Roots Back Home Pt. 1

This week's short story will be split into two, one today, one tomorrow night! I just haven't had time to edit both parts and I wanted to get this out (a little late) on time! This is a really fun style for me and I love the challenge of world building in a story that's en media res (kind of). The next part should be up in 24 hours, thanks so much for your patience!

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Katie’s crying over Alex’ bedside, hands wrapped tight around his, veins pushing against her skin. Too thin, too thin. Her hair is long again but not sleek like Ingrid remembers it, pinched up into a beanie Ingrid recognizes as a child’s. As Alex’s.

“They say,” Katie says, head still bowed over her son, “that he might never wake up. No conclusive tests. No sign. No way to know.” She doesn’t look at her sister, eyes sightless on the smooth white sheets hiding the bruises on Alex’ body. “As far as they can tell, it was spell splash. Completely unintentional, a byproduct of someone else’s battle. It’s horrible, but I wish it was a curse. If it was a curse, they could do something, but…” She laughs. “Splash can be anything. Do anything. Nothing to do about splash.”

Ingrid stands in the doorway, just shy of the sea salt treated rope lying across the threshold. She’s come in too quickly from outside and hasn’t had a chance to cleanse herself. She doesn’t want to contaminate Alex’ room with more wild magic when she can sense the battle happening in his chest from here. “When?”

“Two months ago,” Katie says. She finally looks up and, with the moon shining through the window at her back, her eyes look black. “Dan had the kids in downtown.”

“Then it wasn’t his fault,” Ingrid says. Her hands tingle with power, sparks snapping against her palms. She makes a fist. “Downtown’s a neutral zone.”

Her sister grins and that looks black too. “See, that’s why I called you, Ingrid. Dan, the police, the doctors…they keep assuring me it was no one’s fault. That sometimes magic fights happen and people are in the wrong spot. You show up after three years of radio silence and the first thing you do is look for someone else to blame.”

Ingrid releases the breath she was holding and lets the air hiss through her teeth. “You blaming me, sis?” 

“Yes,” Katie says. Simple. Honest. Raw. “And myself, to be honest. Two months, Ingrid, and their magic is still in my little boy.”

Ingrid nods, accepting that. It’s not their way to leave something like this blameless, something unfinished and unbalanced. Something not natural. “Not right.”

“No, it’s not.” She leans back in her chair, letting the light from the monitors and the hallway catch on her face. Katie is beautiful with flat cheekbones, a wide nose, and eyes slanting up towards her eyebrows. “We’re not kids anymore, Ingrid. Our House still stands. You ready?”

Ingrid’s covered in dirt from three different countries, cheeks round and burned from suns far away, feet still not finding the right way to root into the ground she used to be in. There are no words for what she’s come here to do, no words she can offer Katie, no words to prove she means what she says.

So she lifts her chin and pulls the knife she carries at the small of her back. It’s a wicked edge, serrated on one side, efficient on the other, worn leather cushioning the grip just enough so her hands don’t slip along its body. The charge nurse, stationed at the desk about twenty feet from Ingrid, gasps and stands, hands already floundering for the phone.

“Miss, you can’t have--!”

Ingrid slashes a wound across her left palm, deep enough that the blood falls from her hand like a stream. It splashes against the ground and, with each drop, the air rings with power. It ripples outwards, causes the electronics to flicker, and sparks along the hospital’s wards, gold and blue and white. Ingrid feels her roots finally take, plunging down and down into the earth until she reaches the ley line that tastes like her childhood.

I’m here, her power whispers. She feels her message pulse through the land, lapping at each spark of magic attached to the ley line. She breathes out and the city breathes with her. I’m coming.

“Welcome home, Ingrid,” Katie says from inside the room. The brand on her bare arm is glowing, the waxing moon the same gold as the waning moon burned into Ingrid’s thigh.

The sisters, uncaring of the hospital staff racing towards them, throw back their heads and laugh.

********************

The Arrington family is older than the mayor’s mansion, older than the historic library, older than the road that winds around Mt. Pilar and into the outskirts of the city. They’re a legacy of witches and sorcerers, demon spouses and Underhill hostages, sharp teeth and human hands.

The wild west of those first, settling days suited them fine. They built covens, monarchies, empires around the crossroads they urged their ancestral home from. They welcomed witches from all over the world to share in their prosperity, to feed it. If some of those newcomers decided to rise up, that was fine. 

