Bitter Demons (12 page)

Caroline was put in a room three doors down from my own, all the way at the far end of the hall. Her mother and sister sat with her for the rest of the afternoon, but Caroline still hadn’t opened her eyes. Mrs. King had at least gotten her to a state where she could breathe without pain, but now it was just a waiting game.

I took my time getting ready for the questioning session downstairs. I knew Priestess Winter wanted to go through every detail of what happened, but I wasn’t even completely sure what had happened to me in that circle. Something inside felt strange and new. I felt unusually awake and strong. My arm still ached from the pain of the circle, but the injury was only skin-deep. I was far more interested in what I felt stirring underneath the surface.

Zara knocked on the door, then came in without waiting for me to answer. “Mom’s ready for us downstairs,” she said.

“Is she angry, do you think?” I asked. “I mean, at me?”

Zara gave me a small smile. “No,” she said. “She just wants to get to the bottom of this and figure out who hurt Caroline.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

We made our way downstairs to the sitting room. Everything about this room felt stuffy and dusty. Even the couch was as uncomfortable to sit on as it looked. The priestess sat in a mahogany high-backed chair with a red cushion across from me.

“Tell me what happened,” she said simply.

I cleared my throat. I desperately wanted a tall glass of cool water at that moment. I started by telling her about how Zara and I decided to go outside to practice magic instead of sitting in my room being bored.

I told her about Zara shifting into the butterfly and leading us toward the clearing. The priestess leaned forward in her seat when I got to the part about finding Caroline’s body in the circle of black roses. I had a feeling she’d already heard the first part of the story from her daughter, and now was waiting to hear what I had to say about what happened once Zara left to get help.

“I know Zara told me not to do anything, but I couldn’t just sit there and watch Caroline die,” I said, already feeling defensive. I was sure they would find some way to punish me for disobeying Zara’s instructions. Even if it ultimately did save Caroline’s life.

“And you are both quite sure they were black roses?” she asked.

I nodded and she pulled out a leather-bound book. She opened it to a page near the middle and held it out for me to see. “Like this?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at a drawing of a circle of roses exactly like the ones we’d seen that afternoon.

Priestess Winter swallowed and closed the book, her eyes wide. “What exactly did you do when Zara left?”

I told her how I’d tried the limb first, but that the wood couldn’t survive the magical barrier around Caroline. “That’s when I noticed the stone,” I said.

The priestess nodded. “Yes, the soul stone.”

“Is that what it’s called?” I looked to Zara and she nodded. “I had never seen anything like it before, but I could tell the stone was hurting her. I figured the flowers were just there to keep people out, but the stone was the real source of pain for Caroline.”

“You were right to think that,” Priestess Winter said. “Soul stones haven’t been used by the Order of Shadows for a very long time. It’s an ancient dark magic, used to trap the soul of one witch’s power and feed it to another.”

“After the stick burned, I decided to just reach my hand inside the circle and grab the stone,” I said. “I’d already touched the barrier once and it hurt, but it didn’t seem like it was going to kill me. But as soon as my hand clasped the stone, I felt the circle begin to pull me in. I thought I was going to die for sure.” I rubbed my hands along my pants legs. They were sweating like crazy from nerves. “That’s when Jackson ran up and pulled me out.”

I was careful to omit the part about my necklace and the fact that his brother had shown up as well. I concentrated on keeping my expression steady.

“Then what?”

“Then the roses shattered as if they were made of glass,” I said. “That’s when Caroline’s mother showed up.”

The priestess settled back in her chair and stared out the front window, thinking. I sat quietly, glad I was finished with the story, and hoping I said everything right.

“Black roses like the ones you saw today do not grow naturally on this earth,” she said, not looking at me. “They grow in the land of the shadows, in the place where these demons come from. They are very powerful, but also very dangerous. In the early days of the Order, the roses were used to confine traitors in a circle, like a prison of sorts. The roses were used for years, decades even.”

The sound of her voice was like a waterfall rushing over me. Calm and cool. She turned to look at me then, a strange expression in her light blue eyes.

“It was always believed that no one could break the spell of the black roses except the witch who conjured them,” she said.

My heart stopped beating in my chest for a split second. Was she accusing me of conjuring those roses? I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she held up a hand to silence me.

“I have no idea how you were able to break that spell, and even after listening to your story, it is still a bit of a mystery to me,” she said. “But I can tell from your face that it is just as much a mystery to you.”

I slumped backward and let out a huge sigh. “It all seemed to happen so fast,” I said. “The pain was unbearable.”

“A normal witch wouldn’t have survived it.”

