Chapter 3

3

A fter a brief explanation that makes no fucking sense, her father ends up taking her to her least favorite Target store in the state to buy enough toiletries and changes of clothes for a few days, plus a bright pink rolling suitcase, and Delina can't quite stop shaking. There's a flight to Seattle at six PM with a ton of open seats, and despite everything, despite all the earth-shattering insanity that has been told to her that day, Delina still can't quite grasp that she's actually going on a plane.

She can't quite grasp that she broke a pager.

"Act a bit more natural," her dad mutters to her, as they go through a drive through for fast food burgers, of all things. Delina hasn't eaten a burger in three years, but this seems to call for it.

"I'm…" Her phone chimes, and they both fall silent.

MAISON 3 (3:21 PM): I'm making tacos, can you pick up some cilantro on your way back?

"He knew I had a phone call from someone strange," she says, and her dad holds out his hand for her phone, as they inch along the drive through. "He knew that without me telling him."

"So we'll keep your phone in my car, and if they have the location tracked they can come to my house," her dad reminds kindly. "I'll feign ignorance. I'll park your car somewhere else, and if it's nothing, you can come back and tell him your friend had a crisis and you left your phone."

It's so far outside of her normal behavior, that she knows, she just knows, that there's no way Maison would buy it.

"Did you ever see Mom…" she trails off, still unsure what she could actually say, "do magic?"

"Four times," her father says. "Saw her light something on fire with her fingertips. Saw her draw something in midair and cause an explosion. Saw her write something in a Sharpie and it glowed. Saw her…" he hesitates long enough to order for the two of them. "Saw her aim something at her stomach while pregnant with you, and she had a seizure and you both almost died before you could be born."

"Was she…" Delina trails off, blinking down at her hands in the Arizona sun, "trying to get rid of me?"

"Oh, god no, honey," her dad says, reaching over the parking break and grabbing her hand reassuringly. "Nothing like that, she wanted…" and here he sighs, weary once more. "More than anything, she wanted to give birth to someone powerful. I think that's why."

Delina just watches the cars pass them on the main street, drumming her nails on the passenger's side door, just like she used to do when she was a teen and upset about small things.

The textbook and the will are safely tucked in her new pink suitcase, and the letter in her purse.

"Do you really think Maison is a spy?" she asks, leaning her forehead against the warm glass of the window, her throat tight.

He had made her a smoothie yesterday before work, put chocolate milk in it and everything.

By then, her father had gone over the letter with her, had read that crucial, heartbreaking detail, and had given her a hug over it.

"Your mother seems to think so," he says, still gentle. "She knew that world, not me."

"Why would he be with me for so long if it was just some…ruse?" Delina says, blinking too fast. She had put on mascara before the gym, like she always does, and she doesn't want to ruin it before a flight. "But he…I thought he was going to propose."

Her father reaches across the car and grabs her hand again. "I don't know, Delly. I thought he was good for you."

She doesn't have a response to that.

"He seemed decent, maybe she was wrong about this thing," he says. "She wasn't right about everything, she had her flaws."

She rubs her face, carefully avoiding the already precarious mascara. "Should I just talk to him?" she asks, and it's like she's back as a high schooler, woefully asking her dad for advice. "Maybe there's some explanation?"

He pauses long enough to accept the food from the take-out window, and remains silent until his window is rolled up enough to drive away.

"Delina," her father starts, and he so rarely calls her by her full first name, "go to this cabin first. Take a few days to get your head on straight, see what your mother left you. If you still want to talk to him, talk to him then. You have bigger things to worry about."

He's right, of course, her dad is usually right, but everything presses down hard against the back of her eyes.

"Right, like magic, because that's apparently a thing," she snips back, accepting the hamburger.

"There was a reason your mom hated the College, though I never knew it," he says, digging into the bag for his fries. "And there was a reason they wanted to keep you in the dark."

It still doesn't make sense, even if she accounts for the idea that magic is real and even after three midday airport margaritas.

Somewhere in waiting for her now woefully delayed flight, she pulled out her trusty planner and tried to sketch out some lists, make some sense, anything, and nothing added up.

"I need more information," she mumbles, looking wistfully in the pocket of her purse where her phone usually resided. "This is bullshit without information." The balding bartender throws her a look, and she waves him away. "Just talking to myself."

Even if magic is real, and broken pager notwithstanding she's not sure it is, there's not any reason to keep it hidden from her except in revenge for her bio-mother, and Delina just doesn't have enough information on her to figure that out.

There's always the option her bio-mother was insane even by magical standards, but that's not exactly better, and she tugs at the collar of her gym clothes, suddenly and viciously wishing she had thought to change into something else before driving to her dad. Something more comfortable, something less spandex-y. Something soft, something that she could snuggle into and forget everything that's going on.

