My Spanish comes from Google Translate, so please let me know if I screw anything up!
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They had made plans to celebrate after the competition. The thought of ice cream and spending more time in close proximity had appealed to all, but those hopes were dashed into as many pieces as the phone had been against the sidewalk.
Camry had never seen him the way she and Saoirse found him then: the palpable fear in his eyes was mirrored perfectly by the way his hands trembled and his breathing came in ragged, uneven bursts. Cam was shaking, too, but for different reasons. Kordelle must have been nearby if she was smelling asphodel and sensing a familiar but fading aura on the air. As much as she knew it wasn't real, her scarred tongue felt like it was on fire. Saoirse drew the other girl into her side without a second thought. "What are you talking about? Your dad knows where you are? How?"
"That-- That fucker, he called and told him where we are," he ground out, averting his eyes to the remains of the phone that had betrayed him so succinctly. "He ratted us out! Why would he do that? I... Oh, dios, ¿que voy a hacer ahora?"
Suffice to say, their general mood of pleasant success and accomplishment had evaporated faster than water poured on an embarrassed Relle Phantom. "We have to tell your mom," Saoirse realized. Her outstretched hand withdrew, then moved to cup the back of Camry's head. The shorter girl had turned her face into Saoirse's shoulder and was trying to concentrate on taking slower, deeper breaths of air untainted by asphodel perfume. "Maybe she has a plan for what to do in case this happens."
"The last time, we packed up and went across, like, half a dozen state lines," he groaned. His hands were over his eyes while his head fell back. "I can't do that again! What about school? What about you guys?"
"Hey, it'll be alright," Saoirse said quickly, trying to keep her tone mellow and placating. Her hand moved from Camry's hair and extended toward him, beckoning him closer. "C'mere."
He responded slowly, shuffling forward and taking the offered hand in his own. She yanked him in with a surprising strength and braced him around the shoulders, pressing him into a soft embrace. "You're gonna do what you have to do to keep your family safe, and you're not gonna worry about anything or anyone else. It'll be alright. We'll always be here for you."
Though he didn't look down to see it for himself, one of Camry's shivering arms sneaked its way over to hug him as well, pressing against the middle of his back and solidifying his place in their trio's bond. The tension in his posture evaporated little by little at the contact, and he hugged back after half of a moment's pause. He smelled, Camry noted, like an odd combination of sweat and the burnt dust of the stage's lights; such a familiar picture was brought to mind from her childhood that her panic was swept away and out to sea in record time.
They couldn't stay that way all night, however, and with a melancholic sigh he withdrew from them a fraction of an inch. "I have to go. And tell my mom what happened."
Saoirse nodded, resolute and encouraging despite how the implications obviously pained her. "Do you want us to go with you?" she asked, resting her hand on his shoulder. Camry nodded in agreement, having looked up and gotten her breathing back into a steady pace.
"No, it's okay," Dude said. Under the pale blue light of the glowing trees in front of and behind them, his black opal eyes were shinier than usual. "If she panics..."
An impulse that he thought he had gotten control of once and for all surged up from the marrow in his bones then, and before he could think twice to subdue it, he had pressed a chaste peck on Saoirse's cheek and Camry's temple in rapid succession. "I... have to go," he said again. Detaching himself from their arms, he hurried off down the sidewalk lit only by the trees and, eventually, the electric lights shining through the venue's tall front windows.
The summer air wasn't all that brisk to begin with, but a shiver ran down both girls' spines as they silently watched him go. Camry's right hand wandered up to her face, and her fingertips ghosted over the spot where he had kissed her. What the hell were these butterflies doing, fluttering in her stomach all of a sudden? "Seersh... There's gotta be something we can do about this. I can protect them--!"
The grip around her waist tightened in response, and the hand that Saoirse had pressed to her own cheek dropped to her side. "These are more witches, and-- and you almost died the last time you tangled with one."
"Well," she started to say in protest, but the words petered out on her scarred tongue. "I mean... Okay, but-- but this isn't fair! We can't just let his awful father come in and-- what do you think he's going to do?"
Saoirse hummed a soft, singular note of confusion. "I have no idea. But maybe we have enough time to prepare."
