zadie.

“I don’t know yet,” Mini revealed with a few shakes of her head. “You’re the first person I’ve seen, but, considering we’re here, I believe there are others who might have been scattered in the vicinity as well. I will have a stroll around, see if I can find anybody else,” she had already come up with that part of the plan. The warmth that exuded from Zadie’s hands made it feel like her own were even colder than she’d initially assumed, and she allowed herself to rejoice in it for a little longer.

Biting her lip, Mini analyzed their surroundings. That was Circle of Nightfall territory, but she did not doubt someone was in charge of keeping it presentable, that might have been their best bet. “I don’t want us to end up having to take shelter in a mausoleum, for I have the feeling those would end up being colder and more vulnerable to the weather than if we stayed right here. So, I believe we must look for some sort of shed. There must be a place where people keep the tools for grooming these grounds. We should look for anything that might resemble it. And gather resources for the evening. Whatever we might be able to find,” she instructed.

“Come on, let’s see what they have over there,” she began leading the way to a place where she thought she could see a small flickering light.

She followed, numbly and obediently, until she stopped dead. The wind whistled, high and cluttered, heavy with the weight of the oncoming snow. Zadie pivoted, turning away from the brunette, trying to peer through the fog.

“Someone’s out there.”

She usually kept her observations to herself. It was better that way; and often, during the war, the only leverage or currency that she had. Zadie was quick on her feet, intelligent to boot. If she gave everything up at first sight, well. She’d likely be dead by then. Her tongue darted out, running along her lower lip, before she pressed them together and looked at Minerva.

Zadie felt safe, there. It was her territory. Circle territory. She nodded once, to the woman, and then stepped away. “Go ahead. Find shelter. I’ll be right there.”

An acrid taste rose in the back of his throat. Looking down on the charred origins of the book, the image of Zadie’s farmhouse hollowed and twisted by the blackness formed in Severin’s mind. If he had found her swallowed up in the same way would he have been moved by hot tears and heaviness in the chest? Or would he have been relieved Zadie had finally been reunited with her brother?

All he could feel then was his mother’s search for him in the light of day. Come home, Severin.

With every quick turn of a finger marking the circle of protection around them a light sparked, died, lit up brighter again until connected and fully charged by tiger stripes of flames holding them inside the small radius Severin created. 

The soft timbre of Zadie’s voice echoed within the confines of the cast circle. The book caught fire again as it rolled end over end down the cliffside, cushioned in an unnatural slowness of a reluctance to reach the bottom. 

With both of them repeating the same wish in Latin the ground began to shake under their feet, the sound of the earth’s seams snapping apart to accept the book overpowered the constant hum of the last 24 hours. 

This time Zadie would not have the better idea and he wasn’t going to bend to the silent rejections to placate her. The circle sizzled out, he grabbed her hand and would not let go until they were inside the truck with the engine waiting idling feet away. “Run.” 

The wind whistled high in her ears, piercing over the tops of the trees, and the hum didn’t come from one place, or one object, or one point, but all around. Maybe it was her. She could feel the vibrations deep in her core, proliferating from her ribs and her limbs and her spine, all at once. Zadie’s teeth chattered.

Run.

Yes. Good. That was good. The book ripped from her hands -- did she fling it? was it taken? -- and she felt hollow and alone, ripped from something very dear to her. Her hand found his, palms grasped, fingers laced. The ground was sloped and filled with decaying leaves as she followed, his legs longer and her vision blurred. She was crying.

The orange of the truck stood out against the stark blue and dusk of the ridge, and she hurtled toward it with an abandon not often felt. She didn’t feel much of anything, lately. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. There were rules around what she could allow, and she guarded herself so carefully then -- and had, for years. She had to survive. It felt like pieces of her were breaking off as they ran, her cheeks wet but her vision clearing, and she began to let go of his hand as they got onto solid ground.

She reached for the truck door, her fingers clasping around the silver of the handle. It was ice cold -- or her hand was burning hot.

Zadie looked at him through the windows, fogging from the inside. Bertram had leapt to the back of the truck and was calling to her in that low, gutteral cry. Zadie couldn’t see him, though. Her eyes locked with Severin’s, her hand on the handle. She pulled, but nothing happened. Or maybe she hadn’t pulled at all, but only thought it, conceived the concept and left it behind. Her knees felt weak. The earth was spinning.