Her dad had left her instructions on how to pick up an untraceable cell phone in Seattle, because that's a skill he apparently has now, and had given her even more cash, to the point where Delina's basically a walking target for an enterprising pickpocket.

Maison would always insist on her depositing too much cash, that it was dangerous for her. Insist that she needed to be safe, needed to not take any risks. Would fret at her doing anything remotely risky, worry that she's going to get harmed by some nebulous…something.

If that nebulous something was something magical, she's gonna be pissed.

Across the bar, just far enough away that it's almost ignorable, her eyes catch on a woman staring hard at her. Her graying hair is in a haphazard bun and she's on the dumpy side of fashionable, but her eyes are way more skeptical than most people who look at Delina.

So, of course, Delina lifts her chin and stares right back. Pours all the self-confidence she's not feeling and all the frustration into the look, until the woman's gaze drops.

Drops directly to her hand. To her thumb.

Delina shivers, tucking her hand away, and the woman smirks, throws down a twenty on the bar, and striding away.

By the time her flight takes off, however, the drink has led to a creeping doubt and a deep-down horror that everything Delina's doing is a mistake.

If Maison is a spy, he'll be able to find her. If he's not…she's doing the worst thing she has ever done, and she's not quite sure how there would be a way to come back from it. From hurting him, if that is what will happen.

But her thumb still tingles, and she swipes it on the window of the airplane, and there's no reaction. None of the spark or static that she felt with the pager, nothing.

Except…

All at once, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck raise, and she shudders, glancing up from her seat.

The entire airplane is cool, filled with tired people who obviously would prefer to be somewhere else than on a plane in the middle of the afternoon. Three rows over an elderly gentleman sleeps, his head leaning against the back of his chair, his wispy white hair fluffed up. Two rows back, a young mother bribes her tear-streaked child with a toy, and the kid shakes his head angrily.

But near the front of the plane, almost still, someone stares back. He's propped up, standing from his seat despite the seatbelt light still on, and despite looking like the most boring middle-aged businessman ever in a slightly wrinkled suit, his eyes lock onto Delina with something approaching malice.

If the seatbelt light wasn't on, Delina would march up to him and ask him what his problem is.

But instead, she glares back at him, lifting an eyebrow. People don't stare at her like that, with that intensity. Either they're staring at her boobs or they're ignoring her, their eyes sliding off of her as yet another blonde girl of Arizona, blending into the background.

This man stares at her like he knows what she did wrong. Like she is wrong.

The stewardess leans over to him, and he cocks an ear to her, before continuing to glare at Delina, his lips curling up into a sneer.

"Fuck you," Delina mouths to him, and he flinches back, before finally lowering himself back down into his seat.

She settles back down, grinning to herself just a bit, for a second, just a little bit alive.

The moment she lands in Seattle, before the familiar haggling for a rental car (trickier when she's paying with cash) and the wrangling of suitcases, a strange fog enters her.

She's still aware, of course, but everything matches the weather outside. Like something inside of her was transformed by the three-hour flight, changing her from someone terrified and afraid to someone…separate. More akin to viewing her life from outside a window, watching herself move through the motions, but not connected to them.

Like she's a different person.

Her thumb still tingles, her hip aches like it always does after a flight, and she fumbles with opening the car door more than she should.

The mist of the parking lot chills against her cheeks and tugs at her hair, chilling her to the bone as she stops and buys a cell phone from the first sketchy store she can find, a gas station/convenience store charmingly named Buggies. The outside is less than inspiring, with broken glass all over the asphalt and paint peeling off of a sign that claims the grand reopening was less than a month ago.

Her dad told her to find some place that looked less than ideal, and if he hadn't she would have never pulled over to such a spot.

"Buggies, huh?" she says, the moment she shrugs off the mist and steps inside.

The inside smells a bit too much like damp, the sort of humidity that never happens in Arizona, but the disinterested clerk in a polo shirt doesn't question her at all. Despite the disrepair outside, however, the floor is pristine, mopped clean and scrubbed within an inch of its life. All new shelving adorns the walls, and none of the packaging is even dusty.

She gives the clerk her widest grin as she places the phone on the counter, the sort of grin she uses to get free drinks at bars, but he barely glances at her. He's missing more teeth than not, and wears weathered overalls over the bright red polo shirt.

The counter has a smear of glitter on it, even though everything else is clean. A small sign hung off the end of the counter, says the counter is ‘part of the original build.'

"You re-opened?" Delina asks, after the clerk is still completely silent, counting her dollars.

He nods, giving her a slightly suspicious look.

"What happened?" she asks, something digging inside of her to have the conversation, to have some little bit of normalcy.

