Sunshowers - Part Ten
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.
No one even bothers to attempt an explanation. It’s clear that we all need our memories back, right now.
Aiden finds us a quiet spot alone in the forest, hidden away by a stand of towering lodgepole pines. On a shady patch of soft, needle-blanketed grass, we sit down with some frozen lemonades from the cafe. They’re practically life-giving after so much running around in the summer heat, reviving everyone from the weariness that had temporarily settled in over us.
With renewed energy, having taken a second of calm, it seems like a good time.
Aiden takes my fingers gently into his, letting the connection fall open between us. Showers of sparkling Heliomancer magic spill softly into me, leaving Aiden with the smaller amount he wants to work with. The icy blue glow from his eyes dances slowly on his cheekbones.
He’s done this before, and that always makes him more comfortable with his magic. As he leans up on his knees to touch his fingertips to Noah’s temple, he looks more nervous about what everyone will have to say once the illusion is gone.
Noah’s grey eyes flutter closed as Aiden releases a little burst of golden magic. It glows against Noah’s skin like sunshine before it vanishes, sinking in. Aiden turns to Ralph next, leaving me for last.
I was too distracted to pay attention to the sensation of this last time, but it’s a nice little feeling. A brief rush of deeply-felt satisfaction and relief, like a good back crack. My mind relaxes, releasing a tension I hadn’t noticed there until now.
I open my eyes to see the wave of dark purple magic sweep out from me, Noah, and Ralph, all together. The two of them watch it vanish with obvious fascination, then turn back to Aiden.
“Did it work?” Noah asks, gingerly touching his fingers to the place on his forehead where the magic disappeared.
“I don’t sense illusion magic on you anymore.” Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders, the frosty blue light flickering out from his eyes. “Try to remember.”
Silence falls as Ralph, Noah, and I all cast our minds back to what went down before we left the hotel.
What happened? I ask myself. You were walking across the lawn towards the others, who were by the cafe… and…
Across the expanse of perfectly cut grass, I saw Aiden’s eyes suddenly light up with swirling, frost-blue magic.
The memory is just - there. In complete clarity, as if it was only formed a few hours ago, which it was. Images flash through my mind, along with the sound of a lot of things breaking, of Hanely shouting.
Oh, god. I remember, now. All too clearly…
~~~~
I stop right where I am, halfway across the hotel lawn, staring at Aiden’s sparkling eyes.
Noah is just about to reach Aiden and Ralph, so he sees it too. He pulls up sharply, dragging a strand of long hair out of his eyes. Ralph catches his expression, follows it to Aiden, and freezes in wide-eyed alarm.
We all know instantly that Aiden didn’t summon this magic. Why would he? There’s no reason to. Besides, we’re at the hotel, where there are a bunch of other people around who could see. Hunters at the picnic tables, Eduardo just inside the cafe, Hanely and Grimm in their squad car.
There’s only one explanation. Aiden’s eyes would only begin to shine with unsummoned magic if the Witch is somewhere very nearby.
In roughly the same instant that I see Aiden’s eyes light up and instinctively understand what’s happening, I catch a glimpse of another problem from the corner of my eye.
Hanely and Grimm have left their shiny new squad car. The two of them are walking briskly around to the side of the hotel. It’s abundantly clear that they’re headed for our group, probably for another attempted interrogation about why we’re here. I’m sure they’re more motivated than ever to wring some answers out of us, considering Noah crushed Grimm’s nose last night.
I look forward again in horror as Aiden hastily turns his snapback around and wrenches the brim down over his glowing eyes. Ralph and Noah, having also caught a glimpse of the approaching cop problem, seize Aiden and quickly drag him behind the hotel.
Hanely and Grimm turn the corner around to the cafe side just in time to get a glimpse of the movement. They stop and stare suspiciously at where they just saw Noah’s elbow and one of Aiden’s stumbling feet disappear around the back of the building.
It breaks over my head that Aiden has no way to hide his glowing eyes from the cops. Hanely and Grimm absolutely can’t catch the rest of the team, not right now. Especially because the Witch must be somewhere around here. What if she comes for Aiden right now, and he has to fend her off with magic?
Hanely and Grimm just can’t be allowed to see that. Someone needs to be a distraction, and I’m the only one still in their view.
At least I don’t have to actively try to look suspicious. I’m breathing shallowly as I stumble into movement, nervous sweat making my clothes cling to my body.
