The Burns Fire Read online

  “Of course, Mrs. Rosenberg, I’ll do it right away. I have Lisa’s phone number.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Rosenberg. “And please, be careful, darling. I’ve heard that something dark is rising on the border between the realm of life and the world of spirits. So, watch your back.” She extended her hand to Tessa and sighed. “Now, I’m ready to go…”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Rosenberg,” said Tessa, gently touching her hand. A soft smile appeared on the old lady’s face. The white light shone brighter and the spirit slowly dissipated, as her last words lingered in the air a few moments longer.

  “Blessed be…”

  After the spirit of Mrs. Rosenberg was gone, Tessa went back to her bedroom and found her cell phone. For a moment, she stood quietly, thinking how to present this sad news in the best possible way. After all, she couldn’t just tell Lisa that the spirit of her dead mother visited her, so she needed to find a good way to explain how she knew about Mrs. Rosenberg’s passing.

  In the end, she told Lisa that she heard Daisy’s howling and went to check on Mrs. Rosenberg. But no matter how hard she knocked on her doors, no one answered, so she called Lisa because she was worried. Lisa thanked her and said that she was going to leave immediately to check on her mother.

  With her cell phone still in her hand, Tessa went back to the den. She sat down on the sofa, staring at the bookshelf and sat like this for a while. She didn’t know what she was going to find inside this hidden room and she was terrified and hopeful at the same time.

  Part of her couldn’t wait to open this door and walk into this new life. The unknown world filled with magic, elemental powers and supernatural beings. This part of her wanted to learn all there was to learn. But there was the other part of her that desperately resisted everything that was hidden in this room, the little part of her soul that wished to be normal, to have a normal supernatural-free life.

  She didn’t realize how long she was sitting there. A loud knock on the door brought her out of her emotional stupor. She opened the door to find Lisa telling her that her mother passed away and thanking Tessa for calling her. Tessa didn’t remember the words of support and condolences she said to Lisa.

  Like in a dream, she made her way back to the den and stopped in front of the bookshelf. She wasn’t going to wait another minute. She was done double guessing herself. She had to know the truth. Tessa raised her hand and carefully pulled the book with the blank cover.

  Something clicked behind the shelf and it moved forward slightly, creating a small opening in the wall behind it. Tessa pulled on the shelf to widen the opening and slipped into the dark room hidden behind it.

  It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once she was able to see again, Tessa noticed a lamp installed on the wall next to the door. She pulled the string and a soft yellow light filled the small room.

  After what Mrs. Rosenberg told her about her mother being a witch, a Guardian Witch to boot, Tessa was ready to see pretty much anything – witchcraft books of spells, crystal balls, tarot cards, maybe dried out herbs and weird animal parts in glass jars.

  She observed the room, with relief noticing that there was nothing especially creepy here. The walls of the room were covered with weird symbols, possibly runes or sigils. None of these symbols looked familiar or meant anything to her. At the far end of the room, there was a small table and a single chair next to it.

  Tessa approached the table and sat down on the chair, thinking how many times her mom was probably sitting here, alone, doing God knows what. Everything on the desk and inside the room was well-organized, just like anything her mom ever touched. She found a few folders filled with papers, a small blue box sitting on top of folders, an old book in leather binding and a notebook.

  She opened the old book and stared at the first page in wonderment. She recognized her mom’s concise handwriting, but she couldn’t understand anything that was written in the book. It wasn’t written in English. She scanned through the book, but everything was written in the same weird language. There were a few pictures, mostly symbols similar to those on the walls and a few sketches of strange creatures. But nothing inside this book told her anything about what her mom was doing.

  Tessa put away the old book and took the notebook. It was worn out and looked like it was used quite frequently. Carefully she opened the first page and read the first paragraph.

  “September 12, 2010 – Still didn’t find anything that could help me figure out what happened ten years ago. I followed the trail all the way to Chicago and lost it there. I can’t spend too much time away from my Tessa. Even though I know that Sarah is taking excellent care of her, I can’t tolerate another minute without my little sweetie...”

  Tessa stared at her mom’s handwriting, tears burning in her eyes. It was her mom’s diary. Probably not the first one since the first record in this notebook was dated September 2010. Her cheeks flashed at the thought that she was reading her mom’s diary. It was private. No one should be reading other people’s diaries. She closed the book, putting her hand on top of its cover. The cover felt soft and warm, and for a moment Tessa felt like she was touching her mom’s hand.

  She put away the diary and opened the blue box. Inside the box there were two more thick notebooks. She quickly checked each one of them. These were her mom’s earlier diaries. Tessa put them back in the box and closed the cover. Even though her mom was gone, she didn’t think that she had any right to read her private thoughts.

  Tessa pulled the first folder with some paperwork out of the stack and opened it. The first page in the folder looked like some official Certificate with a golden seal and gothic writing. She pulled it out of the folder and moved closer to the light, carrying the certificate in one hand and the folder in the other.

