"Oh." Then she thought, don"t just stand there. You bluffed him before. You talked him out of knowing he"d been bitten by a snake. For Earth"s sake, y ou can talk him out of whatever he"s thinking now.
"Eric-I guess we"ve all been under a lot of stress. . . ."
"Oh, please don"t give me that." He seemed to be talking to a clump of silver cholla, eyeing the halos of awful spines as if he might jump into them. "Ple ase don"t give me that."
He took a deep breath and spoke deliberately. "You charm snakes and read g uinea pigs" minds. You cure rattler bites with a touch. You tap into peopl e"s brains. You make up magical potpourri bags and your insane cousin is t he G.o.ddess Aphrodite." He looked at her. "Did I miss anything?"
Thea found another rock and backed up to it blindly. She sat. Of everything in the universe, right then what she was most aware of was her own breathi ng.
"I have this feeling," Eric said, watching her with his green eyes, "that y ou guys are in fact the descendants of good old Hecate Witch-Queen. Am I do se?"
"You think you win a prize?" Thea still couldn"t think, couldn"t put a meani ngful remark together. Could only gabble.
He paused and grinned, a wry and painful grin, but the first one she"d seen tod ay. Then the smile faded. "It"s true, isn"t it?" he said simply.
Thea looked out over the desert, toward the huge, bare cliffs of rock in the distance. She let her eyes unfocus, soaking in the expanse of brown-green. Th en she put her ringers to the bridge of her nose.
She was going to do something that all her ancestors would condemn her fo r, something that n.o.body she"d grown up with would understand.
"It"s true," she whispered.
He breathed out, a lonely human figure in that vastness of the desert.
"How long have you known?" she asked.
"I ... don"t know. I mean, I think I always sort of knew. But it wasn"t poss ible-and you didn"t want me to know. So I didn"t know." A kind of excitement was creeping into his haggardness. "It"s really true, then. You can do magi c."
Say it, Thea told herself. You"ve done everything else. Say the words to a h uman. "I"m a witch."
"A Hearth-Woman, I thought you called it. That"s what Roz was telling me."
At that, Thea was horrified out of her daze of horror. Stricken. "Eric-you can "t talk about this with Roz. You don"t understand. They"ll kill her."
He didn"t look as shocked as she might have expected. "I knew you were sca red of something. I thought it was just that people might hurt you-and you r grandma."
"They will; they"ll kill me. But they"ll kill you and Roz, too-and your mo m and any other human they think may have learned about them-"
"Who will?"
She looked at him, floundered a moment, and then made the ultimate betraya l of her upbringing.
"It"s called the Night World."
"Okay," he said slowly, half an hour later. They were sitting side by side o n his rock. Thea wasn"t touching him, although her whole side was aware of h is presence.
"Okay, so basically, the descendants of Maya are lamia and the descendants o f h.e.l.lewise are witches. And together they"re all this big secret organizati on, the Night World."
"Yes." Thea had to fight the instinct to whisper. "It"s not just lamia and wi tches, though. It"s shape-shifters and made vampires and werewolves and other things. All the races that the human race couldn"t deal with."
"Vampires," Eric muttered to the cholla, his eyes going gla.s.sy again. "That"s what really gets me, real vampires. I don"t know why, it follows logically...." He looked at Thea, his gaze sharpening. "Look, if all you people have supernatural powers, why don "t you just take over?"
"Not enough of us," Thea said. "And too many of you. It doesn"t matter how supernatural we are.""But, look-"
"You breed much faster, have more children-and you kill us whenever you fi nd us. The witches were on the verge of extinction before they got togethe r with the other races and formed the Night World. And that"s why Night Wo rld law is so strict about keeping our secrets from humans."
"And that"s why you tried to hand me over to Pilar," Eric said.
Thea could feel his eyes on her like a physical sensation. She stared at a pat ch of rock nettle between her feet. "I didn"t want you dead. I didn"t want me dead, either."
"And they"d really kill us for being in love."
"In a minute."
He touched her shoulder. Thea could feel warmth spread from his hand and sh e had to work to make sure she didn"t tremble. "Then we"ll keep it a secret ," he said.
"Eric, it"s not like that. You don"t understand. There"s nowhere we could g o, no place we could hide. The Night People are everywhere."
"And they all follow these same rules." "Yes. It"s what allows them to surviv e."
He breathed for a moment, then said in a voice that had gone husky, "There"s got to be a way."
"That"s what I let myself think-for a while." Her own voice sounded shaky. "
But we have to face reality. The only chance we have of even living through this is for us to just go our separate ways. And for you to try as hard as y ou can to forget me and everything I"ve told you."
She was trembling now, and her eyes had filled. But her hands were balled in to fists and she wouldn"t look at him.
"Thea-"
The tears spilled. "I won"t be your death!"
"And I can"t forget you! I can"t stop loving you."
