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Summary: Showdown time ... or maybe not.
PART VI: Immunity
HUNTER'S P.O.V
"I want to go shopping tomorrow."
"Oh, me, too. We should make it a group thing."
"Yes, I could really use a new pair of shoes."
"I saw these really nice ones at Nordstrom's back in Widow's Vale. I'll show them to you when we get back."
"Thanks."
"I got these at a Nordstrom's branch in London a few days ago, but I –"
"Do we really have to talk about this right now? We're on our way to strip a witch of her powers."
"Haven't you learned by now, Giomanach? This is how women adapt to stressful situations. They get things off their mind by talking about shoes and shopping and such."
"Yes, but I don't see why that particular conversation has to be held now."
"Because talking about stripping people of their powers is depressing?"
"That may be true, but that doesn't excuse the shopping conversation. Let's talk about something else."
"... Squirrels don't always remember where they have buried all of their nuts."
It had definitely been a strange night. The above conversation went as follows: Aunt Shelagh, Morgan, Sky, Morgan, Sky, Aunt Shelagh, me, Uncle Beck, me, Morgan, me, and ... Sky's thing with the squirrels. Even though I've known her since I was born, sometimes I still don't get her.
"Oh, look, we're here." The five of us stopped walking in front of Maggie's house.
"Goddess," I muttered under my breath.
Maggie's house was a certainly spectacle to behold; a large fire truck was parked outside and a few firemen were talking to Maggie, who was standing on the walk outside her house and looked remarkably calm for what had just happened about ten minutes earlier. As the five of us hid from view in the next yard over, where the neighbors that had just been observing the fiasco at the Fishers' had turned their lights off again, I noticed that the fire in the hedges was gone, but now they were now blackened and dead.
"Poetic justice?" Aunt Shelagh asked rhetorically.
"Count on it," came a voice from somewhere behind us. The five of us whirled around, caught off-guard, to see a large, middle-aged woman with short brown hair coming up behind us, carrying an athame with an intricate Celtic pattern of knots on its hilt. Shelagh and Beck both relaxed.
"Oh, Breanna, thank you so much for getting here," Beck said, clearly relieved to see the woman, who smiled.
"Oh, are you joking?" she asked, looking curiously over and into the next yard, where Maggie had disappeared back inside her house and the firemen were preparing to vacate. "I always thought it was Maggie, but I didn't wish to say anything in her presence. She's always been adept with working at plants, be it raising them or killing them. Brightendale, you know." Her gaze flicked over to the three of us, who were watching her with open distrust.
"Oh!" Aunt Shelagh said quickly, taking the hint. "Breanna, this is our daughter, Sky, our nephew, Hunter, and their friend, Morgan. They're going to help us with the spell. Kids, this is Breanna Lewis. She's another blood witch in our coven. We wanted her to help with the spell to ensure its power and ..." She paused. "Well, if Maggie tries anything, it'll be nice to have another person here."
I smiled at Breanna, starting to warm up to her friendly exterior a little bit more. "Yes, well, the more the merrier."
She nodded at all of us. "Yes, well, it's very nice to meet you all." She looked a little closer at Sky. "Hmm ... I can see the family resemblance. She has your face, Shelagh." Sky gave her mother a tiny smile, who returned it slightly.
"Is it time?" Morgan asked, her voice shaking somewhat as she looked over into Maggie's yard over her shoulder again. "The firemen are gone, and I don't think she knows that we're here."
Beck looked at me. "So, Giomanach, what's the standard protocol for an impromptu stripping?" He paused. "That did not come out the way that I had meant it to."
I glared at him, and then looked at the others. "Well, generally, we speak with the ... um ... stripee, or the one whose powers will be taken away, and explain the situation and the fact that they will be condemned to live a life without magick by order of the International Council of Witches. If they cooperate, which most do out of shock, then we proceed. If they refuse and attempt to escape, we put binding spells and the like on them to subdue them, and then ..." I hated how primitive this sounded. "... proceed anyway."
