The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (37 page)

Until then, I’d look for the tree myself.
 

I returned to my bedroom, ready to share the news with Eve. When I opened the door, I almost fell over laughing at the sight. Leo sat on a chair, his hair twisted up in bows , wearing a face full of makeup.
 

“What are you doing to him?” I asked, spitting into a Kleenex and swiping at the red on his lips. “He isn't a doll.”

“I know.” Eve removed a bow from his hair. “But he saw me putting on my makeup and wanted me to fix him up, too. What could I say?”

“No?”

“Easy for you to say. You weren't the recipient of his puppy dog eyes. Leo, make your doggy eyes.”

He widened his hazel eyes and turned his mouth down in a pout. It was comical––and horrible.

“I suppose you taught him that, too?”
 

Eve spread her hand. “We ran out of candy and he sucks at Scrabble. What were we supposed to do? I do have something to show you, though.” She reached into her handbag and removed her tablet. “Check this out.”

Leo and I gathered behind her as she pulled up Facebook. A photo of Leo with slicked-back hair on a golf course smiled smugly back at us.
 

“He looks like a real douchebag, doesn’t he?” she asked.

“You cracked his password?”
 

“I wish I was that smart,” Eve said, her eyes flashing. “It was all Leo.” She scrolled through pictures and instant messages, stopping on a picture of Leo with his arm around a woman half his age. “I guess it’s like muscle memory. I handed him the tablet and he typed in his password. He’s a good boy.” She scruffed his hair.

“Well, at least he’s a good boy now,” Eve continued. “Maybe not before. Has about twelve girlfriends in four different states. None of them know about each other. Hasn’t seen his mother in two years. And, he admitted to a friend that he’s been scamming money from his work. Nope. Leo wasn't a very nice boy at all.”

“Wow,” I said, as Leo pointed to pictures of him parasailing over sky-blue waters.
 

What Jillian said, about spells only working on people who had that in their nature already must be true. Still, it was tough to reconcile this innocent with the pompous, scamming, womanizer on the Facebook page.

“I don’t feel so bad about killing him now,” Eve said, putting her tablet back in her bag.

“Eve! Don't say that!” I covered Leo’s ears, but he shook my hands loose.

“It’s true. You should see what he wrote in some of those messages. Told three different women he was going to marry them. And he was practically stalking a fifteen-year-old in Washington. He was scum, Maggie. Consider it a public service.”

I opened my mouth to defend him, but she stopped me.
 

“Before you get on your pulpit, which you conveniently drag out only when it suits you, check this out. I got into Leo’s bank account. The guy is loaded. Nearly 14,000 dollars in his savings account and half that amount in his checking. And we have his password, debit card, and checkbook.”

“Are you serious?”

“Aren’t I always?”

I sat on the bed, imagining everything we could do with that much money: Pay the taxes on Harvest Home, take Mother to a real doctor, buy diapers and formula for my kiddo. “We can’t take that. Can we?”

“Well, we gotta feed him now. And clothe him. He eats his weight in gummy bears. He won’t be cheap.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what, Maggie? What’s he going do with the money, especially if he stays like this?”

“We should at least
try
and make him better first, don’t you think?”

“How? How is he going to get better? I think we are saddled with him for awhile now, and if that’s true, twenty grand isn’t going to get us very far. But it will at least buy us some time.”

A lump caught in my throat. Eve was right. Leo was in our care, indefinitely.
 

I fell back onto the bed, covering my face with my hands as I rolled across the sheets. Even if we were responsible for him now, it didn't seem right, taking his money.

“Give me some time,” I said. “If we find that tree…”

“We aren't going to find that tree. Wise up.”

“Let’s at least wait until the holidays are over before we make any decisions. Deal?”

Eve’s eyes became calculating slants. “Deal.”
 

“I still have hope,” I said, sitting up and patting Leo’s arm.
 

“That makes one of us. We can’t keep the wolves at bay forever. If we don’t do something, we will lose this house. And we may lose Mom.”

“I know.”

Twenty thousand dollars was enough to pay the back taxes, but it would also seal our fates. We couldn’t spend Leo’s money and then release him. I wasn’t ready to go down that road without trying to fix things myself first.
 

Twenty-Two

EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE

Leo followed me through the denser parts of the forest, lifting up branches and carrying me over boulders as we trekked our way through the back woods of Dark Root.
 

