Devil's Frost, Spellspinners Series #3 (The Spellspinners of Melas County) (15 page)

The golden strings began to vibrate. One at a time. Flick. Indent. Vibrate. My fingers hovered nearby, but I wasn’t touching the harp, which now appeared to
glow
.

The notes were clean. In tune. Pitch perfect.

At first only the strings closest to my hands were making sound, but then one on the far side of the harp pinged, its shiny note ringing out into the captivated audience, joining the melody coming from Jonah’s piano.

Without me touching it.

Panicked, I looked across the stage at Jonah, who, as his own fingers flew over the keys, flicked me an encouraging glance over his shoulder.
Keep going.

My fingers fluttered around the glowing strings. Inhaling deeply, I gently grazed the strings, and right as rain, the most beautiful music sprang from the harp. The swaying shadows of audience members slowed as the moving music flooded the room. Now I was playing. My own fingers flitting over the thick strings. I played harder and faster, squeezing my thighs around the base of the harp, swaying my body to the music, bending over the instrument as if, like in a fairy tale, the harp and I were one and the same. This instrument was indeed enchanted, but I felt magic surge within myself, which led me to believe that it was mostly me making this magic happen. As if, like in the old Mickey cartoon, the harp and I were one and the same instrument; we needed each other to create this enchantment.

I’m not sure how much time passed, maybe thirty minutes? An hour? I had no idea. I was so absorbed with the playing I forgot everything else, until my music simply stopped. My hands stopped moving. The strings faded from bright gold to normal silver, and became completely still, as if the harp was a steam-punk animatron whose interior clockwork had stopped.

Blinking, I stiffened my fingers and pulled my hands away from the harp’s strings.

What had just happened? Jonah was right. I could play. I could play…beautifully.

It took me a moment to regain my footing and reacclimatize to where I was. My breath was shallow and my heartbeat slow, like Mom’s after she performed an intense spell. Sometimes she’d have to lie down in a dark room with a cool washcloth over her forehead like she was recovering from a migraine.

I felt more like I’d just raced my epic crush in a four-minute mile.

And won.

A mix of romantic exhilaration and physical conquest.

My soul soared and I wanted more.

As I reached out to try to play another song, I remembered the audience.

Glancing into the crowd with my hand over my eyes to shield the light, I noticed how quiet they were. Silent. My stomach tightened. I knew I was a beginner and all, but at least throw me a bone and a courtesy clap, huh? Jonah had asked them to be extra cool. I didn’t expect a standing ovation first time out of the gate, but couldn’t they bother to at least lightly applaud?

Then it hit me.

Maybe the enchantment was that even though I thought I was fab, in reality my playing blew. It was the fourth-grade recital all over again and bucked-tooth Daisy with her recorder ruined the song with all of her missing notes.

Oh my goddesses! This was a nightmare!

Where were my friends, at least? They would still love me. They didn’t care if I was talented at the harp. They’d give me my iced latte; I’d nurse my “I suck” wounds and feel better in time.

But I couldn’t see them, either.

All I saw were shadows. That bored, huh? But as my eyes adjusted to the glare, my breath caught in my throat. The audience was there, but now I understood why they were so quiet. They were slumped over the tables, heads lying in plates of croissant crumbs and puddles of spilled espresso. Flopped onto their hands or balancing on their friends’ shoulders.

They weren’t bored. They looked
dead
.

The exception was the lone figure in the corner of the stage who straddled the piano bench like the most relaxed performer ever to grace a café stage. He started slow clapping, and a wide smile spread across his face.

“Jonah, what the hell?” I was genuinely freaked out and, frankly, a little pissed off by tonight’s bizarre events.

Above us, the stage lights flipped off.

I heard a snap, and a dim house light rose. Jonah stood, his fingers still poised for another snap.

He walked across the stage to where I sat on my velvet stool, surely slack-jawed. “That,” he said, gesturing to the snoozing crowd, “is your gift.”

“My gift?”

How was this happening? How did Jonah know anything? What did he know? Had he just turned off the lights with a snap? No. Friggin. Way.
Jonah is human.
As human as they come. Lily and Iris would know if he was a warlock! And they would’ve told me.
Wouldn’t they?

