Blood Magic: Witch’s Bite Series Book Three

by Foxe, Stephanie

  I walk in a daze. It doesn’t register that we’re back in the hotel until Reilly is guiding me into our room. I head straight to the bathroom. My back still aches from the scratches Ryan left me with.

  Cold water on my face helps wake me up a little bit, but I’m exhausted. Reilly is leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, face blank. I know what he wants, and that there is no backing out of the deal I made. I don’t regret it though. There was no way I was going to let Corinne die when I had the power to save her.

  I suppose he’d say she might not do the same for me. And perhaps she wouldn’t, but I don’t care. I made my decision about who I wanted to be after I fed off that vampire. Reilly might have no conscience. He might be okay with threats and manipulations and putting his ambition over what is right. My mother raised me better. I’ll die before I see myself become like him.

  “Maybelle helped my mother steal a spellbook,” I begin.

  Reilly uncrosses his arm and steps closer.

  “I don’t know what exactly was in it other than the spell they used, if anything. And I don’t know where it is now.” I stand up straight and turn to face him. “All my mother wanted was to have a baby apparently, but she had fallen in love with a vampire.”

  “And vampires can’t have children,” Reilly says.

  “They can if they use this spell. Sort of,” I say with a grimace. “Maybelle was waiting in another room, but she went in when she heard my mother screaming.”

  Talking about this makes me sick to my stomach. Reilly doesn’t push. He knows I’m not going to clam up now.

  “The spell killed my father. Maybelle said he turned to ash while he was still inside my mother.”

  Reilly’s eyes widen imperceptibly. He wasn’t expecting that I think, that it would kill the vampire.

  “What else?” He asks.

  “That’s all I really know. It worked, obviously. Maybelle sold the book. My mother did her best to disappear with me.” I shrug and pace back and forth in front of the bathtub. I feel like if I don’t keep moving I’ll fall asleep where I stand.

  “So you are half vampire, and half witch,” Reilly muses aloud. “You can steal magic, though that doesn’t guarantee you can use it well.”

  “The healing magic was easy to control. The rest of this,” I shake my head. “The rest is harder.”

  “You will learn though. You already are.”

  I shrug. “Oh, and something else. The coven that attacked the clan back in Texas, they knew what I was and how I was conceived. They were trying to recruit me. Did you know that?”

  Reilly stares at me before answering. “I suspected it.”

  I rub my hands over my face.

  “I suppose I’m lucky they didn’t find me any sooner.” I pause in the middle of my pacing and laugh. “Or I’m unlucky. Maybe they would have been better to work for than you. They might be insane, but they did seem very enthusiastic about the idea of training me.”

  “The witch council would have eaten you up,” Reilly scoffs.

  I turn on him. “You say that like the vampire council won’t. Like you won’t.”

  “I have done everything I could to make this easy for you. You could have just cooperated, but you have fought me every step of the way.”

  “Cooperated with what, though? You said you wanted to see my potential. If you want to know what I can do, that means you have a plan to use me somehow. I don’t want to be used by anyone,” I half-shout back at him.

  “Tough shit, Olivia,” he shouts back. “We’re all getting used. We all have our part to play.”

  I open my mouth to argue back, but his phone rings. He turns away and answers it.

  “Reilly here,” he says pleasantly. I despise that he can do that, pretend he wasn’t just in the middle of an argument.

  I sit down on the edge of the bathtub and wait. He needs to get off the phone so I can keep yelling at him. I have to be doing something while I wait to hear about Corinne.

  “He’s dead?” Reilly asks, shock apparent in his tone.

  I try to pull on my vampire magic so I can hear the other side of the conversation, but that makes the room swim and my skin ache, so I let it go.

  “And we know for sure that he will be taking his place?”

  Another pause.

  “Yes. Just do it.” Reilly hangs up the phone and stares out of the bathroom door, not moving.

