Page 34 of Into the Void

“I don’t get your problem,” Brett said. “It’s Dad. You can trust him.”

“Trust isn’t the issue,” Nick said.

“So what is it?”

“I...”

They should have told him, but it was too much. Nick couldn’t drag anyone else into it, especially his father. It was too late to keep Brett away from it, but Nick was determined to limit his involvement from now on. If he could keep his father away from all of this, he would.

That was what he told himself, but he knew it wasn’t all of it. Beneath that, a small part of him wondered why Henry never told them about magic. There were wards surrounding the house, and he didn’t tell them. Nick thought he knew his dad, but he obviously had secrets.

If he knew about this hidden world of supernatural creatures, maybe he knew about voids, too.

If Henry knew about voids, there was no way to predict how he would react to Nick. And Nick couldn’t stand the thought of losing him, or having him look at Nick the way Cara did when she first found out. The same way everyone would look at him when they found out the truth.

“I just don’t want to worry him.”

Brett shook his head and left the table, taking his coffee with him. “Sometimes I wonder what the hell is going through your head, man.”

Nick watched him leave, and he sighed into the silence that filled the kitchen. “So do I.”

***

Chapter 12 - Cara

Quinn and Julia were discussing something in the living room, and their voices rose as they grew more excited, and that joy floated into the kitchen where Cara was sitting at the table.

The two rooms melded into each other seamlessly, with nothing but the change in flooring to tell when one became the other. The wall that separated them had been knocked down long before the girls moved into the house, and right now, Cara wished the wall was still standing.

And maybe a heavy door she could close to block out the noise.

Her crystals were laid out across the paper map on the table, and she tried again. She was testing her abilities, trying to cast a locator spell on Nick, but it wasn’t working. It shouldn’t have surprised her, since she knew voids were impervious to magic, but she’d never seen anything like it before.

The spell wasn’t blocked, it didn’t fail, and the crystals were still channelling energy as she whispered the words under her breath. But nothing happened. The spell was working, but she couldn’t find Nick.

It was like he didn’t exist.

Of course, she knew where he was. He was at home. They’d been messaging for the last couple of days, and she told him she was trying the locator spell. It felt kind of creepy to do it without telling him.

It was just a test. She was trying to wrap her head around the idea of a void. A true void, the absence of anything magical.

Her power connected her with the world around her. Nature, animals, people. Life. Anything that was alive, anything with energy. She felt all of it on some level, even if it was so small she couldn’t put her finger on what she felt.

But not Nick. As far as her magic was concerned, he wasn’t there.

Quinn and Julia got louder, and Cara gritted her teeth, trying to focus through the noise. She was concentrating so much that she didn’t even realise they were talking to her.

“Cara? Cara! Hey, what’s wrong?” Quinn asked, and Cara finally looked over at them.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I told you she was annoyed,” Julia said. “Sorry, Cara. We’ll get out of your hair.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “She’s just doing her crystal stuff, Julia. It’s not like we’re interrupting anything important.”

Julia frowned. “It’s important to her, Quinn.”

“It’s a hobby. No offence,” she added, looking back at Cara. “I mean, I enjoy the crystals and the herbs and everything, but you know what I mean. It’s not like you’re doing an assignment or studying or whatever.”

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