“I--”

The humming left an absence in her ears, the ringing almost too much for her to bear. Zadie looked frantically left, then right. She fainted.

Darkness was something that Samuel had become accustomed to recently. He felt it growing inside of him. An unfamiliar feeling. One that could have only been brought on by one reason. War. He stood in his doorway, one hand on the door handle and the other on the door frame. Come in. He wanted to say. This was your house too. He wanted to say. But Samuel didn’t say any of that. Instead he closed the door behind him wordlessly, stepping onto the porch and one step closer to Zadie.

‘‘Dead?’‘ Brief confusion. 

Samuel hadn’t been in the midst of the battle. No, he had been too valuable to be sent out to the frontlines. Instead he had remained safely behind, the mastermind behind the attacks. The reason for such massacres that the Church of Dark inflicted on the other clans.

‘‘I heard what they did to you.’‘ Silence. ‘’I didn’t know, Zadie. I didn’t know.’’

There wasn’t anything to say to that. Bullshit, maybe. Or it doesn’t matter. But she’d forgotten how to really feel anger a long time ago, locked it away, so the only indication was a soft, tingling numbness. Her fingertips hurt.

“I lost the ring.”

It was taken from me.

It was the one contractual piece between them, a point of pride in his own family, so cherished on her finger. She remembered the morning he’d given it to her, cuddled deep in a thick mattress, covered in his red quilt. She blinked. That was a long time ago.

Zadie shifted. There was a firmness to her jaw, her cheekbones pronounced and sloping angularly as she looked around.

“I’ll pay you back for it. It’ll just take a little time.”

He wouldn’t go in before she did. Sam made it clear, opening the door but stepping back as he ushered her through it. And they made it just in time, the door slamming shut hard behind him. Samuel snatched his hand away from the door, the wind outside almost screaming, but they were in here. They were safe, for now.

Samuel looked at Zadie, hand hovering over her face where his blood had smeared over porcelain skin. He pulled his sleeve up, wiping the blood carefully from her face. ‘’Sorry.’’ He said. His thumb replaced his sleeve, running down her cheek gently as his eyes searched for any injuries on her.

Only when Samuel was content with what he saw did he step away, turning to look out of the window at the outside where the snow was falling heavier. They needed something put in front of the window to keep the cold out. His mind had already started calculating the next few steps. They needed a fire.

His touch felt like a cold wind, not unlike the one howling outside. Pale green eyes locked with his; she wasn’t angry. She was scouring him, absorbing every tiny flicker of his lashes, every twist of his mouth. It was as though she couldn’t believe he was there -- and she couldn’t. She’d convinced himself he was gone. He could disappear at any moment.

Sorry.

Zadie shook her head, the movement intended to dismiss his apology and break away from his touch. He stepped away and she shivered, drawing the collar of her poppy red coat closer to her chin. She wanted to follow him on instinct -- god, how she’d loved him once -- but she stopped. She couldn’t.

Instead she turned the other way, crossing the room, rummaging amongst the broken pots and shovels. She uncovered logs, a few. Not damp, but covered in dirt, and carried them back to him without realizing the own dirt smeared upon herself. She dropped them unceremoniously into the fireplace.

“Sam.”

She didn’t know what else to say, so she fidgeted. And then she said it, again.

He questioned why Zadie had the run of everything they did on this trip. She’s Oliver’s sister. Severin kept telling himself. It was the only explanation which didn’t feel like being guided by gunpoint. 

Insisting to be obligated by more than alternate thoughts. That she was smart, insanely knowledgable. He remembered Zadie having a sense of humor once. And she was kind to others still, whether she wanted to admit it or not. 

Just not to Severin. 

He could live with it. As much as the warlock wanted it to be different for stupid, selfish reasons. The eyes that peered right through him as if he were glass. The silence woven into every interaction. 

The still nature of her was destruction after a storm tearing up every foundation he tried to established. The reason why he snapped and wanted something, anything from her. When his head hit the pillow at the motel room Severin was relieved the silence now would be directed at sleep and not him.