I saw Aunt Shelagh's eyes glower slightly. This was one of our disagreement points.
"Well ..." Breanna clapped her hands lightly with an apprehensive look on her face. "Shall we proceed, then?"
"I think that we should speak with her first," Shelagh said quickly. "Perhaps give her the opportunity to resolve this peacefully."
"She kind of destroyed that chance when she pried our heads open and screamed at us," Sky said firmly. I saw Morgan nod fervently in agreement.
"Fortunately, it's not up to you," I told her. "Come on."
With the five of them behind me, I strode up the front walk of Maggie's house and was about to pound on her door when Breanna stopped me.
"Wait," she said quickly. "Let me do this."
With a little sigh of preparation, she readied herself and knocked lightly on the bright red door.
"Conceal yourselves," she hissed with a whisper to the rest of us. With a silent nod that told her we already had, we stepped off the porch and flattened ourselves against the outside wall of the living room. I felt, regrettably, like a secret agent in one of those action movies that Morgan loves so much.
After a moment, I heard the front door open cautiously and Maggie's voice.
"Oh, Breanna, hello. What are you doing here so late?"
"Well, I heard the firemen come past my house, and then I just thought that I had better check to ensure that you were all right. Where's Rupert?"
"He's had to go away to Berlin for a few days. Left this evening."
"Oh, that's unfortunate. So you're all alone here, are you?"
"Unfortunately so."
I sensed that as my cue.
"Well, that's good," I said promptly, stepping out of the shadows and into Maggie's line of vision. "Wouldn't want anything to get in the way tonight."
Maggie's eyes widened proportionally and her face turned a very sallow color with shock. She glared back and forth between Breanna and I.
"You ..."
"Maggie Eleanor Fisher, the International Council of Witches has declared that you are unfit to possess magickal powers or abilities past this night. There are two ways that this may be –"
That was all it took for the door to slam.
"Okay, then. Never mind."
"Come on," Aunt Shelagh said quickly as she, Morgan, Uncle Beck, and Sky hurried over to us. "If I know Maggie, she'll be putting up blocking and protection spells as we speak. We have to move quickly."
"Well, then, let's hurry," I said quietly, and, as per our beforehand plan, the six of us surrounded her house in a sort of siege, each holding an athame. I looked over at Morgan, who was to my right near the back door whereas I was in front of the dining room, and tried to smile encouragingly. I hated this part of my job the most.
As the six of us each began our personal power chants, raising energy within ourselves, I became acutely aware of a strong sense of fear emanating from within the house. Screaming. Agony. Distress. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was Maggie. She was terrified, and I was feeling it. Her cries echoed in my ears louder and louder as I resolutely kept chanting my power call, determined not to let her psychic powers interfere with the job that I was trying to do.
She sounded nearly demonic with terror.
"It won't do you any good!"
I snapped my eyes open and could sense the others doing the same as a head with long gray hair stuck itself out of the window.
"It won't do you any good to strip me of my powers, Seeker," Maggie screamed, her eyes wide and face purple. "It won't do you any good! Do you honestly believe that it's going to stop Cràdh?"
"Cràdh isn't our purpose," I said quietly, and then messaged the others. "Keep going."
Purposefully blocking Maggie's furious wails out of my head, I was about to –
"He's not here!"
My head snapped up once again, as did Morgan's, whose eyes immediately widened.
"What?"
"He's not here! I told you! Cràdh is gone! He's somehow broken through the binding spells ..." Maggie stared around at me, her face growing ever redder. "And it doesn't require much reasoning to discern where he went."
I felt Aunt Shelagh's voice tugging at my mind. "Hunter!"
And now Uncle Beck's. "Hunter!"
"Hunter," Morgan whispered, breaking from her space in the circle to hurry to my side, clutching her athame so tightly that her knuckles were white, but not nearly as pale as her face.
"He's gone to the house."
