Jessa and I squished ourselves closer together. "Any brilliant ideas?" she shouted to me.
I nodded. "Yes, go back in time and kill you in the womb."
Jessa cracked up then, holding her stomach while she tried not to fall down. "I think I love the new, asshole version of you. It's so much better than the pod person you were in the sanctuary."
I circled around, trying to see if there was a weakness in the wind. "I was under a lot of stress and did some stupid stuff. I'm not proud of myself, but you, my sister, just leap every time before you look."
Jessa shrugged, and I could see that she didn't disagree with that statement, but didn't really think it was a bad thing either. And generally it wasn't.
"You just have to remember that you don't have a dragon to fall back on any longer."
Jessa's face fell and I felt terrible for bringing up her loss. Josephina had left a massive hole in my sister's heart and soul, and she was definitely still hurting. But I needed her to stay alive, even if I had to drill it into her. Despite my earlier jest about killing her in the womb, I couldn't live in a world she wasn't in. I loved her more than almost anyone else in my world. Except my baby.
Which was the emotional manipulation I hit her with next: "Plus you have two little dragon babies to think about. And yes, knowing you and Braxton, your children are definitely going to be all-powerful, natural dragon babies which could take on the world … but just in case they aren't, you need to be more careful."
Jessa started to growl, but she also reached across and hugged me. "You're probably right, sister." She pulled back a little to meet my eye. "And you're going to make an amazing mom. I haven't told you that enough. I'm so proud of you. Your strength is admirable."
Don't cry. I ordered my tear ducts to dry the hell up. We were in the middle of a situation here; this was no time to fall apart. I pulled Jessa back in for one last fierce hug, and then both of us focused fully on our surroundings.
"Should we just take the risk and see if we can dive through the barrier?" Jessa said as we inched our way closer to the right side of the wind tunnel. As we stepped closer the wind whipped across our bodies and I could feel the strength of it. "Or should we go into the cake house and see what we find?"
The wind cut us off on all angles except for the direction of the house. Which didn't seem like a great thing. "I'm sure we both realize now that this is a trap to lure stupid supes or humans in with the candy and then blow up the tornado. Now we have no option but to go into this quaint, surely not dangerous at all, perfect cottage."
My sarcasm was on point.
Jessa sighed, just a little exhalation, but I could feel her annoyance. "I'm not great with patience, and despite the fact that I've called through the bond for Braxton, he's still not here."
"Maybe this wind thing is more than just a physical barrier. Maybe it's also a magical one that's blocking your call?"
My twin straightened and took a few steps closer to the whirling vortex around us. Her hands drifted along the edge, the way a mime's would during a performance.
"It's odd," she finally said, without turning away. "Generally I can sense magic with ease, and while there's something threaded through this wind, it's not like any magic I've known before."
Great. Weird, unknown magic. Just what we needed. As Jessa continued creeping along the edge of the wind, her hands brushing up and down in a sweeping manner, I followed closely behind. Like Jessa, I had always been able to detect magic.
In the human world I'd never understood why these weird, almost static electricity-like sparks would trigger between me and certain humans. Now I knew why, of course, and also why those sparks had filled my blood with energy. Magic. So foreign to my understanding, but at the same time starting to feel pretty normal.
Jessa's pace picked up and we were soon standing in front of the house. She had that "cake glazed look" again as she stared up at it. She was totally trying to figure out how to get some of the icing off the roof.
"We shouldn't go inside," I said, nudging her to bring her back to reality. "Every instinct I have is telling me it's a bad idea to go in there. People go in there and never return."
"What are you basing this information on?"
I was probably grasping, but something about this scene triggered a memory. "Mom has always watched the news, every night without fail. Now out of habit I find myself flicking it on. While you were in Faerie, we had a lot of human news stories about hikers going missing in this state, and other weird things with animals. No one in Stratford seemed to care. The supes had much more important things to worry about with Larkspur, but now that I see this here, it's all starting to make sense to me."
"We don't interfere in human problems unless there's a supernatural element," Jessa mused. "Normally, though, something odd this close to Stratford, on our outer territory, would definitely be investigated. The whole Larky thing left everything a mess. No leaders. War across the councils. This slipped through the cracks somehow."
That bothered her. A lot. Surprisingly, I felt the same strong sense of anger and annoyance. I was really starting to feel as if Stratford, and the supernatural community, were my true home and family. I didn't like that someone was trying to take advantage of the recent conflict, and I kind of wanted to rip their heads off and shove them up their own butts.
"Even if this is targeted mainly at humans, it's clearly still supernatural in nature. So we need to investigate it, right?" For the first time I was the one to step closer to the building. "We can't let them prey on humans, or others. What if it's Kristoff or the bear shifters and they're using them as sacrifices or something."
Jessa's head shot around to me. I could see the thoughts firing through her mind also. "Ever since Giselda went on that extended visit to Italy – which kind of bothered me at the time but I was actually really happy she left – I've been thinking that there was something extra weird up with her."
Giselda was my sister's arch-enemy, a witch who was the daughter of Kristoff. What if his daughter was the one helping him with whatever plan he was trying to enact?
"Giselda might never have left America either," I said. "Despite her getting the all-clear, she's probably helping her father." The witches had used some sort of spell to clear her of anything to do with Kristoff and his crimes, but that wasn't totally foolproof.
Jessa growled, picking up my last thoughts. "If anyone knows how to get around those truth spells, it's the Krass family. There was a reason they refused a shifter be in the room. They wanted only magic users dealing with the issue. And since Giselda never technically committed a crime, she still had the right to refuse other races be present."
I was slowly learning how our world worked. I should have been taught from birth, but circumstances being what they were … I was way behind. I was taking the most basic of classes, and some private lessons to try and hurry my progress, but was still pretty ignorant to the ins and outs.
From what I knew, supes didn't have that many "real" laws. The races seemed to keep track of their members, and make sure they didn't go around causing too much chaos. For the larger crimes, then the Book of Guidance passed judgment, and criminals could end up in one of the supe prisons. There was no death sentence unless you fought in the field, but with our long lives you might wish you had been put to death after hundreds of years locked in a prison.
The howl of the wind increased and I found myself spinning around, my back to the candy house. Jessa and I had been so busy talking that we'd missed the sweeping wind closing in on us. It was so close now that if I took a single step forward I'd have been swept up into it.
"Any ideas?" I said, as we both slid back as close as we could to the house. My heels were against the front step; if I moved back any further I'd been up through the peppermint railings and onto the chocolate deck.
Before she could answer, I noticed movement on the other side of the wind wall. Shadows moved into view, large and distinctive.
"Braxton," I heard my twin say with an exhalation of air. "We stay put until the boys figure out how to break through this."
Of course, that was a brilliant plan. Except for the fact that the house must have heard her and decided it was not okay with that. The wind exploded around us. My feet left the ground and we were swept up into the gale. I reached out and grasped onto Jessa's hand, covering my stomach with my other as I fought to protect my child from whatever was going to happen.
The front door of the house slammed open, and I swear as we were sucked into the unknown beyond, multiple roars ripped through the wind. The Compass shadows disappeared when the front door slammed behind us, enclosing me and Jessa in darkness.
Maximus Compass
My head was a mess. My heart was a mess. But my vampire instincts never let me down and neither did my brothers. I was heading south, chasing down our prey; the boys were spread out across the forest. The distance between us was great but I could sense them strongly through our bond. The quad bond. It was also through this that I kept tabs on Mischa, via Braxton and Jessa.