First things first. “Are they okay? I mean, are they going to wake up?”

Was my “gift” becoming a fifteen-year-old mass murderer? Not cool at all. Killing innocent humans, especially my BFFs, was not my jam.

“Cool down, kid. You didn’t kill anyone.”

Thank the goddesses. “I didn’t?”

“No.” Pause. “They’re asleep.”

“Asleep?”

“With the right musician plucking its strings, this golden harp has the power to sing people to sleep.”

“That would’ve been nice intel
before
the show started, Jonah. Geez. I almost had a heart attack. How are you not asleep?”

“I spun a counter, hoping my instincts were right and you had the gift.” He shrugged, his shoulders lifting up and down in his ironic T-shirt, but he touched my elbow sweetly. “If you know it’s coming, you can counter it. Sorry, kid. We had to see if the spell would work organically.”

“Organically?”

“Without you being tipped off. You know, trying or not trying. That’s why we had to surprise you. But it worked! You did it! You started playing along with the harp, and it worked. You put them to sleep and made them stay asleep. And you’ve made such a difference elsewhere. You—”

I didn’t hear him, I was so angry. “
Surprised?
Surprises are like a dozen balloons and a roomful of your friends. This was a nasty trick. I thought they were…dead.” He wasn’t a good friend after all. I didn’t say it, but I wanted to. Wrinkling my nose, I turned toward the crowd so he couldn’t see the tears brimming in my eyes. This day was already hard enough with Lily fighting in the Gleaning. I had enough on my plate without getting chucked onto a mainstream stage and being tested on a magic skill I didn’t even know I possessed.

“I’m sorry,” he said genuinely. This time he didn’t shrug. “They will be up in a half hour or so. Believe me. They are totally fine. And coffee’s on the house when they wake up.”

“This is totally weird.”

“I know. If I hadn’t had to do it, I wouldn’t have. Believe me.”

Still pissed off, I pressed him. “What were you saying?”

“We need you, Daisy.”

“Who?”

Jonah frowned contemplatively, like he was deciding whether or not to tell me who this mysterious “we” was.

I crossed my arms, glancing over at the sleeping crowd. “Fill me in now, Jonah. Who are
we
?”

He glanced at the door, at the sleeping crowd, before leaning in. With a low, serious voice, he asked, “Have you ever heard of a group called the Benders?”

“Benders? No.”

“The Benders are a group of Spellspinners who live off the grid up, way up on top of the mountain. A place called Hidden Valley. They live together there, witches and warlocks.”

“The redwoods here?”

He nodded. “Outside Melas, on the other side of the warlock boundaries, closer to the Silicon Valley.” He lowered his voice. “You know the restaurant where all the bikers hang out?”

“Alice’s?” I whispered, too. Who knew? Maybe one of the sleeping café customers was listening subconsciously.

“Yep.”

“My dad used to take Lily and me there for breakfast when we were little.”

“That makes sense,” he said with a light chuckle.

“What do you mean?”

“Your dad knew them well.”

“My dad knew the—what did you say they called themselves?”

“Benders. Spellspinners who are bending the rules is the root of the phrase. It’s a phrase coined from the old days. The rules brought down by the Seven Sisters’ curse and micromanaged by the Congression were too much for a certain subsection of Spellspinners, so they ran off, carefully, slowly. Some faked their own deaths, some pretended to move away, but they stayed close to Melas, watching, waiting. Working the land and living off it. Their cover is a motorcycle gang”—again the arched eyebrow to share his amusement—“they look tough, and people largely leave them alone. They are, essentially, waiting for Congression to fall, or until there’s a crack in their armor, so…”

“How do you know all of this?”

Jonah’s gray eyes turned bright silver, the color of a winter’s moon, before he answered. “I’m one of them. And so is your father, our former leader.”

Jaw. Dropped. “What?”

He nodded. “He was living among us on The Farm before he met your mom and came into the ‘public,’ so to say.”

That explained a lot, actually. My dad was always counterculture. He was a hipster before hipsters. Played guitar. Cooked organic food from our garden. But he was also tough in this quiet way. “He did ride a motorcycle! He’d go for these long drives on Sundays up into the coastal mountains. I’d beg him to take me along, and he was always saying, ‘When you’re older, Daisy. You’d get sick on those windy roads.’”