The only way to be strong is to be the last one standing.

Dynasties don’t last. That’s a fact her family wasn’t prepared for and that’s the fact that led to their world shattering around their ears. Ingrid’s over crying for her parents, her brothers, her cousins and aunts and uncles. They knew the cost of the magics they sought to invoke and they never thought to compensate for the vulnerability casting would bring them.

Ingrid doesn’t blame the other covens for leaping when their guard was down. She doesn’t.

But. The ashes of their House are barely two decades old and they’ve all forgotten what it’s like to have an Arrington breathing down their necks.

That she can and will blame them for all she likes.

******************************************

The hospital staff can’t stop Ingrid as she winds her way out of the labyrinth of corridors. She’s the Head of the Arrington House now and the law is on her side. It’s within her rights to warn the city of what’s to come, of the fate that awaits whoever it was who crossed a witch of her line.

“It was an accident,” one doctor says. His hair is graying, and she can see the little glow of magic in him, white and shining with healing energy. “A feud got out of hand—”

“No one came forward,” she says. She steps onto the escalator and is patient enough to wait for it to carry her down to the ground floor rather than walking down them. “All those magics in my nephew and no one came forward to untangle them. Did they?”

The doctor stares at her. “I—no. But they might not have even known that their spells splashed on him. There’s no way to say who was even there.”

“This problem might have been fixed with their help,” Ingrid says. She says it like she’s not interested, like it means nothing to her, but something in her aura must give her away because the doctor flinches. Ingrid watches him. “Which you know. So why are you protecting them, doctor? Knowing what they did to that little boy?”

Which one are you hiding from me?

The escalator drops them on the ground floor, but Ingrid doesn’t move much further than one step from the moving platform. The man is forced into her space or risk being pulled down by the rotating stairs and he pales dramatically as he looks down into her face.

“I’m not protecting them,” he says, “but we’ve had two decades without blood, Ms. Arrington. Two decades with the worst injury to a civilian being spell splash. I was doing my residency when your House fell. I know what can come from this.”

“My House didn’t fall,” she says, voice like ice. She believes him but doesn’t like him. She takes a step back, allowing him some room. “It hibernated. And if you really knew what was coming, you’d have tried harder to fix this.”

“I—” He swallows. “I might know someone who—who was there. They didn’t cast that day, not a spell. Swear their safety and I’ll see to it you know whatever they know.”

Her roots whip under the linoleum, far down enough he can’t hope to sense it. An older woman in the waiting area to their left does. She crosses herself and kisses her pendant, activating an impressive shield of protection.

Ingrid approves.

“Sitting on that information for two months,” Ingrid says, “while a little boy lay dying? You sure you want me to give them immunity?” Again, she makes her voice even, uncaring. Again, he flinches.

“They tried,” he says. “They fought for him, but they could only do so much. Let them help you now, safely. Please.”

She doesn’t know the town like she used to. She knows this place like a memory and she knows that her feet will take her to dead ends and empty warehouses before she finds who she needs to fine.

This may save her time, or it may not help at all. Either way, she’s not losing anything and she’s gaining a starting point.

“Alright,” she says. “Safe passage.” 

She waits for him to ask for her word, her bond, but he doesn’t. His shoulders sag under his coat and he rubs the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “I’ll grab my coat.”

An escort and a missing promise. Better and better.

*****************************

The first time Ingrid leaves the city it’s because Katie marries a normal. She never approved of their dating but had assumed Dan would be like all of Katie’s relationships.

Short.

“You can’t marry him,” Ingrid barks when Katie shows her the ring. If she’d been older, wiser, she would have sat on her words, nodded and nodded until it came time for the objections. Then she would have screamed. 

“I can and am,” Katie says calmly. Dan is in the car, pouting at being left out of asking for this blessing. He can’t know. “I love him.”

“He,” Ingrid says, “will dilute your blood.”

“Racist,” Katie says immediately, but not like it bothers her. “And irrelevant. I don’t marry for the House, Ingrid. Mom and Dad never wanted me to.”