  “I would ask if everything is alright, but if someone has died, I guess it isn’t,” I say quietly. I can’t tell if he is angry or upset. His shoulders are a tight line of tension and his hands are white-knuckled around his phone.

  “One of the council members has died. My sire is taking his place.” He turns around and faces me. His jaw is clenched just as tightly as his hands.

  “Who will be taking over as clan leader now?” I ask.

  “His second will be doing that, I assume,” Reilly says, his fingers tapping absently against the phone still gripped in his hand.

  “Were you hoping for the promotion?” I ask, confused at his reaction. He seems distressed.

  “I knew I was not going to be considered for the position. There is a clear hierarchy,” Reilly says.

  “Were you close to this council member?” I ask.

  Reilly shakes his head.

  “Is this bad news somehow?” I ask. I don’t really care to try and comfort Reilly, but if he’s this upset about whatever is happening it could be putting me at risk as well.

  “No, it’s great news for our clan, and for my sire,” Reilly says.

  I wish I could hear his heart, because I don’t believe him at all.

  20

  It’s the middle of the day, but I can’t go back to sleep. Elise had texted me a couple of hours ago that Corinne is still stable, but they’ve been unable to wake her up. The brain scans don’t show any damage, so the doctors are baffled. She also promised me that the doctors haven’t used any magic or brews on her, which relaxed the knot in my stomach a little.

  I sit up and shove the covers off. They don’t want me at the hospital, but I have to do something. I find clean clothes and put on a little extra deodorant because I don’t care to take a shower right now.

  I pace the room, tangling my fingers in my hair. I feel helpless. No one else felt the thing that’s inside of her. The darkness. I stop in my tracks.

  No one else has felt it, but I have. I’ve been so frustrated that I can’t draw it out of her with the healing magic that I didn’t even think about a brew. I was right that the doctors shouldn’t give her anything because it could react unpredictably. It was feeding on her magic and if I hadn’t been able to take the magic first, it would have consumed it.

  It was sentient, but it’s not a human sort of consciousness. It’s more primitive, like a parasite or a weed. It just wants to take all the nutrients it can. I think it stopped because it didn’t want to kill its host. She still had magic in her, just not enough for it to grow.

  I race over to pull my shoes on. As her magic starts returning, the curse is going to start growing again. It has to be stopped before that, and if I can’t heal it, then I have to find an antidote.

  Normally, curses are irreversible. An object that has been cursed has to be destroyed. Curses that affect the body though, those can be reversed. They can be cured. The only trick to it is making the right brew. Curse-ending is somewhat of a dying art. I blame witches like Staci with their bullshit recipes. The only way to brew for a curse is to do it from scratch. Nothing but you and your magic.

  Reilly’s things are on his nightstand. I grab his keys and flip through his wallet taking everything that looks like a credit card. The things I need are going to be expensive. Hopefully, he waits to kill me until after I’m done brewing.

  I haven’t turned on my personal phone since we left Texas. At least ten messages pop up when the screen comes on. I dismiss them all and open the map. There are dozens of brewing supply shops in the city. I click on the one most likely to ha
ve what I need and speed out of the parking garage.

  I call Elise, putting it on speakerphone so I can keep an eye on the map. She answers on the second ring.

  “She’s still fine—” Elise begins.

  “I think I know how to fix this,” I interrupt. “Or at least part of it. How to get the curse out of her.”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Elise says. “You know how to end the curse?”

  Someone talking in the background, almost trying to shout over Elise.

  “I think so. I felt it, and I understand it. It’s like a weed almost. It wants to feed on her magic, but since I took most of it, the curse went dormant. Her magic will recover though, and then the curse will start growing again.”

  Elise is silent for a moment. I hear a door open and close and the background noise cuts off.

  “Olivia, you’re not making sense,” she says quietly. “You took her magic?”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t want to have to explain all of this, but these secrets aren’t protecting me anymore. They’re pointless.