We set off from Harvest Home at dawn each morning, me driving Leo’s car, then traveled by foot through the woods, our faces turned upwards towards the sun as our boots sloshed through knee deep mud.

We were on a quest to find the Lightning Willow, the tree Mother had cut her wand from, the tree that would save us all.

There wasn’t much time.
 

Mother grew paler and thinner every day. Her ramblings were almost incoherent and Merry reported that she was frequently wetting the bed. The doctor that came to check on her said that, aside from a few drugs for pain, there was nothing that could be done for her.

Leo, too, had changed. Though his comprehension of the world around him increased, he slept more, up to sixteen hours a day, roused occasionally by nightmares of a
bad man
waiting for him in a dark hole. He may have been a slime ball in his former life, but there was an innocence to him now, and my resolve to “fix” him grew stronger by the day.
 

A few waves from a life-giving wand, I reasoned, and he’d be healthy and whole again.

We only needed to find the tree.
 

Larinda knew where it was. She had admitted to putting a spell on it, ensuring that it remained hidden until she was allowed inside Dark Root. I had tried to call her using every summoning spell in Mother’s book, but to no avail.
 

So we went out on our own, knowing the futility in trying to find an invisible tree, but hoping that we’d stumble upon it anyway. All I had to go on was the image that had appeared in her crystal ball. The willow stood before a flowing current of water, though I couldn’t tell if it was a stream or a river. There were so many channels of water in and around Dark Root that it seemed an impossible task and I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Think we should call it a day?” I asked Leo as the sun dipped behind the trees.
 

He enjoyed these outings, listening to birds, digging for bugs with sticks in the mud, and collecting pine cones and leaves. He thrust his bottom lip out at my question.
 

“Oh, all right. Five minutes more,” I said.
 

He smiled and immediately set to tossing leaves into the air and running beneath his autumn parachute.
 

“…And if you don’t fight me when it’s time to go, I’ve got some gummy bears in my bag.” I had learned that bribery was the fastest way to get him into the car.

“Oh-kay.” He blew on a handful of dandelions, watching the tiny white hairs swirl into the wind. “Pretty!”
 

When every wisp had floated away, we turned back towards where we had parked. Just then, a flurry of black movement caught our eye.

“Birdies!”
 

Leo pointed to a flock of black birds that rose up from the ground, cawing and flapping wildly as they followed the curve of the river deeper into the woods. Leo sprang forward, giving chase. “Birdies!” he repeated, arms opened wide as he chased after them.

“Leo! Wait!”
 

I ran after him but he was quicker. He leapt over branches and tangles of plants as I tripped behind him, my own breath labored by my pregnancy.
 

“Please, wait for me!”

The birds flew to the other side of the river and disappeared.
 

Leo continued after them, stumbling through the water as he tried to keep his balance. The birds reappeared, shooting up from the trees. Leo hobbled on, his hands clawing for the sky as if he could pluck a bird out of mid-air.

“Leo!” I hollered, falling further behind.
 

He was waist deep now, his lips trembling and body shivering. I pushed on, breathing heavier with each step. The current caught him, careening him against rocks as he was pulled downstream. He let out squeals of pain as he tumbled along.

 
He went under, then emerged, his blond hair plastered to his face. I caught up and ran alongside him, begging him to grab on to one of the many branches extending from the riverbank.

The currents grew stronger. Leo struggled to stay afloat, bobbing up and down as he flailed his arms and called out, “Magg-eee!”
 

He couldn’t swim. Perhaps he could in his former life, but he couldn’t now. I watched helplessly as he was tossed along like a rag doll. He lengthened his arms towards me.
 

“Help Leo. Please.”

 
“I'm coming, Leo.” I pumped my arms with new resolve. “Grab that tree!” I yelled, pointing to a low branch in front of him. “I’m almost there.”

He caught the branch with one hand, as the rest of his body jounced over the water. The river was stronger than his grip, ripping him from the tree. He launched forward, crashing into another large rock. He wrapped his arms around the rock and met my eyes.

“That’s it,” I said. “Hang on.”

I dipped my finger into the river and felt its chill; It was cold enough to stop a heart.
 

“Magg-eee,” Leo whimpered, his eyelids fluttering close. “It hurts.”

I checked the ground. There were a thousand sticks but none of them were long enough to use. I pulled on tree limbs, but the rain had made them too soft and pliable to be broken off with my bare hands.