“I wouldn’t have either if it hadn’t been for Jackson.”

I still didn’t know Jackson’s full story, but no matter what he’d done in the past, I wanted to make sure the Order understood the kind of person he was now.

The priestess sighed. “Jackson,” she said, “is a very complicated individual. And your interest in him only complicates things further. Your Mrs. Ashworth has expressed her concerns to me about your relationship with him.”

She certainly wasn’t
my
Mrs. Ashworth, but I couldn’t say I was terribly surprised that she’d gone to the priestess.

“She just wants me to date her son.” I blurted it out without really thinking it through, but it was the truth.

The priestess nodded. “As the second most powerful family in Peachville, the Ashworth’s merely want to make sure you choose a partner who is worthy of your talents,” she said. “Besides, your children would benefit from having a father from the Ashworth line.”

I had to force myself not to gag. Was she seriously talking to me about children? With Drake Ashworth? I didn’t even know if I wanted to have children someday, and here she was planning my wedding. Being a future was fun when it came to casting spells, but I could really do without the whole expectations aspect of it. Just knowing that I was expected to marry and provide an heir gave me the heeby-jeebies.

“Jackson, on the other hand, can never be your partner,” she said. “You have to have realized this for yourself. Demons are a great source of power for us, Harper, but they are not our equals. Jackson’s purpose for being in this world is complicated and stands at cross-purposes to your destiny as Prima. Any relationship between the two of you is only temporary at best.”

I swallowed and looked down at my hands. Yes, I’d already realized that for myself, but there was a part of me that still held some hope that we could beat the system. Of course, the priestess didn’t know that I had no intention of ever becoming Prima of this town. Not if I could help it, anyway.

“I agree with Mrs. Ashworth that your attachment to the demon is unhealthy,” she said.

I snapped my head up. What was she saying?

“I think it would be best if you stopped spending so much time with him,” she said.

I stood, my heart overruling my brain. Every muscle in my body was tense with anger. I wouldn’t let them keep us apart. “We go to the same school,” I said. “And we live on the same property. You can’t expect us to have zero contact.”

“Of course,” she said. “But the Order would like to see you make a real effort to spend your time with other trainees.”

I clenched my jaw tight. She wasn’t exactly saying I couldn’t talk to Jackson anymore, but it felt like a threat.

“And what happens if I don’t agree?” I asked. “What if I hang out with him anyway?”

She sighed heavily. “It’s possible the local council might vote to send Jackson away,” she said. “To another town, perhaps. Or the Order might decide to finish your training in seclusion.”

I let out a slight whimper. “Seclusion? As in all by myself, all the time?”

Priestess Winter nodded. “Except for your trainer, of course, who would be appointed by the Order.”

I pictured the torture room on the third floor and shuddered. Could they lock me up there for the next two years?

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to trade your time with your friends on the cheerleading squad for that,” she said. “Even Jackson had to agree with that.”

Tears stung the corner of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “You talked to Jackson about this?”

“He understands what’s best for you, Harper,” Zara said. She put her hand on mine, but I pulled away as if she had bitten me. I didn’t want her comforting words. She didn’t know the first thing about my life or what was best for me.

Of course, they weren’t really concerned about what was best for me. All they wanted was what was best for the Order of Shadows. That’s all anyone in the Order cared about. I couldn’t let myself become one of them. I wouldn’t.

“Harper, you are an extraordinary girl,” she said. “You did something today that no witch has ever done, and you lived to tell about it. You may not realize just how amazing that is right now, but trust me when I say that it is quite impressive.”

I stood near the window and looked out at the front yard. The sun was already gone and the porch was cloaked in darkness. Would they really send Jackson away? Or put me in seclusion? If I was really so special, why were they treating me like my feelings didn’t matter at all?

“You may join the rest of your house in the kitchen,” Priestess Winter said. “Ella Mae and the others are waiting for you to start dinner.”

Resigned, I nodded to her, then left the room.

Caroline’s room was cold.

Her mother and sister had already gone to bed in the next room.

When I’d heard the door close behind them, I slipped out of my room and into Caroline’s. I summoned a dim amber light and pulled a chair close to Caroline’s side.

She looked so peaceful. As if she were only sleeping for a little while and would wake up refreshed and happy in the morning. But there were no guarantees that she would ever wake up.

I thought about the black stone I’d pulled off her chest. The priestess had said it was a form of dark magic that pulled a witch’s power from her body and placed it into the stone for another witch to use. If her power was trapped in the stone, couldn’t they just give it back to her and reverse the spell? Or would Caroline’s power be lost to her forever?