All I have to do is rush hurriedly across Hanely and Grimm’s line of sight, and I’ve got their attention. They both stop again, watching me. I can feel their gazes burning into my back.
My eyes frantically search for somewhere to go where they’re certain to follow me. Without thinking, I strike out for the front doors of the hotel. I know I’ll be in big trouble if I’m caught wandering around Wendy’s hotel, but I just have to hope she’s not there.
I trot up to the lobby doors and slip inside, weaving around a few hunters on their way out. Determinedly forcing myself not to glance back at where the others disappeared. Desperately wishing I had any semblance of a plan.
The sunlight almost seems to switch off once I step inside. I can’t help but shiver, looking around at the gloomy hotel. It’s like the warmth and life of the summer day just can’t reach in here, can’t penetrate the thick wall of silence and coldness over everything. The grandiose chandelier doesn’t throw off enough light to even make itself glitter. The icy, smiling portrait of Morden draws my uneasy eyes. Always watching.
The ruins of the armoire and the smashed contents of the decorative table have been swept up into a heap for someone to take care of later. That’s the only comforting sight in here, odd as that seems. At least it’s a sign of life in this dismal place.
I stop just inside the doors, relieved to see that Wendy isn’t behind the check-in desk. The lobby is empty, and no one has followed me inside yet, so I use a few precious seconds to think.
It’s probably best if I don’t actually let myself get caught. Hanely and Grimm will turn me over to Wendy, or arrest me if they think they see a good enough reason. But I can’t just get away, because if I do that they might go looking for the others…
I hesitate for one more second, then dart in the opposite direction of the cafe, towards a large wooden door beside the portrait of Morden. It’s a deep-set doorway, and mercifully unlocked, as I discover when I try the handle. This is the staff only door that Noah snuck through before, so maybe it leads to a maintenance room or something? If so there’s probably another exit. Wendy doesn’t seem like the type to let her staff use the front doors.
I unlatch it and wait hidden in the doorway, trembling anxiously, making sure that just a little of my shoulder is visible from the entrance to the lobby.
The front doors sweep open, allowing the sunlight to make another failed attempt to illuminate the infinite gloom of the hotel. I wait until I hear the clunk of police bootsteps, then slip through the door and close it behind me, making sure that the latch makes a loud click.
Hanely and Grimm haven’t exactly proven themselves to be ace detectives, but I’m sure they heard that. No time to wait around.
I set off in a rush down the hallway I’ve found myself in, which somehow manages to be even dimmer than the lobby. My heart is racing, pounding in my ears. I hope the others are handling whatever’s going on outside with the Witch okay… I hope I’m handling what I’m doing here okay.
I glance anxiously back over my shoulder, wishing there were a few more windows in this dark hallway.
I do a swift double-take, then jolt to a stop and freeze where I am. Staring with perfectly round eyes as something dark and crooked and twitching climbs directly in through the window at the far end of the hall.
She barely fits in the hallway. Doubled over like this she’s even more terrifying, twisted out of shape, her head almost upside down. Her bony, spindly fingers are sprawled on the walls. The darkness of her presence fills up the entire hall around her and behind her like thick smoke, sucking the remainder of the light and all of the warmth completely away.
Out of the crooked black hole in the hallway, two eyes full of icy purple flames open, and immediately find my face. The effect is something like being doused with snowmelt. My blood goes cold, and my brain goes completely blank with fear.
My body, thankfully, seems to require no input from my mind. Every built-in instinct to protect myself that evolution blessed me with fires off at once. Before a single thought crosses my mind I’ve turned around and sprinted the rest of the way down the hall, thrown open the door at the end, and flung myself through.
I find myself staggering into a large, austere, L-shaped kitchen. It looks nothing like the little kitchen behind the cafe, where Eduardo and I sat and chatted the first time Aiden and I came to the hotel. This kitchen is clearly used to make food for the hotel guests. It’s immaculately spick and span, coldly industrial. There’s a taste of disuse to the air, but many fancy kitchen implements around. Presumably waiting for the end of the remodel, when the guests return.
The floors must have been polished recently. The tiles are seriously slippery. I nearly go skidding way too far with my very first step, and have to catch myself on the polished kitchen counter in order to stay upright.
My frantic eyes dart around everywhere as I rush forward, searching for an exit. I turn the corner in the big kitchen, then drag in a hopeful, gasping breath. There’s a back door set into the far wall, one that looks like it leads outside. I couldn’t see it from the first doorway, the way the kitchen is laid out.