"Well, and maybe that was just a spell, too," she said, sniffling. Tears were falling straight off her face and onto the rock. Eric looked around for some thing to give her, then tried to wipe her wet cheeks with his thumb.
She whacked his hand away. "Listen to me. You did miss something when you w ere adding up what I did. I also make love spells for me. I put one on you, and that"s why you fell in love in the first place."
Eric didn"t look impressed. "When?"
"When did I put the spell on you? The day I asked you to the dance."
Eric laughed.
"You-"
"Thea." He shook his head. "Look," he said gently, "I fell in love with you before that. It was when we were out here with that snake. When we just lo oked at each other and . . . and ... I saw you surrounded by mist and you were the most beautiful thing in the world." He shook his head again. "And m aybe that was magic, but I don"t think it was any spell you were putting on me."
Thea wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Okay, so the yemonja had nothing to do w ith it. Anyway, love spells just seemed to bounce off Eric-even the dolls h adn"t worked. . . .
She bent suddenly and picked up her backpack. "And I don"t know why this d idn"t work," she muttered. She took out a quilted makeup bag, unzipped it, and reached inside.
The dolls came out as a bundle. At first glance they looked all right. Then T hea saw it.
The male doll had turned around. Instead of being face-to-face with the female doll, it had its back to her.
The scarlet ribbon was still wound tightly around them. There was no way tha t it could have slipped, that this could have happened by accident. But the dolls had been inside the case, and the case had been inside her backpack al l day.
Eric was watching. "That"s Pilar"s ring. Hey, is that the spell on me and Pilar ? Can I see it?"
"Oh, why not?" Thea whispered. She felt dazed again.
So it couldn"t have been an accident, and no human could have done it. And no witch could have done it either.
Maybe . . .
Maybe there was a magic stronger than spells. Maybe the soulmate principle was responsible, and if two people were meant to be together, nothing cou ld keep them apart.
Eric was gingerly unwinding the scarlet ribbon. "I"ll give the ring back to Pi lar," he said. He reduced the binding spell to its const.i.tuent parts, put them gently back in the makeup bag.
Then he looked at her.
"I"ve always loved you," he said. "The only question is . . ." He broke off a nd looked like the shy Eric she knew again. "Is, do you love me?" he finished at last. His voice was soft, but he was looking at her steadily.
Maybe there are some things you just can"t fight....
She made herself look at him. The image wobbled and split.
"I love you," she whispered. "I don"t know what"s going to happen, but I do.
They fell-slow as a dream, but still falling-into each other"s arms.
"There"s a problem," Thea said some time later. "Besides all the other prob lems. I"m going to be doing something next week, and I just need you to giv e me some time."
"What kind of something?""I can"t tell you."
"You have to tell me," he said calmly, his breath against her hair. "You hav e to tell me everything now."
"It"s magic stuff and it"s dangerous-" A second too late she realized her mist ake.
"What do you mean, dangerous?" He straightened up. His voice told her the peaceful interlude was over. "If you think I"m going to let you do something dangerous by yourself .
He wore her down. He was good at that-even better than his sister-and Thea was no good at refusing him. In the end she told him about Suzanne Blanch et.
"A dead witch," he said.
"A spirit. And a very angry one."
"And you think she"s coming back," he said.
"I think she"s been here all along. Maybe hanging around the old gym, which hasn"t done her any good since n.o.body"s been there a.s.saulting dummies. But if they open it to have the Halloween party . . ."
"It"ll be full of humans, all visiting those booths, all reminding her of what she hates. She can pick them off like ticks off a dog."
"Something like that. I think it could be bad. So what I"ve got to do is qui etly lure her somewhere else and then send her back where she came from."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"I don"t know." Thea rubbed her forehead. The sun was dipping toward the cl iffs and long afternoon shadows had fallen across the desert.
"You"ve got a plan," Eric said matter-of-factly.
Not you, Thea thought. I promised myself I wouldn"t use you. Not even to sa ve lives.
"You"ve got a plan you think is dangerous for humans. For me, since I"m goi ng to be helping you."
I will not use you. . . .
"Let"s make this easy on everybody. You know I"m not going to let you do it alone. We might as well take that as given and go on from there."
This is the crazy guy who ignores snakebites and attacks people with punch, she reminded herself. Do you really expect to talk him out of helping you?
But if something were to happen to him . . .
The voice came back again, and Thea didn"t understand it and she didn"t like i t at all.
Would you give up everything?
CHAPTER.
14 week pa.s.sed more or less quietly. Grandma Harman came home, her cough be tter. She didn"t seem to notice anything different about Thea.
Night came earlier, and everyone at school talked about parties and costu mes. The air got colder and there was an announcement that the old gym wo uld be opened for Halloween.
Thea heard that Randy Marik had been moved to a psychiatric hospital and was in intensive therapy. He was making some progress.
Thea and Eric worked every day on their plan.
The only real excitement came the night when Thea walked in, sat on Blaise"