by Nadia Heaton
“I’ll do it,” Fleur said quickly. Lis normally did that kind of thing, but Fleur worried about Savion. What if Lis did the spell too strong, and it hurt him? That could sometimes happen. She’d be careful. Lisette gave her a strange look, but just nodded.
Fleur knew that her concern for a vampire she barely knew was misplaced, but there was just something about Savion that drew her in.
“I’ll get the stuff ready.”
Fleur dashed into the library to find Savion sitting exactly where she’d left him.
She had just enough time to whisper in his ear before Lisette and Barrett came back. “I took the binding spell off you.”
Savion nodded, giving her a quick smile. Fleur tried not to think about what that smile did to her insides, and instead started preparing the ingredients for the spell. They didn’t need it to last long, so it wouldn’t be complicated. A bit few mixed oils and basil leaf were quickly put in a bowl together.
Fleur spoke the words over the bowl, which glowed slightly. The basil shimmered and became one with the oil.
“Here, drink this. You’ll have no choice but to answer truthfully any question we pose to you in the next half an hour.”
Savion looked more than a little nervous, but he took the bowl without complaint. Fleur watched carefully, making sure he drank it all, wondering what truths it would reveal.
Savion could almost feel the disapproval coming of Rashid in waves, and was entirely sure that he could still hear despite the binding spell.
Not looking at his host, Savion drained the bowl in three gulps. It tasted foul, but he managed to keep it down. He didn’t feel any different, and glanced at Fleur for confirmation. “Is it working?”
“I made it, of course it’s working.”
“Maybe we should test it.” Lisette gave Savion a truly evil grin. “What were you thinking about Fleur when you were flirting with her earlier today?”
Savion had a thousand smart responses he could make, but none of them made it out of his mouth. “I was thinking of slowly stripping off her clothes and licking her –” He suddenly clapped a hand over his own mouth, his face burning.
At least Fleur didn’t look angry, but her amusement at his expense wasn’t much better. “I’d say it’s working.”
Barrett grabbed Savion by the shoulders and shoved him roughly back. “You stay away from my daughter!”
“I’m sorry! I never meant to say that…”
“Obviously, that’s how a truth spell works, genius.” Fleur flicked her hair over her shoulder in a way that was utterly distracting.
Savion glared at her. “I took this potion with the intention of answering questions that pertain to your safety in my presence. Your next question had better be relevant.”
“Don’t worry, Lis was just messing with you.” Fleur seemed ready to get down to business. “Why are you here?”
“I told you, to find Jermaine.”
“Do you mean him or Bethany any harm?”
“Of course not, he’s my brother. As for Bethany, I would never harm someone Jermaine cares about.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“As long as you don’t threaten me or Jermaine, I have no quarrel with you. I’m not looking to get into a fight here.”
“What will you do if we don’t tell you where Jermaine is?”
That one was harder to answer. “I guess I’ll investigate you and decide if you’re telling the truth or not. If you’re being truthful, I’ll leave you alone. If you know where Jermaine is and refuse to tell me, I might be forced to hurt you to get that information.”
No, no, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say. Stupid truth spell. Now there was no way they’d trust him.
Fleur, Lisette and Barrett didn’t look particularly surprised, though. Fleur continued her questioning. “What if Jermaine isn’t ready to be found?”
“That’s stupid. Of course he wants to be found. He has to know I’m worried sick about him. If he hasn’t contacted me by now, it means he can’t. That means he’s either hurt or being held captive.” He leveled a suspicious gaze at the witches. “The only reason I can think of that you’d hide Jermaine from me is that he’s in some kind of danger.”
“That’s assuming we know where he is.” Fleur remained calm, but her eyes hand tightened into a fist on the table.
“I know you’re hiding something, that much is obvious, but I can’t tell what. Believe me, I will find out.”
Barrett made an impatient noise. “Enough of this, I think we’ve heard everything we need to hear. We’re in no danger from you unless we’re harming Jermaine or keeping him from you, correct?”
“Correct. Now will you tell me where my brother is?”
“It’s not that simple. However, I can tell Bethany to give you a call. She'll be able to explain things a bit more thoroughly for you. Are you willing to leave us now, with no violence, and wait for her call.”
“Yes, for now, but if I don’t get a call, I’ll be back.”
“And your friend? If Fleur takes off the spell, will we have any problems with him?”
Savion tried to assure them that Rashid would be fine, but the potion wouldn’t allow that. “He won’t be happy, but I believe I can control him. He knows better than to pick a fight with witches.”
“Seems he’s already done that.” Fleur raised her eyebrows, a movement that was at once cute and graceful.
“He can be an idiot sometimes, as you’ve seen, but he’s not suicidal. I’ll do my best to get him out of here quickly.”
Fleur glanced at Barrett and Lisette, both of whom nodded. With a quiet word, she released the spell. Rashid immediately leapt back, balancing on the balls of his feet, ready for a fight.
“Rashid, come.” Savion didn’t give him time to decide that revenge for the spell was in order, grabbing the vampire’s elbow and steering him forcefully from the room. He didn’t want to leave Fleur, but it seemed he had little choice in the matter right now. He would at least make sure that he saw her again.