The Hinojosas left with little explanation and in such a rush that Dude's silver trophy was left behind without a second thought. The prize money remained in his jacket's pocket, however, and he managed to throw one last look over his shoulder at his best friends before disappearing around a street corner. They were too far away to hear what she was saying, but Maria was talking impressively fast in Spanish, her hands positively flying with the effort of keeping up in sign language for Ariadna's benefit.
When he looked back over his shoulder at them, Camry ran a few yards ahead and cupped her hands around her mouth. "You'd better call me if something comes up!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.
He was gone around the corner before he could respond.
A bitter, anguished taste flooded Saoirse's mouth, putting a pained expression on her face. She reached for her girlfriend and hugged her close from behind, wrapping her arms around Camry's toned waist. The shorter girl leaned back automatically into the contact, reacting to it as naturally as she always did. "Are you cold?" Camry whispered, her voice hoarse with emotions she couldn't tamp down.
"No," Saoirse whispered back through a curtain of blonde hair. "Just... a weird feeling in my gut."
"... Mine, too."
~~
Later that night, when their digital clocks read 2:09 am in sync, Saoirse received a text that made her phone vibrate in her hands. Unable to sleep a wink since the new development regarding Dude's family situation, she had resigned herself to eventually sleeping in as late as her mother would allow and drinking plenty of coffee in the late morning. For now, she was lying in bed and browsing the internet, updating various social media platforms as she went along.
You awake?
A soft smile quirked one corner of her lips. Yeah... she wrote back, her thumbs flying over the small, dimly lit screen. Can't sleep either?
No...
I tried to text dude too but he must be too busy
Or asleep
Either way
I can't get this bs out of my head
Me neither
And to think that-- Saoirse deleted that thought quickly as she realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to even mention the witch that had tried to do away with Camry those few months ago. Her panic attack, while it had been overcome rather suddenly, was probably still fresh in her mind and humming along her frayed nerves.
Can you get dressed and take a walk with me maybe?? I'll come pick you up
An interesting proposition. Sure, that sounds good. Where would you wanna walk to?
Anywhere
Good enough for Saoirse. She threw on the same clothes she had been wearing during the previous day and wrapped her hair effortlessly. All of her makeup had been washed off hours ago, but she wouldn't bring herself to feel self-conscious about it. With or without it, she knew that Camry would still call her gorgeous or--
"Hey, beautiful," Relle Phantom whispered as she lifted the window open high enough for her to shimmy through. "What's a lovely place like this doing in a girl like you?"
Saoirse's snort would have been loud enough to wake the whole house if she hadn't clapped her hand over her mouth in time to smother it. "Wow, Cam," she giggled. Relle's pleasantly mellow blush across her cheeks glowed in the dark and cast a faint orange light that only enhanced the ethereal sphalerite of her eyes.
"So, any requests for where to go?" Cam asked with a grin and a sweeping gesture toward the open window. "The city is your oyster."
"Well," Saoirse mumbled, tapping her chin in thought. "I'll bet the lake shore is pretty nice right now. No people, and it's a pretty warm night-- not that I'll ever have to worry about being cold with you around, of course."
"You've got that right," she said. Taking her girlfriend's hand, Camry crawled back outside and helped Saoirse up and out, where a path of faintly glowing white tiles marked a path for just the two of them. "To the lake!"
"Shhh," Saoirse giggled again in a weak attempt to hush her. Sneaking out always left such a giddy storm of butterflies flapping at her insides, and it was hard to stay quiet so no one could catch them in the act.
With fingers entwined and a gentle airyness buoying up their moods, the two teens made their way in a straight line toward the lake, which only took about ten minutes to reach without the hindrance of being earthbound. When they got there, Camry made gradual stair steps down to the rocky shore and changed back into her human self upon setting down. They stopped for a moment then to look out over the lake's rippling silver surface. It was a relatively clear night; only a handful of thin, wispy clouds made an effort to blot out the stars and the seven moons. Two were waxing in this stage of the monthly cycle, so while the shoreline was still visible and they wouldn't need flashlights to get around, the darkness was a comforting blanket around their shoulders.
