“You know, this would be a lot
easier,” Heather started, raising her voice to get Sharon's
attention, “if I had a PHONE!”
Sharon wiped her ear, thinking
that Heather might have left some spittle during her tirade. They'd
gotten turned around in Heathrow Airport, looking for a gate to a
connecting flight to Edinburgh. Sharon started walking through the
crowded terminal, and tried to ignore the grumbling coming from
Heather behind her.
They finally reached the gate
almost an hour after landing, and Sharon closed her eyes. She
concentrated on her hand and focused her magic, willing two flight
vouchers into existence. The took a deep breath and let it out,
opening her eyes.
Heather stared at her. “I felt
magic. Did you do something?”
Sharon held up the flight
vouchers, and walked forward to the airline counter.
After several minutes of checking
computers, she and Heather held tickets on the next flight out, in
another two hours.
Heather slumped in a seat in the
waiting area and crossed her legs and arms. Her foot moved back and
forth like a pendulum, a blatant sign she was upset. Sharon sat
beside her and watched Heather's foot bounce.
“I need to call my aunt and
tell her I'm okay.”
“You said she did a spell.
She'll know you're okay.”
“I need to have her smooth over
our disappearance, remember?”
Sharon took a deep breath and
huffed. “Fine, hand me your phone.”
Heather pulled the rock shaped
like a phone out of her pack and handed it to Sharon.
Sharon reached into her backpack
with the phone, and held it there as she concentrated. When she felt
the smooth glass on the face, she took her hand back out of the bag.
She looked at the picture of herself with a strand of drool and hit
the delete button on the screen.
“Hey!” Heather tried to grab
the phone, but Sharon pushed her back and held the phone away. As
the first picture disappeared, another one took its place. This one
had softer light, apparently taken without flash. Sharon hit delete
again, dodging Heather's frantic attempts to grab the phone.
They both stood, Heather
wrestling for the phone until Sharon pointed a clawed finger into
Heather's sternum and pushed the witch back. “If you want your
phone back, you'll let me see the rest.”
Heather swallowed. “Fine.”
Sharon scrolled to the next
picture, this one of her looking out of the window of the plane
before the flight took off, earlier in the day. She didn't see
anything wrong with that, and scrolled to the next: Sharon checking
in at the gate in San Francisco. She was going back in time. Next
was Sharon at the metal detectors, then Sharon as she left school.
Next came Diana Jean Morgan at Lanebrook Preparatory Academy, talking
to the rest of the Fierce Four; Diana at lunch with Erin, the girl
she'd saved from Chelsea; Diana with her family at the workshop for
troubled teens.
“Have you been stalking me?”
Heather took a shaky breath and
let it out. “It's not like that. It's... You don't know how big a
deal you are in my world. The covens are going apeshit over
you... I mean, it's like stories the elders talk about when the
Beatles came to America. It's like those stories where a movie icon
drops in on a small town-”
“So... you're a paparazzi for
the witches?”
“Please don't hate me.”
Sharon rolled her eyes and tossed
the phone to Heather, who caught it one-handed. They sat down again,
Sharon crossing her arms and noticing a man sitting across from them
who was gawking at her open-mouthed. His tweed suit seemed tired, as
though he'd been travelling in it for days. She narrowed her eyes at
the man. “What?”
He closed his mouth. “I
couldn't help but overhear.” His British accent was divine to
Sharon's ear. “The topic of witches, and what might interest them
so, is quite intriguing.”
A slight smell of sulfur wafted
toward the girls. Heather put her hand on Sharon's arm and leaned in
to whisper. “He's a demon.”
Sharon felt her pulse catch up to
Heather's, and she swallowed. She turned back to Heather. “What do
we do?”
“Use Glamour,” Heather
whispered back. “Make him think he's gone blind or something.”
“I don't know how,” Sharon
whispered back. Then she got an idea. She could do a lot worse than
make him think he was blind. A demon's eyes were just a
thing, like a cell phone. She stood and approached the demon.
Looking wary, he stood to face
her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I
wish you hadn't overheard that, demon.”
