Arc 2 Read online

  When Jasper closed his door behind him, he gave a sigh of relief to see Felix waiting for him, in nearly the same place as when he’d left, and this whole chaotic night began.

  “Oh, thank God,” he said, wearily opening his arms, into which Felix readily stepped. Jasper had begun doing that instead of actively touching Felix, making the physical offer available and waiting for him to take it. Happily, more often than not, he did. “I’m so glad to find you here—you wouldn’t believe the time we’ve had.”

  “Are you all right?” Felix asked, voice tight with tension. He brought his wings up to wrap firmly around Jasper, one clawed hand going to gently cradle the back of his head. “Where were you tonight? What happened?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jasper said, and heaved a deep sigh. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Felix asked with a confused blink, pulling back enough to look him in the eye. “I’m not the one who left without saying where I was going. I know something happened tonight. Magical. I felt it, like a storm. Was it you?”

  “I… yes,” Jasper said, and if he’d had any ideas of pretense or excuse, they were quickly abandoned. “I didn’t… you were worried, weren’t you?”

  “Of course I was,” Felix said, though he sounded more hurt than concerned at the question. “You were gone, Jude was gone, everything was wrong. I could feel something coming, something strange, something frightening, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. Head started rushing, couldn’t think—like a bad dream. Then I went out to find you, and it got worse.”

  “Oh,” Jasper said, a look of horrible realization crossing his face. “Oh, no. Felix, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t think—no, that’s not true, I did think of you, I always do. I just thought exactly the wrong thing, didn’t I? But wait, you went out looking for me? What happened, worse how?”

  “I want to tell you,” Felix said again, but he did hesitate this time, wrapping his wings and arms tighter around his fiancé. He sounded genuinely regretful, pained. “But not now. I’m sorry. Soon. I know it’s wrong of me to want you to tell me, and then not tell you, but—there’s too much in my head right now. Hard to make the words fit together. Please, you first. Just tell me what happened tonight. It’s the only thing that’ll quiet the noise.”

  His wings were soft and warm as he maneuvered them down onto the couch, which seemed to sigh along with Jasper.

  Slowly at first, eyes closed, he told Felix everything that had transpired that night and the nights leading up to it. The ritual, the required ingredients, the seemingly botched counter-spell, the ominous sights in the mirror. Felix listened silently, his only response to hold his fiancé a bit closer as Wicked Gold entered the narrative. When Jasper finished speaking, he didn’t let go, or answer right away. After almost a full minute of silently mulling it over, he spoke in a low rumble Jasper could feel in his chest.

  “You didn’t have to keep all this from me.”

  “Yes I did,” Jasper sighed. “You’ve got quite enough on your plate without worrying about any of this.”

  “No,” Felix said, a little more firmly. “I wish you’d told me. I wish you’d tell me in the future, when things like this happen, or you’re in trouble or need help, or worried about anything. I want to know. That’s what I’m here for. I promised I would be, for better or worse, and I’m not going to break it.”

  “If I recall, we hadn’t quite gotten to that part,” Jasper said a little dryly. “But I know what you mean.”

  “And I’m not going to break either,” Felix added, voice stronger still, not aggressive or angry, but clear and resolved. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells or treat me like anything you say is going to make my recovery harder. It won’t. My fiancé keeping things that hurt him to himself makes it harder. That hurts me too.”

  “I understand,” Jasper said, words low and earnest. “And I’ll try to never hurt you like that again. I can’t promise perfection, but the best I have is yours. The best of me is always yours.”

  “I don’t want perfection,” Felix replied, and by now, this had to be the most words he’d said in a single conversation in a long, long time. “I just want you. That’s perfect to me.”

  “What in the world did I do to deserve you?” Jasper asked, resting his chin on Felix’s shoulder and breathing him in. It wasn’t a scent cloying with death or decay, but the same one he remembered, a breath that made the years fall away until they were both young and unscarred and completely, beautifully alive. But then, they were still alive, he mused. Just in a different way than before.