Pebbles and thick sand crunched underfoot, echoing too loudly in the silence of their silvery world. Across the lake, whose surface was illuminated in broken rays of white light, unseen mountains rose up to scrape the black sky. Their proximity to the city obscured all but the brightest of the stars twinkling from so far away. Saoirse happily drew closer to Camry's side and smiled at the gentle breeze playing with the trailing ends of her hijab.
"This is nice," she commented after a few moments of amicable quiet. "I wish being at the lake was always this calm."
"Me, too," Cam agreed absentmindedly. Her gaze, after taking in its fill of their surroundings, was being drawn back toward the towering buildings of the city. Its glowing haze was dim, like a flag flown at halfmast instead of at the top.
The quiet resumed between them as what few words Saoirse had prepared faded from her tongue. Then, as she opened her mouth to try and start a conversation that had been weighing on her conscience for a remarkably long time, Camry surged up and cupped her hand to Saoirse's lips. "Shhh," the blonde girl hissed gently. A faint tingle of warmth traveled from the contact to the very tips of her extremities; past experience taught her that they were both now standing invisibly on the uneven beach.
Saoirse, freeing her face from her girlfriend's hand, turned to look back over her shoulder and noticed what had made Camry so tense in the span of an instant. Blue and red lights flashed one after the other in a never-ending pattern, reflecting off the stretch of lake water behind them. Two officers got out of their marked car and sauntered over to a darkly-painted pickup truck that had been parked too close to the water's edge. One shined a flashlight into its cabin while the other scuttled around back to examine the bed. A bundle of wires was stretched taut from the back as it extended toward the lake and was submerged beneath the lapping waves.
"Not again," they just barely heard the first officer groan in exasperation. "How many times is she gonna do this?"
"I guess warnings aren't going to cut it at this point," the second officer mused as he poked at the cables leading into the lake. Before Camry could stop her, Saoirse's curiosity took hold and she guided Camry closer, remaining invisible through their linked hands. From a new angle, they both could see a bulky crank rigged to the pickup's bed, which allowed the wires to be retracted or released. A suitcase and archaic computer were beside it, open and booted up.
'It's like a science experiment' flashed through Saoirse's mind. She frowned; who would be doing science experiments in the middle of the night on the lake?
Why would they be doing it?
"Wanna bring her in this time? Could bag all of this as evidence," Officer #2 suggested. He trailed a hand over the equipment, the expression on his face pensive and more than a little tired.
Officer #1 groaned again as he redirected his flashlight beam to the water's surface. "Too much paperwork. Besides, she might've gotten the permits for... whatever it is she's doing."
Such an idea made his partner snort in derision, but he didn't push the matter and instead pressed the power button on the computer. It flickered out with a dull whine. Almost immediately, a red bulb on the crank burst to life, and the cables started to retract, pulling up whoever or whatever was meandering around the bottom of the lake. In just a handful of minutes, the slow ascent ended with a tall woman dressed in a wet suit and sporting scuba gear standing up in the surf.
In a flurry of anger, she wrenched the face mask and snorkel off of herself and nearly flung it back into the lake. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded, her tone shrill and incredulous. "That data is vital to my research! You cost me an entire night's worth of sampling!"
"Ms. Rheasson, we're gonna need to see some permits," Officer #1 sighed. This exchange must have been routine at this point if he sounded so bored with the confrontation-- not to mention that he wasn't at all fazed by the woman's anger.
"Vehicles aren't allowed to park this far on the beach," Officer #2 chirped, obviously taking delight in the torment he had caused her through such a simple act. "Still think you're above the law?"
"What I'm working on will revolutionize our world's understanding of ghosts and where they come from!" Ms. Rheasson belted as she stomped across the pebbled beach to stand defiantly in front of the policemen. "I need access to that portal in the lake-- it's the only chance we have for learning how to protect ourselves."
#2 snickered and folded his arms over his chest. "You really think you can do the job of an entire government all by yourself, Ms. Rheasson? We're getting tired of coming down here to chase you away."
"Please, Ms. Rheasson, just go home for the night," #1 sighed. "This is your last warning before we start making arrests." He had a pad of paper in hand and finished scribbling something on it. The sharp sound of the paper being torn off cut through the darkness, louder than it should have been, and he pressed the warning into her livid hand.
