Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (10 page)

They believed the story that Jason had spun. That I’d died with her. “He kept in touch with you, though? My uncle?”

“Yeah,” Anna said, wiping at the corner of her eye. “Not often, but enough to keep in touch. I hadn’t talked to him in almost a year, though.”

I hunched my shoulders and turned around, facing the ferry. “He … he’s gone. Just a few days ago.” If I didn’t look at them, I could pretend we weren’t talking about this. That it wasn’t real.

“Yeah, your fa— I mean, I heard,” Anna said. I heard her take a step forward, but that was all. “I’m sorry. He raised you all by himself, huh?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak about that. “So why are you here?” I asked, feeling myself grow colder. “What do you want from me?” I turned to face them, and wished I hadn’t.

Patrick looked like he’d expected this. Knowing, and a little condescending. But Anna looked stricken. “You’re our nephew,” she said, as if it was obvious. “You’re in trouble.
We want to help.”

“But
why
? You won’t set foot in Belle Dam, so obviously you
get it.
Jason says you can protect me, but neither one of them could protect me when it really mattered. So why do you think you can do so much better? And why would you want to?”

Anna seemed to realize there were many questions layered in between. Her insight just managed to annoy me. “We can’t do better,” she said gently. “No one’s ever going to be able to do better than John did. But we
can
help you. We can keep you safe. And we want to. Besides,” she offered a tiny smile, “Patrick’s daughters would love to get to know their cousin.”

Patrick hadn’t said much in the conversation so far, but he looked up at that, a fierce expression I didn’t see coming. His unease now made a little more sense. He was worried about his family.

“How much do you know about what happened to her? Jason won’t tell me anything.”

Patrick gave a sharp look to Anna, and she raised her hands, deferring to him. He cleared his throat, looking at something just past my shoulder. “A few days before you were born, your mother called us in the middle of the night. She was seeing things, and from the sounds of it, she had been for a while. If we’d known, if she’d said anything, maybe we could have done something. But she kept it from us until just before the end.”

Jason had said the same thing. That my mother had seen things, the way that I’d seen things, as though my power were being channeled by her in fits and spurts.

“
She told us there was a darkness lurking in the town and that we had to swear that we would never set foot in the city ourselves. She was adamant, telling me to swea
r on the lives of my daughters.” There was a pause, and he looked up at me like he’d just said something significant.

I didn’t see where he was going with this. “Okay?”

“Patrick didn’t have any daughters,” Anna said, when Patrick faltered. “He hadn’t even met his wife back then.”

Okay, that made sense. Well, it didn’t entirely, because even if she’d tapped into my powers, I couldn’t see the future. Only the present and the past. “She knew. And you believed her,” I said.

Patrick nodded. “I knew my sister. Whatever had happened to her, she was convinced we were in danger. She said that if either of us,” he gestured towards his sister, “even so much as crossed the town line, it would be horrible. So she made us promise never to try.”

“So you left her there.” Everyone had a story about what had happened to my mother, every version had its own villain. And now there was a new pair being added to the mix. “You abandoned her when she probably needed you most.”

“The next morning, she laughed the whole thing off,” Anna said. “She tried saying it had just been a nightmare. That everything was fine.”

“Two days later, she was gone,” Patrick said tightly. “But not you.”

Anna gave her brother a sharp look. “Is that really necessary?” she demanded in an acid tone.

“Jason got the kid he wanted,” Patrick fired back, turning to face his sister. Anger and something like cinders started coming off of him in waves, absences and smudges in the air that hurt every time I looked at them. I winced, rubbing at the sudden blood rush clouding my thoughts. “And now that his plan failed, he’s hoping we’ll clean up his mess.”

I shook my head. “This was a mistake.” I started to back away. Anna might have been on board with taking me away, but Patrick definitely was not. As far as he was concerned, I was just a proxy for his Jason hate.