He raised an eyebrow, then his
lip curled into a small grin. “A bold one, you are. Knowing and
challenging? Not many are so naïve. You are not fallen, but you
glimmer... like-”
“Look, buddy. Take your
gibberish someplace else, unless you want a permanent injury,”
Sharon said, willing herself not to choke on her own fear. She
wasn't sure what a demon could do to her, but Heather was scared; so
her protective instincts went into overdrive. The lioness protecting
her cub from a jackal. Her hands sprouted claws without her
thinking, and she decided to let them show.
He leaned back, holding his chin
in contemplation as his eyes snaking over her as though she stood
naked in front of him. “Fascinating.”
“Leave,” Sharon said,
pointing a claw away from the gate. “Now.”
The demon shrugged, staring her
down. “Or what?”
Sharon focused, blocking out the
world and the people around them with Glamour. She focused on the
being in front of her. For a flash, she saw him as reptilian, with a
snake's head, a man's torso, a lizard's tail and legs that were
half-man, half dinosaur. She concentrated, wanting him to be as
harmless as possible. Believing. A moment later, a small
white rabbit fell to the ground where the demon had been.
“Um, I wouldn't have done that
if I were you,” Heather gasped. “He's gonna be royally pissed
when that wears off.”
She turned to Heather. “You
need to be more careful what you say in public.”
Heather's mouth dropped open.
“But it was you-”
“You want me to let you tag
along or not?”
Heather's mouth closed.
“That's what I thought.”
Sharon sat back down and picked up a magazine that hadn't been on the
seat a second ago. She started thumbing through the pages, abusing
them in her frustration before slapping the magazine back on the
seat.
They watched the rabbit hop onto
the seat where his coat and briefcase sat.
Heather cleared her throat. “I
don't think I've ever heard of a demon being so...”
“Cute?” Sharon asked,
crossing her arms.
Heather laughed.
Sharon turned to stare at
Heather. “You need to stop taking candid pictures of me. It creeps
me out.”
Heather mumbled something under
her breath.
Sharon glared at the witch, her
teeth gritted. “Agreed?”
Heather nodded, punching up the
contact for her aunt and dialing. Sharon could hear the phone ring
and the click as the connection went through. The sounds of laughter
and shushing came from the phone before a woman's voice greeted them.
“I'm glad she gave you the
phone back dear.”
“Hi Aunt Jean. We landed
safely, as if you didn't know already.”
“We've been watching through
the crystal ball, and scrying for anything on your next flight.
There's nothing so far, just that demon bunny.” Laughter filled
the background. “Oh, Esmerelda says 'hi'. She's making popcorn
right now.”
Heather's jaw dropped.
Sharon heard more laughter in the
background, and what sounded like a few girls chanting “stone
rhymes with phone!”
“I've gotta go,” Heather
said, clicking the End button.
“Who's Esmerelda?” Sharon
asked.
Heather put her phone in her
backpack and looked like she was busy searching for something.
“She's a friend of the family.”
“It sounded like they were
having a party.”
Heather pulled out a rosary with
a cross, and placed it carefully over her head. The bunny across
from them jumped down and scampered away.
Sharon watched the rabbit,
thinking that showing the stupid demon a rosary would have been so
much easier than confronting him. Then she thought about the
laughing and stuff she'd heard on the phone. “Why would they be
having a party?”
Heather glared. “Probably
enjoying a nice relaxing day without me around. Can we talk about
what you plan to do when we get to Scotland?”
Sharon sighed and decided to let
the question of what the witches were doing drop. “I was thinking
we'd rent a car. I was going to ask around about where the tartan
was from. But since you bragged about being able to use magic...”
Heather stared out the windows of
the terminal. A burst of rain hit the glass, the patter of raindrops
tapping like frenetic Morse code.
“I could use your tartan as a
kind of homing device,” Heather said, staring at the rain.
Sharon slumped and rested her
head on the back of the seat, trying to relax and not think about the
little details like not having a driver's license yet. She hadn't
needed one until now. Her stomach churned, wondering what would
happen when they finally found her human counterpart. In a few
hours, they'd find the real Diana, and rescue her. She wasn't sure
how they'd do it. She just knew that it had to be done.