They walked away then, mumbling something about paperwork and coffee runs all the way to their squad car. Ms. Rheasson, with the surf lapping at her heels, crumpled the slip of paper up and hurled it back into the water when both men were gone. Her posture was taut, roiling with anger she must have wanted to vocalize. "God damn it," she ground out, breathing hard and visibly gritting her teeth.
Saoirse felt Camry tugging on her hand, urging her to walk away, but she paused to keep looking. Her individual features were almost impossible to distinguish in the pale moonslight, but something about this woman poked at the back of Saoirse's brain. "I think I've seen her before," she whispered down into a head of invisible blonde hair. "After ghost fights, I've noticed her running around. What if she was collecting samples of ghost energy then, too?"
"For real?" Camry, who was usually too busy with disappearing from the scene to take notice of strangely-acting bystanders, whispered back.
Almost immediately, a harsh beeping slashed through the calmed atmosphere and made all three people jump out of their skin. The scientist lunged for the open pickup's bed and grabbed a boxy device, which she held out while slowly spinning in a circle. Was she trying to detect something?
"I know someone's there!" she called out. That anger in her voice from before dissipated, and she spoke like she was trying to encourage and placate a wild animal. "Please, I don't want to hurt you. Can you just come and talk to me for a few minutes? I have so many questions, and I want to help."
Camry tugged harder on Saoirse's hand, and this time she complied with being led off the beach and back toward the road. To keep their footsteps quiet, Camry conjured a path of smooth tiles that hovered only a few inches off of the rocky sand. The steps were as invisible as they were, which they hoped was something the scientist couldn't see with her equipment. They heard her call out again after a moment, though the distance strained her words through the wind. "My name is Avery-- I'm unarmed, too!"
When they felt like they were far enough to talk freely, Camry dropped the invisibility and breathed out a heavy breath. "Whoa, that was close. What do you think all of that was about?"
"No idea," Saoirse answered. "But if she's researching ghosts, we need to keep an eye out for her. Can't have her finding out your secret identity or something."
"True," Cam agreed wholeheartedly. "Well, that "adventure" was kind of a bust. What should we do now?"
Neither girl wanted to let go of the other's hand, so they continued to walk aimlessly, entwined pleasantly and chatting about whatever floated through their minds in the moment. Right about the time when Saoirse could start to feel a dull soreness creep up into the soles of her feet, Cam fell silent midsentence and whipped her head back to look over her shoulder. "What's up?" Saoirse asked softly. Her heart pounded in her chest with practiced intensity; was it a ghost attack? More scientists?
"No, I just... had a weird feeling. On the back of my neck," she explained in halting sentences. "You don't think we're being watched, do you?"
"Ohhh, I don't wanna think about something like that while we're wandering the city at night, hon," Saoirse said with a grimace. "Should we call it now and go home?"
"Sure, sure," Camry, still distracted and staring into the distance behind them, said. On the road they traveled, there were no glowing trees or lit storefronts to guide their way. The lakeside part of town was older, more peaceful in its simplicity but less advanced in its furnishings. Very few cars were on the streets at such a late hour, but once in a while someone would dart into view and disappear into an alley or around the corner of a building. Both girls supposed it was a natural occurence and tried not to think too much on it. After all, what chance would an attacker have against Relle Phantom?
"Do you mind if we go to one more place first?"
An interesting question, and one that Saoirse wasn't adamantly against. She hummed an agreement and let herself be led along as they climbed higher into the sky, following a trail of white light to a poorly-lit section of town. Old, grey buildings rose up to meet them, scratching the sky at twenty or thirty stories. Most of the lights in the apartment windows were either off or shrouded by drawn curtains, but Camry knew exactly where they were going. In all honesty, Saoirse could have easily predicted their coming to this location, and not an atom of her being was surprised in the least.
Their intended target was the third-floor window that faced the street corner. The glass was locked tight, but the curtains were pulled back and electric lights glowed inside. As Saoirse and Camry walked closer, they could see people moving silently back and forth across the cluttered bedroom. Ariadna, Dude, Ari, Dude-- they were gathering up their belongings at a frantic pace, stuffing necessities into expectant luggage wordlessly. Signing was probably too much of a chore with full arms.