I sprint for the back door at full speed. Right as I reach for the handle, the door bursts open from the outside, and someone else comes rushing in.
I gasp and fling myself backwards, losing my footing on the slippery tile floors. A warm hand catches mine and wrenches me back onto my feet, saving me just before I can fall.
Panting hard, I look up into two alarmed, very beautiful blue eyes.
“Oh - Aiden, thank god!” I bury my face into his chest in relief, then draw back to look up at him. “How did you find me-?”
“I saw you running past the windows! Are you-?”
“I’m fine, I was just trying to lead Hanely and Grimm away from you, but the Witch is here, Aiden, she’s here right now, in the hotel-”
I break off with a sharp gasp as the kitchen door that I came in through crashes open again. I spin around, expecting to see the Witch, and promptly lose my balance again on the overpolished floors.
I try to catch myself on a hanging rack of pots and pans. My flailing hand only succeeds in giving the entire rack a hard yank before I go tumbling towards the floor. Aiden immediately tries to catch me, losing his own footing on the slippery floors in the process. We both go down in a tangle.
In the two seconds it takes us to fall, Aiden somehow manages to twist around in the air, reversing our positions so that he lands beneath me. It’s a gentle fall for me, cushioned by the firm warmth of Aiden’s body, but it forces a jagged breath out of him.
“Are you okay, Aiden?” I gasp.
“Mhm,” he groans, wincing as he sits up, easing me upright, too. “No - no biggie.”
“Oh, god, I’m sorry-” I begin regretfully, then stop to look up, hearing an ominous little squeaking sound from somewhere overhead.
A large, sturdy saucepan at the end of the rack I nearly tore down is swinging precariously. It’s almost fallen off of its hook, dangling from the very end.
Right as I look up at it, it gently slips free and begins to tumble through the air, falling directly towards my face.
Before I can so much as blink, Aiden flings one hand out. A beam of radiant golden light bursts from his palm like tracer fire. The bolt of magic intercepts the saucepan and instantly melts into its metal sides.
The saucepan shudders. With a little jerk it hastily pulls itself out of its trajectory, twisting around in midair. It bounces off of one of the cabinets, going out of its way to avoid Aiden’s shoulder, then tumbles to the floor and clatters to a stop a few feet away from us.
“Shit, that was close!” Aiden stammers, panting hard. “You alright, Jamie?”
“Yeah, I’m f-fine-”
“HEY!” shouts whoever opened the kitchen door, having heard the enormous, resounding crash.
Hanely sprints around the corner in the angular kitchen, then stops to stare at me and Aiden as we stagger up onto our knees.
“What are you doing?” he snaps, striding past the saucepan, coming straight for us.
He slides on the slippery floor just before he reaches us. He has to catch himself on the corner of the kitchen counter, which must make him feel that his authoritative entrance ended in a disappointing anticlimax. He looks even more annoyed as he straightens up, especially because he knocked a bunch of large metal cooking spoons to the floor. They make a loud clatter as they hit the tiles.
“Explain yourselves,” Hanely hisses, clearly trying his absolute best not to acknowledge the spoons in any way.
“We fell!” I explain, scrambling to my feet, pulling Aiden up with me. “The floor is slippery!”
“Yes, I can see that!” Hanely snaps. “I mean what are you doing sneaking around the hotel, again?”
“There’s no time to explain, we have to get out of here!” I tell him urgently, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder. “The - the monster that everyone is hunting is here, right now! In the hotel-”
I break off, looking sharply at Aiden. It just struck me that his eyes aren’t glowing anymore. Like the Witch - left? Is she not in the hotel anymore?
“Didn’t you see…?” I ask Hanely, confused.
“I’ll tell you what I see, okay?” he answers heatedly. “Two strangers who aren’t from around here, who have repeatedly refused to identify themselves to the police, who have already behaved very suspiciously over the last few days, coming up with a shoddy story-”
I completely lose track of what Hanely is saying. My eyes - and Aiden’s - are suddenly riveted to the saucepan behind him.
The hard crash-landing it took left it on its side on the tile floor. But I… I swear I just saw it give a little jolt. Now that I’m looking closer, there’s a very faint glow of gold emanating from the metal, the exact shade of Heliomancer magic.
My breath catches in my throat as the saucepan gives itself a little shake, then hops up to sit flat on its metal bottom on the floor.