In another bed his back was turned to her. Stiffly starched sheets, carpet worn into a thinly packed moss on the floor. A drip occasionally in the bathroom from a leaky sink. 

Severin couldn’t sleep but pretended for the sake of it. Zadie began a delayed response under the crackle of a contained fire in the corner for warmth and his eyes opened slowly. 

Did he know what it was like? Not in the cruel way she did. Fucking hell, the things she must’ve… his emotions did a little backsliding then. He regretted asking. Held his breath knowing if he said a word she’d fade away. 

But Severin had never been good at keeping his mouth shut. His voice matched hers in case they both wished to pretend they’d never addressed each other in the room. “No. I don’t.”

Zadie nodded, once. Bertram jumped on the bed and turned three times, his tail swishing as he curled up in the space underneath her arm. And then she shut her eyes, and waited for sleep.

---

The house was ash, when they came upon it, and she didn’t know what else she expected. Of course it was; nothing could survive it. She stared, brown-booted toes perched on the edge of the road, peering down the slight ravine. There had been a house there, once. Now it was black.

She was tired. Drained. She could feel it in the way her fingers ached and her thighs had begun to tremble, the uncomfortable panic of too much settling in as she tried to contain the book. It was still humming, reverberating. She’d wrapped it in her jacket to contain it, held it to her chest. Latin murmured under her breath, again and again. Et filum spinalis torquent--

The book lurched against her arms all the same, and she was tempted to let it fly out, tumble down the mossy cliff, back to the scorched earth where it belonged. Her head felt full, blood rising in her neck. --in medio spiritum meum--

“Burn it.” She managed, her words strangely crisp, cutting through the humming and the Latin. Her throat was dry, her gaze snapped to him. “Severin. We’ve got to burn it.”

et corona tua fixumque intercipit.

“Make the circle.” She gritted her teeth and locked her jaw. She could hold onto it a little longer, still. She thought. She could. “Hurry.”

@zadie-maclain

Then he saw her. Like he said before, she was unmissable. Her white hair glowed in the dark like a halo and in that moment, all Samuel felt was relief. She was here. She was alive. He mumbled an excuse me, and started walking. That walk turned into a jog, until it turned into a run and his lips parted, shouting her name before he could stop himself.

‘‘Zadie! Zadie!’‘

Relief.

All he could feel was relief. And she turned around, but he was already there. His arms around her, his face in her hair, breathing in her smell. Oh, her hair. She was okay. Samuel pulled back, his hands on her upper arms as he looked her over. Samuel could barely feel the blood still dripping from his ear, down his neck. All he could think about was her

She was here.

She was okay.

‘‘Zadie.’‘

The storm confused her, and the night had gone on so long. She’d gotten used to it, the lack of sleep, the need for constant movement. They’d traveled a lot at night, especially during the winter when the night came early and stayed long. Zadie wasn’t afraid of the dark. She just wasn’t ready for it.

Mini had found her first, her tiny hands milk-white in the moonlight. Shelter, she’d said, and Zadie followed her as far as she could. The outpost was small, but solid, fortified with quarry stone. She was almost through it when she stopped.

Why did she stop?

Maybe it was stress. She felt her grasp on reality slipping with each passing day, the monotony of routine pounding into her skull and taking her identity with it. She was a shell, a ghost. She would’ve stopped if she knew how.

The arms that locked around her were strong, connected to a solid torso and a rough beard and a voice that she knew. But she stayed still, even compelled toward him, falling only as far as she was coaxed. Sam.

Her breath sounded loud, face angled in the soft curve at the base of his neck, and for the shortest flicker, her eyes shut. They weren’t there, not in a storm, not in a cemetery. Not after the war. For a moment, there was no war.

He was worried and he was bleeding, and she noticed both of those things in rapid succession. Zadie stared as the wind caught in it, white flakes dissolving in a dark drop as it slid down his neck. She’d been pressed against it, the blood smudged where her cheek had landed. Zadie lifted her hand to her forehead, her fingertips coming away red.

“Inside.” The storm grew and the wind howled and he was too far away. She flinched, angling her body toward the outpost. “Inside, Sam.”