  “I ask the same thing every day.” Jasper didn’t see or even feel Felix smile, but he knew it was there all the same, the way he knew the sun would rise, or that the air would still be there the next time he took a breath. The tiny glint of humor amongst the serious, thoughtful words was pure Felix-ness, and Jasper breathed this in as well. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

  They lapsed into a silence that wasn’t just comfortable but restorative, a quiet moment of actual rest and relaxation after too much tension and worry. Words weren’t necessary, not when you’d found someone who understood you without them.

  Then, Felix’s arms tightened around Jasper’s waist, as if suddenly frightened he may slip away. “You’re thin.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jasper laughed. “Not nearly.”

  “Too thin for you,” Felix rasped, looking into his fiancé’s face with serious, searching eyes. “You have been since I got back, but even more now. You haven’t been eating, have you?”

  “Clearly I have been, since I’m still among the living,” Jasper said dryly. “At least, last time I checked.”

  “Not enough.” Felix’s voice grew a bit rougher, not in a growl, but as if the words were becoming more difficult to push out. “And you know what I mean. It’s the first thing to go when you’re troubled. I haven’t been here for you. You’ve been so busy taking care of me, I haven’t done the same.”

  “Darling, it’s nothing—”

  “It’s not nothing. It’s everything, you’re everything.”

  “Like I said, you’ve had a few things on your mind, more than enough without worrying about me.”

  “And like I just said, I want you to tell me these things. I’m still your fiancé. It’s my job to worry about you. And make sure you eat something.” Felix hugged Jasper’s waist again, still wide and soft but too sunken for comfort. “Besides. You’re disappearing. That’s always going to scare me.”

  “Point taken,” Jasper said, and now he sounded more serious as well. “The next time you feed, I’ll see about feeding myself as well. Please don’t be afraid, Felix. I’m not going anywhere—not ever.”

  Felix buried his face against Jasper’s shoulder again, and curled his wings a bit more securely around the two of them. Neither of them moved, as if the moment they did, this precious moment of peace would be lost forever.

  “Love, I do have one question you might be able to answer.” This time it was Jasper who broke the lull, rather confusedly. “About what you just said… but also in regards to something I heard earlier that I just can’t wrap my mind around.”

  “Anything,” Felix said, his dry-leaves voice low and soft.

  “Does just… having me around help?” he said, repeating Jude’s words slowly, with much less certainty than he’d heard them said before. “Even if I don’t do anything?”

  “More than I can say. And not just because talking is hard for me.”

  “Hm.”

  “Is it hard to believe?”

  “Not for other people,” Jasper said. “For you, Jude, anyone else who’s a positive influence in my life, yes absolutely, simply having you around helps immeasurably. My brain simply refuses to accept that the same could be true in the reverse. The concept feels foreign. I’m not sure if it’s depression, or arrogance, because I can’t stop thinking ‘if I were doing enough to help, nobody I love would be suffering as much as they are.’�
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  “You’re not arrogant,” Felix rumbled. “The farthest from it I know. You want to fix everything. You can’t, but you keep trying, and wanting to. Part of why I needed you in my life. Both lives. But you don’t need to try so hard. You wouldn’t ask me to. Or anyone else.”

  “I know. I know it makes no sense, and that it’s just more cognitive dissonance brought on by trauma or imbalanced brain chemistry, but it’s like thinking day is night and up is down. My presence, alone, being not just worth something, but actively helpful in itself? Impossible.”

  Felix held out one clawed hand and turned it over thoughtfully, flexing his elongated fingers. “A lot of impossible things have happened.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Jasper replied. “I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying to trust the impossible—even when it’s inconvenient for a brain determined to find the worst in everything.”

  “Please do.” Felix’s voice dropped further, even as it turned a bit rougher. Words were leaving him; soon he would lapse into silence, entering the semiconscious state that let him recharge without quite sleeping the sleep of the undead, but close to it. “That way one of us will believe in something.”