"Explosion," he replies, gruff. "Took a year to rebuild."

Out of all the answers, that wasn't one she anticipated, so she cocks her head at him, her ponytail exaggerating the movement.

"Are you on your way to Canada?" he asks, finally, opening the brand-new cash register with the same suspicion he gave her.

"No, to…above Bellingham. Up the mountain." she says, trailing off, thinking back to the will in her pink suitcase. "I'm…in the area, visiting friends."

That sounds plausible.

"That's a two-hour drive." Slower, he re-counts the money, like he's not used to seeing such crisp bills. "There's food in Bellingham, not much more until you go to Woolley, and even then it's not great." He raises an eyebrow at her, at her pristine gym clothes. "No cell signal there, this will be useless."

Of course her insane mother had to give her a property with no cell signal. "I'll make do."

Finally, he pushes the cell phone across the counter, and she grabs it as fast as she can, her hand grazing the counter.

An audible snap cracks out the moment her thumb touches the glitter, and she jerks back, almost dropping the phone.

He gives her a blank look.

"Sorry, must be static," she says brightly, her heart pounding. "Not used to the weather, you know?"

The clerk scowls at her, hands her the receipt, then busies himself reorganizing the candies, an obvious dismissal.

"Wow," Delina says aloud, then strides out, gripping the phone, and stands by the rental car long enough to punch in her dad's number.

DELINA (10:23 PM): Made it safe.

DAD (10:23 PM): Good!

She shivers in the mist, and her hair is going to frizz into something unmanageable, before she glances back at the Buggies.

So. Her hand responded to another thing. This time something closer to her mother's house.

DAD (10:26 PM): Maison has called four times. I played dumb. He definitely noticed you weren't where you were supposed to be before he should have, hours before.

Delina stops herself from biting her cheek at that.

DELINA (10:27 PM): Tell me if he suggests to you that he knows?

DAD (10:28 PM): The moment he does, I will. Be safe and have a good drive! It's pretty up there!

Delina glances up, and she's not sure she can see the tips of the trees for all the mist.

DELINA (10:29 PM): Gas station clerk says I might not get cell signal, so don't worry.

DAD (10:30 PM): I will!

With one last shiver, she shoves the phone in her pocket, then climbs back in the car. It's a ratty sedan, far lesser than her sleek car at home, but it chugs out of the parking lot without a problem.

Bringing her closer to her mother's cabin.

By the time she drives by the little town of Woolley, nestled charmingly in the mountains among the spruce and the dying fall grass, she's over it. She's over the cutesy storefronts and the Americana coffee shops and the rain pelleting onto the windshield and the moss on every tree and the advertisements for a winter snow festival in just a month.

Sure, Prescott occasionally gets snow in the winter, but it never lasts, and she gets a creeping dread that the snow might be a bit more intense up here.

So if she stays—her mind blanks out for a few seconds, and she coasts the car to the side of the two lane winding highway—she'll need better coats.

If she stays.

If, for some reason, there's something here for her. If there's magic and her full potential and whatever bullshit that's supposed to be.

If she has to stay in hiding, away from Maison, away from whatever nemesis her mother has. If she has to abandon all her possessions, never to get them back.

She takes a big, gulping breath, the only sound the absolute drumbeat of rain against the roof of her car, drowning out every other noise.

If she can't go back, if she can't resume her job, if she has to live off the inheritance and whatever houses and other things in the will and…

She shuts her eyes, thudding her head against the lumpy seat cushion.

"I just have to go to the cabin," she whispers to herself, though it's lost in the thrum of the rain. "Everything else can wait until I've gotten to the cabin."

It's only a ten-minute drive from where she's parked, and the only light is her headlamps. With the clouds drumming so heavily, there's no moonlight, no stars, and certainly no streetlamps.

She lets herself despair for five seconds, then throws the blinker on out of habit, coasting back onto the highway.

DELINA (12:46 AM): Losing cell signal.

Her phone blinkers out before she can get a response, so she drives on, exhaling hard out of her nose.

The highway turns into a winding road, bumpy and half overgrown with dead blackberry vines, before, finally, to a gravel driveway, leading her through a narrow pathway of tall, overarching trees that disappear into the clouds, until she finally turns around a bend, to a cabin.

It's a cute cabin, the sort you see in rustic postcards and advertisements for the Pacific Northwest. Rough-hewn logs, floral curtains, stained glass window on the door with light peeking out.

Light.

Her breath catches.

The lights are on, shining bright into the forest around them, and a plume of smoke curls from the chimney.

There's another car in the driveway, a beat-up looking jeep with rust adorning the tire well and chains wrapped around the back.

Someone else is here.