“They never needed you to,” Ingrid retorts. “There were so many of us then. We need to make our House strong again, you know that. Dan doesn’t have a drop of magic in him—”

“Well,” Katie says, examining her nails, “I suppose that’s true. He will be part of our House when I marry him and he is a normal. I guess I can’t marry him if my Head of House tells me I can’t.” Her eyes slash across Ingrid’s. “Can I?”

Ingrid’s mouth runs dry. She’s the older sister, but that doesn’t make her old. She was never supposed to lead. “I can’t.”

“Then I guess you have no say,” Katie says. There’s triumph in her eyes but also something inexplicably sad. She stands up. “Don’t come to the wedding without a gift.”

Ingrid watches her walk out the diner’s door and get into Dan’s car. Ingrid pays the bill and leaves as well, walking down the road to the edge of town where she rents an apartment to stay in when the memories are stronger than she is.

She walks past the building and keeps on for a long, long time.

********************************

She doesn’t make it to the wedding.

****************************************

The doctor’s name is Blake Hudson according to the papers she finds in the glove compartment. He’s fifty-two, nearly six feet, and an organ donor.

“Please,” Dr. Hudson says tightly, “don’t go through my stuff.”

She obliges because she’s already seen everything, slamming the compartment closed with her knee. They’ve left the parking garage anyway and it’s still too dark to read without the fluorescent lights. “Where are we going?”

“To see the friend I was telling you about,” he says. He pauses. “Maybe I should call them first…?”

“Nah,” she says. She doesn’t want them warned. “Where are we going?” This time she puts a bit of her power in the words, a light compulsion that won’t do more than let him know she means business.

He bites his tongue at the swell of magic. “Is that really necessary?” Then, in the same breath, “The police station.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The police won’t help you. The law is—”

“The law is on your side,” he says, biting the words out. “I know. He’s an officer of the law. Riot patrol. He was there the day of the—the altercation.”

She thinks about that, tugging at her seatbelt. That gives her a better idea of the day. More than one combatant. One of the busier streets, probably with a few shops since Dan would never take the kids down an alley. Broad daylight and nowhere to hide as the police cordoned off the street and sent men with energy shields storming down the road. Her lips thin. “You said he didn’t cast. Why?”

“He—he knows one of the people involved,” Dr. Hudson says. He flips his blinker, turns right, carefully not looking at her. “It got…complicated.”

She waits for him to continue, fingers tapping against her thigh in time with the blinker. When he doesn’t, she clicks her tongue. “Dr. Hudson. Blake—”

“I prefer Dr. Hudson,” he says.

“—I’m really going to need you to stop bullshitting me,” she finishes as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Because now it sounds like you know who was there when my nephew got splashed.”

“I don’t,” he says too fast. Too little thought.

She smiles without humor, reaches over and yanks the wheel to the left as hard as she can.

The car jerks, throwing them both against the windows as the wheels scream, trying to follow the steering. There are no other cars on the road which means, when they flip, she doesn’t have to be careful. As Dr. Hudson screams, hands scrabbling at the interior, she lets her eyes flutter shut.

Her magic catches them before the roof hits the asphalt, flipping them back upright. Dr. Hudson is still screaming as the shocks absorb the impact of the short fall after she releases them. The car creaks and settles, dead center in the middle of the road.

Dr. Hudson’s screams taper off, stutter, and dissolve into sobbing pants. 

“Who, Dr. Hudson?” she asks. Her shoulder aches from where she hit the door, but it’s a small price to pay for the tears running down his face.

“Please,” Dr. Hudson stutters. “They’re just kids. Just kids—” He jumps as she bangs her fist on the dashboard. “My friend, he can tell you all about it—”

“I don’t need to know all about it,” she says. “I don’t care all about it. I care about my nephew who is dying under your care, doctor. And, if I were you, I’d care a lot more about that than them.”

“Anu knows where they are,” Dr. Hudson tries. His eyes are more whites than pupils. Blood drips from a cut on his forehead. Oops. “Just let me take you to him, I won’t lie, I swear.”

She looks at the closed businesses across the street, thinking. She could track them down herself, but what statement did she want to send? What message? “Tell him to meet us here. Tell him to bring one of the assholes who were stupid enough to splash my nephew. Tell him he has one hour.”

Dr. Hudson freezes, throat working. “He—he might not be able to find them at this time of night and with so little time, I don’t know if that’s possible.”

She hums like that makes total sense. “Tell him if he doesn’t, you’re dead and I’ll be coming for them all anyway.”