  “Oh, my darling boy,” Jasper murmured, turning his face up to kiss the corner of Felix’s jaw. “Even when I can’t believe in anything, I believe in you.”

  As strange as the mall had seemed at night, dark and empty, it was every bit as normal during the day. Bright, cheery, capitalistic, reassuring that everything was as it should be. Letizia sat at her usual table with coffee and cards, but this time, instead of shuffling her cards, she held a fragment of bone, running a thumb over it like a smooth stone.

  “Keeping it as a reminder of last night?”

  “In a way,” Letizia said, giving her coffee companion a smile that only looked a little sad. The second difference: Jude was off the premises, and instead, Eva sat beside her. Nails and Maestra had offered their presence, but the Witch knew enough to be sure they’d only be bored with an old lady’s coffee date, and they were likely off causing mayhem, or reconnecting with one another after a long imprisonment that had to have felt like a separation, or both at the same time. “Even if it didn’t quite go as planned, it was an important night. For more than one reason.”

  “Yeah it was.” Eva started to say more, then reached for her coffee, hiding her smile behind a long swig. “So, do we still need to worry about Wicked Gold taking over the circle?”

  “No,” Letizia said, and she sounded certain about it, but her face hardened with obvious worry. “If he’d gained the stones’ power, I’d know, believe me. And, as I said, so would Pixie. He’s still connected to his sire, even if I severed his control. A surge that strong would be impossible to miss.”

  “But you don’t seem that happy about it.”

  “I’m not. The circle… we’re not done with them. I feel it.”

  “Done with what?” Eva asked, not angrily but emphatically. “You still haven’t told me exactly what the deal is with this whole circle thing, or what the ritual actually does, or any of it. And after last night—now that the power or whatever is in me—I think I deserve that much.”

  “You’re right,” Letizia said quietly, shoulders sagging. “You deserve all that, and more.”

  “So tell me.” Eva’s voice carried a challenge, but not an aggressive one. “Tell me what’s in this circle that’s so important. What’s worth dying for?”

  Letizia closed her eyes. When she spoke, she didn’t open them. “It’s not a what. It’s a whom.”

  “A whom?” Eva repeated. “What does that mean? The circle is alive?”

  “Not the stones themselves,” Letizia said, eyes still closed. “The witch inside the stones.”

  “There’s someone in there?” Eva asked, voice sharp with alarm. “A witch—a person witch?”

  “There was. A witch from another time and place. My time and place. Their spirit has been locked within that circle of power—they are the reason why the stones hold any power at all—and the thought of Wicked Gold getting his hands on them is—is impossible. Unbearable. I had to stop him!”

  “Why didn’t you say all this earlier?” Eva asked with a shake of her head. “Why not just tell everyone you’re trying to help a friend? You’re our friend, we would’ve helped you! And we would’ve done it with a lot less complaining, if we’d known it was that important.”

  “I…” Letizia stopped, voice nearly cracking. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I’ve kept this secret for one hundred and fifty years, and every year it gets harder. It’s one of my deepest and most precious things to guard. The stones, and the one sleeping inside them. If they were lost… I’d be lost.”

  She fell silent, both hands clutching at her coffee cup as if she was trying to soak up all its warmth into her undead bones. Eva didn’t push, and, slowly, Letizia’s hands relaxed, along with the rest of her.

  “I charged those stones myself,” the Witch said in a calmer tone. “I cast the spell at the beginning, and I’ve been keeping them active all this time. We go way back.”

  “So you put someone—someone’s spirit—in the stones?” Eva asked, in a tone firm enough to require an answer, but gentle enough not to shake Letizia out of her reverie. “And… if I got circle-blessed or whatever—they’re inside me now?”

  “No, not themself,” Letizia said with a shake of her head. “I would feel that, and I don’t. I have no idea what that would even look like.”

  “I’d rather not guess.”