“No, Braden,” Anna pleaded, holding out a hand to me. “It’s not—this is just hard.” She fixed her brother with a dark look. “
On all of us.
”

“Jason Thorpe is a poisonous serpent and he deserves to have his son ripped from his arms,” Patrick spat, turning away sharply.
So that was his stake in all of this.

“Hey!” I grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back around to face me. “He’s my
father
, and you don’t get to talk about him like that!” I’d earned the right to be pissed at Jason for every little thing, but I was also the only one that probably gave a damn about him. That made it okay. Neither of them could understand the way Belle Dam twisted things. Maybe Jason was responsible for their sister’s death, but I wouldn’t believe he did it intentionally.

“Thorpe
murdered
my sister,” he snarled. “Your mother. I get to talk about him however I want. Don’t tell me you actually believe he’s the hero in all this? How long were you in Belle Dam before someone tried to kill you? How many days after that did you get admitted to the hospital?”

“And where were you when my mom died?” I spat out.

In hindsight, I deserved it. If anyone had said something like that to me about John, I would have decked them, too. I just didn’t think it would
hurt
so much.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground and Anna was standing between us. I could still feel his fist colliding with my face, the press of each knuckle into my skin. It replayed in my head over and over again.

Now my head throbbed for real, and the blind spots swirling around Patrick were even more frenetic. It was like snowflakes viewed through a photo negative, speedy black trails flaring around him.

I picked myself up off the ground and started backing away. Whatever Anna was saying to him had finally started to calm Patrick down, and now that it was over and his temper was fading, I recognized the shame in his expression.

“Braden, I’m sorry,” he started, “that was completely uncalled for.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said, shrugging. “I deserved it.”

“No you didn’t,” he said. “I’m supposed to be helping you. Not assaulting you.”

“No, really,” I said, “I’m used to it. I can’t start my day unless someone’s already tried to beat the crap out me.” I ignored the looks on both of their faces: hurt and worried and
concerned.
“Thanks for this. Meeting me. I mean, it’s nice to know that you’d come all the way here to try and help me out.”

“Braden … ” Anna said softly, but the resignation in her voice said she already understood.

I wasn’t going with them. I couldn’t. “I’d like to get to know you … ” I trailed off. Knowing my mom had family made me feel hope. There was more to me than what Belle Dam had given me. “But I have to do this first. I’m sorry.”

“Braden, don’t do this,” Patrick said. He reached out a hand.

“If I run now, then everyone else has to pay for my mistakes,” I said. “But I meant what I said. Maybe if I find my way out of this. But right now, I have responsibilities.” Who’d be there for Jason to cook dinners for? Or work to find a cure for Riley? Or referee Drew and Trey?

It was easy to run from the home I’d grown up in to come to Belle Dam. But running from Belle Dam was harder than I ever would have thought possible. It hadn’t become my home exactly. More like it was a puzzle, and I was the last piece. And once I was fitted into place, the puzzle was complete.

I couldn’t leave that behind, even if I wanted to.

fourteen

The wind picked up again on the way back as the temperature dropped significantly. Another storm was inching its way into the city. The ride back was quiet, leaving me ample time to think about what a moron I was.

I should have left while I had the chance.
Anna and Patrick might not have been perfect, but that was the smart choice. The easy choice. But something had held me back. I wasn’t the kid who ran away from his problems. There were two types of people in the world. People who ran from trouble, and people who ran towards it. Actually, there were three types of people in the world, because someone had to cause the trouble in the first place.

I definitely wasn’t the first, probably was the second, but almost wished I was the third.
“Be the villain,
” Matthias had said, before realizing just what that would entail.
“So what do you want to do?”
Drew had asked, snippy and to the point as usual.

I was already looking for him before the ferry finished docking. Drew had set up a perch on one of the metal railings that lined the pier, and he didn’t seem to care that everything was still soaked through from the rain. In fact, it looked like he’d been caught outside during the worst of it. He looked more scowly than normal, which meant that “bonding with Trey” had gone over more like “advanced trig without a calculator.”