MORGAN'S P.O.V
Within seconds, we had abandoned Maggie's house, leaving the distraught witch still screaming her head off inside and sprinting like crazy away from Kingston Drive as if we were being chased by a horde of monsters. I could hardly breathe. Oh, Goddess ... Cràdh ... going to Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's ... where our friends were still sleeping. Our non-witch, and therefore mostly defenseless, friends.
Crap.
My muscles felt so tight that they would snap in half as easily as toothpicks. My lungs were craving the oxygen that I could not provide them with fast enough. The last time that I had run this fast was ... well ... never. Never even during sprints in PE. Robbie. Bree. Raven. And then Cràdh. Going to kill them. When he found a mostly abandoned house with just three helpless teenagers in it, what would he do?
Maybe he would let them live.
Sure, Morgan. Maybe if you tell yourself that, you won't collapse on the spot from anxiety.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Oh, Goddess, protect them, please. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
When we reached Shelagh and Beck's street again, my panic eased slightly. Maybe they're fine, I thought. Maybe he didn't really go to their cottage. Maybe we're really in time to help them. Maybe everything is okay, and we're going to storm in there, all ready for action, and realize that Maggie was lying to us and that our friends are all fast asleep in bed without any clue as to what just happened.
Maybe they're fine, I thought. At least, I thought that until I saw the smoke.
Thick clouds of black smoke, thicker and denser than I had ever seen them, were billowing from Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's cabin, which was aglow with flame. Flame. Gold, red, yellow, and bright orange fire was clinging to the walls, the roof, the dead plants around the porch, everything.
There was so much smoke.
"Goddess." Hunter's mouth was wide open with stunned shock, staring at the house where he had grown up as it burned.
I couldn't speak. Oh, Goddess. Robbie .. Bree ... Raven ...
"Where are they?" I demanded, seizing Hunter's arm and shaking it violently. "Are they in there? Are they okay? Have they gotten out?"
"I-I-I can't tell," he stammered, his voice shaking intensely. "Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck have put too many protection spells on it, my magick can't break through ..."
But the fire could.
"Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?" I yelled, tears springing to my eyes, not just from the smoke but from sheer panic. I punched Hunter's arm in panic, my breath coming in short, high-pitched gasps. "Where are they? They have to be okay, they HAVE TO be okay ..." My heart was in my throat. I couldn't see. There was only the fire. And my friends. "Help them! Someone help them!"
I could hear Sky shrieking somewhere to my left. She was fighting her father tooth and nail, who was trying to subdue her, and her eyes were wide and crazed as she stared in horror at the house, trying to break free and rush inside.
"Athar, no!"
"Raven!" she screamed, tears pouring down her cheeks in droves as she tried to wrench herself free of her father's grip, who was using all of his strength to try to restrain her. "Raven!"
Aunt Shelagh was crying softly as she crumpled to the ground and stared up at her beautiful cottage, which the flames were steadily destroying. "Oh, Goddess ... Goddess ... please help ..."
"No ..." I whimpered, clinging to Hunter's arm as if it was my last link to civilization. "No ... no ... no ..."
"Geez. To the common observer, it would appear that you've all gone crazy."
SO not funny.
"Bree!" I all but screamed as I grabbed her and hugged her as tightly as humanly possible. "Ohmigod! If you EVER do that to me again, I swear –"
"Hey, we didn't do anything. You guys are the ones that jumped to conclusions."
Disgusted with her nonchalant grasp of the situation, I released her and instead grabbed Robbie in another bear hug.
"Well, it's nice to know that you care so much about us ... Morgan? Morgan, I can't-I can't breathe ..."
"Sorry. Oh, thank the Goddess you're safe ..."
Robbie just shrugged. "Well, thank Raven's insomnia. We'd probably still be in there if she hadn't seen the fire first."
I shook off shivers at that thought while Raven tried to look modest.
