sleep.
She spent some magic tonight, but she’d kept an untapped reservoir all this time, so that was fine. It would be fine to come back and spend a little more on other nights, too, if his nightmares still troubled him.
It was worth it. She finally had a little something to protect again. She paused there for a moment, leaning on her staff, smiling down at his small, curled-up form, which breathed slowly now that he was deeply asleep.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and softly closed the window.
~~~~
The Witch trembles on her hands and knees, gasping and shuddering. Recalling that memory did something. The green cracks are shining brighter than ever. Team Ghost Office stares at her through the storm as she slowly, painstakingly manages to lift her head and look up at Aiden.
Jolting like she has to fight for every second of it, she reaches a crooked hand up to him.
Help… me… Guardian… she whispers.
Aiden slowly goes closer to her, hesitates for just a fraction of a second.
The storm of magic shakes the trees just as hard as the rainstorm as he takes her hand.
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