  “I wasn’t born with the ability to use all these different kinds of magic. I was only born with the ability to steal it. I stole my mother’s hedgewitch magic. I stole healing magic. I stole the electric magic from a detective that was killed in the NWR attack in my hometown. I stole something different from the clan leader I worked for. It changed me, but that’s—that’s not important right now,” I say breathlessly. “I can brew something to end the curse.”

  “I don’t—” Elise sighs. “I don’t know if they’ll let you.”

  “Then don’t tell them,” I say immediately. “I’m going to brew it. I’ll find a way to get it to her.”

  “I don’t know if I’m going to let you,” she says quietly.

  My heart drops. I hadn’t expected that. I should have.

  “Olivia, curse-ending is advanced magic. It’s hardly done anymore, hell, curses are almost unheard of. Especially one like this. Her coven is going to find a specialist, they’re already making calls. They said there’s someone in Europe that might be able to help.”

  “There isn’t time,” I plead. Corinne is too powerful, her magic is probably already recovering.

  “You giving her some brew that you can’t prove will work could kill her.”

  “You didn’t feel it, Elise. I know I can do this.”

  “You thought it was a good idea to try to Find Martinez too and look how that turned out,” Elise says, all semblance of patience gone from her tone. “We’re all scared, and we’re all worried. You can’t do something else reckless trying to fix this.”

  I grit my teeth. I can’t talk her into agreeing with me, but I refuse to give up when Corinne’s life is on the line.

  “Whatever you say.” I hang up the call. I should have just done this without talking to anyone about it. It’s too late for that now, but I can’t give up.

  The first shop has the cauldron I need, but not all of the herbs. I swipe Reilly’s black credit card and let out a little sigh of relief when it isn’t declined. I hope it’s the type that doesn’t have a credit limit.

  I have to visit three more shops before I get all of the ingredients I think I might need. It’s hard to predict beforehand, but I’m letting my intuition guide me. This magic is something I know. It’s the one thing I was trained to use, and it’s always been as natural as breathing. My mother was talented and this magic inside of me is still part of her as well.

  I put the last bag in the trunk and slide into the driver’s seat. I’m not sure where the best place is to brew. It has to be somewhere I won’t be interrupted, so the JHAPI offices are out. I tap the card against the steering wheel. A hotel it is.

  I pull out of the parking lot and drive toward the strip. I’m sure I can find something near there. Las Vegas is not lacking in hotels, and I know some of them rent by the hour.

  I stop at the first one I see with a sign out front that is blinking the number of vacancies. It’s rundown and there are people loitering in front of some of the rooms. Half are obviously prostitutes. The rest either have the cocky walk of a pimp, or they’re pretending they aren’t looking at the girls while unable to take their eyes off of them.

  I park in front of the main entrance and hurry inside. The receptionist, her name tag says Glenda in glittery pink letters, is a middle-aged woman with thinning hair and a pockmarked face. She has a cigarette hanging out of her thin lips.

  “I need a room,” I say holding up the card. “Any non-smoking by chance?”

  She laughs, but it turns into a cough.

  “They’re all non-smoking but nobody gives a fuck and smokes anyhow,” she says, tapping her cigarette against the no smoking sign sitting on her desk.

  “Alright, whatever, I’ll take a room anyhow.”

  She turns around and digs out a key attached to a little wooden handle with a number written on it.

  “How long you want it for?” She asks.

  “I’ll take it for two days.” I don’t know how long this is going to take and I don’t want to have to worry about getting all my stuff out of it right away.

  She raises a brow but slowly types it into her computer regardless. She takes a long drag on her cigarette and blows the smoke up toward the ceiling, then puts a card reader up on the counter. She doesn’t mention a price, and I don’t care how much it is. I swipe the card and sign the receipt she gives me.

  She hands over the key.

  “It’s around back, first floor,” she croaks.

  “Thanks,” I say, already halfway to the door.

  I drive around to the back. The prostitute’s eyes follow my car, but when they catch a glimpse of me inside they turn back to the men still milling around.

