Lachlan cupped Cam’s cheek again, his eyes alight with worry. He couldn’t seem to stop touching Cam’s face.
A seed of realisation finally sprouted in Cam’s muddled mind. ‘Is something wrong with my face?’ he croaked.
‘I’ll fetch a mirror,’ Lachlan replied quietly.
When he returned to Cam, he’d thrown on a pair of shorts and a jumper, and carried a small round shaving mirror. His bare feet sounded heavy on the floorboards.
Cam took the mirror and tried to keep his hand steady as he came face to face with his reflection.
He’d been Scorched again. The black mark stained the skin across his entire right shoulder, extending over half his throat and onto the right side of his face. It covered most of his cheek; had burned away the fine stubble on his jaw. Inky fingers stretched over the bridge of his nose, his lips, and brow. Like he’d taken a swipe from the claws of a shadowed ghoul.
He peered closer at his eyes. The right one was wrong. Black veins threaded over the white sclera, making it look bloodshot in a toxic way. His pupil was dilated, squashing the brown iris to a thin, dark band around it. And perhaps it was a trick of the light, but he swore he caught a flash of pink luminescence in the depths of the pupil when he turned his head.
Cam blinked repeatedly, as if that would make it return to normal. He was aware he was breathing heavily. Sweat beaded on his brow.
The cool contact of Lachlan’s fingers made him jump. He dropped the mirror onto the bed, feeling sick. Lachlan sat next to him, stroking soothing circles into the nape of his neck.
‘This isn’t meant to happen, is it?’ Lachlan said quietly.
Cam couldn’t answer at first. Because the truthful answer was that, in a way, this wasexactlywhat was meant to happen to him. If anything, he’d been lucky that the Scorch had stopped at his face.
He exhaled slowly, unable to meet Lachlan’s gaze. ‘I’ve told you before. When the magic is too strong… if the fire gets out of control… it leaves a Scorch mark. I shouldn’t have used it. I didn’tmeanto use it.’
‘It looks bad, Cam.’ Lachlan’s fingers stilled in their stroking. There was a warning to the bluntness of his words. ‘Are you in pain?’
‘No.’ If anything, he still felt a little numb all over.
By the way Lachlan’s eyes narrowed, Cam could tell he didn’t quite believe him. His muscles twinged, as if to give justification to the doubt.
‘What are you not telling me, Cam?’
Cam swallowed thickly. He didn’t want to say it all out loud. Especially to Lachlan. It would become too real, and too hopeless. He’d wanted to keep running away from it all, hiding in this remote hilltop café and the arms of his sweet, sunny loch monster. But running away had never really worked for him before. Life had a way of catching up.
‘The Scorch…’ he started, clearing his throat again, and faltering. ‘It happens to all of us. All the witches in my family. If you have the fire in your blood, then…’ He looked up at the ceiling, willing kinder words to drop from the rafters. ‘…then it will eventually end up killing you.’
Lachlan went very still. ‘What do you mean?’
Cam still couldn’t look at him. His breath hitched even as a desperate chuckle tried to escape his throat. ‘You might say that… you might say that ‘spontaneous combustion’ is a common cause of death in my family.’ He gulped for air, feeling the tightness around his eyes that was threatening to release tears. Like hell was he going to cry over this in front of Lachlan.
Still, his voice cracked as he continued. ‘It’s how Mum died. She and Dad, they were fighting a lindworm. They didn’t survive so there’s no… there aren’t any notes. All we know is that Mum must’ve had to use the fire and… it was too much—’
Fuck. Cam crumpled forward, smothering his face with a hand, shoulders shaking silently. It was his Aunt Meredith who’d found them. Two smouldering corpses, identified by the remnants of clothing and the stone talisman that now sat on Lachlan’s dresser. His dad had probably been trying to help, trying to talk Amelie down when the flames lost control. He’d only been consumed by them as well. They both burned alive, clasped in each other’s arms.
Cam had never seen the bodies. He’d been in Devon at the time. Fixing up old dirt bikes for kids to race. Almost as far from Scotland as he could possibly get on land.
But Meredith’s description haunted him. His parents had died for something. A cause they believed in. Protecting people from monsters that ought to only exist in nightmares. Cam felt like a poor shadow of them.
Guilt, more than anything, made him take up the mantle of Witch Incumbent after the funeral. And when he’d returned to the cottage in Glencoe, it had seemed like the only option. As though his path had narrowed to one indisputable point which ended in fire, just as it had for every Walker witch before him.
Lachlan’s hand rested on his back. The weight of it should have been comforting, but something in its stiffness conveyed distance. He hadn’t spoken yet.
‘The Scorch mark is like a warning,’ Cam mumbled, more to fill the void than anything. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, stifling further tears. ‘Once you’ve been Scorched, it means the end is… it means…’
Lachlan stood up abruptly, ripping his warmth away from the bed. He paced to the fireplace on the other side of the room and stared blankly at the dark coals in the cold grate. ‘You’re going to die, Cam?’
His voice rang out eerily calm and flat. Cold like the ice forming over the loch outside.
‘Yes,’ Cam croaked.
