Wrath of the Gods [Legacy, BK 3 - Hiatus]

6.3 - John

Cameron left me alone as the sound of the door to the garage opened, signaling the arrival of the other hedge witches.

I couldn't take my eyes off the fern. The leaf was still green. Holding my breath, I kept waiting for it to shrivel up and go brown. But it only seemed to get stronger, growing a little in size as the rest of the plant began to look healthier as well.

Glancing down at my hand, I pushed the sleeve of my hoodie up to reveal three times the number of dark black markings that normally would show up on my arm after casting a portal. Whatever I'd done, it'd not only cost me in pain but a good deal of energy as well.

"Hey," Hunter said. "You want one?"

He'd walked into the room without me noticing and was even within arm's reach as he held out a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

"I'm okay." With a shake of my head, I forced myself to turn away from the window and the plant. Staring at the thing wasn't going to help me figure out what happened and I didn't want to be stuck with one of the crappy camp chairs if I was still standing when all the others finally joined us from the kitchen.

The couch was the most comfortable place to sit in the room, even if it was lumpy and anyone who sat on it sank into it like it was a pool of quicksand. I took the far corner, which gave me the best view of the room and still let me keep an eye on the plant.

It didn't make sense. I'd killed everything that I'd tried to touch with my power so far. What had been different this time? How had I done it?

"Are you okay?" Hunter asked. He ate the last cookie and sat next to me, crumpling the now-empty bag in his hand. He shoved the trash into the pocket of his jacket and dusted off his hands.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I didn't feel like talking about it yet, not until I'd figured out what had happened. There was no point worrying Hunter over another unexplained issue with my powers when there was already so much on our plates.

The others came in and found seats. Kit and Gareth took the folding chairs, chatting quietly as they sat down and Cameron sat in one of the chairs he'd brought in from the kitchen table.

Rose, who was the last to walk in with a soda in one hand and her phone in the other, took the last free on the couch. She'd dyed her hair again since the last time we'd seen her, the pale pink strands french braided back away from her face on the long side. Rose seemed to prefer to dye it almost weekly, and always wild colors that went along with her punk rock clothing choices.

The three hedge witches always seemed like an odd mash-up of friends to me. Rose was about my age, but Kit and Gareth were older. Kit was an average middle-class guy, with an accounting job at some bigwig company. He wasn't much of a talker unless it came to the coven stuff.

On the other hand, Gareth was volatile and about as different from Kit as night and day. The bodybuilder worked as a personal trainer during the day, using his gifts with Spirit to help understand what was holding his clients back from reaching their goals. But within the hedge witch cycle, Gareth was known as a livewire and was just as ruthless in his pursuit to take down the coven as some of the coven members were committed to destroying the necromancers.

"Let's get started." Cameron turned to Rose. "You found something?"

She wiggled a little in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable spot. "One of our insiders came across a few emails that mentioned an address that we haven't seen before in connection with the coven. He's already done some preliminary research, but he's not cleared to visit the site himself. I don't want to compromise him if we can avoid it, but that means someone else needs to go and visit the site."