Jack awoke with a shiver. There was dew on his bare skin and a warm woman curled up next to him. He sat up and held his head, feeling like he was recovering from the flu. He heard a groan and saw that the other two were perfectly mirroring his position. Naked and a little freaked out.

He’d turned into a bear last night. He’d fought a demon. Thea had almost died.

He looked down at her and saw that she still slept peacefully amongst the huge blanket bed the women had made.

He leaned down and nuzzled her before he rose, following the other two as they wordlessly made their way to the lake.

Seemed that they all wanted the same thing. A dip in the lake.

They swam wordlessly, letting the cool water wash away some of the strange, energetic residue from last night. For a while, this whole predicament had seemed sort of normal. It now seemed excessively strange again.

When they made it back to shore and had pulled on their discarded clothes again, they found that the women had gone inside; breakfast smells wafted out to greet them.

They were greeted with hugs and cheers from the women as they came in and Jack noticed immediately that Thea wasn’t there.

“So,” Martine asked, “how was it? Your very first shift?”

“Ah,” Jack said after a minute. “Words escape me. I’ve, obviously, never experienced something like that before.”

“How does your connection to one another feel?” Martine asked, leaning over the counter and eyeing them. The three men felt like they were at a doctor’s appointment.

They turned to one another and shrugged, silently agreeing.

“The same, I guess,” Tre said. “I mean, it was crazy to speak to each other in our heads—”
“And to hear Arturo in our heads,” Jean Luc put in, scowling. That had been a horrific invasion to him. If Jack hadn’t done it, Jean Luc was seconds away from beating down the demon himself.

“You heard Arturo in your heads?” Martine asked sharply.

“Yeah, he spoke to us. Is that unexpected?”

Martine’s brow furrowed. “It means that he has a connection to you three. One I didn’t expect. Accidental, maybe? It was unintentional when he made you shifters? Strange. Very strange.”

“So,” Caroline said, slicing up bananas at the counter. “Does this mean that he’ll still be after us?”

“I think so,” Martine nodded. “Some demons are known to give up after they fail, but the fact that your connection to one another is still strong indicates that there is still danger at play. And the fact that he’s sent Arturo three times in two weeks implies that he wants one of you very badly.”

“He?” Celia cut in, though all of them were wondering the exact same thing. “He who?”

“Why, the demon of course,” Martine looked at them all like they were completely losing it. She knew that humans were mortal, but she didn’t know that they apparently had the attention spans of a puppy.

Again, Celia was the one to speak, slowly, carefully. “Are you telling us that Arturo isn’t the demon?”

“No!” Martine exclaimed. “The demon is hideous beyond belief. Arturo is his soldier. He was a man at one point. A bear shifter like you three. Now he works for the demon. Sold his soul, in fact. Well, half of it. Long story.”

Jack shook his head. This was all too much. He needed Thea. Where the hell was she? He strode toward the stairs to find her when she came sprinting down, her map in her hand.

“You are not gonna believe this!” she called. She strode forward and threw her map onto the kitchen table. “It changed.”

They crowded around the table to see and sure enough, there was a new map there where the old one had been.

Celia left the room and came sprinting back with her old map. “Mine, too.”

One by one, they each retrieved their copy of the map until they were all laid out on the table. They were identical. A new place. None of them recognized it until Jean Luc leaned down and squinted at it. “I think… son of a bitch.”

“What?” Celia asked anxiously.

“I think this is right around where I grew up. In Florida.”

“Another connection,” Martine muttered.

“Arturo doesn’t actually think we’re dumb enough to follow this map, does he?” Thea asked. “It’s obvious that he’s leading us to our deaths at this point.”

Martine leaned forward and flipped one of the maps over. “I was thinking the same thing. Except…”

The words there had changed, too.

Seven Souls

Down to One.

Each part weak on your own.

Separate if you dare.

And say goodbye

forever

to the Seventh Soul.

 

 

“So, now,” Celia said slowly, dropping down into the chair beside her, “if we don’t follow the map, one of us will automatically forfeit our soul? God, they’re gonna kill me at work.”

“Is there any chance this isn’t true?” Tre asked, leaning forward to study one of the maps, his eyes squinting. “Could Arturo and the demon just be bluffing in order to get us all in one place at one time?”

“No,” Thea answered and surprised them all. “Can’t you feel it, Tre? The connection between us all? It isn’t waning. It’s getting stronger.” She paced away toward the window and looked out. “Trust me. You can’t walk away from it. I know what that feels like.” She turned back. “It was because I walked away that Arturo singled out Jack. Because I love him and I walked away. It made him vulnerable. Arturo thought he’d be easier to take because he was abandoned by me.”

“You came back,” Martine reminded her softly. “That’s why Arturo couldn’t take his soul. Because you love him and you came back.”

Thea nodded, her eyes distant. It was time to give up this guilt that had been riding her since she’d left. She came back in the end. And that was what was important. She came back and she wasn’t leaving again. “He’s not lying. These maps aren’t a trap. They’re a promise.” She picked one up and threw it back down. “If we separate, we become vulnerable.”