The two of them were surrounded by greyed tombstones. The wind was wuthering, howling like a wolf to the moon, bringing the snow to them. White speckles began dotting the landscape, stretching as far as the eye could see. They needed to get away from there. Now.

“Good,” Mini found herself taking Zadie’s hands in hers, giving them a squeeze. For a moment there, she had forgotten she didn’t have her gloves on. She’d left them inside the pocket of her coat right before she took her place in the circle. Maybe, if she were lucky, they would still be there. “We need to get out of here,” she ushered, her eyes scanning the grounds for anywhere they might have been able to use since it was evident they wouldn’t be able to make it a lot further. “Have you seen anyone else?”

It was only as Zadie’s question reached her ears that Mini lowered her gaze towards herself. Damn it. She didn’t know what had happened, but, amidst the chaos, her coat might have gotten caught in something, causing it to tear.

Shrugging it off, Mini began prioritizing things inside her head. “It’s okay, I’m sure it won’t be all that important. But we need to find shelter,” she dismissed, aware that her coat was the last thing they should be worrying about.

The woman’s hands were tiny, and she stared at them in some shock. She remembered what it was like to not have gloves, or a coat, or even shoes with their soles intact. Almost immediately, Zadie’s hands clamped over hers, shielding the delicate skin from the wind.

“Anyone else?”

Who else was there? Where were they? How had it--

Slowly, Zadie took in their surroundings, the snow whipping against her cheeks. The tombstones and the ferocious wind, beating against her shoulders just like it had at the north outpost. Her mouth went dry. “Sam, I’ve gotta find--”

Sam.

Shelter.

She stared at Minerva, wide-eyed.

“Where?”

Show off. 

And wasting precious energy they both needed to deal with the book by lifting the truck.

As he changed the tire Severin remembered a Zadie who slipped away to her room when the boys camped out on her parent’s sofa. She’d smile at his twin, Ethan. Sometimes she’d even smile at Severin before disappearing up the stairs. They were identical, she may have confused the two, it was easy to do. Still, she once smiled his way. While a protective Oliver told both brothers to never lay a finger on his sister.

When Zadie said she was better in a crisis– he said nothing. Maybe Zadie was right, but Severin wasn’t going to say it. 

He wasn’t going to argue with her because at every turn the witch seemed to want to conjure annoyance. And with each fantasy of leaving the woman somewhere else her brother’s voice echoed a threat in his head.

When they reached a lake another hour down the road Severin could hear a sickening bend of metal behind him. The smoke billowed inside the cab of the truck enough to choke on. Zadie’s familiar turned sharp ears on the blonde. He parked as close to the shore as possible. 

Getting out of the truck he slammed the door behind him. The lock of the tool chest had fallen into a putty-like glowing slack of neon heat. With a flick of the wrist Severin cast it aside. 

A pause. Light eyes shot her way. His voice wasn’t lacking emotion nor was it friendly. Not entirely hostile. Harboring irritation. At the book. At her holding on to the book. “What did they do to you? The Church of Dark? During the war?”

He was as sour as a rotting lemon, and maybe he always had been. Zadie bristled every time he snapped, every time the door slammed and his feet hit the ground, heavy. Severin set her on edge, and she didn’t like this newfangled sense of importance he brimmed with. Council was easy to buy into, everyone knew that.

Still, he was a Council member. She wasn’t.

Zadie opened the door and Bertram leapt out of the cab, his fur fluffed out every which way. He paused a few paces from the truck and bent, licking a long path from nape to tail. Filthy, Zadie. His voice echoed in her mind. Leave the boy. You know he’s trouble.

Green eyes glanced over at Severin, and she nodded slowly. He was.

Didn’t matter.

She walked over to him, met light with light, returned the emotion with a similar tone. There was so much unanswered about him, and that angered her. Why are you still hanging around, what do you want, where is--

Didn’t matter, again.

“It was the war,” Zadie answered, practical. She hoisted herself up so she was standing on the tire wheel, peering over at the book in the truck bed. The air was heavy, filled with freshwater, and she took a long, deep breath and expelled it through the smallest split in her lips. A motel’s red light twinkled in the distance.

