Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [33]
“Very good.” The voice in my head made a satisfied sound. The smell of burning hair filled the air.
I slammed into ice-cold water. It cooled the fire, leaving behind warm coals that settled down somewhere deep inside me. Water washed over me as my hands and knees hit wet sand. I sputtered to my feet, thigh-deep in salt water, my clothes and backpack soaked through and dripping. A hand grabbed mine—Ari. He must have landed on his feet; he was only wet to the thighs. “Haley, your hair …”
The fire was gone, my skin unburned. We were no longer on a mountain ledge, but in a bay beside a black sandy beach. Beyond the beach I saw a dirt-and-gravel road, beyond that, gray hills smudged with red and orange mosses.
Ari shivered—was he cold? His hat was gone. Rain dimpled the surface of the bay, and water soaked through my sneakers, but I wasn’t cold at all. Ari splashed out of the water, and I followed, still holding his hand. As we reached the shore, I stopped short and stared at him. “I know you,” I said.
Ari kept shivering. “Yes, we’ve been through this already. I’m Ari, Katrin’s son—”
“No. I remember you. I ran into your dog—” I reached around and touched my hair. It was short, barely touching my ears and the back of my neck. The ends were brittle—burned away—and the smell of burning hair lingered. The darkness over my memories had burned away, too. I was Haley, I went to Rincon High, I studied biology and wanted to work with animals and ran track, my father was Gabe, my mother was Amanda—
My mom—I released Ari’s hand, my fingernails digging for my palms. My mom had disappeared—no, she hadn’t disappeared, she’d been caught by a spell—it had to be a spell, because I knew magic was real now—only before the spell caught her she’d run, because she found out that Dad had—nails broke through my palms, the pain shoving other thoughts away. Smoke seemed to rise from the broken skin, but I could have imagined that. I knew only that I had one more chance to push the memories back, to bury them so deeply that only the stone halls of Muninn’s cave would ever remember them.
I forced my fingernails away from my skin. The pain receded, the smoke disappeared—if it had ever been there—and I faced the memory straight on. “My dad,” I said slowly, looking at Ari. “And your mom …” Katrin, who gave me her notebook, who told me not to run … “They had an affair. My mom found out, and she ran.” Ari looked down, as if my steady gaze hurt him. He rubbed his sleeves for warmth. His lips were pale, which should have worried me, but I just went on, “Mom’s been gone a year. I came to Iceland to find her. If Katrin’s right, there’s nothing left to find. Hallgerd’s spell—” Katrin said the spell had consumed Mom, as surely as the fire Ari and I had leaped through had almost consumed us.
The coals inside me grew hot at the thought. My jeans and jacket steamed in the damp air. I reached for the coin—its metal felt merely warm now—and closed my fingers around it.
The coin flared hotter. The ground shook beneath me, and I fell to my knees.
“Haley!” Hallgerd’s voice roared into my head. This time, I understood every word. “Where have you been?”
Chapter 8
A woman stood before me, gray eyes smoldering, blond hair swirling like flame around her, so long it pooled at her feet. Her red cloak was bright against the gray sky. She reached for me, but I drew away.
“I waited for you. For days I returned to the cave. When I could no longer return I searched from my home, whenever I could escape the eyes of my family. I sought you on my wedding day, and past it as well, until Thorvald was gone and my anger was quenched. All that time you hid from my spell. Why do you wake it now, after all these years?”
The coin burned against my hand. The air held the stench of sulfur. It hasn’t been years, I thought. The woman shimmered, as if