“I hope you’re not trying to get me home in time for curfew,” I called out as I approached, shoving my hands into my pockets. “And since when do you take orders from Trey, anyway?”

Drew rolled his eyes and hopped down off the railing. “You got big plans tonight, manpain? Got some epic sulking to do while you stare longingly out a window? Guess again.” He cuffed me on the back of the head, and added, “Also, fuck you. But I got to hang up on Gentry four times before he managed to spit out enough to get me here. I should thank you for that.”

I rubbed my head and glared. “Dick.”

“Stop flirting, you’re giving me butterflies,” Drew said absently, awkwardly texting with a phone that looked positively doll-sized in his too-big hands.

“Is that Trey?” I asked, trying to peer over and catch a glimpse of the screen.

Drew raised his hand again, only this time it was a fist he waved at me. “Personal space, moron.”

“You forgot to take your Midol, didn’t you?” I said sympathetically. “Well, too bad, because we don’t have time for stops.” I clapped him on the shoulder and then started walking away before he decided to retaliate. “Come on, we haven’t got all night.”

“Did someone spike your sippy cup? Because you’re extra sassy tonight,” Drew fired back. Despite the fact that I was walking fast, Drew’s long legs meant he didn’t have to struggle to keep up.

“I just figured a few things out, that’s all,” I said. “And now we need to go. I need to sneak onto the Lansing property, and I need
you
to help me not get caught.”

“What’s the rush, little boy? Afraid Prince Charming
won’t be waiting patiently for you until tomorrow?”

I spotted Drew’s motorcycle parked on the sidewalk and changed directions to head towards it. “Who said anything about going to the house? We’re going into the woods.”

His curiosity was piqued. “Oh?”

I nodded. “Going to see a woman about an eye exam.”

Everything was fine one moment, and the next … not. There was an extra bite to the wind, an extra layer the darkness. Drew felt it too, he grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me to a stop. We were fifteen, maybe twenty feet from his bike, and alone underneath one of the buzzing parking lot lights.

With the ferry docked, the crew had followed me off and gone home for the night. The parking lot was a forgotten field, the lights only managing to illuminate just how alone we were. But still, I could feel something. Drew could feel it too.

I started to spin around to check all the angles, but Drew wouldn’t let me go. “Something’s coming,” he growled.

The first drop of rain struck down the moment I felt him appear like a mirage forming at the edge of my vision. He was wispy around the edges, smudged into the landscape around him like a spirit conjured out of the earth at a pagan rite. He stood with one of the lot lights behind him, and the halo around him washed out the features of his face. But I knew it was Ben.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said under my breath.

“Don’t worry,” he called out, smug and fevered. “I learned my lesson last time. Quick and fast. Especially now that there’s no one to interrupt.”

“Blind
and
stupid,” Drew responded, moving to stand in front of me. “Which idiot are you working for?”

“Drew, don’t,” I said urgently, grabbing at his arm and trying to move around him. But the Shifter wasn’t having any of that. Every time I tried to move, he was already blocking my way and crowding into my space. His eyes locked on Ben, and I
felt
his body tighten, like I had the day when he’d threatened Jason.

I didn’t flinch. I was proud of myself for that. “It took you long enough,” I called back to the ghost. I wasn’t nervous or scared. Because of all the things I’ve faced down in the last few months, the ghost with a grudge was pretty much near the bottom. If this was where my story ended, I’d gotten off easy. Nothing surprised me anymore.

Ben stepped forward, leaving behind the corona of light that bled out his features. Beside me, I felt Drew shudder.

“
Da
d
?” he whispered, confusion and heartbreak making his voice tremble.

Well, fuck.

fifteen

“What do you mean,
Da
d
?” I demanded.

But it was like Drew couldn’t hear me. Even Ben exercised his right not to open his mouth and make some stupid comment. The only response I got was from the storm, which continued to whip the winds up around us and open up into a deluge.