She grabbed a blanket, thrown in the back of the truck, and tossed it over the now-cold toolbox. The book flared and cooled, just like it had when she’d opened it. It seemed to respond to a tide of its own, annoying as shit that was.

“Come on.”

She hopped down, reached into the cab for his wallet and coat. Kept ahold of them as she started walking.

----

The room was green, speckled with flowers where there was wallpaper, painted brick where there wasn’t. She drew the blankets high to her chin and stared at the ceiling in the dark. Bertram purred against her leg.

He could’ve been asleep. His breathing had slowed a few minutes back, the yellow light from outside only just making it through the thick curtain over the singular window. The room was small, and smelled mostly of bleach. It felt strange not to be in her own bed. Stranger, still, to be in walls.

“Do you know what it’s like--”

Her voice was soft, easily missed, and intended not to wake him if he was asleep.

“--to not be treated as a person?”

That was what they did, the Church. They took away who she was, reduced her into functions, into limbs and parts. Nothing had mattered about her -- not her name, not her family, not the good grades she’d gotten in school or the friends she’d made in their coven. Wash. Tend. Cook. Shut up. Walk.

Zadie swallowed, and tried to shut her eyes.

“I do.”

@zadie-maclain

Winds moved with increasing speed, blowing past Minerva’s dark hair, whipping it furiously around. Out of all possible times for the storm to be upon them, this had to be the worst. If only they could be done with getting rid of that poltergeist, they could all leave the streets in search for shelter.

Energy coursed through each one of them, their hands linked, following the Captain’s orders to maintain their formation. The air current tormented them, like an unrelenting child begging for a treat, until it became too strong for them to be able to withstand. Like a deck of cards, the wind scattered them all away.

The events all happened so fast that the brunette was a little disoriented. Glancing at her surroundings, she wondered how she’d ended up there. Her head seemed to throb, and she wasn’t sure why. Still, as she spotted a familiar face, she rushed over to the woman.

“Zadie, are you all right?” She wondered, eyes scanning over her figure before offering her a hand.

They were in a graveyard.

Zadie’s head whipped around as quick as the wind, light eyes taking it in. She felt breathless, not out of shock or the sort of cold breath that came after a hard run, but as though there was no breath in her body. She felt hollow.

Her hands reached for something, something solid, and landed upon an old gravestone. Fingertips dug into the craggled rock as the wind soared, snow on the red wool of her coat, speckled in her hair. She couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there, or if that had even been the intent. Only the poltergeist, and the square, and holding Severin’s hand until--

“Oh, hey there,” she breathed, the words falling off her tongue out of habit. Zadie blinked, and more snow cluttered her lashes. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m--”

What happened? How did you get here? Where is everyone else?

“That’s your coat?”

“At least if we were dancing we would be warm right now.” His chin tucked down in the raised collar of his coat. The one he’d worn for years during the war. But also had over his shoulders before, the one he shared with his brother. Thin, bare thread at the elbows, a cigarette burn near a button hole.

You can’t win for losing. An idiom passed on from his grandfather to his brother Ethan. A person so idealistic and optimistic it brought a pause to Severin when he heard his mirror twin say it. It was so out of character back then. 

And so right for tonight in so many ways that would fester, would be an accelerant on a fire which had always been there. Started in the valley but maybe meant for another place.

Because– fuck this place. Maybe the poltergeist would raze it to the ground. His palm turned up when light feet treaded over packed snow and reached him. Severin didn’t have to look up to know who it was that pulled him out of his thoughts. 

@zadie-maclain​

Zadie slammed the truck door, the soles of her slouched leather boots contacting hard, nearly-frozen ground. The wind was cold on Peach Street, all of the houses dark, with their curtains drawn. Let no light break, let no spirits wake.

Hands in her pockets, she beat a quick path to the square and tensed at the crowd, already filling. Zadie shifted uncomfortably, looking a little lost. It was dark, with only the light of the moon and the clock tower to illuminate the faces gathered there. Friend or foe? It was impossible to tell.

She saw a familiar set of shoulders, heard the low rumble of his voice, and in an eagerness to be done with the whole thing, Zadie took Severin’s hand.

Soft.