"I went downstairs to see if you guys had come back yet, and the living room was burning down." She looked apologetic. "I didn't see who set it, though, clearly being more worried on escaping alive than –" She broke off abruptly as Sky, with a sort of strangled cry, raced up to us with almost inhuman speed and tackled Raven in such a tight embrace that she nearly knocked both of them to the ground.
Hunter appeared behind us, a grim expression marring his features as he frowned.
"I think that you guys should see this."
Shifting my gaze over Hunter and towards the front of the house, I saw something that made me gasp with shock: Cràdh Fisher, bound, gagged, and on his knees on the front walk. Shelagh and Beck were both standing over him with their hands stretched towards his crumpled form, and I realized with a start that they had him under a binding spell.
"He was around the back," Shelagh said grimly as Hunter, the others, and I approached slowly, Raven, Robbie, and Bree still in their pajamas. "Laughing."
"Damn ... you ... all ..." I heard Cràdh wheeze under his breath at us in the same cold, emotionless voice that I had heard at Maggie's. "Damn ... you all ... to –"
"Oh, shut up," Beck said in disgust and, without further ado, punched Cràdh in the head, effectively knocking him unconscious. At our shocked glances, he just shrugged. "He was irritating me."
"I'm all for renting a room at the inn," Shelagh said, sounding utterly exhausted as the distant horns and alarms of the approaching fire truck grew audible. "Seeing as our house isn't quite fit for such a thing as sleep."
"Here, here," Sky said in the same tired tone.
"Um, excuse me?" Hunter asked in surprise. "Now that we know that everyone is okay, shouldn't we get back to Maggie's and continue with what we were doing?"
Aunt Shelagh gave a funny sort of laugh. I think she was entertained by that. "Oh, please, Giomanach, you don't really expect her to still be there, do you? No, she'll have been gone the moment that we left her property." Seeing Hunter's horrified look, she held up a hand. "Don't worry. I placed a watch sigil on her car. Council members will be catching up with her by dawn, I expect."
"So her car wasn't really broken?"
"It seemed quite fine when I drained the tank of half of its petrol."
"Never mind."
I watched this exchange with slight amusement, but then sighed and rubbed my eyes furiously as the fatigue that the others felt caught up with me. At the moment, I wanted nothing more than to collapse down on a bed and sleep for a month.
I must have unknowingly voiced that thought aloud, because Hunter smiled slightly at me.
"I guess we could," he said thoughtfully. "Now that this thing with Cràdh is finished."
The next few hours passed in a sort of blur. Instead of boring myself to tears with recounting the events over and over again, here is the shortened version: the police got to Shelagh and Beck's within fifteen minutes and arrested the still unconscious Cràdh, Maggie was found and arrested by council officials at a gas station in a small town a few miles north of London, trying to convince the middle-aged and for some reason still single owner of the station that she would use a love spell to get him the most sexually attractive girl in Wales if he would just give her free gasoline, and Hunter, Sky, Raven, Robbie, Bree, Shelagh, Beck, and I crashed at the Greenshackle Tavern, a cozy restaurant and inn outside of town, for the night, all completely and thoroughly exhausted.
He and Shelagh seemed to have taken the news that all of their furniture and their possessions had burned down rather calmly. Hunter guaranteed me later that they were insured for everything, but as to my inquiries about personal family heirlooms and the like, he just gave a mysterious smile and assured me that they were quite well protected.
I think that asked more questions than it answered, but I wasn't about to press the issue.
"So what do we do now?" I asked Hunter while sipping a cup of warm lemon tea that the tavern's caretaker, whom Shelagh and Beck knew personally and was thus being excessively friendly to us, had managed to procure for me.
He paused for a moment. "I think ... we just keep going."
I mulled that over in consideration. The idea had some merit.
A/N: Don't forget to tell us if you want the story to continue past England, okay? We have some ideas, but feedback is important!!!!! REVIEW!!!! (and we'll buy you lots of chocolate and presents and stuff ... hehe)
Summary: Showdown time ... or maybe not.
