Cherie Colyer - Hold Tight

“You said yourself he can’t see her,” Josh replied.

“Yeah, but he can see the meadowsweet.”

“Madison’s right,” Isaac interjected. “We can’t do this at her house.”

“Besides,” I said, “we don’t have anything for her to eat.”

“How long do you think Reed would leave his sister to starve?” Josh said.

“We aren’t going to torture Brea!” I protested.

“Of course not,” Isaac said. “We’ll provide three meals and snacks. We’re civilized people.”

“We’re not trapping her here. She hasn’t done anything!” I’d be no better than Reed if I forced Brea to eat something from our realm.

“Has she stopped by to visit since Reed told her to leave?” Isaac asked.

“She brought me more flowers.”

“That she conveniently dropped off when you weren’t home.” He stuck a scrap piece of paper inside the grimoire and closed the book. “If she was your friend, she’d be helping you get away from Reed. Her absence proves that she won’t cross her brother.”

I swallowed audibly. I really didn’t like the idea of using Brea as leverage, but I didn’t have a better suggestion. Reed was too smart to allow himself to become trapped in a faerie ring, and even if we did manage to deceive him, I doubted he’d agree to walk through the door without some sort of motivation. Besides, we wanted Reed gone, not stuck in our world.

Whether it was because Isaac’s powers wrapped around me like a security blanket or that we eventually devised a plan, over the course of the morning, the burning in my gut lessened to a nagging whisper, and my hands only trembled when Reed’s name came up. Considering our evil plan centered around him, that was a lot. Thankfully, however, it didn’t come up once during the hours we spent hustling about Gloucester to get everything we needed to execute Plan Faerie Exile.

Now all I had to do was hope my newfound stability wouldn’t completely dissolve the moment I saw Reed.

Josh’s and my shoes slapped the sidewalk as we made our way to the back of the cemetery. The soft thump thump thump of our footsteps almost drowned out the nerve-curling moans of the dead.

“I don’t like this,” I muttered.

“Madison, we have less than an hour before Caden comes back, and it’s not like you can go into hiding to buy us more time,” Josh said, hiking the backpack we’d brought higher onto his shoulder.

The beams of light from our flashlights sliced a path through the darkness and allowed us to see an occasional shadow float past.

“They can’t hurt us,” Josh reminded me when a long thin shade stopped in front of me.

I stepped around it. “Yeah, well, I’d prefer not to see them.”

“Ever stop to think they’d rather not see you?”

We were on the east side of the cemetery, far away from my mom. I had tried to talk Josh into setting up near her grave, knowing the whispers of the dead couldn’t reach us there, but it was too close to the main road. Someone might see our lights, and we needed privacy.

Josh stopped behind the crypt of a family who’d died long ago and scanned the area. A cluster of overgrown shrubs lined a rusty chain-link fence about twenty feet from where we stood. Tall maples and ash trees dotted the open field of overgrown weeds. Immediately to the left of the crypt was a decaying statue of an angel, her blank stare focused on the grave she guarded.

“This should be good,” he said.

For a séance, maybe . “I’d feel better if Isaac and Kaylee were here.” I started when a shadow rubbed my leg and slithered by. It was blacker than the night, giving the impression of a bottomless void crossing my path, and it left the air next to me cold as death. To my amazement, Josh still wasn’t bothered by the cemetery’s ethereal residents.

“Isaac can’t be a part of this. Not after the promise he made about harming a member of the Seelie Court.” And Kaylee wasn’t here because Josh didn’t want to put her in danger.

He dropped the backpack in the unruly grass. Three shadows lingered in the gloom not far from us, hovering above the ground eerily.

“You sure those things can’t hurt us?” I asked, taking the pillar candles Josh held out.

“Pretty sure.” He set his flashlight on its end so that the light beamed upward.

I shined mine in his face. “‘Pretty sure’? You dragged me back here on a ‘pretty sure’?”

“No, you refused to stay home.”

He had me there. I had insisted on coming, reasoning that two witches were better than one. Truth was, I couldn’t let someone else get hurt because of what I’d done. Natalie was gone. Chase had almost died. No way would I let anything happen to Josh too.

He stood, one hand held to his side. The sweet aroma of apple cider encompassed us as his powers glowed bright red in his hand. He turned slowly, and as he did, the grass around us became matted as if smashed by a heavy object.

“You could help me build the circle instead of obsessing over spirits,” he said.

I placed the pillar candles on the freshly crushed grass. They would act as the perimeter of our circle. Next, I set my flashlight on the ground so that the light stretched upward toward the heavens. We stood facing each other, arms raised above our heads, and closed the circle. When we finished, the candles burned bright blue.

“I still think this is a bad idea.” I really hated to be skeptical, but Josh’s plan didn’t sit right with me. “If we mess with Reed’s family, don’t you think he’s going to mess with mine? The guy doesn’t like to be threatened. He’s made that clear.”

“That’s why we convinced your dad to take Chase to the movies.”

Isaac had placed a bewilderment spell on my father to help sway his decision. Dad would kill me if he ever found out we’d manipulated his thoughts. But the safety of my family wasn’t the only thing that troubled me.

“Brea’s not like her brother,” I said for what had to be the tenth time that day.

Josh’s black hair fell around his eyes when he met my gaze. “She could have kept Reed from getting into your head.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. If Brea had told me her brother had come through the door with her, if she had warned me not to eat anything I didn’t recognize, Reed wouldn’t have gotten the better of me.

“She’s a faerie, Madison. She survives the same way Reed does. Just because she hasn’t fed off your energy doesn’t mean she’s given the other humans she’s come in contact with the same respect.”

“I still don’t get the whole essence thing. Brea said faeries do favors for humans in exchange for their company. Even if ‘company’ was code for ‘suck on your aura,’ how could Reed feed off mine? He didn’t do anything for me.”

“You’ve eaten their food. That changes your physical makeup and the rules.”

“Yeah…well…with all the mystical guidelines governing supernatural creatures, you’d think tricking your prey into submission would be forbidden,” I griped. Seriously, if saying, I promise , bound me to my word and a deal had to be made for a crossroad demon to help a human, why the hell didn’t faerie food come with a warning written in bold letters: MADE IN LA LA LAND. EATING WILL OPEN YOU UP TO FAERIE ATTACKS.

We laid a ring of meadowsweet in the middle of our circle. Josh touched the sprigs with his fingertips, willing magic into them and creating a faerie prison of sorts. He set the ceramic bowl we’d brought inside the ring, placing in it three acorns. Next, he held a wilted red rose by its stem. A moment later it perked up, looking as if it had just been cut from the bush. He plucked off three petals and added them to the bowl, which he used his magic to fill with spring water. More shadows had gathered, but none crossed the invisible barrier of our circle.