"I can't just let this happen," Camry murmured after a heavy moment of tension. Neither girl knew what to do: could they jump in and help them pack, or try to convince them to stand their ground? What if they found somewhere within the city to hide the Hinojosas until the threat had passed?
Saoirse didn't need the moonslight to see the tears rolling down Camry's cheeks. She angrily wiped them away with the heel of both palms and set her jaw. "I oughta destroy Kordelle for doing this to them."
"No, no, no," Saoirse sighed at that. She put both hands on her girlfriend's shoulders and gently forced her to look up into her pink tourmaline eyes. "We both know how that would end, Cam, and it's not going to happen that way if I have anything to say about it."
"He's running Dude and his family out of town!" Camry exclaimed too loudly for the hour, and her voice echoed through the spaces between the apartment buildings. "Shouldn't we at the very least make him regret messing with him? With us?"
Saoirse cupped the right side of Camry's face then and swiped her thumb tenderly over the triangular scar on her cheekbone. It was damp with drying smears of saltwater, so the pad of her thumb stuttered across its rougher surface. "You know I want to make him pay, Cam, but... I don't know what I would do if I saw him anywhere near you again. We're better off with keeping our distances and sticking to fighting ghosts, not fighting witches."
Right at the end of her sentence, a rusty clicking sound made their hearts leap into their throats before they turned in unison to look for the source. Dude lifted the sash of the window and leaned out as far as he dared, a look of surprise dropping his jaw ever so slightly. "What are you guys doing here so late?" he asked, trying to keep his tone low enough to not disturb the other tenants.
"Just... checking in," Saoirse answered awkwardly. Was she suddenly blushing because they'd been caught in the act of practically stalking him? "Wanting to make sure you're all safe."
Ariadna appeared behind him and gave them a withdrawn wave "Hello," before going back to her packing. Dude watched them as the two girls scurried closer and drew even with the window's altitude so they could all talk easily. "You don't really think he would be here already, do you?"
The way he said it had the intention of a half-hearted joke, but it didn't land. No one expected it to.
How in the world had things spun so out of control in the span of a single evening? "Maybe," Camry replied. "We couldn't sleep, though. Too much to... think about." Her hand came up to clutch her other elbow in a pose that made herself look smaller and meek. A tinge of redness had permeated the whites of her eyes from the tears she hadn't been able to hold back a few moments ago.
"If..." Saoirse started to say, then paused to recollect her scattered thoughts. "When you all are safe-- you've got someplace safe to stay, and all that-- you'll let us know, right? We're still keeping in touch with you." She meant it as a question, but it came out more like a statement than anything else.
He managed a smile at that. "Of course we are. I won't know when I can contact you guys after we leave, but I won't stay gone for too long."
"You shouldn't have to stay gone at all," Camry grumbled then, clenching her hands into fists at her sides. "How about I punch all of them in the face and we call it a night?"
Despite the dread and melancholy coiled in his gut, a snort escaped him then, and Dude bowed his head a little to laugh. His shoulders shook with quiet giggles. "Thanks for the offer, Cam, but I think we're gonna have to stick with Plan A for a while."
"No, no, no, this is, like, Plan V," she insisted, darting nearer and throwing her arms around his neck. Dude wobbled a little but didn't fall when he returned the embrace immediately. "You could stay at my house. Maybe my ghostliness will help hide you guys, or... or..."
"It's too dangerous," he mumbled, looking up to meet Saoirse's watery eyes. His own were pretty damp, try as he did to blink back the wave of emotions. "Kordelle was one thing, but my dad's a coven leader. That's gotta be a whole 'nother ballpark of bad news."
For the second time that night, all three teens hugged one another as tightly as they dared, refusing for as long as they could to let go. No one spoke for the longest time. Eventually, though, they had to part, and they did it tearfully with their reluctant goodbyes. When Camry and Saoirse had turned their backs to the window to start their journey back to the Mahadeo home, Joaquín resisted the urge to... to do something. To call them back, to hurry after them somehow, to give a voice to the ache that burrowed itself in his bone marrow and wrapped squeezing tendrils around his heart.
