Firewalker

 

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For Pia

 

CHAPTER

1

Lily lay floating on a raft of pain. Terror kept her clinging to it. If she slipped off the side, she knew she'd drown in the smothering darkness that swelled like an ocean under the sparking surface of life. She wanted to let go, but fear wouldn't let her. When the pain became too much to bear, she hoped that at least the fear would end so she could allow herself to slip weightlessly into the hushed waters of death.

But the fear didn't end. And Lily knew she couldn't let go. She was a witch. Witches don't die quietly in the cold, muffled silence of water. Witches die screaming in the roaring mouths of fire.

“Open your eyes,” Rowan pleaded desperately. Wading her way back to the sound of his voice, Lily forced herself to do as he said. She saw his soot-smeared face, smiling down on hers. “There you are,” he whispered.

She tried to smile back at him, but her skin was tight and raw and her face wouldn't move. All she could taste was blood.

“Do you recognize this place?” he asked, looking around anxiously. “I've never seen anything like it.” He tilted her up in his arms so she could glance around.

It was nighttime. Lily felt pavement under her hand and realized they were lying in the middle of the road. She heard a jingling sound when she moved. The shackles and chains from the pyre were still bound to her wrists, the weight of them dragging down her arms. She focused her eyes and looked up the street. It was snowing. The streetlamps were few and far between. Woods surrounded them, but not the impossibly dense, old woods of Rowan's world. These were young woods. Her woods.

The winding road and rolling hills were familiar. Lily knew this place. They were two towns away from Salem in Wenham, Massachusetts. She hadn't realized her pyre had been that far from the walls of Salem. The battlefield in the other Salem must have been enormous, and she had filled it with blood.

“I think we're on Topsfield Road,” Lily croaked. “There's a farm up ahead.”

“A farm?” Rowan said, squinting his eyes as he tried to peer through the trees. There was a flash of light and Rowan's head snapped around.

“Headlights,” Lily rasped, her voice failing. “We have to get out of the road.”

“You're badly burned,” Rowan began hesitantly.

“Have to. We'll get hit.”

Rowan reluctantly started gathering her up in his arms, but Lily screamed before he could pick her up. It felt like he was tearing off her skin.

The raft of pain rose up again, lifting Lily up and out of herself. The headlights grew closer, blinding her. Tires squealed. Car doors slammed. As she drifted away from it all on her raft, she heard a familiar voice.

“Go help him, Juliet,” the voice commanded. “Careful! She's burnt to a cinder.”

“Mom?” Lily whispered, and then gave herself to the wet darkness.

*   *   *

Juliet stared at the charred girl lying in the middle of the road, momentarily unable to accept that she was looking at her little sister. The skinny girl was burned and bloody all over, but her raspy voice was unmistakable. It was Lily.

A frantic young man clutched her to his chest. Juliet had never seen anyone quite like him before. His hands and forearms were burned as well, but the rest of his leather-clad body was drenched in blood. Juliet got the sickening feeling that the blood was not his own. He was carrying two gore-tipped short swords strapped across his back and his sooty hands looked as if they knew how to use them. At his waist was what seemed to be a whole kit of silver knives arrayed from his belt and strapped down the side of his right thigh. He looked like an utter savage.

“Go, Juliet!” Samantha ordered. Her mother's voice, strangely calm and in control for the first time in ages, was what snapped Juliet out of her shock. She strode forward and knelt down next to the stranger and saw a flash of silver around her sister's wrists.

“Why is Lily wearing chains?” she asked accusingly, her voice pitched low to keep it from shaking. When she lifted her eyes to meet the stranger's, her gaze was caught by something at his throat. It was a large jewel that seemed to throb with dark light—if there was such a thing as dark light, Juliet thought. She blinked her eyes and looked away, both disturbed and drawn to the odd jewel at the same time.

“Samantha, do you know me?” the savage asked. Juliet stiffened in fear. Who was this guy?

“How do you know my mother's name?” she asked, certain that it hadn't been said in his presence.

“Yes, I know you, Rowan,” Samantha answered, waving an impatient hand in Juliet's direction to keep her quiet. “What do we need to do?”

“We need to get her by a fire so I can start to heal her,” Rowan said. He started to lift Lily, and she moaned in pain.

“What? We need to call 911 and get an ambulance,” Juliet yelled. She reached out a hand to restrain Rowan from moving her. “You're hurting her!”

“I know that,” he shouted back, his expression desperate. “But we have to move her. I can't heal her here.”

“Mom!” Juliet screamed. “For all we know, he
did
this to her.”