  Glenda was right about the room, it’s definitely been smoked in recently. It takes three trips to the car, but I get everything inside. There isn’t much to work with in here. There’s one desk and the narrow shelf the television is sitting on.

  I move the television to the floor and pull the desk closer. I set up the propane stove on the desk and begin lining up the ingredients on the shelf. I haven’t wanted to admit it, but I am nervous. Elise’s comments have only made that worse. I pause and take a steadying breath. There’s no time for self-doubt.

  I unbox the cauldron reverently. The circumstances aren’t great, but I can’t help the thrill of excitement that runs through me at the chance to use this cauldron. It’s something I don’t think I’d ever have had the money to buy, but I’ve always lusted after it.

  The four most common types of cauldrons are copper, pewter, iron, and steel. This cauldron, however, is made of leaded glass. The same stuff used to make those decorative crystal trinkets people buy and then don’t know what to do with. I saw one of these when I child and I thought the cauldron was somehow carved from a diamond. I fell in love instantly.

  It’s a quirky cauldron to use. You can’t brew too hot with it, and you can’t brew anything that’s overly flammable, or you could shatter the whole thing if something went wrong.

  I fold back the lids of the box and lift the cauldron out slowly. It sparkles even in the dim lighting of the motel room. It was carved with hundreds of facets on the outer edges that catch the light. They’ll catch my magic too. Brewing with one of these is like watching a fireworks show.

  I set it carefully on the burner and look over my ingredients one last time. I have one shot to do this right. It isn’t going to take Reilly all that long to find me, and I doubt he’s willing to fund another round of this. Hell, he didn’t willingly fund this attempt.

  I pull up music on my phone, turn up the volume as loud as it will go and drop it next to the cauldron. It’s instrumental, which I would never normally listen to, but it makes me feel classy and this cauldron deserves a little class. Or as much as it can get in a pay-by-the-hour motel in Las Vegas at three in the afternoon.

  I lay the cutting board on the left side of the cauldron and grab the single, large sunf
lower I bought. I pluck the petals carefully and set them in a pile in one corner of the cutting board. The hedgewitch magic is already tingling at my fingertips as I work. The petals perk up, taking on a kind of glow as I pluck them.

  Once they are all removed I slice each one into long slivers. I light the fire under the cauldron and grab the bottle of carbonated water. It fizzes happily as I pour it in, and it doesn’t stop. I won’t be able to boil anything. My magic will have to provide the heat to bind the ingredients together. The carbonation will keep it all moving.

  I sprinkle the petals in and they dance across the surface, bending and twisting and shimmering. They won’t sink in just yet, I realize. They won’t do that until the end.

  I cut the lemon in half and squeeze each half over the cauldron. The juice runs down my wrist too, but most of it drips into the bubbling liquid. The bright, fresh scent spreads throughout the room in a rush. It reminds me of summer days on the front porch when the only thing that could cool me down was ice cold lemonade made fresh from the lemons we grew in the backyard.

  Next are the dragonfly wings. They’re arranged carefully in the little plastic box I bought them in. I crack it open and lift them out. They’re colorless, lacy things that could crumble at any moment. I cradle them in the palm of my hand and lower them to just above the surface of the brew before I let them slip into the cauldron. They flutter down and dissolve in a swirl of light.

  The brew pulls on my magic, and I let it. I expected the magic to be bright, and it is, but it’s also colorful. It pours out of every part of me. My hands, my arms, my face, my chest. Anywhere it can escape from. It bounces off the facets of the cauldron casting light all over the room like a prism.

  The door crashes open with a bang that almost makes me lose my grip on the magic. I’m immediately struck by Reilly’s scent, so I don’t even bother turning around. He did find me sooner than I expected, but I’ll deal with that in a minute.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” He shouts.

  I ignore him and grab the final ingredient. The most important one. This is going to carry the light, to ensure that my magic can shine inside of Corinne so brightly the dark thing that is trying to eat her magic will have to get out of her or die.