PART VI: Immunity
HUNTER'S P.O.V
"I want to go shopping tomorrow."
"Oh, me, too. We should make it a group thing."
"Yes, I could really use a new pair of shoes."
"I saw these really nice ones at Nordstrom's back in Widow's Vale. I'll show them to you when we get back."
"Thanks."
"I got these at a Nordstrom's branch in London a few days ago, but I –"
"Do we really have to talk about this right now? We're on our way to strip a witch of her powers."
"Haven't you learned by now, Giomanach? This is how women adapt to stressful situations. They get things off their mind by talking about shoes and shopping and such."
"Yes, but I don't see why that particular conversation has to be held now."
"Because talking about stripping people of their powers is depressing?"
"That may be true, but that doesn't excuse the shopping conversation. Let's talk about something else."
"... Squirrels don't always remember where they have buried all of their nuts."
It had definitely been a strange night. The above conversation went as follows: Aunt Shelagh, Morgan, Sky, Morgan, Sky, Aunt Shelagh, me, Uncle Beck, me, Morgan, me, and ... Sky's thing with the squirrels. Even though I've known her since I was born, sometimes I still don't get her.
"Oh, look, we're here." The five of us stopped walking in front of Maggie's house.
"Goddess," I muttered under my breath.
Maggie's house was a certainly spectacle to behold; a large fire truck was parked outside and a few firemen were talking to Maggie, who was standing on the walk outside her house and looked remarkably calm for what had just happened about ten minutes earlier. As the five of us hid from view in the next yard over, where the neighbors that had just been observing the fiasco at the Fishers' had turned their lights off again, I noticed that the fire in the hedges was gone, but now they were now blackened and dead.
"Poetic justice?" Aunt Shelagh asked rhetorically.
"Count on it," came a voice from somewhere behind us. The five of us whirled around, caught off-guard, to see a large, middle-aged woman with short brown hair coming up behind us, carrying an athame with an intricate Celtic pattern of knots on its hilt. Shelagh and Beck both relaxed.
"Oh, Breanna, thank you so much for getting here," Beck said, clearly relieved to see the woman, who smiled.
"Oh, are you joking?" she asked, looking curiously over and into the next yard, where Maggie had disappeared back inside her house and the firemen were preparing to vacate. "I always thought it was Maggie, but I didn't wish to say anything in her presence. She's always been adept with working at plants, be it raising them or killing them. Brightendale, you know." Her gaze flicked over to the three of us, who were watching her with open distrust.
"Oh!" Aunt Shelagh said quickly, taking the hint. "Breanna, this is our daughter, Sky, our nephew, Hunter, and their friend, Morgan. They're going to help us with the spell. Kids, this is Breanna Lewis. She's another blood witch in our coven. We wanted her to help with the spell to ensure its power and ..." She paused. "Well, if Maggie tries anything, it'll be nice to have another person here."
I smiled at Breanna, starting to warm up to her friendly exterior a little bit more. "Yes, well, the more the merrier."
She nodded at all of us. "Yes, well, it's very nice to meet you all." She looked a little closer at Sky. "Hmm ... I can see the family resemblance. She has your face, Shelagh." Sky gave her mother a tiny smile, who returned it slightly.
"Is it time?" Morgan asked, her voice shaking somewhat as she looked over into Maggie's yard over her shoulder again. "The firemen are gone, and I don't think she knows that we're here."
Beck looked at me. "So, Giomanach, what's the standard protocol for an impromptu stripping?" He paused. "That did not come out the way that I had meant it to."
I glared at him, and then looked at the others. "Well, generally, we speak with the ... um ... stripee, or the one whose powers will be taken away, and explain the situation and the fact that they will be condemned to live a life without magick by order of the International Council of Witches. If they cooperate, which most do out of shock, then we proceed. If they refuse and attempt to escape, we put binding spells and the like on them to subdue them, and then ..." I hated how primitive this sounded. "... proceed anyway."
