Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (7 page)

Emmy kept the bracelet in her fist and slept with the wretched thing right against her heart all night.

he kids had all gone to their rooms. Amanda sat on their bed reading, acting completely innocent. David took his pillow off the bed and grabbed the afghan that was draped over her legs.

“David,” she said.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m giving you the whole bed. I’m taking the afghan.”

She followed him out into the living room.

“So you’re sleeping on the couch,” she said—an obvious fact that didn’t need stating aloud. “Listen…I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t remember the last time they fought and she apologized. “You’re sorry? What’s your angle?”

“My angle is apologetic.”

“You messed with my head. I asked you to never do that again.”

“Can you please trust me on this one?”

“That’s not how it works, Amanda. I don’t care if you had the best reason in the world. You don’t get to decide what I know and what I don’t.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Yes, obviously. That was the point, right?”

“Fine, be mad at me. I guess next time I’ll ask you to leave yourself a note.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You
asked
me to cast this spell. I thought it was a good idea, so I did. And if I tell you, then you’ll just ask me to cast the spell again. And then every day you’ll be mad at me when I come home from work. Like some fucked up
Groundhog Day
.”

David wanted to yell again, but her words sounded true. Getting that small bit of truth relieved his agitation, as if puzzle pieces in his brain had snapped together.

“Why would I want you to make me forget something? What could have happened yesterday that would be so traumatic?”

“It wasn’t like that. You wanted me to counter a spell that had been cast on you. I did the best I could. I’m sorry. I’m not a fantastic witch.”

That last line gave David pause. He couldn’t remember Amanda ever admitting to not being fantastic at anything. Granted, she had lived most of her life as a non-practicing witch, and had been raised by the same, so she didn’t have much training or experience. It probably annoyed her deeply to be a beginner at anything at forty-two. She sat on the couch, and pulled the afghan up to her neck.

“I don’t want to fight,” she said. “If you really want me to tell you what I distracted you from, I will.”

“I…” David’s mind had cleared, but he still felt as if he missed important things, like trying to catch smoke. For one, since when did she give in so easy?

“Tell me,” David said.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

David sat next to her. “What do you mean?”

“The good guys always win.
Always
. They talk about dark wizards being dangerous, but that’s ridiculous when you think about it. The good wizards win every time. They’re the dangerous ones.”

“I think you’re thinking about Disney movies.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close, even though he didn’t understand why he was comforting her. She leaned her full weight into him, as if she might fall asleep at any moment.

“Maybe. I just don’t like you involved in summer magic. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it.”

“Summer magic?”

She leaned over and grabbed the tablet off the end table. After a few swipes and taps, she handed the tablet to David, displaying a news story about Julie Prescott.

David sighed with relief, feeling his brain reorienting itself. He also felt the magic that had propelled him to investigate Julie coming back. Well, not coming back, exactly—it had never left. Now it vibrated in him more strongly than ever, as if the spell had been screaming over loud music, and someone had turned the music off.

However, the feeling of relief subsided, because he also remembered why he had wanted Amanda to make him forget.

David considered asking Amanda to cast the spell on him again, but aside from the grief she would give him, he knew she had been right. Her spell hadn’t worked. Amanda’s spell and the summer magic would battle it out in his head, which could not be good for him. The spells had fought for less than 24 hours, and he felt as if he had spent that 24 hours binge drinking, or running a marathon, or both.

So, that next morning, he felt sick and sore. But his mind had cleared, and he remembered asking her to cast the spell.

When he told her what he wanted her to do, she said, “Honey…” and patted his arm.

“Nowadays, you only call me ‘honey’ when you’re about to say something patronizing,” he had said.

“I think the magic part may be all in your head.”

“Yep, there it is.”

“I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there. It makes me worry.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“I know…I just want you to stay that way.” She’d avoided his eyes then, in a way that made her look young. Frightened.

“I’m not making this up, Amanda. Maybe at first I had thought you might be right. Maybe I was just bored. Maybe missing kids get me all worked up. But the magic has been getting stronger. I don’t even know if I’ll even be able to sleep.”

After David had spoken to Patrick and Xavier, the magic had gotten worse. Almost as soon as David showed Patrick the photo and saw him react, the white noise had moved out of the background. The humming vibrated through his brain. The magic screamed. So he dropped the matter and walked out of the room. He could hardly hear his own voice over what felt like a waterfall pummeling his brain. He also left because he didn’t want to know any more. And that’s why he had asked Amanda to stop the spell.

“It’s something Emmy said, too,” David said, carefully selecting which part of the truth he wanted to share. “About how any dark wizard would want to attack her on sight. I don’t like that…I don’t know what that might mean.”

Amanda crossed her arms over her chest then. “Oh, I think I see what this is about. Really, David?”

“What?”

“Just because he made one mistake one time doesn’t mean he’s capable of something like this.”

“What? Jude? That’s not what I’m saying. I mean, I suppose it’s possible but…”

“He’s not a psychopath. He made a mistake,” she said again.

“Why are you defending what he did?”

“I’m not defending what he did, I’m defending him. He’s my son. And if you’re going to accuse him of every crime you see on the news, then hell yes, I’m going to defend him. Because that’s not fair.”

David’s jaw tightened and he had to remind himself to breathe. He hated thinking about what Jude had done. And even more than that, he hated thinking about what
he
hadn’t done. He had done so little to protect Samantha from harm and help her recover from it. Instead, he never wanted to look at her or hear her name again. She reminded him of not only of the darkness inside of his son, but the darkness inside of himself.

“I never accused him,” David said. “That’s not what I was trying to say.”

“Because he’s a winter wizard and she’s a summer witch, he’s automatically a suspect? If that’s all you’re going on, you could just as easily accuse me, or any other winter wizard. It’s not exactly an airtight case.”

“Yeah…I know.”

“Don’t even think it. I
know
it wasn’t Jude.”

“What do you mean you
know
?”

“I know. It wasn’t him. He had nothing to do with it.”

“When you say you
know
, like that…do mean like ‘a mother knows’, or you actually
know
something that proves it wasn’t him?”

“What’s the difference?”

“I think you know what the difference is.”

“Don’t be paranoid. It wasn’t Jude. End of story.”

“I don’t think it was Jude,” David said. “But…I don’t want to even wonder. If the spell needs to use me…then I must have some connection to Julie. There must be a reason why it’s using me. And it’s a summer wizard’s magic, so I have to assume the spell wouldn’t be kind to me. Just make it stop.”

And so she did her best. She specialized in memory magic after all. But the memory of Julie didn’t slide out of David’s brain. It
fought
. It clawed. It screamed.

David rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes while he spoke into the phone. He had hired a private investigator several times in his life—on multiple occasions, in fact, to try and find Crystal and his kids, and more recently to find Samantha’s missing parents. He didn’t know why he kept hiring Mundane PIs, because they failed every time. Mundanes just couldn’t find missing wizards. He had accepted that, so he wouldn’t try to have this man find Julie. Instead, he had asked for a full background check on the Prescott family. He wanted to know about any possible threats or anything unusual. Fortunately, since David had hired this particular PI before, and he had failed to find his children despite guarantees to the contrary, David had been able to negotiate a drastically reduced rate for this search.

When he called to give David the results, the PI started the call with a suspicious tone. “Why are you investigating the Prescotts?”

“That’s not really your business, is it?”

“Normally, I wouldn’t say anything. But I don’t want to get involved in anything nasty. I’m sure you know, their daughter recently went missing? It’s all over the news.”