comment had sounded.
“No, ma’am. Is Isaac home?” I asked.
“He’s in the basement.” She stepped aside so we could come in. “Shoes off. I just washed the floors.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We slid out of our sneakers and hurried downstairs.
Isaac took the news of Reed’s visit about as well as I had expected, although I hadn’t anticipated his face would turn the shade of a dark red cherry. Sadly, it made me think of the candy Reed had. I kept that thought to myself because Isaac and Kaylee were already talking crazy.
Kaylee had the brilliant idea of me wearing full-body armor. I thought I was going to have to steal her car keys and run from both of them. Luckily, body armor isn’t made out of iron, so her suggestion was out. Isaac’s, as ridiculous as it was, was actually doable if I were five.
“Isaac, I am not going to wear my clothes inside out,” I said, exasperated.
That was his solution to finding out that iron bothered Reed about as much as a fly bothered a horse. Supposedly, faeries couldn’t see humans when they wore their outfits with the tags on the outside. Isaac didn’t find me in the least bit funny when I suggested it wasn’t that a faerie couldn’t see a person who wore their clothes inside out, but that said faerie didn’t like no-name brands.
Isaac paced zigzags around his dungeon-like room while I flipped through the book on Fae. Kaylee stared into space, twisting and untwisting the necklace I’d given her. She did her best thinking when she zoned out like that.
“What if she’s never alone?” Kaylee asked.
Isaac looked past me to Kaylee as if I wasn’t there. “That could work.”
Kaylee jumped up from the corner of the bed where she’d been sitting. “We’ll take shifts. I’m sure Josh will help us.”
Isaac crossed the room to his dresser and picked up a small notepad as if he was going to write out a schedule right then and there.
As much as I loved my friends, no way did I want them around twenty-four seven for the rest of my life. “Guys, my dad’s not going to let Isaac or Josh sleep over at my house.” Kaylee opened her mouth, and I knew she was going to suggest she and I take turns sleeping over at each other’s houses. I quickly added, “How long do you think it will take our parents to tell us we need to sleep in our own beds?”
When we were nine, the answer to that question was eight days.
Silence followed. Isaac continued to pace. I continued to read. Kaylee plopped back down on the bed and resumed staring at nothing in particular.
“Isaac, why don’t you cast one of your protection thingies?” Kaylee asked.
“I can’t put a ward on the entire town,” Isaac replied. “Maybe there’s an herb that repels the Fae.”
“I see that working as well as the iron bracelets,” I retorted. I’d taken the chains off as soon as I’d finished telling Isaac about Reed’s visit.
Kaylee’s hands fell to her side as if she’d given up. “How did you get rid of him the last time?”
Isaac rubbed his temple. “After several days spent trying to get the better of the other and engaging in a fight that quickly became apparent neither would win, we came to an agreement.”
My gaze went to the smooth crescent-shaped line below his eye. “Your scars are from Reed, aren’t they?” Reed’s faerie magic would explain why the cuts hadn’t healed on their own. “Heather was the ex you’d been protecting.”
Isaac nodded. “I didn’t get my shield up fast enough. Two of his daggers got through.”
As part of my magical training, I had sparred with Isaac. He had incredible reflexes. Reed’s had to have been just as impressive for him to throw a dagger—let alone two—with speeds greater than Isaac’s ability to put up a shield.
“Can’t we skip past the battle and strike up a deal?” she asked.
“He tricked Madison into eating that candy. He’s already one up on us. No way is he going to make a deal. Besides, he’s using her to get back at me, and I don’t have anything else Reed wants that I didn’t already give him.”
Several minutes passed.
“Kaylee may have been on to something with her first idea,” Isaac said, breaking the quiet.
“I’m not wearing body armor.”
Isaac dropped to his knees and rummaged through a pile of musty old books in his closet. “Not that one. The idea about not leaving you alone. Only, what if we didn’t have to actually be with you for you to be with us?”
“What?” Kaylee and I replied.
He sat on the edge of the bed, a large book in his lap. Kaylee and I scooted closer.
“What is that?” Kaylee asked.
“My grandfather’s grimoire. It’s a collection of spells he mastered. There was this one I had asked him about.” Isaac didn’t finish his thought. Instead he searched the discolored pages, hastily flipping through them. “Here it is.”
“A unity spell?” I inquired.
“It binds one person to another.”
“Isn’t that what our hemp bracelets do?” Kaylee grabbed her wrist as she spoke.
Isaac shook his head. “That links our thoughts, giving us the ability to call each other without a phone. This spell literally binds a person’s being to someone else. It’s like handcuffing your wrist to something solid.”
“So it would anchor me to our realm,” I said.
The corner of Isaac’s mouth quirked upward into a lopsided grin. “Exactly. We could reverse the spell once Reed is back in his realm. You game?”
“A magical ball and chain,” Kaylee quipped with a giggle.
Isaac pinned her with a glare that clearly said,
My “being,” as Isaac called it, had to be the same thing as my aura. I’d be tethering my life force to Isaac. Funny how I’d never really given much thought to having an aura in the first place or how a part of me that I couldn’t see or touch could be taken away bit by bit by something as beautiful and alluring as Reed.
And the fact that I called the thing that wanted to steal me away from my home “beautiful” and “alluring” told me how much I needed something tying me to my world.
“I’m game.” Heaving out a breath, I asked, “What do we have to do?”
An hour later we were sitting in a circle on the cold stone floor in Isaac’s room. Josh had joined the party to act as a second witness, Kaylee being the first. A single bright white candle with Isaac’s name and mine etched into the wax stood like a lone soldier next to a ceramic bowl in the center of our circle. In the bowl were a few strands of my hair, bloodroot, myrrh, dirt from a crossroad, and a scrap piece of notebook paper on which I’d written the words to the spell.
“Why is there dirt in every spell we cast?” I asked.
“Crossroad dirt,” Josh corrected. “The veil between worlds is the thinnest at a crossroad. Many spells feed off the power that collects there.”
Isaac and I sat across from each other, my hands in his and our powers gently pressing against each other’s. The written portion of the spell was in Nordic. To be honest, none of us really knew what it said, but Isaac trusted his grandfather, and I trusted him. The verbal portion was easy enough to remember and read more like wedding vows than a spell.
I pushed a small amount of magic out and lit the candle. Next I said, “I, Madison Elizabeth Riley, do hereby willingly and completely entrust my spirit to Isaac James Addington.”
“I, Isaac James Addington, do hereby promise to hold and guard Madison Elizabeth Riley’s spirit as if it were my own.”