I saw Aunt Shelagh's eyes glower slightly. This was one of our disagreement points.
"Well ..." Breanna clapped her hands lightly with an apprehensive look on her face. "Shall we proceed, then?"
"I think that we should speak with her first," Shelagh said quickly. "Perhaps give her the opportunity to resolve this peacefully."
"She kind of destroyed that chance when she pried our heads open and screamed at us," Sky said firmly. I saw Morgan nod fervently in agreement.
"Fortunately, it's not up to you," I told her. "Come on."
With the five of them behind me, I strode up the front walk of Maggie's house and was about to pound on her door when Breanna stopped me.
"Wait," she said quickly. "Let me do this."
With a little sigh of preparation, she readied herself and knocked lightly on the bright red door.
"Conceal yourselves," she hissed with a whisper to the rest of us. With a silent nod that told her we already had, we stepped off the porch and flattened ourselves against the outside wall of the living room. I felt, regrettably, like a secret agent in one of those action movies that Morgan loves so much.
After a moment, I heard the front door open cautiously and Maggie's voice.
"Oh, Breanna, hello. What are you doing here so late?"
"Well, I heard the firemen come past my house, and then I just thought that I had better check to ensure that you were all right. Where's Rupert?"
"He's had to go away to Berlin for a few days. Left this evening."
"Oh, that's unfortunate. So you're all alone here, are you?"
"Unfortunately so."
I sensed that as my cue.
"Well, that's good," I said promptly, stepping out of the shadows and into Maggie's line of vision. "Wouldn't want anything to get in the way tonight."
Maggie's eyes widened proportionally and her face turned a very sallow color with shock. She glared back and forth between Breanna and I.
"You ..."
"Maggie Eleanor Fisher, the International Council of Witches has declared that you are unfit to possess magickal powers or abilities past this night. There are two ways that this may be –"
That was all it took for the door to slam.
"Okay, then. Never mind."
"Come on," Aunt Shelagh said quickly as she, Morgan, Uncle Beck, and Sky hurried over to us. "If I know Maggie, she'll be putting up blocking and protection spells as we speak. We have to move quickly."
"Well, then, let's hurry," I said quietly, and, as per our beforehand plan, the six of us surrounded her house in a sort of siege, each holding an athame. I looked over at Morgan, who was to my right near the back door whereas I was in front of the dining room, and tried to smile encouragingly. I hated this part of my job the most.
As the six of us each began our personal power chants, raising energy within ourselves, I became acutely aware of a strong sense of fear emanating from within the house. Screaming. Agony. Distress. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was Maggie. She was terrified, and I was feeling it. Her cries echoed in my ears louder and louder as I resolutely kept chanting my power call, determined not to let her psychic powers interfere with the job that I was trying to do.
She sounded nearly demonic with terror.
"It won't do you any good!"
I snapped my eyes open and could sense the others doing the same as a head with long gray hair stuck itself out of the window.
"It won't do you any good to strip me of my powers, Seeker," Maggie screamed, her eyes wide and face purple. "It won't do you any good! Do you honestly believe that it's going to stop Cràdh?"
"Cràdh isn't our purpose," I said quietly, and then messaged the others. "Keep going."
Purposefully blocking Maggie's furious wails out of my head, I was about to –
"He's not here!"
My head snapped up once again, as did Morgan's, whose eyes immediately widened.
"What?"
"He's not here! I told you! Cràdh is gone! He's somehow broken through the binding spells ..." Maggie stared around at me, her face growing ever redder. "And it doesn't require much reasoning to discern where he went."
I felt Aunt Shelagh's voice tugging at my mind. "Hunter!"
And now Uncle Beck's. "Hunter!"
"Hunter," Morgan whispered, breaking from her space in the circle to hurry to my side, clutching her athame so tightly that her knuckles were white, but not nearly as pale as her face.
"He's gone to the house."