“
What do you mean, Da
d
?” I shouted. Because this … I didn’t know what to do with this. Jason had killed Drew’s father. And now, it seemed like Drew’s father wanted to do the poetic thing and kill Jason’s son.
That
was what Matthias was talking about the last time. He’d known who Ben was all along, and never said a word.

“I told you Ben was short for something,” the ghost said, sharing a smile with me. Not Ben.
Bennett.

I should have seen it coming. Ben had been too eager to help, too knowledgeable about what was going on in Belle Dam. About the players involved. Now I knew why. He’d worked with Jason and Catherine, and they’d betrayed him in this quest for power. Matthias had used
Drew
to make Ben back down last time, threatening the life of his son.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ben added, “but the demon didn’t quite understand the rules. There must always be an Armstrong in Belle Dam. The boy is as safe as houses.”

“What are you talking about?” Drew asked, once he found his voice.

“Do you really think he won’t come after Drew?” I demanded. “He’s a demon. They can’t be trusted. He’ll do it just to spite you, whatever your ‘rules’ say.”

“Trusted? No. But bought … ?” Ben’s smile grew even wider.

Drew turned to me. He looked … lost. I’d never seen a picture of Drew when he was a little kid, but now I knew I’d recognize him anywhere. He probably looked lost like this, vulnerable and sad. Drew’s mouth opened, and it took a second for him to force the words out. “You know him? He’s come after you before?”

I nodded. “He’s the guy who gave me the information about Grazia.” A girl I’d never met before Lucien had attacked her, only a victim of his rage because her name was Italian for Grace. “He pretended he was friends with Riley, then he showed up at the hospital and took some of my blood.” The simplest explanation seemed best. “He almost
killed me with it.”

“Like a poppet, or a voodoo doll,” Drew said faintly. “But he’d need a witch to prepare it … ” he shifted his
stance, back to facing his father. “Why would you do this?
How
could you do this?”

Being chastised by his son didn’t affect Ben. “Do what? Make Jason pay? Better question, why am I doing your job? You know it wasn’t an accident. You knew who was responsible. Are you really that much of a coward that you’d suck up to them now?”

It was the wrong approach to take. Drew didn’t do well with
anyone
telling him what to do, let alone his deadbeat father. He shifted his feet just slightly, putting himself back into a fighting stance, and offered a feral grin. “Course not, but I’ve been thinking about asking good old Jason to adopt me anyway. Might even start calling him Pop. What do you think?”

It was almost easy to see the relationship the two would have had, had Bennett lived. Hard, demanding, and a constant push and pushback. But there wasn’t twenty years of history to soften the exchange, and for whatever reason, Drew was ignoring the fact that it was his
father
across from us and treated him just like any other opponent. And Drew had never met an enemy he didn’t like to bait with every low blow he could summon up.

“You’re going to want to stand down, son,” Ben tried, even though he looked no more than maybe a year older than Drew. But it was there in his voice, the confidence of someone well beyond their years. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Can’t hurt me, if all your crazy talk is true. I’m the only Armstrong in Belle Dam.”

“Can’t
kill
you,” Ben said in almost exact same tone. “Didn’t say anything about hurting you.”

The two of them tried staring the other down. A long moment passed before Drew finally lowered his head and looked away. “Just give me a second,” he said, voice dropping.

“Take a minute if you need it,” Ben said magnanimously.

I wanted to feel surprised, but I didn’t. Not really. “I get it,” I said softly. “It’s fine.” I didn’t blame him. This wasn’t his fight, and I was surprised he’d stuck around as long as he had.

Drew peeled himself out of the shirt he was wearing and handed it to me. It was already soaked through, so the timing didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also, it weighed like twenty pounds. “You … want me to have your shirt?” I asked. As parting gifts went, it defied understanding. When a guy gave someone their letter jacket, it had a meaning. But what did a blue henley imply? Was it a promise to go steady at the local Old Navy?