The flight to Edinburgh took
almost no time at all compared to the fight from California. Sharon
and Heather stood at the exit of the terminal, watching the
mid-morning airport traffic drive by through a light misting rain. A
parking structure across from them displayed a large “Welcome to
Edinburgh” sign. The air traffic control tower shaped like an
hourglass seemed to say “don't stay too long.”
Sharon stared at the cars going
by, the drivers on the right side of the vehicles. “I don't think I
can drive here. I forgot they drive on the left. I barely passed
Driver's Ed on the right side of the road.”
Heather watched the traffic for a
minute, then turned to Sharon. “Okay, let me take care of this.
Hand me the tartan.”
Sharon pulled the cloth from her
backpack and handed it over to Heather.
Heather mumbled something over
it, and put it in her pocket. She stood there with her eyes closed,
breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth,
meditation-style.
Sharon watched, growing more
impatient by the minute. She was about to say something when
Heather's eyes popped open.
“Come with me,” Heather said,
straightening her backpack. “We have a bus to catch.”
An hour bus ride later, they
found themselves at an outdoor bus stop in the town of Stirling.
They waved goodbye to the kind old man from the bus who'd told them
how to find the McDonald's up the street, and settled in with their
bags of food to wait for Heather's spell to tell them what to do
next.
“The people here are really
nice,” Heather said, opening her bag.
They heard thunder in the
distance. The misty air hung heavy with the smell of diesel fumes
from cars and buses.
“How much longer?” Sharon
asked before chomping down on her cheeseburger.
Heather shrugged and finished
chewing. “It doesn't work that way. I just get a feeling for which
way we're supposed to go. I have no idea how far away she is, just
which direction.”
“So which direction is she?”
Heather pointed.
“There's no road that way.”
Sharon started to worry about where they'd stay for the night. She
hadn't thought this out at all. She tried not to let the butterflies
in her stomach keep her from eating. She had a feeling she'd need
all the energy she could get to deal with Diana and the Fae.
Heather jumped up as a bus rolled
up, shoving her half-eaten burger in the bag. “This is our bus!”
Sharon got up and followed,
wondering where this next bus would take them. She already felt
hopelessly lost.
They took seats on the upper
level of the double-decker bus, and settled in. The upper level only
had a dozen other people, so it was practically deserted. Sharon and
Heather finished their burgers and watched through the side windows
as the bus navigated its way through narrow streets filled with cars
parked parallel on the sidewalks.
The bus seemed to stop almost
every minute, and each time Heather would stand and hover before
shaking her head and sitting back down. Soon enough, the narrow
old-world streets gave way to newer buildings and then country road.
The rain let up as they went
through a roundabout at the end of the city. Rain and roundabouts
seemed to be everywhere in Scotland. Sharon watched as they passed
sign after sign with “A84” at the top. She guessed that meant
they were on highway A84, and tried to keep that in mind for the trip
back. Maybe she could grab a map when they got off the bus.
They passed a beautiful little
church, and more country road before entering the small town of Doune
to make more stops. Heather got up again at each one, hovering
before sitting back down.
Heather looked out the window,
scanning the buildings as the bus started moving again. “She was
here recently.”
Sharon wanted to claw something.
Her nerves felt frayed. The bus rolled through more miles of
countryside, finally reaching the town of Callander after almost
three dozen stops.
Heather stood, undecided for a
second before rushing to get off the bus. Sharon was barely able to
keep up as Heather ran to another bus which was a hundred yards away.
When they reached it, Heather knocked on the door. The driver
opened it and let them in, closing it behind them to keep the drizzle
out.
Heather looked back at Sharon.
“Do you have the tickets?”
Sharon put her hand in her pocket
and focused, believing two tickets into existence. She handed them
to the driver.
His eyebrows raised. “This is
certainly the scenic route to Loch Ness,” the driver said. He had
kind eyes and a gaunt figure that reminded Sharon of Abraham Lincoln.
Sharon shrugged. “We're just
exploring.”
“Americans?” he asked.
Sharon nodded. “I was born here
though.”
The driver chatted with them for
a while about the glory of returning to the highlands before Sharon
was able to politely extricate herself and join Heather at the back
of the bus.
As the bus started moving, Sharon
turned to Heather. “Did you get a feeling there too?”
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