“So….” Tre dragged out the word, looking around at everyone. “We’re going to Florida, then?”

Thea looked up and saw Jack’s eyes on her. Burning. Shocked. “You love me,” he said from across the room.

Record scratch. The women watched intensely; the men wondered if they shouldn’t flee the room.

Thea shrugged, not particularly minding the audience. She figured, in a way, it was partly their business. “You know I do.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jack said, rounding the table slowly. “But I hoped like hell that you did.”

He stood in front of her, the air between them vibrating.

He cleared his throat. “Because I love you. And I’m pretty sure I have since I saw you picking knives in that general store. Meeting you was like meeting a part of myself I never knew I was missing.”

She nodded, understanding perfectly. “It was like my whole life my eye had been wandering and when it landed on you it was like that’s the one.”

“Damn right,” he muttered, cuffing her forward and swallowing her up in those long arms of his. “I’m gonna be yours until the day I die.”

“Damn right,” she repeated and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Caroline burst into tears. The group turned to her in shock. Seeing Caroline cry was like watching a kitten commit suicide. Celia rushed forward. “Caroline!”

Caroline let herself be hugged for a second before she wiped her eyes and stepped forward. “I can’t lie anymore. Not after that.” She pointed at Thea and Jack. “You’re so honest and brave and in love.” Caroline put her hands over her face and just cried.

Tre was caught between wanting to hug her and wanting to punch through a wall. He couldn’t stand to see her like this. It made him want to grind his teeth down to sand.

“What’ve you been lying about?” Celia asked. “I’m sure it’s not so bad.”

Caroline turned and sprinted out of the house. They heard her car door open and then slam.             

“Uh,” Jean Luc said, utterly befuddled. “Should somebody go after her?”

But then she was jogging back into the kitchen, tears streaming down her face and a stack of papers in her hand. She tossed them on top of the maps and covered her face again.

Thea leaned down and peered at them. She looked up at the group. “Divorce papers.”

Caroline, face still covered, nodded miserably. “Peter wants to divorce me. He gave me the papers and I left. I went to my parents’ house in Jersey. And then I rented a car and came here.”

“That’s terrible for you, Caroline, and we’re so sorry,” Celia said, looking around at the group. “But it’s not really a lie. It’s not like you were obligated to tell us about your personal life.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Caroline finally let her hands drop. “I stole the map from him. I lied and told him that it had disappeared in our last move. He never did the research on it, so he didn’t know that it would lead him here. But it was passed down in his family. It was his. He should have been the person on this adventure with you all. But I wanted the adventure. I was selfish and I stole it and now if all seven of the right people aren’t together then one of you is going to die and it’s my fault because I tricked you all into thinking I deserved to be here.”

She covered her face again and cried and cried.

“Caroline,” Tre said finally, into the silence. “I stole my map, too. You think that means I’m not supposed to be here?”

She lowered her hands.

“Seriously, honey,” Celia tried. “You remember what Martine said. The maps had a way of finding the right people. Maybe you were supposed to find the map and steal it.”

“Hell,” Tre said. “Maybe you were supposed to marry that guy just so that you could find the map.”

He was instantly embarrassed for having said that. Like he’d shown a hand he didn’t realize he’d been trying to hide.

“You mean…” Caroline took a deep breath. “That if the map really is mine, even though I stole it, then Peter isn’t supposed to be here instead of me?”

“Definitely not,” Jack said. He didn’t know this Peter guy, but he couldn’t imagine wanting him there more than sunny Caroline.

“Then,” she stared down at the divorce papers, “I can sign the papers. Before I wouldn’t because then I wouldn’t have had any claim on the map.”

“The map is yours, Caroline,” Martine said, coming forward and laying a hand on her friend’s back. “The maps don’t make mistakes. They find their way to the right owners. It’s yours whether you’re married to Peter Clifton or not.”

Caroline wandered over to the living room and collapsed hard onto one of the couches. She was exhausted. Felt like she’d just run a race.

All of them did, actually.

“We need to go out for breakfast,” Jack decided.

“But we just made some!” Celia protested.

“I know,” he said. “We’ll save what we can and have it for lunch. But trust me. I’ve never seen a group more in need of a good diner breakfast.”

They did look a little blurry at the edges. He’d steered them in the right direction before. So, shrugging to one another, they all agreed.

Half an hour later, they sat at a big, round table in the Mooselodge diner. Tre poured coffees and passed them around, Caroline ordered one of everything on the menu for them all to share, Jean Luc finished his orange juice, and when Thea nudged hers forward for him, he finished that one, too.

Soon, they’d head out again, on a new leg of their journey. But that morning, they let the feeling of victory overwhelm them. They’d battled Arturo and won. They were all safe, and each of them realized on their own, one by one, they were each happier than they’d been in a very long time.

 

The End