“No, he didn't. Listen to him, Juliet. He's the only one who can help her now,” Samantha said sternly.

Juliet searched for any sign in her mother's eyes that she had lost it, but all she saw was cold, hard sanity—something Juliet hadn't seen in her mother in a long time.

Samantha knew exactly what was going on, even if Juliet didn't, and it was Samantha who had said she knew where to find Lily and she'd forced Juliet to take her to this stretch of road in the middle of the night. Juliet had no idea how her mother could know where to find Lily after three months of her being missing, but right now there were more pressing matters, like saving Lily's life. And at the moment that seemed doubtful. Juliet had candy-striped in hospitals and trained as an EMT. She was going to med school at Boston University and she'd seen enough to know when someone was dying. Although Juliet said under her breath that they should be taking Lily to an emergency room, she knew it would make no difference at this point. Her little sister was going to die whether they got her to an ICU or not.

Rowan kept Lily on his lap in the backseat of the car while Juliet drove as quickly as she dared through the falling snow. She gripped the wheel as if she were trying to wring it dry in order to keep her hands from shaking. Her sister, missing and thought to be dead, was back. And she was dying in the backseat of Juliet's car.

Juliet's eyes kept bouncing up to the rearview mirror as she drove. She watched this Rowan character cradling Lily in his lap, trying to soothe her. He spoke to her gently to keep her conscious, saying anything that popped into his head—outrageous things, like how Lily wouldn't dare leave him alone. How he needed her. How lost he would be without her. But Juliet's suspicion was not as easily quenched as her mother's. Lily had been kidnapped three months ago, and Rowan must have had some part in it, no matter how tenderly he seemed to hold her and speak to her.

Lily was delirious by the time they got her home, humming and whispering to herself in a singsong way as if she were soothing a child. Rowan carried her inside and laid her in front of the fireplace.

“Fill a cauldron with water and bring it to me,” he ordered as he unstrapped his weapons and started laying his knives out on the floor around Lily. Juliet stared at him, rooted to the spot. “Move, Juliet,” he barked.

Spurred into action, Juliet began opening up cabinets even though she was quite sure they were fresh out of cauldrons. She ended up grabbing her mom's biggest copper-bottomed stockpot and filling it while Rowan listed more things he needed to Samantha. It was mostly herbs. Juliet hauled the pot of water into the living room where Rowan had a small fire going in the fireplace. He glanced at the pot dubiously.

“It's all we have,” Juliet said with a defensive shrug.

“Then it'll have to do. Put it on the fire and open all the windows,” he directed, scowling, as he stripped off his blood-soaked shirt.

“This is insane,” Juliet said, but did as he instructed. As she pushed open the last window, Juliet saw an eerie pulse of light swell inside the room like an expanding bubble and turned to face the source of the light. Her skin tingled as it passed over her, membrane-like, and all sound in the room was muffled as if someone had stuffed cotton in her ears. At the center of the bubble was Rowan's odd amulet. Juliet looked down and saw three jewels like Rowan's winking at her sister's throat.

“She's so weak,” Rowan whispered. He knelt down beside Lily and began cutting away what was left of her clothes. “Samantha, burn the sage and walk around the room counterclockwise,” he said. “Juliet, start rubbing this salve on some of the lesser blisters. See if it helps.”

Rowan took a tiny glass jar of greenish salve out of a pouch on his belt and put it into Juliet's hands. She started dabbing the stuff hopelessly on her sister's skin.

“This isn't going to—” she began, and stopped. She sat back on her heels. “Impossible,” she breathed. Where Juliet had put the salve, Lily's blisters had shrunk away to nothing. Before her eyes, the broken skin was healed. Juliet looked up at Rowan, her mouth hanging open.

“It won't do anything for the really bad burns, but it will soothe some of the pain,” he explained.

“How did you—?”

“Magic,” Rowan answered automatically. “We need to make a tent. Lily's lungs are scalded raw and they're filling with blood. She'll drown if we don't stop it. Do you have large sheets and a way to prop them over her?”

“Yes,” Juliet replied, and stumbled out of the room to the linen closet, dumbfounded by what she had just seen. No medicine worked that fast. Burned skin did not heal in a few seconds—if it ever really healed at all.

Juliet returned with the sheets and saw Rowan leaning over Lily. Tendrils of reddish-purple light emanated from the dark jewel at his throat and danced across Lily's face. One of the tendrils snaked down Lily's throat, and she gasped and sputtered. Rowan turned her head to the side and blood oozed out of Lily's mouth. Juliet took a step forward to stop him. When he looked up at her his face was pale and strained with effort and his eyes were so frantic that Juliet checked herself.