Page 83 of The Royal Street Witch
That’s why Jade was just calling me. I have to tell Chantal about the letter I’m sending, how I’m going to come clean to everyone, but I suddenly can’t breathe, my chest catching on an inhale.
Turning, she offers a cup of coffee, but a shock erupts in my hand while reaching for it. My fingers barely touch the porcelain when another jolt erupts up my palm to my elbow and the coffee cup plunges to the floor, shattering into a hundred tiny pieces.
The shock, excruciating and live, bolts through my spine and something is wrong. Our eyes meet as my legs ignite with pain—electric, exploding pain. I look to my garnet ring burning against my finger, warning me. I’m in danger. And the only way I can think to stop it is to get home.
“Chantal!” I scream and she looks at me, confused. “Home,” I say, turning, running out of her kitchen, and she’s behind me now.
There’s a viper in my chest, and it’s pulling me, pulling me down Chantal’s street, onto St. Ann, down Bourbon, and I hear the sirens—they are far away, but I hear them and I know. I see smoke and the viper pulls me, and Chantal is shouting my name behind me but I can’t stop, I can’t stop because something is happening at home and I don’t know what it is, but I see streets of blood, I see ash and fire and I see pain and sorrow.
There’s screaming. Is it in my ear, in my brain? Is it the viper? I turn left on Royal and smell the smoke and that’s when I see the flames and the hole. The gaping hole in the roof of my home, right over my bedroom, and the entire roof aflame. I scream louder, and arms encircle me, pulling me from running into the house.
Chantal hooks my elbows through her arms and pulls my back against her chest. Her words are slow and forceful. “You’re a witch, you’ll burn.”
“Let fucking go of me,” I scream, the flames rising, the siren deafening, as my room incinerates. Chantal has me locked in her grasp, so I scream, I scream until my lungs ache, until my throat feels like raw pieces of flesh. Bucking against her, calling my magic, I scream until the clouds rip open and rain pours upon us in fat drops, water filling my open mouth. I writhe and buck and it’s daylight, the sun is pouring right into my bedroom, right on the bed where I kissed Bastian goodbye. And there’s no time. No time to be standing around. He had to have gotten away, had to have, but he sleeps so heavily and I close my eyes. I can get her off if I just collect myself but that’s when her grip loosens and she shouts, “Okay, let’s go!”
And I’m free and running to my front door but it’s locked so I use all my strength to kick it open in front of the crowd that’s forming but I don’t care. I’m up the stairs in seconds, his name leaving my lips again and again as I navigate the smoke-filled hallway, Chantal at my heels.
“No, no, no,” I cry, batting the smoke that surrounds us, seizing our lungs.
We cough and cough, me searching, Chantal moving her hands in big circles, using her magic to clear the smoke, chanting, and I scream his name, scream it, because the firemen will be inside any moment and I have to find him, to hide him. And how many times will he make my heart stop?
“Bastian!” I look up to the entire roof of my home burnt to the heavens, my feet slushing through the rain-soaked carpet.
“Aster!” Bastian shouts from somewhere in my room, and my body ignites because he’s alive so I let the tears roll from my eyes because he’s not gone.
But shattering shrieks of agony echo from my bedroom and I can save him, I can save him, please let me save him.
I turn to my bedroom. And there he is. Lying on the floor, one arm stretched toward me as the sun rays pour over his beautiful face.
“Oh my God,” I choke out because he’s burning, incinerating before my eyes. Paralyzed by the sun, unmoving across the floor, skin boiling, and he cries, “Fuuuck,” through clenched teeth, neck tensed with misery. It’s the final stage he told me about, all his skin aglow, like embers of a fire and he’s leaving me now and no, I’m not ready. I just found him, I just found him and I can’t lose him now. I call on a spell, on anything, darkness, the pitch of night, but nothing happens and I’ll call on strength to pull him down the stairs, into the closet, and I grab his hand.
“Chantal, help me,” I plead. “We need strength to get him downstairs!” I look to her and she falls to her knees, mouth wide with an overwhelmed look twisting her face.
“I’ve lifted him before, I can do it again. Help me!” I scream and she outstretches her hands and begins to chant.
“Aster,” he cries, his hand burning in mine, blood tears streaming down his glowing face. “I’m going to die.”
“You are not,” I whisper but something tells me, this time, he’s right. We’ve danced with death before, he and I, and this time feels different, this time I almost believe him. The power of three…
“I would do it a thousand times over, it was worth every second,” he whispers, and his face is gleaming orange now, burning from the inside out and I squeeze his hand, the nails piercing my skin. “Aster…” His jaw quakes; he’s shivering and feverish. He opens his mouth only enough for the smallest three words to escape. “Baby, let go.”
I scream because it’s a goodbye and I clutch tighter to his hand and look to Chantal, my head shaking, my heart booming, NO, NO, NO. Her eyes are heavy with tears as she pulls her clasped hands against her chest.
I’m not letting him just leave me, so I chant, “Vivere. Vivere.” The word comes out broken, and I squeeze his hand and scream to Chantal, “Keep chanting!”
And the glowing orange that rims his body turns to embers that quickly ignite into tiny flames, engulfing his body, and magic, magic don’t fail me. I keep chanting, but as the words leave my lips, the top of his head changes to ash, and it flows, like dominos until the tips of his toes have followed suit.
His hand, flesh and skin turn to what feels like sand in a fist. I look to Chantal, the screams leaving my mouth, her moving to embrace me. There is no Bastian, no words. Just my palm, full of ash and with that, his obsidian ring.
I’M ALL LIQUID, THE PAINlike a sword, cutting me from head to toe, my insides puddling around my feet, my soul seeping through the floorboards down to hell.
I left only with my cat in one hand and what was left of Bastian in the other—a ring and ashes of what once was the flesh I worshipped so. Chantal’s voice in my ear, “We have to go, we can’t stay,” and she somehow got me out the back though I don’t recall making it her house. Just the screaming, the shivering, the regret. And she just held me. She just held me.
On Chantal’s couch I sleep and awaken to the truth over and over again. Thwacks to the heart, reliving what’s happened, and curl up with the bag of his ashes to my chest, a kind of broken pain that no potion or spell can take away. I had him, I loved him, I lost him, and now I mourn him.
The days roll into nights, the nights roll into days, and I don’t give a fuck about insurance or claims and I have to lie and tell everyone no one died in the fire but the truth is I may as well have died in that fire.
My Bastian was murdered. It was Franklin who had it done, but did he know Bastian was inside? Or was the fire just intended for me?
