Chapter 214

#Chapter 214 – The Magic “Please,” Alvin says, guilt written all over his little face. “Please don’t be frightened – we didn’t want to tell you, because we knew you would be frightened.”

“Really, mama,” Ian says, giving my hand a squeeze. “It’s okay.”

I’m almost gasping now, I’m so freaked out, my head spinning to look all around us – at the ghost things all around us –

“Boys,” Victor says, stern. My eyes fly to him. He’s freaked out too, I can tell, but he’s holding it together way better than I am. “You will explain. Right. Now.”

Alvin nods, taking the lead. “It’s just…the magic of this place, papa,” he says, holding his hands out as if it’s simple. “It’s just curious. It just wants to say hello.”

Ian bobs his head, agreeing, eager to convince us. “It’s really not bad – it’s just different. We know. We can feel it.”

Then, to my shock, Ian stands up. And starts to call out to the ghostly smoke.

“Please!” he shouts out to them. “They don’t like it when you –“

“Ian,” I hiss, pulling him by the hand so hard that he stumbles, falling back onto his butt.

“Mommmm,” he growls at me. “You’re embarrassing me, in front of the ghosts.”

“What the heck is going on here,” I hiss, looking between the boys. But Alvin’s attention, I see, is outward – out into the darkness. So, I follow his gaze.

And, to my shock, it seems…yes. That they’re fading away. Moving outward, away from us and from our camp.

“See, mom?” Ian says, grudgingly rubbing his sore butt with his hand. “All we had to do was ask and they went away.”

I feel a little bit of hysteria building in me as I stare around the fire at my two boys, who are looking at me like I’m stupid for not knowing that all I had to do was ask the ghosts to go away, and at Victor, who looks just as dumbstruck as I feel.

“Tell us,” Victor says, crossing his arms and falling back on his Alpha control in this moment of fear.

“Tell us everything that you know. Right. Now.”

Ian has the audacity to roll his eyes at us in this moment, and I open my mouth to snap at him – my temper worn thin – but Victor shoots me a look. I close my mouth in time, letting the boys speak.

“You guys just don’t get it,” Ian says, his voice a little frustrated. “We didn’t tell you about it because we knew you wouldn’t understand. And they’re not here to hurt you so,” he shrugs, “it was better for you to not know.”

“But what are they,” I ask, leaning forward.

Alvin shrugs, looking down at the fire. I can tell that, for some reason, he just…doesn’t want to have this talk. “We don’t know, actually,” he mutters. “We call them ghosts but we don’t know if they’re…

ghosts. Like dead people. They’re just…here. Things that live here, in this forest. They’re not bad, they just…are.”

“How do you know this,” Victor says, his voice calm and quiet. “How on earth can you know this about these things, whatever they are?”

“Dad,” Ian says, sounding a little exhausted. “It’s because…Alvin and me, we’re closer to the magic.

Closer than you two have been probably your entire lives.” With this, he gestures between Victor and me, and my mouth falls open again in shock.

“We’ve always known about it,” Alvin says, looking up at me, hugging his knees now. “It’s always been around. We just…decided not to tell you. Because we didn’t want you to freak out.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, a little rueful, still rubbing his injured backside. “We didn’t want you to freak out. Like you’re doing. Right now.”

“That’s it.” I say, standing up sharply, somehow managing to balance my plate of food in my hand and not spill it all over the floor. “Family meeting. In the tent. Right. Now.”

All three of them open their mouth to say something – and frankly, I don’t care what. Protestations, questions, objections, enthusiastic agreement – they can all keep it to themselves.

“No,” I say, sweeping my hand decisively, brooking no discussion on this point. “Everyone in the tent.

Now.”

Ten minutes later, the dinner cleaned up and the fire banked, the four of us are seated in a tiny little square in the tent. The boys sit across from each other, as do Victor and I.

Frankly, I wanted to come into the tent because it’s cozier in here. One of the Betas – and I wish I knew which, so I could thank them – has actually packed us a near-weightless string of fairy lights with a tiny battery pack.

Before dinner, I had strung these along the roof of the tent and, combined with the electric lantern that sits in the middle of our little family square, the tent is suffused with a rather cozy orange glow.

It’s much better in here than out by the fire, where I knew I would be staring into the darkness of the woods for those smoke figures all night. I know that they’re very likely still out there but…at least in here, I can’t see them. Out of sight, out of mind.

Instead, I want to be able to concentrate on my boys when they tell me what the hell they mean when they talk about the magic.

“All right,” I say, calmer now than I had been out by the fire. It had been the right choice, I know, to delay this conversation for ten minutes so I can collect myself. “To begin, please tell us how you know that those…smoke ghosts. Outside. Don’t want to hurt us.”

Ian sighs a little. “It’s hard to explain mama,” he starts, “but it’s just…a feeling we get from them.

They’re just curious. I know it like I know how Alvin feels, pretty much all the time.” He points to Alvin when he says this, who nods along with him.

“If they wanted to do bad things to us, to hurt us,” Alvin says, “we’d know it. Just like we feel our own emotions inside of us, we can feel it inside them.”

“How?” Victor asks, drawing his brows together. “Can you do that with…just them? Or can you do it with people too?”

“Not with people,” Alvin says, thinking about it. “I don’t know how people feel unless they tell me.

Except Ian, of course,” he says, looking to his twin.

“But that’s because we have the magic,” Ian says, pointing between his brother and himself. “And those ghosts – they are made from the magic. So. Maybe that’s why we understand them.”

“What the hell –“

Both boys gasp and snap their heads to me then, their mouths perfect little o’s as they react, scandalized, to my curse.

I grit my teeth while Victor laughs a little laugh at me, shaking his head. I glare at him, but he just shrugs.

“Ghost, they can handle,” he says, and I’m happy – suddenly – that his voice is light. “But mommy can’t curse.”

I shake my head and then turn back to my kids. “Apologies,” I say, rolling my eyes. But the mood is lighter in the tent now, and I’m grateful for it, “but what the heck do you mean when you say ‘the magic?’”