The memory choked me up, of my dad, coming home after dark, the sound of his motorcycle’s engine dying and him walking it into our garage, parking it in a hidden corner.

“Did my mom know?”

“No. She thought his magic was stricken; he had to practice in secret.”

“But they seemed so close.”

“They were. That’s why Hawk had to protect her. If she knew, Jacob could find out, and the Benders couldn’t risk the exposure.”

“Hawk?”

“His Bender name. We all have one.”

“Hawk,” I said, remembering. “He had a red-tail patch on the back of his leather jacket!”

Jonah nodded, urging me to continue.

“I remember seeing him out my window one night, walking his motorcycle, instead of driving it, down our road. His headlights were turned off, but it was a full moon. He parked the bike in our shed out back. I asked him about it the next morning while he was making his special buttermilk blueberry pancakes for me, and he said what I saw was real, but I had to keep it a secret, even from Mom. I figured it was because she wouldn’t want him riding a motorcycle at night, but wow, the real reason was because he was part of this secret group?”

Jonah nodded.

“If you’re a warlock—”

“Not a warlock. A
Bender.
We don’t do the gender war thing and consider the term warlock to be offensive.”

Leave it to über-politically-correct Jonah.

Since I was still pissed off at him, sarcasm lingered in my tone. “Pardon me, a
Bender
. Does Lily know?”

“She suspects I know more than I let on. I covered for her magic once or twice at the bar.” He tapped on the stage, looking sheepish.

“Ah. And Logan?”

“I don’t think he thinks of me as anything more than an obnoxious human.”

I had to ask. “So were you ever into Lily really, or was that just a Bender thing?”

I held my breath, waiting for an answer.

Frowning, he looked away. He wasn’t going to tell me about his inner feelings. I narrowed my eyes, half bummed, half relieved. If he confessed his undying love for her, I’d crash and burn. So I switched topics. “How old are you, Jonah? Really?”

He laughed, tugging on his silver ring. “Seventeen.”

“Aha! I was onto you, you know. All this community college stuff…I mean, you’re mature and all, but no way are you drinking age.”

“Well, technically that’d be
voting
age.”

“And what’s your Bender name?”

“That’s classified,” he said, teasing. “I’ll tell you once I assign you yours.”

“Mine?”

“Heck yeah. After what you just did? You definitely have the magic touch.”

I grinned. Maybe I
could
take a spin without crashing and burning. “Why did you think it would be me? Why me?”

He stopped smiling, and his tone was serious again. “When you were born with that honey-colored hair and brown eyes, Hawk suspected you might be the one who inherited this rare magical musical gift. But then, when you showed absolutely no aptitude for music, he was confused—”

I laughed out loud. “The fourth-grade recorder concert?”

“Exactly.” He grinned. “He was hoping it would click the night of the syzygy—when three celestial beings aligned—Lily isn’t back until dawn, so I’ll explain more on the way up to camp—I’d like to show you around, give you the grand tour.”

I perked up. “A tour! Do you have goats? I’ve always wanted a goat, but Mom won’t let me get one. She says goats eat shoes. Do your goats eat shoes?”

“You are the perkiest person I’ve ever known,” he said.

“Noted.”

“Yes, we do have goats, and yes, to the best of my recollection, they do, from time to time, enjoy the taste of old shoes. In fact, there was this…”

His words dropped off when the door chimes rang and a disheveled young woman with shoulder-length blond hair and bright blue eyes stumbled into the café, looking half desperate and half confused.

“Daisy?” the young woman said, “Oh, thank goodness one of you is okay. Lily told me to come straight here. That you and Jonah could protect me?”

She looked stoned. Or insane. This must be one of Lily’s friends from school. She wasn’t a witch I recognized.

“Protect you from what?”

Glancing at Jonah, confused, I looked back at the girl. She looked like a lost college kid. Or maybe she was just drunk and wandered in from a bonfire. Maybe some creepy guy was after her.

“Congression,” she said, her eyes wide and wild with fear.

“What?” Jonah and I exchanged confused looks again.

“Daisy,” she said intently, taking a step forward and staring deep into my eyes. Hers were oddly familiar. I noticed her clothes were too big for her small frame.