#so! here's chapter one lsdkjs

[laudsimogen]

Turn Away and Return Ch. 1

Summary: A stray daemon has been wandering around the Salvatore School campus ever since the portal to Malivore closed, and Josie intends to find out why. When she finally pieces together his story, she finds much more than she bargained for, including a girl she could swear she's already falling in love with. AU: Daemons Pairing: Hope/Josie Length: 1,614 

Read it on AO3

Chapter 1:  Ásfriðr Next chapter: Hope

“It’s here again. Don’t move too fast.”

Josie glanced up at her daemon, a small brown and black bat, who sat against her bedroom window and looked out over the school grounds. She put down the book she’d been reading and gently moved the curtain out of the way.

It looked like an ordinary house cat, except that it wasn’t. It lurked through the shadows of the woods, its tabby pattern almost completely camouflaged in the mottled afternoon light. Its gaze roamed over the grounds with purpose.

“I don’t like it,” Josie said. “He looks like he knows what he’s doing, and his person can’t be far behind. I just don’t know what they want.”

“I don’t think it has a person,” Reuven whispered. “It’s been scouting out here all summer and we’ve never seen a person with it. That’s weird, Josie.”

“Come on. We both know that’s impossible.”

Josie swore as the cat caught her eye for a split second and disappeared into the trees.

“It could be possible,” Reuven insisted. He flew to Josie’s shoulder. “It’s obviously a daemon, but do you see anywhere down there a person could be hiding? Because I don’t.”

Josie looked back down at where the cat had been walking. Reuven was right; there was plenty of undergrowth among the trees, but no bushes or tree trunks large enough for a person to hide behind. Her stomach churned a little.

“You’re not thinking of going after it, are you?”

“Don’t you think it’s time we did?” Josie scoffed. “I want to know what’s up with him. And anyway, it’s just a daemon. He can’t do anything to me.”

“Okay,” Reuven said, “but I don’t think you’ll be able to get anywhere near it.”

***

The woods were empty and silent by the time Josie reached them, but she called out as she wandered through the trees, anyway.

“Hello?” She ducked under a branch and gazed around the area where the cat had disappeared. “I know you’re probably still out here. I just want to talk.”

Nothing.

“Please? Maybe I can help you.”

“Josie?”

Josie jumped and Reuven flew from her shoulder, startled. Landon stood a few feet behind her; she’d been so caught up in searching for the stray daemon that she hadn’t heard him follow her.

“You saw him, too, didn’t you?” he said. “The cat.”

“Yeah,” Josie said. “I thought I was the only one who ever noticed him.”

“It’s weird, right?” Landon held his daemon, Pernilla, against his chest. She had only recently settled as a mole. “I mean, it kind of freaks me out, seeing him around here without a human.”

“It’s definitely weird.” Josie looked one last time into the trees before turning around. “And he obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

“What about all those stories about witches being far from their daemons?” Landon said. “I mean, I know they’re not true, obviously. But maybe one is? You know, like one that’s been to Malivore and back?”

Josie shook her head. “I don’t know. He showed up after you destroyed Malivore, and even if something got out at the last minute, it shouldn’t be staking out the school like this.”

“You’re probably right.” Landon helped Pernilla onto his shoulder and she watched behind them as they left the woods. “I’m glad you’ve seen him too, though. I thought I was going nuts.”

“I was beginning to think we were, too,” Reuven whispered to Josie. He said it, she knew, because he still thought so. He knew something that Landon didn’t know and that Josie had been afraid to admit since the cat had first shown up: that she knew this daemon somehow. She couldn’t conjure an image of its person’s face, and she didn’t have any real memory of seeing it before, but it felt all too familiar.

Both of them knew she wouldn’t stop until she found it.

***

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Reuven said that night as Josie prepared a locator spell. “I mean, what are you going to do? Grab it and make it talk?”

“I can hold him still with magic,” Josie said. She smoothed a map of the campus over the floor. “It doesn’t have to be that invasive. Why are you so afraid to find out what his deal is?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like how I feel when I look at it.”

Josie ignored him and focused on conjuring an image of the cat: long, rich brown fur, dark mackerel stripes, a long face with large green eyes. She held the image in her mind as she spoke the incantation. “Ahsorum, dolusantum, infidictus.”

The back corner of the map began to glow, and a bright, pulsating pinprick of light settled directly on top of a tree.

Reuven inched onto the map to look closer. “Is that…?”

“Yeah.” Josie snatched the map off the ground and hurried out of the room so quickly that Reuven was barely able to slip through before the door closed.

Josie kept an eye on the map as she ducked through the trees and headed toward the edge of the property. Hardly anyone ever went that far through the woods, but Josie and Lizzie had explored every inch of them as children. The tree, when she reached it, was exactly how they’d left it years ago: large and hollow, but not nearly as grand as when she’d been four feet tall. The cat lay curled asleep within the trunk.

Josie stopped several yards back, and this time it was Reuven who couldn’t help his curiosity. He fluttered toward the tree as silently as his wings would allow and landed at the edge of the hollow. He slowly crept closer to the cat, but its eyes flew open and it reacted with the fastest reflexes Josie had ever seen. It had already torn away to the point it was almost out of sight before Josie managed to get the spell out of her mouth.

The cat froze in its tracks and Josie jogged to catch up with it. It hissed and spat, and when she entered its field of view, its glare sent a chill down her spine. She’d never seen a daemon look at a person with so much spite.

The hissing fell to a deep growl, and the cat spoke, low and steady: “Let me go.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Josie said, but her voice was taut. “I just want to know who you are. And how did you find that tree? My sister and I cloaked it years ago.”

The cat only silently continued to glare at her, but there was something else in his eyes. Longing or pain or something of that nature. She should have led with a different question.

“Where’s your person?”

The cat stared at her. “Let go of me,” he said. “I’m not going to talk to you like this.”

Josie hesitated, then dropped the spell. The cat stretched and sat down, his body tense. He wrapped his tail tightly around his paws before speaking again.

“My person is gone.”

Josie exchanged a glance with Reuven, and he instinctively moved closer to her. “What do you mean, they’re ‘gone?’” she said. “They’re…dead?”

“No,” the cat said. “She’s alive, obviously. But she’s not here. She’s not anywhere anymore.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Josie murmured.

The cat sighed, and it almost looked as if he were about to say something else, but he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You won’t be seeing me again.” He unfurled his tail and stood up.

“Wait,” Reuven said. He lit upon the ground in front of the cat and reached one clawed wing out to touch the cat’s paw. “What’s your name?”

The cat narrowed his eyes and glanced between Reuven and Josie. He searched her face for a long moment, and eventually, he said, “Ásfriðr.” Then, he disappeared into the depths of the forest.

***

Reuven lay against Josie’s neck as she stared up at the ceiling in her room. It wasn’t cold, but she could feel him shivering. She still felt sick to her stomach herself.

“How could his person just be gone?” Reuven whispered eventually. “I can’t imagine it. I don’t understand how that can happen.”

“It won’t happen to us,” Josie said, answering his unspoken question. “Whatever they did, it had to be intentional. There’s no way something like that could be an accident.”

Reuven looked up at her. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

Josie sighed and rolled onto her side to face him. “The timing. I mean, there’s coincidence, and then there’s this.”

“Malivore.”

Josie nodded. “Malivore. I think Landon was right, just…not the way he thought. I don’t think some witch with a flying broom and a daemon who could leave her came out of the pit. I think his person went in without him. We know other people were there when Landon closed it.”

“But who would go in without their daemon? The pain…”

“I know,” Josie said. “Maybe Malivore won’t let daemons in. I don’t know, but I feel so bad for him.” She frowned. “I feel even worse for whoever’s down there without him. She’d be all alone. More alone than we’ve ever felt in our life.”

“We knew her, didn’t we?”

Josie tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “He knew where our tree was, Reu. It’s still cloaked; his person had to be part of the spell. I just—I want to know who she is. I want to help her.”

Reuven looked away.

Malivore was gone. There was nothing she could do to help now.