MORGAN'S P.O.V
Within seconds, we had abandoned Maggie's house, leaving the distraught witch still screaming her head off inside and sprinting like crazy away from Kingston Drive as if we were being chased by a horde of monsters. I could hardly breathe. Oh, Goddess ... Cràdh ... going to Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's ... where our friends were still sleeping. Our non-witch, and therefore mostly defenseless, friends.
Crap.
My muscles felt so tight that they would snap in half as easily as toothpicks. My lungs were craving the oxygen that I could not provide them with fast enough. The last time that I had run this fast was ... well ... never. Never even during sprints in PE. Robbie. Bree. Raven. And then Cràdh. Going to kill them. When he found a mostly abandoned house with just three helpless teenagers in it, what would he do?
Maybe he would let them live.
Sure, Morgan. Maybe if you tell yourself that, you won't collapse on the spot from anxiety.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Oh, Goddess, protect them, please. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
When we reached Shelagh and Beck's street again, my panic eased slightly. Maybe they're fine, I thought. Maybe he didn't really go to their cottage. Maybe we're really in time to help them. Maybe everything is okay, and we're going to storm in there, all ready for action, and realize that Maggie was lying to us and that our friends are all fast asleep in bed without any clue as to what just happened.
Maybe they're fine, I thought. At least, I thought that until I saw the smoke.
Thick clouds of black smoke, thicker and denser than I had ever seen them, were billowing from Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's cabin, which was aglow with flame. Flame. Gold, red, yellow, and bright orange fire was clinging to the walls, the roof, the dead plants around the porch, everything.
There was so much smoke.
"Goddess." Hunter's mouth was wide open with stunned shock, staring at the house where he had grown up as it burned.
I couldn't speak. Oh, Goddess. Robbie .. Bree ... Raven ...
"Where are they?" I demanded, seizing Hunter's arm and shaking it violently. "Are they in there? Are they okay? Have they gotten out?"
"I-I-I can't tell," he stammered, his voice shaking intensely. "Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck have put too many protection spells on it, my magick can't break through ..."
But the fire could.
"Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?" I yelled, tears springing to my eyes, not just from the smoke but from sheer panic. I punched Hunter's arm in panic, my breath coming in short, high-pitched gasps. "Where are they? They have to be okay, they HAVE TO be okay ..." My heart was in my throat. I couldn't see. There was only the fire. And my friends. "Help them! Someone help them!"
I could hear Sky shrieking somewhere to my left. She was fighting her father tooth and nail, who was trying to subdue her, and her eyes were wide and crazed as she stared in horror at the house, trying to break free and rush inside.
"Athar, no!"
"Raven!" she screamed, tears pouring down her cheeks in droves as she tried to wrench herself free of her father's grip, who was using all of his strength to try to restrain her. "Raven!"
Aunt Shelagh was crying softly as she crumpled to the ground and stared up at her beautiful cottage, which the flames were steadily destroying. "Oh, Goddess ... Goddess ... please help ..."
"No ..." I whimpered, clinging to Hunter's arm as if it was my last link to civilization. "No ... no ... no ..."
"Geez. To the common observer, it would appear that you've all gone crazy."
SO not funny.
"Bree!" I all but screamed as I grabbed her and hugged her as tightly as humanly possible. "Ohmigod! If you EVER do that to me again, I swear –"
"Hey, we didn't do anything. You guys are the ones that jumped to conclusions."
Disgusted with her nonchalant grasp of the situation, I released her and instead grabbed Robbie in another bear hug.
"Well, it's nice to know that you care so much about us ... Morgan? Morgan, I can't-I can't breathe ..."
"Sorry. Oh, thank the Goddess you're safe ..."
Robbie just shrugged. "Well, thank Raven's insomnia. We'd probably still be in there if she hadn't seen the fire first."
I shook off shivers at that thought while Raven tried to look modest.