I sighed and laid my head in my hands. It wasn’t fair. I should have been the one lying helpless in that bed. Whoever took Caroline’s power was really after my power. I was sure of it.

I spent the rest of the night thinking about who would possibly have access to dark magic and ancient rituals. It would have to be someone with a connection to the Order, right? Someone who had access to all of the spell books. It would have to be someone powerful, too. Someone capable of conjuring something so difficult.

And they had to be close by. When Zara and I came upon Caroline’s body, there was no one around that we could see, but what if someone had been hiding in the woods? They’d gone to so much trouble to kidnap her in the first place, they wouldn’t have just left her there. Besides, if it was her power they wanted, they wouldn’t have left the stone just sitting there unattended.

I twirled the black crow feather between my fingers.

Priestess Winter said her trackers didn’t find anything in the woods, but something like a crow feather wouldn’t be so hard to overlook. They were looking for a human. A witch. They weren’t looking for a witch whose demon could manifest as a crow.

Something tugged at the corner of my mind. Something important. I thought of Zara floating through the air as a butterfly. A shape-shifter. Then, I thought about the clear blue eyes of the crow and how they looked so incredibly human.

Then it hit me. The crow didn’t belong to a witch.

The crow
was
the witch.

I was in knots all day Sunday. I wanted to talk to Jackson about the crow, but I wasn’t sure how to get his attention without someone seeing us together. Plus, the priestess had said he agreed not to spend so much time with me. I wasn’t exactly sure where we stood lately.

Sometimes, I felt that Jackson truly cared for me. But other times, I wondered if he only cared about keeping his brother alive. For a while, it seemed like our relationship was really going somewhere, but he hadn’t kissed me since that night at the hospital when I found out he was a demon. Maybe he didn’t care about me as much as I thought he did.

I knew I couldn’t just lay on my bed all day thinking about Jackson. I needed to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t go insane. I decided to clean my room, and when I started cleaning out the space under my bed, I found the silver box. The one Zara said was sitting outside my door yesterday morning. I’d completely forgotten about it.

I sighed and pulled the white ribbon from the slender box. Drake Ashworth had another thing coming if he thought I was going out with him again. Why did he insist on sending me presents?

I removed the lid from the box and froze. I dropped the box onto the floor and backed away.

Inside the box, nestled in black tissue paper, were a dozen black roses.

School on Monday was a nuisance. All I wanted to do was figure out who this crow witch was, but instead, I was forced to endure things like poetry and calculus. The only good thing about being back in school was that I could at least see Jackson and ask him why he agreed that we shouldn’t see each other. The Order couldn’t possibly be watching us at all times, and I figured school was a safe place to try to talk to him. Besides, he needed to know about the black roses.

I missed riding to school with him. The Shadowford van was more than quiet this morning. Courtney was reading a book, and Mary Anne was even more sullen than usual. I was happy to finally get to school and find Lark and Allison waiting for me by the statue. Unfortunately, Brooke was there too. I hadn’t talked to her at all since the party Friday night, and frankly I didn’t really have anything to say to her. As far as I was concerned, she was just another member of the Order now.

“You’ve got to tell us all about it,” Allison said, grabbing my arm. “Did you really find Caroline all by yourself?”

“My mom said you single-handedly broke a spell that no one in the Order knew could be broken,” Lark said.

“It wasn’t that big a deal,” I said with a shrug.

“See?” Brooke said. “I told you it wasn’t that exciting.”

She turned and started walking toward the building. I stuck my tongue out at her and Lark laughed. I was tired of Brooke’s attitude. She was obviously jealous of the attention I was getting for being the future. Well, if she wanted my power, she could have it.

The thought stopped me dead in my tracks.

Brooke wasn’t on my list of possible suspects, but I suddenly realized she had a clear motive. I didn’t know how she might have access to dark magic or the ability to shape-shift, but she definitely had a reason for wanting to steal my power.

Then, I realized that the first time I ever saw the crow was after I heard Brooke talking about me behind my back. She couldn’t be the crow unless there were two of them, and I highly doubted that. I’d only ever seen one, and it couldn’t have been Brooke.

I guess I was relieved to find that it wasn’t yet another one of my supposedly best friends trying to kill me. On the other hand, I was no closer to solving this mystery.

“See you guys at practice this afternoon?” Allison said.

Brooke gave a half-hearted wave and disappeared into her homeroom class. The rest of us parted ways and headed to our own classes.

I had to stop by my locker real quick to drop off some of the heavy books I’d brought home and hadn’t opened. When I opened the door to my locker, a small white piece of paper fluttered onto the floor. My stomach did a little back-flip as I leaned over to pick it up.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching me, then opened the note.