He rolled his eyes. “Just hold onto it.” And then he turned back to his father. “Someone bought that shirt for me, I don’t want it to get ruined. You’re going to beat the shit out of me? You’d better get started.” Like it was any other bully on the playground, Drew started stalking towards his father, hands clenched into fists. “But just to warn you, Mom date
d a lot of assholes while I was growing up. I know how to take a beating.”

Ben’s face darkened.

“She said Jason was better in bed than you, too. In the interest of fatherly loyalty and all.”

As much as the idea of Jason having a sex life made me want to cringe, the low blow caught me off guard and I barked out a laugh. This definitely wasn’t the time for laughing, but that was Drew. Always getting an inappropriate reaction out of me.

I’d seen Drew fight demons before, shifting between animal forms from one second to the next, capitalizing on the strengths of one even as he shifted into another. I’d never actually seen him go for a straight-up fight in his human form, though.

And I definitely had never seen him get his ass kicked so easily.

Drew was fast, but his father was faster. Every lunge, every jab, every attempt at offense was easily and effortlessly dismantled. It wasn’t like the last time I’d seen Ben, when he’d gone out of his way to make it as painful as possible. With Drew, Ben showed mercy, but it didn’t strike me as any sort of fatherly concern. The smirk on his face only got wider the more Drew tried, and failed, to even get a single hit in.

Drew dropped to the ground, a busted lip smearing red all down his chin. Ben stood over him, dead eyes as disturbing as any demon’s, and grabbed his hand. He snapped Drew’s index finger like it was a butterfly’s wing, his eyes eagerly watching the reaction in his son. Drew tried not to howl, choking off his yell almost as soon as it started, but he didn’t have enough in him to pull away.

“Stop it,” I demanded, running forward. Ben looked over at me, and without breaking my gaze, proceded to snap another finger, like a child slowly and deliberately disobeying. Or like a cat continuing to scratch at the walls even after being yelled at. Staring, and dragging claws against the wall slowly and insolently. The unspoken “fuck you” was obvious. Ben didn’t take orders from me, and if he had to beat his kid bloody to prove it to me, he would. And stare at me with those blank, empty eyes as he did it.

“He’ll heal.” Ben offered, staring down at his son. “That’s part of the fun. You can decimate him all afternoon, let him shift a few times, and he’s nearly as good as new. Then you can start all over again.”

“He’s your son! Doesn’t that matter to you?”

Ben looked down at the body lying there in front of him. Still, there wasn’t the slightest bit of remorse on his face. There wasn’t anything human in it at all. He shrugged, smirking. “Not really, no.” Ben raised his hand, again, and I ran for him.

Stupid move. Stupid,
stupid,
move. I went flying back before I even got close to him. I flipped, and rolled, and somewhere along the way, I slammed into the concrete base of one of the parking lot lights, right against my kidneys. I cried out, grabbing at my back once I finally stopped moving. It was like a sharp knife to the organ, but it lessened just a bit every time I took a breath. I just had to wait it out.

“I still have your blood,” he said, jiggling a little vial in front of me.

“Just let him get it off his chest,” Drew said weakly, from a few feet away. He turned his head and looked at me, though for once he didn’t try to immediately get back up. “He hits like a girl anyway.” Drew raised his voice, “Right,
Mom
?”

“
You have some mouth on you,” Ben said, his face screwed up in the kind of hatred and loathing I’d come to expect fr
om demons, but not someone that used to be human. Then again, Hannah the princess Barbie bus-pusher had been a
sociopath, too. Maybe that was why Grace had chosen them.

The wind died to a crawl and the storm let up in stages until it was nothing but rogue drops of rain escaping the sky.

“Bennett Amadeus Armstrong!” Trey’s voice rang out from behind me. He strode across the parking lot like he was the biggest badass in the state, an undercurrent in his voice causing goosebumps to break out on my arms.
Trey was here?