  “Indeed. No, you just received the benefit of a witch’s power, and their unbreakable intent to heal and protect.” Letizia smiled, but it carried melancholy a century in the making. “I don’t know exactly what effect the magic will have on you, but I promise you won’t be alone to figure it out.”

  “Then help me figure everything else out,” Eva said. “Why was there a witch in the stones? Why any of this?”

  “It...” Letizia hesitated again, looking away. Her hands faltered and she paused, not putting the bone down, as if holding it was one of the only things keeping her centered. “I did it as a last resort. Wicked Gold... did something terrible, to someone I loved very much. They were—they are—one of his most powerful enemies, and he tried to destroy them. I was able to save them, by putting them into a kind of... magical sleep, inside those stones.”

  “Who exactly was—is your friend?” Eva asked. “What was their name?”

  Letizia was quiet for a few seconds, eyes faraway. When she spoke, so was her voice, soft and wistful. “Zadkiel.”

  “Pretty name,” Eva said. If she was surprised by the unconventionality, she didn’t show it.

  “They’d appreciate that. It was self-chosen, like everything else about them. Like their destiny. Except for the last part, when me sealing them inside a stone circle was the only way to save their life.” Her tone grew even quieter, face more thoughtful, and regretful. “Zadkiel always treasured independence, choice. The ability to walk their own path. Trapping them in those stones… it felt like taking all choice away from them. What right did I have?”

  “Sounds like you didn’t have much of one at all,” Eva observed. “A choice, I mean. You or them. I would’ve done the same thing.”

  “I know,” Letizia said, and now she smiled briefly. But it was indeed brief, and her face hardened again. “And the stones’ power began to fade, and Wicked Gold threatened it. It was all that kept Zadkiel alive! And if they never woke up, or if Wicked Gold captured them at last—that wouldn’t be their choice either. They would die without ever… I would never know if I did the right thing.”

  “That’s what your spell was really about,” Eva realized. “Keeping Zadkiel safe from Wicked Gold. Because that’s what he wants, not just some vague power, and not even you—though he was totally trying to kill two birds with one stone back there, taking you out too. He wanted Zadkiel, specifically.”

  “Yes!” Letizia said, giving the
table a little slap. “And I had to use the energy he gathered to break the spell on the stones instead, and wake my friend up. But it didn’t work. Why?!”

  Letizia let out a frustrated noise, then seemed to collect herself, smiling just a bit, in an ironic, bemused kind of way.

  “You asked me before, why did the stones come to life without an actual sacrifice, without blood being spilled? Because even though I cast the spell that protected the witch inside them, it was a collaborative effort. Zadkiel was—is—a remarkable person. They would never ask for blood—and I’ve been a fool all these years to believe otherwise. Wicked Gold could never imagine anyone suffering what Zadkiel did, and not becoming bloodthirsty and vengeful, but I should have known better. Of course they’d stayed kind.”

  Letizia was silent for a moment, and Eva held perfectly still, as if moving may spook the Witch like a deer, and bring all her defenses back in force.

  “Of course all the ritual would require is the intention to save someone else, the desire to give anything to see them safe, even one’s own life. It was my wish that powered the spell that saved their life.”

  She locked her eyes directly onto Eva’s and held her gaze.

  “No, the circle’s power will not harm you. It was made from selfless love. Magic itself is wild and neutral, but a witch’s will is not. The raw energy could be directed to do evil, but on its own… no, it would only heal.” She chewed her lip with all the care fangs demanded. “The past century and a half has been a poor way to repay a friend’s sacrifice.”

  “That makes sense to me,” Eva said quietly. “Zadkiel sounds like someone I’d like to know.”

  “And I’d love for them to know you,” Letizia said, face falling. “But it didn’t work, it wasn’t enough, they’re still asleep, if—they’re even still alive at all,” she stammered a bit, voice hitching. “The stones are silent, it’s like they’re just gone—again! Nothing is where it should be, because this shouldn’t have happened. It should have worked! Why? I did everything right! They should be here!”