I steal a wide-eyed glance at Aiden, silently asking the obvious question. What exactly did you do to it?
He flashes me a very anxious look that suggests he has no idea.
“-not to mention the music we heard you playing earlier, which was very inappropriate, understand?” Hanely is saying. He pauses in exasperation, glaring at us. “Are you two even listening to me?”
We’re actually both just staring at the saucepan, which is now trying to inconspicuously scooch itself in a circle, as if it’s taking in its surroundings.
Spell-casting is all about the ask, I remember dizzily. When Guardians have to do magic very fast, the ask usually doesn’t come out as clear as it could.
I’m increasingly concerned that maybe Aiden asked the saucepan not to hit us, and it came to life in order to oblige him.
“Kasey,” I whisper, sensing we’re on the verge of a serious problem.
She materializes by my side, then stops in confusion, taking in the situation.
“What…?” she begins, staring at the saucepan, then at Hanely, then at the spoons all over the floor.
“You’re not going to fool me into thinking the animal everyone’s hunting for is in this hotel,” Hanely snaps, noticing the way we’re staring past him with our mouths slightly dropped open. “That’s very funny, boys, now knock it off. I’m an officer of the law, do you not understand that? You won’t-”
The saucepan abruptly seems to understand where it is. It gives a startled, alarmed little hop.
Hanely breaks off mid-sentence as the metallic bonk sound reaches his ears. He hesitates, his lip twitching. There’s no denying he heard that, but he also just promised us we weren’t going to trick him into turning around.
“You won’t-” he begins again, through gritted teeth.
He breaks off as the saucepan decides that it wants out.
Just like all the tired, overworked, underappreciated others in Wendy’s employ, the saucepan clearly does not want to be at the hotel. It launches into an immediate, desperate escape attempt, with all the grace and calm of a cat being chased around the room with a firehose.
It springs into the air, bounces frantically against the dishwasher, then rockets up to crash into all the other hanging pots and pans, sending them down in a rain in front of Hanely, who has to hurl himself out of the way. His giant, jacked body crashes into the kitchen counter, sending half of the appliances to the floor in a shattering heap. The panicked saucepan slams into a delicate convection oven on the counter, thoroughly shattering it, then uses the momentum to hop back down onto the floor.
Hanely straightens up, wide-eyed and gasping. It’s hard to judge whether the saucepan or his flailing arms have done more damage to the kitchen counter equipment.
“Holy shit!” he screams, stumbling gracelessly over the fallen pots and pans, tripping on all the spoons. “GRIMM! GRIMM! THE MONSTER IS HERE, IT’S HERE!”
“No, Hanely-!” I begin.
Aiden catches me around my waist and wrenches me out of the way as the saucepan, now charging blindly in self-defense, hops furiously for Hanely like a jousting knight.
Hanely doesn’t turn around to see what’s making the clanging noise very rapidly getting closer to him. He simply runs, wrenching down anything he can from the kitchen counter and hurling it behind himself, trying to slow the saucepan’s advance. He and the saucepan do a full lap of the kitchen island in the center of the room, and then Hanely bolts for the door leading back into the hotel, still screaming for Grimm.
It seems to occur to the saucepan that Hanely may know the way out of here. It bounds eagerly after him as he races into the hallway, shoving down a bookshelf behind himself, trying to build a barricade on the go.
Aiden, Kasey, and I stare after them in stunned silence for a second, then set off rushing after them.
“HANELY!” Aiden shouts. “STOP, STOP! IT’S NOTHING, AND YOU’RE GONNA BREAK EVERYTHING!”
Hanely can’t hear him over the clanging of the saucepan, but someone else does. Wendy comes rushing out onto the landing at the top of the stairs as we all burst back out into the lobby. The expression on her face suggests that she heard exactly what Aiden just shouted.
“What are you doing, officer?” she shrieks, making for the stairs.
Grimm comes rushing across the lobby towards Hanely, his eyes wide with alarm. “What-?”
“IT’S HERE!” Hanely screams.
He just crashed into the sofa, which he gets out of his way with a brutal kick that nearly snaps the old thing in half. The saucepan makes an unbelievably loud clanging sound on the tile of the lobby floor, and Hanely flings himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms. Grimm gasps and dives for cover behind the destroyed armoire before he can even see what’s going on.
“STOP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!” he roars at the saucepan.