Savion gave her one last smile as he practically dragged Rashid out of the front door into the night.
Fleur closed the door behind the two vampires, suddenly exhausted. Savion confused her. She should hate him and be terrified of him, but neither of those emotions seemed to take much room in her head when she thought of him.
Her dad didn’t give her time to dwell on her troubled thoughts. “Fleur, I want you to call an emergency coven meeting.”
It wasn’t what she’d been hoping to hear, but Fleur couldn’t exactly say she was surprised. “I thought we were keeping the rest of the coven out of this. We decided that was best for Beth’s and Jermaine’s safety.”
“And I have no intention of telling Mirabelle that we’re harboring a vampire, but as for the rest of it, the coven needs to know. Having the attention of Jermaine’s coven could go badly for us, and we need to be prepared.”
“They don’t mean us any harm, as long as we don’t hurt Jermaine. I don’t want to start a fight with these people.”
Lisette sniggered. “More like you don’t want to start a fight with Savion.”
Fleur glared at her sister. Lisette specialized in love and lust, so she should have predicted that her naughty thoughts about Savion wouldn’t go unnoticed.
“I’ll call the coven meeting,” she said flatly, stomping to her room and starting to gather the ingredients for a summoning spell. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight to keep things between her coven and Savion’s coven peaceful. She’d do whatever it took to make sure that everyone involved came out of this unscathed. And it had nothing to do with Savion. It was just common sense, really.
9
Savion managed to drag Rashid two blocks away before his host came to a forceful stop.
“What the hell was that?”
“That was me getting us out of a potentially volatile situation alive, no thanks to you. You’re welcome.”
“You let those witches wal
k all over you! I thought better of you, Savion.”
“If you don’t like my strategies, then you can go right back in there and sit the night out with that binding spell, which would have been the best case scenario, if I hadn’t cleaned up your mess.”
Rashid’s mouth opened and closed for a moment, making him look like a goldfish asking for food. “Whatever. I’m going for a drink.”
“Be my guest.” Savion happily let Rashid go. Though the hour was late for mortals, but for vampires, it was just the beginning of their day, and Savion had no intention of going to bed. His mind was still too full of the encounter with Fleur to rest, even if he’d wanted to.
Savion wandered aimlessly for a while before he found his feet taking him to the dock. No matter how much time he spent inland, he’d always be most comfortable near the sea. Savion sat down on the end of the dock, letting his feet dangle over the edge.
He contemplated shifting to his ray form and swimming for a bit. It wasn’t like there was much else to do this evening. Bethany would either contact him, or she wouldn’t. Savion would need to acquire a cell phone. He didn’t doubt that the witches could track which number he was using for Bethany to call, but he would need to have something for them to track.
That would have to wait until tomorrow, though. Only bars and clubs were open at this time of night. Savion stared out at the calming waves of the ocean as his thoughts turned to Fleur. He didn’t quite understand what was happening to him in regard to his feelings for her.
His sudden attraction could easily be explained – she was stunningly beautiful. Savion had been with his fair share of beautiful women. No, that wasn’t what was bothering him. What he was feeling wasn’t purely physical, and that's what worried him.
He’d never felt such a strong pull to a woman before, much less a witch! Savion didn’t just want something physical with her. He wanted to get to know her. She was fascinating, though she didn’t seem remotely interested in him.
Though she had trusted him to stay put without a binding spell. Savion still couldn’t figure out why she’d done that. If he’d had witches in his home, he wouldn’t trust them to enough to turn his back to them. Well, maybe with Fleur it would be different.
Crap, he had it bad, didn’t he? Fleur could probably incinerate him on the spot if she wanted to, and Savion suspected that a continuation of his advances would make her want to do exactly that. It was a good thing she was Bethany’s sister. He’d probably end up seeing Fleur again before he and Jermaine left, whether Fleur wanted that or not.
Savion was now sure that Jermaine was here. Fleur’s family had gone to great lengths neither to confirm nor deny it, but he was good enough at reading people to know that they had his brother. He also sensed that they meant Jermaine no harm, which is the only reason he’d left peacefully. Well, that and he didn’t want to fight Fleur.
When Jermaine had fallen in love with Bethany, Savion had been annoyed that his brother had to choose someone he would have to move mountains to be with, but now he felt his annoyance waning. Being with a mortal was hard enough for a vampire, but a witch? Savion must be insane to be thinking of pursuing Fleur, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his head.
The sound of feet lightly brushing the ground had him leaping up. Vince was running toward him quickly, as only a vampire could. His movement was too fast for a mortal to track, but Savion could clearly see his friend getting closer.
They didn’t often run like that in public places, not unless there was a powerful reason. “Vince? What’s wrong?”
Vince came to an abrupt stop next to him. “There’s something you need to see. Zan and I were following two women who we suspected of being witches, and it turns out we were right. They looked to be headed home when a small glowing pinprick of light appeared in front of them. They hurried to a deserted alley – at least, they thought it was deserted. Zan and I stayed in the shadows.
