Page 66 of Soulmates

“I have sources, some of whom he’s approached to ask questions he has no business asking. There are networks of scratch mages everywhere. Some you wouldn’t even recognize as magicians.” Cricket regarded him carefully. “You don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

“No. Not the networks, not my father,” Maddox said. “He’s not good. And I mean that in the most basic terms. Not that he’s not a good father, but that he’s not good at all—somewhere far down wherever goodness comes from, he isn’t.” Maddox took a moment just to breathe. Cricket let him sit in the silence.

After a moment, Cricket said, “You will be alright, young mage,” Cricket said, and Maddox once again smiled at the endearment coming from such a seemingly gruff man. Cricket’s goodness was obvious. As obvious as Jake’s.

“I could sense from a young age, the goodness in people. I was drawn to it. Jake’s goodness runs all the way through. It’s nearly blinding and so warm I always felt like I could pull at it when it was cold. But there was a time when I pulled on it, not because it was cold, but because it was a bad day. My father’s father had died. And he was always good to me. I was devastated. But my father just stared into the fireplace, not blinking. I tried to talk to him, and he turned to look at me and—I was maybe nine at the time—he was empty, like he wasn’t even there.” Maddox shuddered at that, the first memory of his father’s emptiness. “I ran from the room and straight over to Jake’s house. I passed through the house and past all the people until I got to his room. It felt like I exploded through the door and my heart was frozen in my chest, but he jumped to his feet and threw his arms around me, and I pulled as hard as I could at that warmth. And it filled me. I swear that something filled me. And I can feel that in people. That goodness. How much they have or how much they don’t. You have a lot. Forrester, Professor Hooper, my grandmother. My father has none. It just feels like a hollow chamber.”

“Maddox,” Cricket said, seeming not to know what else to say.

“He’s a bad man, and he can’t know about any of this. He can’t know about the Soul Exchange. If he knew there was a way, any way of doing something like that…”

“He won’t.” Jake’s voice came from the doorway.

“Jake, I…”

“He won’t know because Cricket is going to teach us to hide it, and we’re going to come up with a reason we’ve been missing. And we’re going to be okay. And you can come steal my warmth anytime you want.”

Maddox couldn’t stop the tears from falling. No, he didn’t love his father, but he loved his family. And he feared what his father had become or would become. His lack of reaction to their disappearance during the challenge sounded worryingly like a lack of surprise. And with Forrester admitting that Maddox’s father was on the board of the school—Jonathan likely knew a lot more about the challenge than anyone else. Cooperative magic, huge spells, that hollow place inside his father… Thoughts were spinning around in Maddox’s brain, attempting to fit together.

“Baby.” Jake’s soft voice and his rough hands ran down Maddox’s arms as if pulling him back to the present.

“Shit, sorry.” Maddox looked at Jake and then at Cricket, who appeared worried but was also guarding the door as if protecting Maddox from anyone else watching him potentially melt down. Not today. He would not do this today.

Jake rubbed Maddox’s back. “It’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that I talked to my mom, and she’s going to make sure your mom knows the basics of what’s going on. We need to talk to Forrester to come up with believable plans for both you and me and for Santiago as to where we’ve been. But that can wait until you’ve eaten something.”

Maddox nodded.

“Not to add to the list, but we also need to take care of the light situation—both Maddox’s eyes and the pull you have on all light in general,” Cricket said from the doorway.

“That too,” Jake said. “But food and more coffee first. Then we take it one moment at a time.”

Maddox gripped Jake’s hand like a lifeline, allowing himself to zone out a bit, knowing Jake would guide him safely.

The meal was quiet, everyone deep in thought. Santiago and Carter had made eggs, bacon, toast, and a stack of pancakes so high it looked like it would fall over any moment.

It was Carter who broke the silence. “So, what are our next steps?”

“Well, darling, we will finish our celebratory trip and go back to graduate,” Lizzie said. “Santiago will call Professor Hooper from an unknown destination so she’s not seen driving Hooper’s jeep back to school. And Maddox and Jake will come wandering back in some other way. Forrester had some ideas of how to make it seem realistic. Then, we’ll go from there, I suppose.” It was just like Lizzie to have brainstormed the whole plan ahead of time.

Santiago arched a brow. “We?”

Lizzie scoffed. “Like we’d let you take down the patriarchy alone.”

Santiago rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”

“Where do we start?” Carter asked. “Seems like a good place might be Maddox’s eyes.”

“Yes. Can we please do something about that?” Maddox asked.

“Maddox and Jake, come with me. The rest of you can listen and learn if you wish,” Cricket said and headed out the back door.

Everyone followed.

Cricket didn’t take them far, just to the edge of the water near the dock. “Maddox, this is going to be mainly on you since you have access to fire and wind magic. Jake, we can work on teaching you how to help with this later.” Cricket regarded Maddox thoughtfully. “I doubt you can change the composition of your eyes, but you can change how they appear to other people. There will be people who will see through it, but it should be masked enough for them to trick their own minds into thinking it’s a play of the light.” Cricket lifted his hand at their surroundings. “You need to bend the air around you and Jake to create the effect of normal light and shadow. You’ll do the same thing with the light around your eyes so they reflect versus project light. It won’t be as bad in direct sunlight, but anytime you’re in indirect or unnatural light, you’ll need to bend it back.”

“How exactly do you want me to do that? And how am I supposed to keep a spell going basically all the time?” Maddox asked.

“First of all, it’s not all the time. You can relax the spell anytime you’re alone or around friends. Second, you aren’t going to hold a complicated spell in place. You’re simply going to ask the air and the light around you to bend in such a way as to mask its pull to you. You’ll do the same thing with your eyes. Ask the light to reflect back so they aren’t emitting light. It might not fix the color, but you can pass that off as a consequence of the challenge.”

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