The saucepan pauses, seeming to notice the abundance of windows in here from which it can make good its escape. It skids back a little on the smooth floors, and then - hurls itself into the air, spinning like an out-of-control propeller until it shatters a window and vanishes through it.
Aiden and I both gasp, rushing to the destroyed window. We stare in disbelief as the saucepan, still airborne, spins off into the forest and vanishes. Sailing high, like a thing experiencing true freedom for the first time.
Kasey leaps through the window after it, chasing it as a streak of light into the woods.
Wendy freezes at the bottom of the steps. She got here just in time to hear the window break, but not to see what caused it. What she does see is Hanely laying sprawled on the wrecked remains of the lobby sofa, with broken pieces of the kitchen all over him. She doesn’t even notice Grimm, who’s still cowering in confusion behind the destroyed armoire.
Wendy stands stock still in front of Hanely, disbelieving wrath slowly building and building in her icy stare.
Hanely freezes when he gets to his knees and sees it.
“What,” Wendy breathes, through gritted teeth, “Do. You. Think. You’re. Doing?”
Panting, Hanely surges back to his feet, lifting his chin. “Ma’am, I just had an encounter with the animal those men outside are hunting! In your hotel! Only some very quick tactical thinking got me out of there, it’s a miracle I’m still alive!”
“I don’t care!” Wendy answers, in a voice that would put a real-life banshee to shame. “Look at my window! Look at my sofa!”
“I don’t have time for this!” Hanely sputters. “I’ve got to get out there and tell everyone to listen for a clanging noise! The monster must have metal feet! Did you hear it, Grimm?”
Grimm shoots Hanely a poisonous look. Wendy hadn’t noticed him in his hiding spot until that. “Hear what?”
“The sound, the - it sounded like - bonk bonk bonk-”
“I see that Chief Sieler is hiring complete fools, these days!” Wendy screeches, beside herself with outrage.
Realizing she hasn’t even seen the kitchen or the hallway yet, Aiden hastily catches my wrist and draws me away to the door. We leave Hanely and Grimm to shrink down in dismay as Wendy backs them into a corner and really lets her thoughts start to fly.
We burst outside through the front doors and rush around to the cafe side of the hotel. The hotel muffles a lot of noise with its heavy carpeting and curtains. The chaotic crashing of everything that just happened doesn’t appear to have reached the hunters gathered up out here, although Eduardo is leaning over the counter in his cafe, staring curiously in the direction of the lobby. I can tell even from here that whatever he’s hearing is making it difficult for him not to laugh.
Kasey reappears by my side, out of breath.
“Fuck! I lost the saucepan, you guys! It was going so fast! It was just outta there!”
“Okay,” Aiden says breathlessly. “So - there’s an animate saucepan out in the woods. That’s - we should probably tell Ralph, he might not be happy with that-”
“How did this happen?” Kasey sputters, in disbelief.
“I was just trying to get it out of the way!” Aiden protests, increasingly flustered. “How was I supposed to know-?”
“Okay, we need to find that thing,” Kasey says, and sets off as a silvery white streak back towards the forest.
“Wait, where are Ralph and Noah?” I ask urgently, catching Aiden’s wrist. “What happened while I was keeping Hanely and Grimm busy?”
Aiden winces, shaking his head. “I sensed the Witch for a few minutes, but then I didn’t sense her anymore-”
“Because she went into the hotel!”
“We didn’t know that, we went down towards the forest looking for her! But I couldn’t sense her, so we figured she left, and we came back up here to look for you. Ralph and Noah said they’d go around the front, and sent me around - around the back…”
Aiden trails off, mounting alarm in his blue eyes.
“That’s - she was in the hallway,” I whisper. “But she didn’t chase me. Maybe she - went right through the hallway, and to the front of the hotel…? There would’ve been nobody else out there but them…”
Aiden is breathing hard. “Okay, we need to call them.”
I pull out my phone, then let out a frustrated curse when my call to Ralph doesn’t go through. “Fuck! There’s only really specific places with reception around here, I swear! I’ve got to get closer to the cafe.”
“Fine, and I’m just gonna check and make sure they’re not walking away right now,” Aiden says hurriedly. “I’ll be gone for one minute. You stay in the crowd while you call them, you hear me? Don’t go out of sight. And no wandering off!”
“Okay, yeah, no!”