  “Certificate of Adoption,” she read and stopped, her hands trembling, her body slowly filling up with lead. “This is to certify that Therasia Reagan Doe was formally adopted into the Donavan family…”

  Tessa dropped the folder and a few more papers fell out, gliding on the floor. She picked them up – more legal documents confirming her adoption. She stared at the words on the paper but couldn’t understand anything. Numb inside, she slid down to the floor, leaning her back on the wall. Her thoughts were tripping over each other in her head and she couldn’t stop and think clearly. Bitter tears gathered in her eyes and spilled down, but she didn’t bother wiping them.

  The room around her swayed and something dropped on the floor with a soft thud. Tessa blinked her tears away and stared down. It was her cell phone. She picked it up and the first well-formed thought flashed through her mind. She was thinking that she needed to get out of this house. She needed a few hours of being away from all this, so she could calm down.

  For the first time in a long while, she didn’t want to be alone. After her mother passed away, she always felt lonely. Even when she lived in her uncle’s house, she felt alone. It never bothered her before. But right now, she desperately needed someone by her side. Someone, who could understand. She didn’t need this person to comfort her or tell her that everything was going to be fine. The silence was fine, as long as it wasn’t silence in solitude. Maybe later on she would need some alone time to figure things out, but not now.

  Tessa tried to get up, but her legs felt weak and shaky, and she had to sit back down. She unlocked her phone and opened the contact list. For a moment she was considering calling her uncle but then quickly changed her mind. She didn’t think that she could tolerate his wife’s attitude at this moment.

  Aidan… He was the only person she could call. But how was she going to explain this room to him? He would be… She had no idea how he would react to the fact that her mother was a witch. She just knew that she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t show him this room. He would think that she was off her rocker. And then he would never see her in the same light again. No, she couldn’t call him, she couldn’t talk to him about all this. Aidan was the normal pa
rt of her world. He was the definition of normality and strength, and she loved it about him. She couldn’t take even the tiniest chance of losing it, losing Aidan.

  Tessa scrolled through her short list of contacts. Her eyes stopped on the name she was looking for. Zane Burns. He was the complete opposite of Aidan. To her, he represented everything Aidan was not. He was her connection with the world of the supernatural, the part of her life she feared and was hiding from everyone. She hardly knew him, but for some reason she felt that she could trust him. She could trust him with everything outside the normal. He was the only one who could help her sort out all this mess.

  3:23 AM. She pressed the dial button next to Zane’s name.

  ~ Zane Burns, a.k.a. Gunz ~

  Gunz dressed as quickly as he could and ran out of the house, just to remember that he didn’t have a car. Frustration simmered up in him ready to boil over. He punched the air, cursing brutally and jumped over the fence into his own backyard. The last few days were a complete disaster. He forgot when he had a full night of sleep; he was drained magically, and he desperately needed some decent shut-eye to restore his strength.

  It seemed that the rest wasn’t anywhere in his foreseeable future. First, he needed to figure out a way to get to Tessa. She called him at three in the morning, asking if he could come over right away. She wasn’t crying, but her voice was empty and lifeless, and when he asked her if she was okay, her answer was no. His car was at the mechanic shop and calling a cab at this time would take an extra thirty minutes to an hour. He was sure that Tessa wouldn’t call him in the middle of the night without a good reason, and he didn’t like the idea of leaving her on her own for such a long time.

  There was another question burning in the back of his mind. Why did Tessa call him instead of Aidan McGrath? She said it herself – Aidan was her one and only true friend. But she thought that Aidan knew nothing about supernatural. The only reason she would call him was because something supernatural was going on and this thought made his blood run cold.

  He re-read the address Tessa texted him, committing it to memory. He knew this neighborhood well and there were enough of dark corners and alleys where no one would see him walking through his blazing portal. Screw it, he thought, opening the fiery curtain of his portal, if someone will see me walking through the fire, they will need a few extra therapy sessions.

  Gunz walked out in the dark backyard behind Tessa’s condominium building and immediately ran into an oak tree. He hit his forehead so hard that his eyes watered, and he staggered back almost falling. Carefully, he touched the bump on his forehead and winced, noticing blood on his fingers.

  “I swear there was no tree here. I know this area,” he groaned, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. But he had no time to contemplate on that. He ran toward a thin road that was circling the building. As he was turning the corner, he glanced back and came to a screeching halt. The oak tree he had the head-on collision with was gone. Someone is messing with me, concluded Gun, as he walked around the corner toward the entrance into Tessa’s building. If I find out who it is…

  Tessa lived on the first floor. Gunz stopped in front of her door and pushed the doorbell button. No one answered. He knocked on the door and waited a few seconds, listening intently. The dead silence behind the door sent chills through him. He put his hand on the door handle and turned it carefully. The door was locked.

  “Recludius,” he whispered a spell and turned the door handle again. With a soft squeak the door opened up. Gunz walked inside and stopped, probing the house for any supernatural presence. He didn’t sense anything alarming, but there was a light hint of protective magic lingering in the air. The living area was dark and only a thin yellow strip of light was cutting through the dark floor, coming from a den at the far end of the room.

  “Tessa?” called Gunz, moving toward the light.