Instead, he shut and latched the window.
It wasn't until around four-thirty in the morning that he, Ari, and their mother fell into their beds surrounded by cardboard boxes and fell asleep, content with the knowledge that their progress was good enough for them to leave town sometime later in the morning. To stay awake long enough to finish packing, Ariadna had chugged a caffeinated soda, and no matter how much she lay in bed with her eyes closed, sleep would not take her. She finally gave up around six o' clock and got up, sparing her occasionally twitching brother a glance before taking a seat at the window. Ari opened it halfway and leaned out to catch sight of the sixth and seventh moons sinking below the horizon. Maybe she could still catch the end of their nightly stories if she listened to them now. As it were, traces of orange and pink were starting to color the sky to the east. It was still summer, after all.
Ariadna closed her eyes and breathed deeply, allowing her senses to stretch toward the heavens and breach the barrier that fixed their world within a constantly shifting present. Sounds of the past trickled down to her ears, filling the spaces of her brain with information that she didn't know what to do with beyond giving a simple acknowledgement. The first indication that something was off came with the rumbling of a high-powered engine and the phantom vibrations of machinery. She shrugged them off easily enough; the moons saw more than their fair share of planes flying through the night sky.
However, those vibrations were a little bit strange. She sometimes imagined the physical sensations that she expected would accompany the sounds she heard, but these ones didn't seem all that fictional... Her white opal eyes flashed open and she flattened her palm against the wall beside the window. Those vibrations weren't her imagination-- someone was knocking at the front door!
Her heart seized in her chest, stuttering the flow of oxygen to her brain, and before she knew what she was doing she had lunged for her jacket hanging by the door to her and her brother's room. She yanked her arms through the sleeves, paying no mind to the unfamiliar feeling of the cloth against her skin, and was back at the window before her better judgment could take control.
Dude was sitting up by then, too, and staring at the closed door. Just beyond it lay the hallway, which led to the front door that... was being opened. His touch conduit could sense vibrations with hundreds of times more accuracy when he pressed his hand to the floor; their mother in the next room over was slamming her feet against the floor in an effort to get up quicker.
Who was at the door, then?
The two twins shared wide-eyed glances before Joaquín was on his feet and pushing Ariadna toward the window. A fire escape was only a short drop from the ledge, and the weathered metal steps led down to a spot on the ground where bushes could hide someone from the road. Ariadna squeaked with the half-hearted attempt to tell him to stop, to ask him what he was doing, but he signed "Go!" and effectively silenced her.
Ari and Joaquín slid the window open together, trying to be as quiet as possible without sacrificing speed, and she threw a leg over the sill. He flattened a hand against her upper back for stability, but pulled away when he heard something. Footsteps? Voices? Ari didn't know, and right then she didn't especially want to know.
"Wait," she murmured, looking back. A sharp tug on her lungs pulled a shallow gasp from her lips, and the world stopped moving.
There had been a gentle, early morning breeze blowing against her face when she first opened the window; that was dead now, frozen in place as time had been put on pause. Well, maybe it wasn't a perfect pause. As she looked in all directions, she could still detect the barest traces of movement, like a snail's journey through maple syrup. Ariadna could see Joaquín reaching for the window as if to close it, and the knob on their bedroom door was turning at an agonizingly slow pace.
She knew what she had to do, but that didn't make doing it any less painful. Ari got her other leg out the window and pushed off, free falling the five or six feet to the fire escape's nearest landing. She took the steps down two at a time, paying no mind to the metal slats biting harshly against the soles of her bare feet, and started off in a desperate run down the sidewalk. Her only indication that time had resumed was when the first sputtering cars of morning traffic picked up their pace and zoomed past her, sending waves of wind against her legs. Well-worn pajama shorts and a T-shirt under her jacket didn't make for the most conventional outfit for going out on the town.
It was a good thing she vaguely knew where she was going.
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Boy, we are jumping right into the action! Credit for the creation/design for Avery Rheasson goes to @WhiteLion_Angel
Please leave a vote and a comment! They make my entire day so much better, no matter the circumstances. See you all in the next chapter!