Dr. Hudson chokes on a sob and scrambles in his coat for his phone.

*************************************

Ingrid comes back to town when Katie has her first kid. A little girl named Risa with red hair and baby blue eyes.

“They’ll be brown soon enough,” Katie says, smiling down at her daughter through the pain that still lines her face. “Just like her papa.”

Ingrid nods like she believes it, but she doesn’t. Risa will have her mama’s green eyes with the amount of magic already snaking through her core. “Congratulations, sis.”

“Congratulate Dan too,” Katie demands, nodding to her husband, lurking in a corner. “He helped.”

Ingrid snorts. Over her dead body. “Hi, Dan.”

“Hey, Ingrid,” he says, raising one hand weakly. He’s never been a fan of Ingrid, not since she sent him a curse as a late wedding present.

“I love it when you two get along,” Katie says. She shifts her daughter in her arms and asks, “Dan would you go get my bag from the other room? I think they forgot it in the move.”

Ingrid goes carefully still.

Both women watch Dan scuttle out the door, fast enough that Ingrid knows just how much he hates being in a room with her.

“Now that we’re alone,” Ingrid says, “what did you want to say?”

Katie doesn’t beat around the bush. “I want Risa inducted into the House. Today.”

“There’s no Head of House,” Ingrid says, brow furrowing. “I’m still… I still can’t.”

“I don’t have time to argue about that,” Katie says, frustrated. “Dan doesn’t know yet, about what induction means. When he finds out, he’ll—”

Ingrid’s eyes narrow. “He’ll try to stop it.”

“No. Maybe,” Katie says. She closes her eyes. Opens them to show fire, gold and magic. “Will you help me?”

Ingrid grins, glad that she hadn’t asked again, that Ingrid doesn’t really have to say not yet again. “Anything for family.”

She’s surprised by just how much she means it.

***********************************************

Anu is a scrawny man, arms and legs too long for his torso and a thin, thin mustache running over his upper lip. He looks too young to be anything more than a beat cop, something his uniform confirms. He approaches the car, now pulled to one side of the road, like it’s a bomb, arms wrapped tight around himself to keep himself from reaching for a gun.

It wouldn’t matter even if he was armed. Ingrid’s done some spellwork before his arrival.

Dr. Hudson gets out of the car before Ingrid, slamming the door and hurrying around the hood to meet his friend. Ingrid takes her time getting out, eyes scanning the area for the other person who’s supposed to be here. She frowns when she can’t detect any bit of life big enough to be constituted as a person.

“You didn’t bring them.” She strolls deliberately forward, hands loose at her sides. Her voice, however, bites. “Why?”

Anu, straightens, chest puffing out as he steps in front of Dr. Hudson. “I need you to listen to me first. Before—before you do something we’ll all regret.”

The sun is coming up in a few hours, the sky already lightening, but the moon is still waning. She moves forward, shoulders rolling. “Do not. Tell me. What. I’ll. Regret.”

“Bad choice of words,” Anu says hastily, hands up as if to ward her off. The only reason she doesn’t curse him is that she can see he’s not trying to cast—he’s keeping his magic firmly locked down where it’s not easy to access. “I just—I’m not trying to stop you, Arrington. You need to know what happened before you make a decision. That’s all.”

She stares at him. “A member of my House is lying underneath one of the worst cases of spell splash I’ve ever seen. The decision’s already been made.”

“No one thought it would last this long,” Anu says. His voice is pleading even as he stands, feet shoulder width apart, chin up. “The circumstances—let me tell you. I won’t stand in your way once you’ve heard it all.”

It’s a good deal and she knows it though she doesn’t think he does. He’s giving her carte blanche after hearing this, an officer’s permission to enact her revenge. The law is on her side, but only after the accusations have been laid. He’s offering her more than he knows.

She smiles and reaches out to shake his hand. It takes a bit of a stretch, considering he seems rooted to the spot, but he takes her hand seemingly out of reflex. The magic that comes from the contact is quick and sharp, like a snake.

Anu gasps and shakes out his arm, expression sick as he realizes what just happened.

“Thanks for your word,” she purrs. She walks backwards until she hits the car and can hop up on the hood, one knee propped up so she can hug it to her chest. “Tell your story. You’ve got one hour.”

End Part One