"I went downstairs to see if you guys had come back yet, and the living room was burning down." She looked apologetic. "I didn't see who set it, though, clearly being more worried on escaping alive than –" She broke off abruptly as Sky, with a sort of strangled cry, raced up to us with almost inhuman speed and tackled Raven in such a tight embrace that she nearly knocked both of them to the ground.
Hunter appeared behind us, a grim expression marring his features as he frowned.
"I think that you guys should see this."
Shifting my gaze over Hunter and towards the front of the house, I saw something that made me gasp with shock: Cràdh Fisher, bound, gagged, and on his knees on the front walk. Shelagh and Beck were both standing over him with their hands stretched towards his crumpled form, and I realized with a start that they had him under a binding spell.
"He was around the back," Shelagh said grimly as Hunter, the others, and I approached slowly, Raven, Robbie, and Bree still in their pajamas. "Laughing."
"Damn ... you ... all ..." I heard Cràdh wheeze under his breath at us in the same cold, emotionless voice that I had heard at Maggie's. "Damn ... you all ... to –"
"Oh, shut up," Beck said in disgust and, without further ado, punched Cràdh in the head, effectively knocking him unconscious. At our shocked glances, he just shrugged. "He was irritating me."
"I'm all for renting a room at the inn," Shelagh said, sounding utterly exhausted as the distant horns and alarms of the approaching fire truck grew audible. "Seeing as our house isn't quite fit for such a thing as sleep."
"Here, here," Sky said in the same tired tone.
"Um, excuse me?" Hunter asked in surprise. "Now that we know that everyone is okay, shouldn't we get back to Maggie's and continue with what we were doing?"
Aunt Shelagh gave a funny sort of laugh. I think she was entertained by that. "Oh, please, Giomanach, you don't really expect her to still be there, do you? No, she'll have been gone the moment that we left her property." Seeing Hunter's horrified look, she held up a hand. "Don't worry. I placed a watch sigil on her car. Council members will be catching up with her by dawn, I expect."
"So her car wasn't really broken?"
"It seemed quite fine when I drained the tank of half of its petrol."
"Never mind."
I watched this exchange with slight amusement, but then sighed and rubbed my eyes furiously as the fatigue that the others felt caught up with me. At the moment, I wanted nothing more than to collapse down on a bed and sleep for a month.
I must have unknowingly voiced that thought aloud, because Hunter smiled slightly at me.
"I guess we could," he said thoughtfully. "Now that this thing with Cràdh is finished."
The next few hours passed in a sort of blur. Instead of boring myself to tears with recounting the events over and over again, here is the shortened version: the police got to Shelagh and Beck's within fifteen minutes and arrested the still unconscious Cràdh, Maggie was found and arrested by council officials at a gas station in a small town a few miles north of London, trying to convince the middle-aged and for some reason still single owner of the station that she would use a love spell to get him the most sexually attractive girl in Wales if he would just give her free gasoline, and Hunter, Sky, Raven, Robbie, Bree, Shelagh, Beck, and I crashed at the Greenshackle Tavern, a cozy restaurant and inn outside of town, for the night, all completely and thoroughly exhausted.
He and Shelagh seemed to have taken the news that all of their furniture and their possessions had burned down rather calmly. Hunter guaranteed me later that they were insured for everything, but as to my inquiries about personal family heirlooms and the like, he just gave a mysterious smile and assured me that they were quite well protected.
I think that asked more questions than it answered, but I wasn't about to press the issue.
"So what do we do now?" I asked Hunter while sipping a cup of warm lemon tea that the tavern's caretaker, whom Shelagh and Beck knew personally and was thus being excessively friendly to us, had managed to procure for me.
He paused for a moment. "I think ... we just keep going."
I mulled that over in consideration. The idea had some merit.
A/N: Don't forget to tell us if you want the story to continue past England, okay? We have some ideas, but feedback is important!!!!! REVIEW!!!! (and we'll buy you lots of chocolate and presents and stuff ... hehe)