Aiden sneakily leans down to brush a very fast kiss onto my lips, then rushes off to the front of the hotel. I slip into the loose crowd of hunters and tailgaters hanging out at the picnic tables, but my phone still won’t give me any reception. The one place I know for sure I can get it is around the back of the hotel, where I called Gabby and Ralph called Calla. Or - no, there was also that spot by the picnic tables where I called Gabby the first time. That sounds better.
It’s a little off to one side, more than I’d like. Of all the picnic tables, it’s the farthest from the cafe, and the closest to the forest. But the thought that the Witch might be luring Ralph and Noah away right now sends me rushing towards it. There’s just no time to waste.
I stop by the empty picnic table and call Ralph again. Straight to voicemail, and I know his phone isn’t off. He must not have reception. Shit. Am I so cold because I’m panicking?
“Come on, come on…” I whisper, mopping icy sweat off of my forehead with the sleeve of my flannel. “Somebody please answer…”
I frantically pull up Noah’s contact instead, then… stop, staring down at my phone in confusion.
Wait… what am I doing? Didn’t… didn’t Ralph and Noah head out into the woods with Aiden, like, just a few minutes ago? Yeah, and I was going to meet them after I got a cookie from the cafe. We were gonna go to the villas together. That’s the plan we made at the picnic table a minute ago, isn’t it?
I can’t even think why I was so worried and worked up. I stuff my phone back into my pocket and set out for the forest, relieved to think that Aiden will be there, just over the hillside.
I stop after a minute or two, realizing regretfully that I didn’t get the cookie I wanted. But it’s too late to go back now. I wouldn’t want to be caught on my own, after all…
~~~~
Ralph, Noah, and I all break from our silent remembering at once. In the same moment, I look up with an apologetic wince at Aiden, and Ralph drops his head into his hands. Noah sits back, making an oops face.
“How,” Ralph says, after a brief silence, “Can it be possible that I still don’t have a single fucking clue about what happened with the saucepan?”
“Oh.” Aiden blinks as the realization dawns on him. “That’s right, you, um, you weren’t there for that part…”
He’s cringing with every word, so I bite the bullet and explain what happened for him. Ralph and Noah listen with eyebrows arched all the way up. Noah starts fighting back a laugh about halfway through, but Ralph looks more and more dismayed, and then thoroughly amused when I end the story with, “And we just need you to be cool about it, dude, alright?”
“Alright,” he answers, to my considerable surprise. “Can’t see what there is to be done about it now. At least we know why the window at the front of the hotel is smashed out. Also explains all the broken kitchen stuff they’re piling up outside. I am gonna say that it’s probably bad about the animate saucepan being loose in the woods. Any chance the spell is gonna wear off on its own, Aiden?”
“I - don’t think I gave it specific instructions about that,” Aiden says nervously.
“Okay,” Noah says, biting back a grin. “So now we’re hunting for a witch, and also a saucepan. Unrelated.”
“How did you guys get taken?” I ask, turning to Ralph and Noah.
“We got nabbed pretty fast,” Noah says frankly. “We were trying to get Aiden out of there, ‘cause we saw Hanely and Grimm coming for us, and our boy’s eyes were glowing. Then we saw you lead them off the trail, so we went to see if we could find the Witch and lead her away from the hunters, maybe take a crack at her while the cops were otherwise occupied. But she was just gone.”
“Yep, and we figured you could only be in trouble with Hanely and Grimm,” Ralph adds, “So we split up to cover more ground to find you, and that turned out to be a mistake. Last thing I remember is running for the doors of the hotel, and then slowing down because I couldn’t remember why I was running.”
“Me, too,” Noah says, frowning. “She must’ve got both of us at the same time.”
“Great to know she can do that,” Ralph grumbles.
Kasey reappears by my side, then drops down to sit next to me, tossing her hands up in defeat. “No sign of the saucepan anywhere.”
Ralph breathes out a heavy sigh when I repeat that. “One thing at a time. We’ll worry about the saucepan later.”
“In that case,” Kasey says delicately, “Won’t someone please tell me and Aiden what the fuck happened earlier? Why did I watch Jamie beat the shit out of a cop car? I mean, it was sexy, I’m not gonna lie, but-”
Aiden’s blue eyes go very wide. “You watched Jamie do what?”
By the time we’re done explaining, Aiden has definitely lost the guilty, abashed look that was lingering on his face as he explained about the saucepan. He looks alternatingly alarmed, furious, in disbelief, and on the verge of laughter in such fast succession that it’s hard to tell one expression from the other.
