Page 13 of Guardian of Exile

Teeth gritted, Nyx led them all somewhere out of the way, then let her Hiding go with a sigh of relief. The only ones she couldn’t let go of were the ones that covered Alihana and the Harvester. She didn’t think any amount of strategic use of the word “LARPing” would get around the fact that she was carrying an actual sharpened sword around, and she couldn’t risk, even in Dead Earth, that the Harvester’s signature might attract unwanted attention. But those two, at least, were far easier to manage than the one that had covered her and her friends. Most people in Dead Earth expected to see other people, so covering them took a fair bit of magic. Most people in Dead Earth did not expect to see magical swords and talismans, so the Hiding of them was minor in comparison.

“I do not like this place.” The statement came from Evra, whose hand went to where her sword hilt should have been, only for her fingers to close on thin air. She let out a snarl. “And I do not like being weaponless.”

Convincing the others that they could only carry weapons they could conceal by traditional means had not gone over well. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand why—Kaden had lived in Dead Earth for two years, and Evra and Morgen had bounced around it for a few months on “vacation”, so they all understood they couldn’t just walk around with weapons strapped to their persons—but they all got what Nyx would colloquially call the heebie-jeebies at the idea of going after a known magic user without proper weaponry.

“You have a dagger in each boot, a bracelet full of poisoned needles, a stiletto in your hair, and a long knife concealed in your jacket,” Nyx reminded Evra. Kaliaris had made the jacket especially for her, with a reinforced sheath in the lining that would allow Evra to draw at a moment’s notice. At least it was still cool enough in this part of the country that a light jacket made sense. “I would hardly call you weaponless.”

Evra made a noncommittal sound. “I still do not like this place.”

“I don’t either,” Morgen said, stepping a little closer to Evra. “It feels…wrong. Like something terrible has happened here.”

Kaden didn’t say anything, but there was a tightness around his mouth that said he shared the other two’s feelings. Nyx wondered if her own lack of discomfort came from how long she’d lived in Dead Earth, or if it was because she already knew the history of what she suspected they were picking up on.

“In the late 1600s, several people suspected of being witches were killed here.” She knew the basics, because she’d spent a lot of time in Dead Earth looking up places with any known ties to magic or the supernatural, hoping to find anything that might be able to explain her amnesia.

“Why?” Morgen asked, his voice tight.

“Some people got sick, and the doctor didn’t know how to fix it, so he blamed witchcraft. And if you blame witchcraft, you have to go looking for witches.” After a few too many beats of silence she added, “If you want to know more, this place is a tourist destination, now. I’m sure there’s a museum…well, right in front of us, actually.”

The circular yellow sign on the building before them, featuring a woman riding a broomstick, proclaimed it to be the Witch History Museum. Morgen looked like he was considering it for a moment, but then he shook his head. “We have places to be.”

That they did. A maps search that made her feel old and out of touch with technology as she navigated the screen and its many choices, showed a rental car place a little over a mile away, so they started walking, passing several more witchy and occult themed shops, plus another museum on Essex Street before turning onto another. Morgen had a look of deep concentration on his face, and they were halfway to the rental place before he finally asked: “They executed people here for witchcraft, but this town seems to peddle a great amount of magic-related wares.”

Nyx didn’t know how to explain that the tourist side of it had little to do with the original deaths, but she did her best. “While there are still sects of religion that think witchcraft is evil, most people these days don’t. People here…they need something to believe in. This is something. The Salem Witch Trials are probably one of the most well-known historical events to people in the US. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone brought up in the US education system who doesn’t at least have a vague idea of what they were.

“The town capitalizes on that, I guess you could say. It gives them a way to attract tourists and provide business for the residents with the ‘fun’ side of witchiness, but it also lets them bring more attention and knowledge to the historical side of it as well. So it’s not quite the contradiction it seems at first glance.”

Morgen made a noncommittal sound, and they walked the rest of the way without much conversation. After looking through the available car options and signing half her life away, Nyx received the keys to a sedan that got reasonable gas mileage. Predictably, Evra and Morgen chose to complain about the size of the vehicle, and then to argue over who got the front seat. Morgen claimed he deserved it, on grounds of being “the reasonable one”, while Evra claimed she deserved it on grounds of being “the best friend”.