Lunch. Meet me where we first talked.

A secret note from Jackson! I had to stop myself from jumping up and down and squealing with joy. Was it possible he wanted to see me as badly as I wanted to see him?

The rest of the morning passed by so slowly. It seemed like every teacher wanted to drone on and on about the most boring topic all year just to make time move slower. When the bell rang for lunch, I bolted from my desk and headed to the spot behind the cafeteria where Jackson sometimes liked to hang out.

Lark raised her hand in a wave as I walked out the double doors. I just waved back and kept moving. The wind blew my hair all around, and I pulled my jacket tighter to my body. I stood in the courtyard for a moment just to be sure I wasn’t followed, then slipped behind the building.

Jackson was already there waiting for me, leaning against the brick wall just like the first time we ever talked. That day seemed like years ago now, when Tori was still alive and everything was so different. I wanted to run into his arms, but restrained myself and tried to pretend like I wasn’t completely overjoyed to see him.

“You got my note,” he said.

“Sneaky,” I said, unable to hide my smile. “They told me you agreed we shouldn’t see each other anymore. They said they’d send you away.”

Jackson laughed and shook his head. “They said that? Don’t listen to them, Harper. They can’t keep us apart.”

My heart skipped a beat. I stepped closer to him. “I don’t want us to be apart either.”

Jackson’s green eyes searched mine. He leaned forward and placed his palm against my cheek. My mouth felt dry. My breaths were shallow and quick as he brought his lips to mine. I flattened my hand against his chest and felt his heart beating just as fast as mine. We melted into each other, our bodies pressed close together.

The kiss deepened, and I felt his tongue slide across my bottom lip. His hands moved down my sides and hooked into my belt loops, pulling me closer. The warmth of his lips, his body, his hands brushing slightly against the bare skin above the waist-line of my jeans, had the world spinning. No one’s kiss had ever made me feel so unhinged.

I pulled away, out of breath and heart racing so fast I was sure he could hear it pounding against my ribcage. I lifted my fingertips to my lips and smiled, warmth rushing up my neck to my cheeks. I ducked my chin, embarrassed. God, a guy like Jackson had probably kissed a hundred different girls. Me? I’d been kissed before, sure, but never like that.

Was it possible he really did care about me?

“When can I see you again?” My voice came out like a whisper, like I still didn’t have complete control of my senses.

“They might be watching you a little closer for a while,” he said. “We should probably stick to meeting here or in the barn for now. Just so they stay off our back.”

“They threatened to put me in seclusion,” I said. “For training.”

Jackson’s jaw clenched. “I know,” he said. “They told me the same thing, but I don’t think they really want to pull you out of school. It’s important for the people in town to see you and get to know you as a leader. I think putting you in seclusion is a last resort at this point.”

“That would seriously suck,” I said.

“What would suck is if whoever hurt Caroline comes after you next,” he said. “We have to find out who conjured those roses.”

I explained to him that I thought the crow was a witch who could shape-shift and he agreed that it was definitely possible.

“I also need to show you something,” I said. “But you have to promise me you won’t go crazy.”

“Let me see it,” he said.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and brought up a picture of the box of black roses.

Jackson grabbed the phone from my hand and studied the picture, frowning. “Someone sent you black roses?”

I nodded. “Before I even found Caroline,” I said. “They were delivered Saturday morning and I figured it was another present from Drake so I just tossed the box under my bed. Then, Sunday when I was cleaning my room, I remembered the box.”

“Those roses aren’t from Drake,” he said, pacing. His shoulders tensed and he gripped my phone so hard I was afraid he was going to crush it.

“I know,” I said. “But they aren’t the same as the roses I saw near Caroline, either. They’re just regular black roses, like from a florist.”

“Someone was trying to threaten you,” he said. “Where did they come from? Which florist? Maybe they have a record of who sent them.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There wasn’t a name on the box or anything. But how many florists can there be in a town this small?”

“Good point,” he said. “I’ll go this afternoon and check it out, see if I can dig up any information on who sent the flowers. Can you meet me in the barn tonight at midnight? Or do they have someone watching you still?”

“I think I can make it,” I said. “Zara’s still technically watching out for me, but she doesn’t stay in the room or anything. She sleeps down the hall. I can sneak out the window.”

“The window?” he asked. “And then what? Jump two stories?”

I smiled and flipped my hair. “I learned some new tricks.”

Jackson laughed and his smile lit up his whole face. He leaned forward and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Be careful Harper,” he said. “See you tonight.”

The bell rang and he disappeared around the side of the building. I waited a full minute and a half, then headed back to class.