  She didn’t reply. Gunz walked into the den and stopped. The light was coming from behind a bookshelf. He approached the shelf and pulled on it, expending the opening behind it. Hidden behind the shelf, he found a small room. Tessa was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees with her arms. Her head was bowed down to her knees and the dark mane of her hair was obscuring her face. She looked so small and helpless that something inside him shattered. A few documents were scattered on the floor around her.

  His first instinct was to walk inside the room and see if Tessa was okay, but he decided to err on the side of caution and probed the room for wards and protection spells. Immediately he knew that he couldn’t cross the threshold of this small room. At least not right away.

  “Tessa,” he called louder. She lifted her face and a hardly visible smile touched her red eyes.

  “Zane,” she said, “you’re here. You came…” Her voice trailed away as her eyes moved to the papers on the floor.

  “You called,” Gunz replied. “What’s going on, Tessa? What is this room?”

  She got up slowly, holding her hand on the wall to stop herself from swaying. Her glassy eyes made a dazed circle around the room and then fixed back on his face. Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it.

  “This is my mom’s secret room,” she whispered bitterly. “Zane, I lived my whole life with my… this woman and I have never known her… She wasn’t even my real mom.” Her eyes darted down to the documents on the floor.

  Gunz followed the direction of her gaze and noticed the Certificate of adoption. He quickly reviewed the sigils and runes on the walls and he had no doubt that besides the fact that Tessa’s mom wasn’t her biological parent, she was also a witch. A supernatural witch, not a Wiccan practitioner.

  “Tessa, that’s not true,” he said quietly. “You didn’t know some areas of your mother’s life, but you knew the woman who raised you, who loved you and took care of you for most of your life. Supernatural or not, adopted or biological, it doesn’t matter. Just because she didn’t give you birth, it doesn’t make her any less of a mother.”

  “She lied to me my whole life…”

  “She didn’t lie to you. Do you think that possibly, your mother didn’t want to reveal this side of her life to you because she was trying to protect you?” asked Gunz. This wasn’t the most comfortable subject for discussion for him and he wasn’t the right person to talk to her about that. “We all have our secrets. And you should know that better than anyone else, Tessa. I still believe that you need to tell the truth to Aidan.”

  “Zane, she was a Guardian Witch,” said Tessa. “Do you know what that is? A Guardian? What was she guarding?”

  Gunz frowned. He’d heard of the Guardians before, but he knew nothing about this ancient organization. “I’m sorry, I can’t answer these questions. I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head slightly, thinking that possibly Kal would have an answer.

  “Come here, take a look yourself,” she told him, moving toward the table.

  “Wait, Tessa,” called Gunz. “I can’t walk into this room. At least I don’t think I should.”

  “What do you mean?” She turned around to face him.

  “Your mother placed some serious wards and protection spells over this room,” he explained, pointing at the runes and sigils on the walls. “I think, she placed them in the way that only you could safely cross the threshold. I don’t know what I would trigger if I walk in, and I don’t think that I should try to bring down the wards… assuming I can. This is kind of a magical panic room for you. If something happens, you’re always going to be safe here, supernatural attack or otherwise.”

  Tessa kept quiet for a few seconds, observing the drawings on the wall. Then she walked out of the room and shut down the light. She pushed a blank book that was half out back into the shelf and the bookshelf glided back soundlessly, concealing the hidden room. She leaned her back against the shelf and looked up at him.

  “Zane, I don’t want to be here. I just can’t,” she said, her fingers gripping at the books behind her back. “I need a little time to process all this and think
what to do next. And I can’t do it here so close to my mom’s secret life.”

  “I understand,” replied Gunz, “where do you want to go? Do you have any relatives that I can take you to?”

  “Where do you live? Can I stay with you for the rest of this night?” she asked, staring directly into his eyes.

  Gunz hesitated, feeling a little uncomfortable with her request.

  “Do you live alone?” she asked, noticing his hesitation.

  “Yes, I live alone,” replied Gunz, making a quick decision. He didn’t want her to be alone and obviously she wasn’t ready to talk to Aidan about the supernatural side of her life. “You can stay in my house tonight. A small problem though… My car is at the mechanic’s shop and I had to travel here by portal.”

  Tessa smirked and shrugged her shoulders lightly. “Well, that would be another new experience for me today. Go ahead, open your portal.”

  Gunz waved his hand, unfolding the fire-curtain. She approached the wall of blazing flames and quickly stepped back.

  “It’s fire,” she said, giving him an arched stare. She didn’t look concerned or scared, just curious.

  “Are you going to punch me out if I attempt to lift you and hold you in my arms?” he asked, unable to conceal the sarcasm in his voice.

  “That depends,” she replied dryly. “Try something funny and you’ll find out.”

  “Nothing funny, cross my heart,” he promised. Carefully he lifted her, holding her against his chest, thinking that holding her was like holding a child, so weightlessly light and as tiny as she was. “As long as you’re with me, the fire is not going to harm you.”

  “I trust you,” she replied simply, hiding her face in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck.