by Lexi Ostrow
“For?” Deidre started to walk toward the exit.
“For reminding me that I don’t have to do this alone. I might want too because I can control my reactions and my thoughts, but I’ve got a partner this time.”
“Right. A good one who just needs a little push to do the dirty work.” She winked at him and pulled a transport potion from her purse. “It’s summer. While the streetcar ride and walk was nice from your place, Mid City is a lot further.”
Chuckling, he gestured for her to take the lead. “Drop away.”
Ten
“This is the last book.” Deidre damn near dropped the largest grimoire her family-owned into Jonathon’s lap. The tome boasted over two thousand pages and was easily the size of a thirteen-inch laptop.
“Shouldn’t you already know what’s in these? You know, like an organization system?”
Deidre smirked. “I’m not Ivy.”
He sighed and gently opened the book, showing it all the respect such a tome deserved. “So how have you done it? Just dropping spells onto blank pages over the years?”
“Exactly.” She took her spot on the couch and grabbed the mason jar mug of sweet tea off the glass coffee table. “Although I’m getting the feeling you disagree. Is everyone in your family so attentive to details?”
“Mostly. Our books are organized by type. Spells in one. Potions in another. Hexes in a much smaller notebook we keep locked away.”
Deidre opened her mouth the speak forgetting the tea and choked. Her eyes blurred as the sweet liquid slipped down the wrong pipe. Pain scratched at her throat.
“Anapnéo,” Jonathon was across the space with his hand hovering over her throat.
The wheezing vanished, though the pain lingered for a moment as she uttered a final cough. “Thank you.”
“Seemed only fair.” His smile was playful. Something Deidre didn’t think he could be why. “Here, your spells seem a bit more personal. I won’t intrude.” He slid the sizable brown book toward her across the table. “Do you think I could take a peek at your potion ingredients?”
“How do you know I have any on hand?”
He shrugged. “One of your best friends owns the top shop in the city. I assume she’s kept you well supplied.”
Deidre smirked and let her eyes play over the pages, turning them gently so as not to destroy the centuries old pages. “You really are a detective deep down in your old soul.”
“Old soul?”
“You’re young, physically, but mentally, well, you make me out to feel like little more than a teenager. Your thoughts are far more mature than they ought to be.”
“You were married to a human before, yes?”
She flinched but nodded.
“Perhaps you simply like younger men.” He winked, and again, Deidre found herself intrigued by the playful nature in the otherwise hardened cop.
“Perhaps I do. Second floor, third door on the left. It’s little more than a closet, but it should have everything you’d need to brew anything legal. Even darker magics.”
He nodded and mock saluted her.
The motion stole her breath from her lungs as the image of Gerard saluting her to be silly almost every day before he left work. So many scars lingered from her long life, and yet, that was the only one that refused to stay healed.
Closing her eyes, Deidre forced out a slow breath of air. She always found her way back to Gerard anytime things grew remotely serious with the three men she’d tried dating the past few months. It made sense that now, when her trauma-addled mind was so keenly tied with Jonathon’s, that images came back to her.
That guilt came back to her.
“There’s no time for that right now. You’re scared, and he’s more than attractive. Sooner or later, if you ever got to see this side of him, you might have gotten to this point on your own thanks to Vexx.”
“What was that?” Jonathon’s question echoed down the narrow stairway.
“Nothing. Sorry. Talking to myself.” Deidre sighed and leaned back into the couch, lifting the book closer to her eyes as she did.
Her mother’s handwriting was no easier to read now than it had been nearly three hundred years ago when Deidre trained to be a member of the Crescent City Coven. Out of all the grimoires from the witches in her class, hers bore the only difficult to read handwriting.
Aine always laughed it off, telling Deidre she ran a bewitched bar, her handwriting didn’t matter.
“Except for when you’re trying to decide if that cast is how to stop a storm or how to stop a swarm.” Blowing air past her lips, Deidre created the same horse-like sound she always made when stress enveloped her. Letting her eyes glance down at the incantation, she realized the spell was indeed meant to ward off swarming creatures – perfect for banishing mosquitoes in the summer, but not what Deidre needed.
Her right arm started to heat up as if she dangled it over an open flame. “What?” Deidre ran her right hand over her arm, wincing at the heat nearly burning her fingertips. “What the hell?” She chewed her lower lip and watched her arm as if it would do any good. “Neró.” The spray of water sizzled and evaporated into smoke the second it hit her arm. “Jonathon!”
As his name left her lips, she was moving toward the storage closet – but not to find him. She didn’t feel like she got off the couch, but she was off.
“Jonathon!” She hissed as she moved up the stairs two at a time and found him standing in the doorway, a look of confusion slashed across his face.
“What’s the matter?”
“My arm,” Deidre tried to gesture to it, but something shoved her inside the closet.
“What about it?”
“It burns, Jonathon. Like it’s on fire.” She forced her hand to press into the wall and a black mark singed into the lilac wallpaper.
“God. What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for the large glass bowl she used to summon water to a circle and whirled to face the shelf, her eyes stopping on the gemstone box on the second shelf.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean, I’m not the one doing this. I’m not moving myself. I’m not even sure what I’m doing. I have no thoughts, I’m just grabbing things.” As if to emphasize her point, she curled her hands around the jagged-cut lapis lazuli and showed it to him before letting it clank into the bowl. “Jonathon, restrain me. This isn’t me!”
Recognition sparked in his gaze. “The hex.”
“Yes, the hex! Jonathon, freeze me. Right now!” She snarled even as she pulled the four-ounce blue spray bottle off the shelf one row up.
He did nothing. His brown eyes might have burned holes into her skull had Deidre not looked away.
“Deidre, we have a problem.” He uttered the words with the same deadly calm he employed anytime she’d heard him speak at work. Jonathon moved a hand to his cheek. He tried to speak, but his mouth merely flapped away soundlessly.
“My arm. Your mouth.”
He nodded, his eyes shutting. “I can’t … this is…” his face scrunched in agony as he struggled to breathe. Fought to speak.
“Págoma!” She shouted even as she spritzed the brilliant blue rough-cut stone with water. Her hand didn’t move toward her, and the blast of green sparks slammed into Jonathon. “Fuck!”
His eyes closed, and when they opened, the brown nearly glowed with anger.
“I can’t cast if I’m not in control of my arm. I can’t even isolate this!” She shrieked as panic danced with terror. Whatever was done, the hex shouldn’t be this powerful. “How? How can someone brew this?”
“Biological magic. Vexx.” The words were strained as he fought to speak against not one, but two, spells. “God,” he hissed, his hands wrapping around his throat before an animalistic cry came out. “Winds and rain. Turn the tide. Bring the storm down. There’s nowhere to hide.” The words tumbled past his lips in a struggle, but out they came.
“Goddess, help us.”
> Jonathon didn’t respond. He couldn’t, and she couldn’t silence him without silencing herself – which could leave them stuck in a horrible loop.
“Winds and rain. Turn the tide. Bring the storm down. There’s nowhere to hide.”
A crack of thunder seemed to break right over her shotgun house, and she yelped, jumping back from the bowl.
The rain came then. Slamming into the roof so forcefully it sounded like rocks pelting against it, not drops of water. Another burst of thunder shook the house, and the power flickered even though she didn’t see lightning.
“Diakopí!” Jonathon’s voice boomed through the same space. He closed the space between them in two short strides. “Your arm.” He dropped down beside her and gently took her hand in his.
Deidre touched it, not entirely shocked to find the heat gone. “We’re free. We just unleashed the hurricane. I have to call Ivy.” She pushed up from the floor so quickly her sock slipped, sending her flying forward and knocking Jonathon down.
Her heart beat in her chest as she placed her hands on his chest. His expression softened if just for a moment, and then he rolled her off him. “No! This isn’t a hurricane. You call her, you sign her death certificate.”
“No. This has to be it.” Scrambling to stand, she moved out of the small hall closet and stared at the colossal raindrops falling just on the other side of the window.
“Deidre,” his hands grasped around her wrist, but he didn’t apply pressure, just held onto her. “Think. Weather Magic is specific – as specific as any other magic. Whatever words came from my lips, only spoke of rain. No wind. No death.”
“Then, I have to call Ivy and get the Coven to stop the storm.” Deidre put her hand over his and tried to pull his fingers apart. “Jonathon!”
“I’m not going to let you do it, Deidre. You’ll kill her.” He rested his forehead against hers and looked into her eyes as a sadness slipped into his predatory brown stare. The intensity lingered, forcing her to keep looking into his eyes. “Trust me.”
The whispered word was spoken with more convention than any Deidre ever heard Jonathon utter.
And she did.
She trusted him because he cared for her friends as much as she did.
They stood there, their heads resting together as tenderly as lovers, and all the while, the rain crashed down outside.
“It’s going to flood out there,” she whispered, unsure of why neither of them distanced themselves from the other.
“This is New Orleans. It always floods.” His lips quirked into a smile. “I know how to stop this one, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.” He pulled away, nearly taking her breath with him. “We have to ride this one out. This was a test. I can feel it.”
A bolt of brilliant light struck just outside the window.
“He’s going to kill us before we can finish his stupid hex.”
“No, this is just the nature of weather magic. My family, we helped create a few white Christmases in New York, there’s always an epicenter around the casters.”
“You said you didn’t know any weather magic?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want you to be upset I knew some. Nothing for rain though.”
Deidre sighed and. “So, we just sit in here, hiding away like we didn’t just cast goddess knows how powerful of a rainstorm to destroy property and maybe kill some homeless who have nowhere to go?”
“No.” His jaw clenched, and he took her hand in his. “No. We get to Lita’s shop immediately. She must know people powerful enough to make that gods-be-damned hex after so many years with Vexx.”
Deidre flinched, and he saw because he still stared directly at her. For the first time he noticed what the man’s name did to her.
“I’m sorry, Dee. I didn’t know.”
“I can’t control it. His name, just the sound of it, infuriates and frightens me.”
“We’ll fix that. I know someone back home who can help. For now, we must get to Lita and pray this storm stops before the levees overflow. They’re already dangerously high for this time of year.”
The storm blasted against the swamp, creating almost as much of a cacophony as the freighted frogs and birds did. Drops of rain as large as quarters fell with lightning speed from the sky above. Without the lights from the city, the dark gray storm clouds nearly cloaked the area with nightfall. The smell of peat moss floated in the air and filled Remy’s nostrils with a sense of satisfaction.
Though Remy worried a bit for their homes down the river, the safe houses were elevated and reinforced. A storm wouldn’t do any damage here.
“This storm.”
Glancing around, he watched as the rain hit hard as rocks into the water just off the house’s dock.
They’d done it. Right on schedule, Jonathon and Deidre created the first storm. Remy paid over a million dollars for the hex, but he hadn’t been convinced it would work. The variables. The genetics required to tie to the casters. The djinn’s blood magic clearly covered the majority of it.
Still, he’d asked a great deal of the warlock who’d bottled the hex.
“And it’s paying off.” His lips twisted up into a grin as Remy slipped his hand inside his pocket. A phone call was in order.
Setting up the call, he looked back out over the restless swamp. The entire situation was serene, and Remy couldn’t help but wonder if others would realize this was an act of magic. Either way, his hurricane was coming, and no one could stop it short of death.
The cop might off himself to save the city, but Remy remained confident the witch wouldn’t.
Remy grabbed tapped the voice manipulator app. It wouldn’t sound the same as his casted voice, but it didn’t need too.
“Who is this?” The warlock’s snipped words told much of his current disposition.
“A delighted customer.” Remy held off his laughter. Provoking the noble half of the pairing could lead to the termination of the hex.
“You,” Jonathon hissed. “We will stop you. Or ourselves.”
Remy tsked. “It’s such a pretty storm. I’m watching it right now. Outside and everything.” He swallowed a deep lungful of musty, rainy air and blew it out slowly. “By now I assume you’ve learned you can’t communicate your little … predicament to anyone.”
“Is that him?” Deidre’s voice slipped over the connection.
“Hello there, thanks for an expert cast. The storm is marvelous.”
“Remy!” Elijah’s voice boomed through the rain, cutting through the sounds of swamp and likely terrifying everything into quiet.
Remy dropped the phone, and it slipped into the swamp. Water resistant or not, dropping it saved him because if either caster heard Elijah’s voice, they’d have a way to find him by asking the alpha where he’d been.
Leaning his head to the left, Remy cracked his neck before plastering on a smile. “How can I help you?” he spun and found himself face-to-face with the furious wolf.
Elijah’s eyes glowed with the shift settling over him, and his teeth began to grow into fangs.
“Elijah, calm yourself.” Remy didn’t resist the urge to take a step backward and lean against the house. The gators were inside, and they could take the wolf if needed.
“Calm myself?” Hands wrapped in Remy’s shirt as the alpha male lifted him up the side of the house. “You fled for the crime.” Spittle flew out of Elijah’s mouth as the man roared.
The blood left Remy’s face. Elijah couldn’t know about the storm. Unless the hex failed that trial.
“I want his head on a platter. I want it this minute, or I will rip you limb from limb and call it justice.”
Him? “Elijah. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A hand slammed around his throat, locking Remy against the house as the air supply was severed. Elijah spoke, but he didn’t hear the man. Panic forced his hands to claw at Elijah’s, desperately working to remove the man from his throat.
Remy’s arms grew heavy, and his
head threatened to fall to the side after a few seconds, but he didn’t stop.
A gunshot rang out – a shotgun shot that rang through the swamp and brought life back into his fight.
“Put my good for nothing brother down.” Galena’s call was quiet compared to the gunshot, but it did the trick.
“My husband is a lot of things, but worthy of death isn’t one … yet.” Heather stepped outside as well.
Elijah’s grip loosened just enough to let air. Remy cried out at the pain of air rushing through his injured airway. His heart slammed into his chest as he frantically opened and closed his mouth to grasp at air he couldn’t possibly hold on to.
“Shoot the Council Elect. My location is not a secret. They’ll destroy your clan.”
Fear raced through him like an icy jolt. His people trusted him. “Stop.” Remy wheezed, the pain in his throat ringing through into his ears.
“I want to know where he is.” A growl punctuated each word.
“Who?” Remy couldn’t focus his eyes, they rolled about as he sucked in air.
“Last night, a little girl was ripped in half by gator. This morning I went to your house to discuss and imagine my surprise when it was vacant.” Elijah gave a forceful squeeze of his fingers.
“I swear, I don’t know anything about it.” Tears sprung in Remy’s eyes from the pain of forcing so many words out.
Elijah let him go, obviously seeing the truth in Remy’s words. Still, Remy kept his back against the house, grateful his sister kept the gun trained on Elijah.
“My little girls were in that park.” Elijah punched the wooden cabin exterior, drawing back a hand covered in blood. “I want justice, Remy. You find out who the fuck decided to prey on a child, and you bring them to me.”
“If it’s anyone in my congregation, I will handle the justice just as you do. If a rogue dares to be in my midst, I’ll destroy him for violating city rules.”
“Wrong. I handle shifter justice. If I wish to pass it to an alpha, I do. I will not be.” His nostrils flared as he damn near growled the words. “I won’t be. You find the son of a bitch gator caught on film, or I will come calling for your head.”