“I have bad news for both of you,” she said, interrupting a straight minute of bickering. “You’re both in the back. Kaden’s up front.”

This elicited the predictable how-is-this-fair objections.

“It’s not fair or unfair. It’s determined by the fact that motion sickness usually isn’t as severe in the front seat of a vehicle as it is in the back. Also, if Kaden ends up projectile vomiting, I’d think both of you would be glad he’s in front of you, and not behind you.”

This shut them up long enough for bags to be stowed in the trunk and for everyone to take their respective seats. Evra chose the driver’s side backseat, which left Morgen behind Kaden. Nyx unbuckled Alihana’s sword belt and, after a moment of bickering with them, stowed them in the floorboard of the backseat before climbing into the driver’s seat. Veritas dug into her thigh, so she unbuckled the thigh sheath for the truth-telling dagger and settled it into the console. But there was still something else biting into her thigh. She dug into her pocket and came up with a small pill bottle. Oh, right. She tossed it to Kaden before starting the car.

“What’s this?” Kaden asked, frowning at the bottle.

“Dramamine. Take some. It helps with the nausea.”

“You never thought to mention this before?”

Before, as in, when they’d lived together. “Before, we never drove anywhere that was more than fifteen minutes away. It didn’t feel necessary. Also, it can make you drowsy, which made it feel extra not desirable for a fifteen minute car ride.”

Kaden’s mouth tightened at this last bit of information, and he held tried to hand the bottle back to her. “I don’t need it.”

Nyx rolled her eyes. “The world will keep spinning if you take a nap.”

“I’m fine.” He had that look on his face that said no force on this earth would move him.

“Kaden,” she said slowly, and a flicker of something crossed his face that made her wish she hadn’t said his name. “I’ve seen you in vehicles before. You did throw up the fourth time.” That was the first—and only—time they’d driven anywhere longer than fifteen minutes.

This statement made Morgen snicker and Kaden glower. “Not in the car,” the latter ground out.

“Yes, yes, you heroically barfed on the street.” She’d felt terrible, and demanded to know why he hadn’t told her he got carsick. He’d hesitated, and then he’d just shrugged and said he hadn’t wanted to bother her. She understood now that he hadn’t told her because he hadn’t known. On the shorter drives, he’d probably just felt a little off, and chalked it up to the novelty of the new transportation method.

It wasn’t until she’d wanted to attempt fun and normality, and had decided to push the limits of her own ability to travel beyond Tempe’s borders to go to the Phoenix Art Museum, that the problem had become apparent. By the time she’d pulled over because he was green in the face, she’d already had a splitting headache. After a half-hour breather on the side of the road, her hope of anything resembling a normal life died, and they’d turned around and gone home.

Home, where she’d already been living with him because she was desperate, had nowhere else to go, and because it would have taken an army to pry her away from the one person who could remember her for more than five seconds and also seemed to like her. Stars, she’d been so dumb not to see the con from the start. But then, cons were designed to prey on the desperate, right?

She shook off the memories—she hadn’t thought about her previous relationship with Kaden in a long time, and she certainly didn’t want to start doing so again now—and pushed the bottle of Dramamine back at him. “It’s roughly a four hour drive. Don’t triple the travel time because we have to stop every half hour for you to breathe fresh air.”

He took the bottle back but didn’t open it.

She sighed. “What exactly do you think is going to happen if you fall asleep?” She had herself, Evra, Morgen, the Harvester of Worlds, and a sapient sword. There was precious little in Dead Earth they couldn’t deal with. Did he really still think she couldn’t handle herself after all this time?

“Nothing,” he answered.

Did that nothing sound a little hostile?

He popped the top off the bottle, shook out a pill and swallowed it dry—which, gross—and said, “Can we go now?”

Yep, he was pissed. Because stars forbid she try to prevent him from puking and point out that the world did not require his conscious presence on a car ride. “Yes, Your Majesty, we can go now.”

Morgen snickered again and clapped Kaden on the shoulder. Evra met Nyx’s gaze in the rearview mirror and rolled her eyes. That, at least, made Nyx crack a smile. She dropped the car in drive, followed her phone’s overly chipper voice telling her which direction to turn onto which street, and sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be the longest four hours of her life.