“As soon as they were in the alley, one of them spoke some kind of incantation, and the light disappeared, but a voice came out of thin air. It summoned them to an emergency coven meeting, telling them to meet in the woods.”
“Fleur’s coven, it must be. Rashid… I’ll have to tell you another time, but basically, the witches are spooked. Is Zan following them?”
“He is, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to stay close enough. They’re likely to cast visual warding spells around their meeting place.”
“Then we find them the old fashioned way – through scent rather than sight.”
“That’s what I told him. He’s going to try to keep them in his sight, but the two of us should approach the woods from a different direction and try to scent them. You up for a swim? The forest meets the coastline a couple of miles from here.”
“Absolutely.” Savion slipped easily into the water, and Vince followed. The two of them morphed into their manta ray forms and started swimming. It wasn’t a pleasure swim, and they pressed their ray bodies as fast as they could.
Vince seemed to know where he was going, and headed for the shore after about twenty minutes of swimming. The two of them changed back to human form and walked swiftly up the beach, taking the cover of trees as soon as they could. Savion paused, breathing in deeply through his nose.
“There. It’s faint, but I can smell it.”
“You can? I can’t smell anything?”
“It’s Fleur,” Savion admitted.
“You’re attuned to her scent? Already? Sav, you barely know her!”
“Shut it, Vince. We’ll talk about this later.”
“You bet we will.”
Savion couldn’t really blame Vince. It usually took vampires decades to become attuned to another’s scent. It happened faster with someone they were in a romantic relationship with, but he could hardly say he was in a relationship with Fleur, no matter how much he wished he were.
It wasn’t as strong as a full attunement would be, but Savion could still pick up her scent a long way before he caught a whiff of anyone else. The two of them crept through the dark woods, relying on their noses rather than their sight.
They were getting close when they ran into Zan.
“I lost them,” Zan admitted in a whisper. “I wandered around for a while before finally backtracking and tracing their scent trail.”
“We’re nearly there,” Savion confirmed. “Let’s get just inside their warding spell, then hide ourselves.”
It didn’t take long. Savion could tell the moment they stepped through the warding spell, because he could suddenly see and hear a small gathering of witches through the trees. He took a few more steps, positioning himself so that he could see what was going on, then leapt up into the branches of a tree.
Vince and Zan took trees on either side of him, and the three of them managed to get settled with minimum disturbance of branches.
It was too risky to talk, so they remained silent, simply listening and watching. Savion moved a few branches higher, getting himself an unobstructed view of the clearing where the witches were meeting. Nothing was happening yet – it seemed like they were waiting for everyone to arrive.
He was just close enough that he could make out their voices with his vampire hearing. People were questioning Fleur, insisted on waiting for everyone to arrive before she started. He was surprised to see that even the older members of the coven deferred to her. Surely, she was too young to be the coven leader?
“Focus, Sav,” Zan hissed from the tree next to him.
Savion saw his friend glaring at him from between the branches. “What?” His whisper was quiet enough that there was no way mortal hearing would pick it up, and Zan responded at the same pitch.
“Stop staring at Fleur and concentrate on the actual meeting.”
The actual meeting hadn’t started yet, so Savion felt justified in allowing himself to stare at Fleur, but now was not the time to get into an argument about it. He simply nodded at Zan, who rolled his eyes.
Savion forced his gaze
to roam the clearing, taking in everyone there. There were six of them so far, and witch covens usually averaged at about ten. All three of the LeBlanc sisters were present, but not Bethany. That made sense, since Bethany wasn’t a witch herself.
Savion pushed his confused thoughts of Fleur out of his mind and focused on the issue before them. They needed to know what the witches were planning to do, and judge whether or not they, or Jermaine, were in danger.
10
Fleur sighed in relief when Mirabelle arrived. She may be in training to take over as coven leader someday, but that day was far away, and she was struggling.
People were scared. Emergency coven meetings were seldom called, and even then only in the direst of circumstances. Lisette and Tristan kept glancing at her, but soon Mirabelle took control.
“Alright, everyone, let’s just remain calm. No one is hurt, and that’s the most important thing.” Had someone been hurt, Fleur would have notified Mirabelle at once, so even though her aunt didn’t know what the situation was, she at least knew that the coven was well, for now.
“We’re waiting for everyone to get here, then Fleur will explain the situation. For now, let’s all just concentrate on warding this place properly so that when we’re all here, we can begin without fear of some late-night hiker walking in on us by accident.”
Glancing around, Fleur saw that they were still waiting for two people. Amanda may take longer – she was out of town, and wouldn’t resort to flying unless told to do so. There were other, less dangerous, magical means to speed up transport, which meant they could be waiting for up to another half hour.
“Tristan, Lis, come. I want to speak with you in private.” Fleur tried to keep her voice calm and commanding, but a few eyebrows were raised nonetheless. Mirabelle didn’t stop her, so Fleur led her sisters away.
She kept going until she was sure they were out of earshot of the others, and put up a sound warding spell just in case anyone was trying to listen in with magic.