AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t have to know. I don’t want to help you. You chose to do dark things with your magic. Evil is as evil does, my mom always told me that.”
Xantha laughed, and her voice sounded like it had a lot of static on it, like we couldn’t quite find a clear signal from up there… wherever that was.
“We’re just going to figure out where that amulet is, and then you can go.”
“Where?” I asked.
Xantha shrugged. “I don’t know. Where the rest of them went. After I’m done with them, it doesn’t really matter where they end up.”
I shivered. It was cold here. There was no warmth to be had. I rubbed my hands over my bare arms, but I couldn’t feel myself. It was like I didn’t exist.
“Was it you?” I asked.
“Was what me?”
“Delaney. Did you kill her?”
“It wasn’t the plan, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s not what I asked, but you answered me, anyway.”
Xantha’s laughed, a needle skip on an old record player.
“Where’s the amulet?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not here.”
“No,” Xantha said. “You put a spell on it. I can feel the magic, I just can’t tell where it is. We’ll just have to find the start of it, and then…” She looked around, and a silver string hung down between us.
I frowned.
“Ah. Here it is.” She took the string between two fingers and started to pull. As she did, the darkness around us lifted like she was pulling up blinds. My loft apartment came into view, messy, just like I’d left it after I’d beaten myself up about not telling Jameson who I was right away.
“Girl, you need to clean,” Xantha said.
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
Xantha laughed again. I wished she would stop doing that—someone had to check whatever was wrong with her. She needed a service, or to be refurbished or something.
Xantha tugged at the silver string, and it pulled out of the apartment as if it had been painted in, and she peeled the layers away. She followed it around the apartment.
“Who used this magic?” she asked as she followed the string.
“I did.”
“You’re not fae,” she said.
I shrugged. “I don’t think you qualify, either.”
She laughed again. I had to stop making her laugh. What was so damn funny all the time?
Finally, the string drew a line across the floor. My heart beat in my throat, and my hands grew clammy. I wanted to jump forward and tell her she was on the wrong track, she had to look somewhere else, but I couldn’t move.
I was stuck in some kind of dream, and I wasn’t the one calling the shots.
“Ah,” Xantha smirked when the string disappeared between the old floorboards. “Clever. The oldest trick in the book, too. The original tricks always work better, don’t they?”
Was she talking about where I hid it, or the magic I’d used? I wasn’t sure what she was going on about.
