Chapter 6: Temper Tantrum

It wasn't until my socks were soaked through with dew I realized I'd forgotten to take shoes with me. No time to go back, not now. Not when I'd made a second, definitive exit from the very people I was supposed to trust and look to for guidance instead of finally realizing they'd never even been open to who I was. Just who they feared I might face and become.

Okay, so not Nanna and Poppa, and maybe not Mom, not completely. But that didn't mitigate the fact she'd left me in the not-so-tender clutches of Ethpeal Hayle and her hate on for her own mother. And honestly, how deeply sick was that? I shook my head as I stomped through the darkness, disgusted by myself, by her and the soaking yuck of my wet socks.

At least I wasn't in my pajamas. That would just be the end of everything.

Okay, so I understood why they worried about me. We'd lost a lot of family and friends over the years, and I wasn't so young when it happened I forgot the night I was jerked from bed and deposited in the cavern, terrified and unable to use my power thanks to the shielding within. I made a connection in that moment, one I'd never made before. To the smoke smell and the fiery form of Zoe that Mom just shared. The exact same night, wasn't it? I shivered at the realization before marching on. So, yeah, okay, fair enough. I was fully aware of the fact at any second, without warning, our lives could be thrown upside down and we could be fighting for our lives. I got it. I did.

But did that mean hiding in this tiny place in the middle of nowhere just in case something bad might happen sometime? I guess I could see how it could be a decision made in haste to protect everyone that became an ingrained habit and then just the way things were.

Time for that to change.

As for GreatGram's little fantasy about me and her mother, I had no idea what Mahalia Hayle had done, so how was I supposed to guard against being her? I could shake my coven leader, I was so mad.

Was it childish I slowed my pace just a tad to see if anyone would come after me? Follow me, beg my forgiveness, ask me to come home and promise everything would be different from here on in? Okay, Mom. That Mom would do that. And, was it even more pathetic when none of the above happened I threw a bit of a temper tantrum fed by grief and took all my hurt out on the flower beds at the edge of the park?

I panted over the resulting mess, loam spread like black, crumbled blood across the asphalt road, petals descending in sad spirals from the cloudburst of ruptured blossoms, sizzling around the edges as my demon fire lit them up in a blast of heated air. Of course the coven felt it, the few tentative touches retreating in a rush when I snarled for them to mind their own damned business. I'd attract more powerful intervention any second and honestly, despite needing my

mother to show some kind of interest, the last thing I wanted right now, now that I'd released my fury on the poor flowers, was to just find a place to hide and be left well enough alone.

I have no idea what possessed me to keep walking, to pass through the quiet streets of Wilding Springs, up the road and around the corner from the high school, out of sight of home. Through the downtown that was little more than a library/town hall and a few shops, out the other side to the long, lonely road that wound its way to the edge of the residences and the marked border of our territory.

GreatGram could have claimed so much more. Many of the other covens, from what I was told, covered whole swaths of real estate, stretching miles. But she always insisted despite the fact the Hayle coven was the most powerful one around, Wilding Springs was more than enough for us.

Whatever. If she said so. Like I was taking anything that passed her lips for truth or consequence from now on.

I paused at the border, startled to find myself there, staring down the dark road. There was no actual marker aside from the pretty sign that named our town, standing on two steel posts in the ditch at the side of the road. Zero traffic passed our way, the highway rumbling with constant motion off in the distance, Wilding Springs isolated from the rest of the world out of design and desire. I inhaled the night air, wavering on the edge of the border. I'd been outside our home's power so infrequently these last eight or nine years, I could count those journeys on one hand.

And never alone, never without GreatGram hovering and staring and judging.

The temptation to step over the border made me giggle on the edge of hysteria, made worse when I eased one socked toe over the line. I felt the power of the coven flinch from that betrayal, but it didn't respond negatively, sighing around me as though waiting to see what I would do.

I half expected GreatGram or Mom or someone to appear in a burst of power through the veil and chew me out for being out here alone in the dark. Instead, the soft chirping of crickets and the distant whoo of an owl were the only response.

I gulped a breath before stepping over the line, standing in defiance on the other side.

Waiting for a huge epiphany or giant shift in thinking or even, at last, a response from within. But nothing, not a scrap of interest and, sadly, no bright spark moment of inspiration. Just the quiet night, my loneliness and the dark road.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

Some impulse drove me forward and I started walking again. Don't get me wrong, I had no intention to run away or anything silly and childish like that. Well, maybe the thought crossed my mind, but I wasn't stupid enough to think I'd be allowed to get away with it. But the freedom that came from just walking, the lightness of spirit that overwhelmed me the further I walked, the more distance I put between Wilding Springs's border and me, the more elated I felt.

That was more like it.

I inhaled deeply, found myself smiling as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. And caught my breath, stumbling to a halt when I realized I wasn't alone. I'd missed the car in the darkness, hadn't noticed it sat there, nor the fact someone perched on the bonnet, too engrossed in my own little world to realize until I was close enough I could make out the sparkle of the glass headlights in the rising moonlight.

She held still and quiet, that was part of the problem. I adjusted my vision, my demon sight snapping me from subtle blackness in shades of dark to almost daylight illumination. And felt myself gasp again despite my desires otherwise.

It's not like she threatened me in any way or did anything to make me feel uncomfortable. If anything, the woman seated on her bonnet with her ankles crossed under the heavy fabric of her skirt held so still it was almost possible to think she was carved from stone. But she felt nothing like Jiao or Charlotte. Instead, there was a pulsing darkness around her that matched her to the night. Still, she didn't come across as threatening, just different.

It took me a long moment to realize she felt like a sorcerer. And something more.

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