The next hand that she touched made her wish that she’d worn gloves, or cut off her left hand entirely. Zadie tensed from head to toe.

@valko-rathmore​

He wasn’t avoiding her completely. They just hadn’t seemed to ever be in the same place at the same time. That was what it seemed like at least. Until now, when he left the bookshop, the bell tinkling behind him, and his eyes on Zadie across the street. She hadn’t seen him yet. Sam barely looked both ways before crossing the street in a hurry, almost getting hit by someone on a bicycle. He gave them a hasty apology before looking back at where Zadie was. She was gone.

He came to a slow stop on the pavement where he had last seen her, doing a circle on the spot and then frowning. His gaze flickered to the sky briefly, but Lucy wasn’t back yet from her hunt. The bird of prey had noticed his sudden mood swings though, asking him if he was okay. Fine, I thought I saw– He stopped, suddenly seeing her on the side of the road he had just been on. She was looking right at him. 

His heart skipped a beat, his breath catching in his throat. Samuel raised his hand in a greeting, suddenly unsure if he should approach her or not. A brush against his shins made the warlock look down, an orange tail curling in the air as Bertrand nimly and quickly crossed the road to his other half. That made Samuel’s mind up for him, and he followed the creature to the other side of the road. 

‘‘Hi.’‘ He couldn’t help his gaze sliding to her finger, but pulled it away again to look at Zadie. ‘’Hi.’’ Samuel repeated again, tongue-tied and at a loss for words.  @zadie-maclain

Light green eyes bored into him. No, through him. She stared, dressed in a red wool coat, the gray sky overhead robbing both of them of all color. She didn’t blink. 

Hi.

Zadie turned on her heel and left.

Seven hours later Sharpe house. She threw a rock at his bedroom window, like she’d done as a teenager. Zadie had pretty good aim, thanks to Ollie and his penchant for games, and the stones landed squarely on the middle pane before dropping back to the ground. The air was cold, but she wasn’t. She’d worn a scarf that time.

Zadie waited, watching the moonlight illuminate his face as he came to the window, the shadow as he stepped away. Lights didn’t come on in the house -- they hadn’t when they were kids, trying not to wake his parents. They didn’t now, either.

He stood in the doorway, she on the lawn. She didn’t move closer.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

I thought you were.

Immy smiled. Don’t make a scene. She was that person after all. And maybe Zadie knew that better than others. Zadie knew what to look for in Imogen’s eyes, the brief split second glint before Immy would drop anything she was holding, draw herself up to full height – which wasn’t much, and then make the scene.

‘‘Me? Make a scene? Zadie, I wouldn’t dream of it.’‘ Immy drawled. And maybe she wouldn’t dream of it. No, it would just happen. She wouldn’t give it much thought until after. Nine out of ten times the scenes usually worked in her favour. 

Immy didn’t have anything better to do. A moments of consideration and she settled against the lamppost, hands tucked away in the pockets of her leather jacket. ‘’We’ll keep you company.’’ Immy decided. ‘’And I vote we throw rocks at him.’’ She added as an afterthought.

Zadie stood in silence for a long moment, letting Immy and Charlie get situated. And then she moved, propelling herself away from the building and turning halfway to face her newfound companion. Resignation set in with a small tilt of her chin. “Ah, damn it.”

She wasn’t inconspicuous at the best of times, with white-blonde hair and wide green eyes. The addition of Hayes and her sodding dog wouldn’t help things. Zadie sighed.

“Let’s just go get a coffee, Immy.”

She nodded down the street to the café.

“Nothing’s happening here.”

END?

Two years ago.

She was thin. Too thin. And tired, always, as a default. She wavered on the edge of the two bonfires, watching the Churchmen gather around. Women, too, she saw their slender, lithe forms dart around the flames. She’d stolen a bit of bread and gnawed on it without much heart.

She felt him near. It didn’t make her tense, the Father’s presence. What could he do, kill her? If only. The revelry had slowed, died off, and she dully noticed people pairing up in groups.

Zadie looked him over with an immutable expression. It was just a kiss. Who minded? It wouldn’t hurt her -- if anything, she’d wind up like one of those captives who had favors bestowed upon them. Less nights sleeping in the cold. Fewer nights in chains.

No.