The first step in banishing a ghost was to invoke his or her name. The name was important, because knowing something’s name gave you power over it. But only a witch could banish a ghost—and Trey might have had it in his blood, but he’d never been trained to use it. So what was he thinking?

I met Drew’s eyes from across the lot. “Amadeus?” we mouthed at each other. At Trey’s intrusion, Ben had let his attention be dragged away from his son. When he started walking towards Trey, I began inching towards Drew.

Ben went silently still, but it only lasted a moment. A fleeting glimpse of surprise flickered across his face, like he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Something’s wrong. What’s Trey trying to prove?

“That’s not my name,” Ben said, his smile widening as his body relaxed. “Next time, double-check your sources.”

“Only Trey would come to the rescue with the
wrong goddamn name,
” Drew snarled into the grass, beating his fist into the dirt.

It was almost funny. But then I remembered that Ben was a sociopath and I was probably going to die. So it became even
funnier.

Trey looked down at me, annoyed. The hysterical laughter probably wasn’t helping. “Of course it’s not his middle name, but it got your attention, didn’t it?” The other two were silent for a moment, and I only started laughing harder once I realized that
Trey had made a joke.

Trey came to the rescue with the wrong goddamn name, and he only did it to be a dick.
It was like Drew, Trey, and I had somehow started sharing one single sense of humor, and it was obnoxious, irritating, and absolutely fucking hysterical.

“Bennett Andrew Armstrong,” Trey said, more formally this time. The reaction in Ben was immediate. His head
whipped
around to stare at Trey, and there was fear in his eyes. My laughter died out like a bike skidding to a stop. A few laughs still escaped, but they were humorless bubbles sneaking out minutes too late.
Something
was wrong. The goosebumps I had had before were a full-fledged panic attack surging through my body like a lightning storm.

Normal people can’t banish ghosts,
I thought.
And
Trey isn’t a witch.
And yet, when Trey held out his hand and a pair of golden flames sprang into existence above his palm, I wasn’t surprised. The flames hovered there, reflecting in his eyes so that it looked as though his eyes were glowing much like mine had.

He didn’t go through the ritual the way Elle did. He didn’t do
anything
like she did. The air pressure compacted into a dome around us, careening in so quickly that my ears popped. A low rumble started to build in Drew’s chest, and his lips peeled in a growl.

My teeth rattled, and I was pretty sure the filling I’d gotten when I was fifteen was about to unfill itself right out of my mouth. The wind was a howl, an angry mistress that writhed and struggled against Trey’s will, but still did as she was commanded. Overcast skies turned dark with angry intent, a crackle and rumble of thunder preceding a new storm.

The sky ignited into lightning and a blinding sheet of water that instantly washed out the world outside the dome. Beneath us, the ground shook just enough for the loose gravel to shimmy and shake like Mexican jumping beans. My skin was electric, an entire menagerie of goosebumps swarming over my skin until I could feel each individual hair on my body stand at attention.

Trey was using magic, and he was like a pro.

“I banish you.” Three words. Three simple words, and the world rushed to obey. I felt a tightening in my chest, a compression and familiarity of something that had once been second nature. I could
feel
it in the air. Maybe for the first time since the lighthouse. Magic. A
lot
of magic.

This wasn’t ordinary power. And it wasn’t the kind of power a boy like Trey could have harnessed in an afternoon. My mind cataloged all the signs, even though I already knew what it all meant. I saw the pieces laid out in front of me, and no matter how much I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening, more evidence became filed away.

Trey had magic. Trey had a
lot
of magic, maybe more than me. And what was more important, he had the kind of control that Jason and Catherine did—control that came with decades of effort. I couldn’t have handled it. Every time I tried before nearly killed me. But Trey was
glowing.
Not literally, but it was like the magic was feeding him and in some way that he’d always been malnourished, but now he was whole. The one glaring imperfection had been smoothed away and now he was
complete and
right.