In the end, Kasey, who clearly spent the better part of that story fighting back her giggles, finally lets a few out. Aiden closes his eyes, takes a very deep, slow breath, then says:
“We’re even. No more talk about the saucepan or the destruction it caused. No more talk about the cop car. Are we all in agreement?”
We all let out a collective breath of relief, nodding immediately.
“All I’m gonna say is that it was awesome,” Noah blurts out suddenly, grinning from ear to ear. He tilts his head back with a satisfied sigh, as if the destruction of the squad car is playing out behind his eyelids. “I can still see it, I can still feel it… Mmmf, que ça fait du bien…”
“Okay!” I clamp a hand over Noah’s mouth. “That’s the last anyone says about it!”
“I think,” Ralph muses, half to himself, “That the Witch must be doing some restrategizing.”
We all look at him curiously, and he shrugs his shoulders.
“She tried a direct attack on all of us. She tried driving the rest of us off to catch Aiden while he’s alone, then she tried luring us away. Now she’s also tried using us to lure Aiden out. Nothing has worked the way she wanted, so… what’s she gonna do now?”
There’s an uncertain silence.
“She prefers to strike at night,” Ralph goes on, speaking more slowly, pushing a hand through his blonde hair as he thinks. “But she’s not afraid to strike during the day. She’s not afraid to get right up close to human beings, but she obviously doesn’t want to attract the attention of more than a few people at a time. Elsewise she would’ve taken a crack at Aiden when he was hiding out in the crowd at the cafe.”
“She’s designed to scare small groups of people,” I point out. “Or people on their own.”
Ralph is preoccupied with organizing things in his mind, his grey-green eyes narrowed and gazing at nothing in particular.
“And tonight,” he murmurs slowly, twisting his fingers through his leather wristbands, “We’ll once again have the problem of a bunch of nervous hunters and their dogs all bunched up together, with her on the prowl.”
Noah bites his lip, and I exchange a nervous glance with Kasey. Aiden clears his throat, sitting up some more.
“I don’t know if this helps, but… even though we haven’t really had what you’d call a victory against the Witch - we’ve got to be burning through her power.”
Ralph’s eyes flit to meet Aiden’s, his eyebrows furrowing. “What?”
“I mean… she’s not like me. She has a set amount of power, remember? She only has a lot because she drained a ton of energy from the hotel and the ranger’s station. Each piece of magic she does is going to drain some power from her, and she’s had to do a lot of magic, facing us.”
Noah stares hopefully at Aiden. “Any chance she’ll burn herself down to the socket?”
“No, I think she’s probably still got a good amount to work with. But she might try a different approach this time, one that doesn’t cost her so much magic.”
Kasey is looking sidelong at Ralph, who’s once again lost in thought.
“You look like you’ve got something, Ralph,” she observes.
He shrugs his shoulders slightly when I repeat that, still half-tangled in his thoughts.
“I’m trying to think what I would do if I was the one trying to get Aiden alone so I could attack him, and nothing I’d tried had worked so far.”
“Lovely,” Aiden grumbles. “And?”
“I’d be looking for a way to use some element that wasn’t in play before, and turn it to my advantage.”
“Like what?” I ask, watching Ralph curiously.
“The hunters.”
There’s a brief pause as we all absorb that.
Ralph has a point. The hunters don’t realize just how easily they could turn into the hunted. Exactly how they could be used against us, I’m not sure. What I do know is that it’s well within the Witch’s capability to manipulate them, and this time Gabby won’t be able to stop things before they get out of hand.
“Is there some way we can prepare for that?” I ask anxiously.
Ralph lifts his gaze to the sky overhead. It’s mostly obscured by the canopy, but it’s easy to see that the golden sunlight has grown deeper, more of a flamey orange and red. The sun is going down, painting the sky in glowing stained glass colors.
“Think that all we’ll have time to do is go back to camp for some dinner and a little rest,” Ralph murmurs, getting to his feet. “Sun’s going down soon enough, but I think she’ll wait until night is good and settled in before she makes her move.”
“We should have plenty of starlight to see by,” I offer, as the rest of us get up to follow him back towards our campsite. “No cloud cover tonight. At least there’s that.”
To my surprise, Ralph flashes me a little smile over his shoulder, as if to say he appreciates the optimism.
“Least there’s that,” he agrees softly, turning his gaze back to the forest.
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