by Sam Cheever
I stared at him, shocked he’d throw more pressure onto us. Then I looked deeper into his eyes and saw the pain and fear there. What I didn’t know was if the fear was because of the enemy we were trying to defeat, or because his scary ex-girlfriend had inserted herself firmly into his life again. “We’re moving as quickly as we can, Deg. This thing we’re fighting has proven the ability to find us when we try to stop it. I thought we’d agreed to be careful.”
He glanced away, a flush infusing his handsome features. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m a little stressed about Tabby.”
I touched his arm as the earthy scent of burning wood filled the kitchen.
Mandy lifted the damper on the back of the stove and placed a jar over it to gather some of the smoke. She placed the special brass lid over the jar to keep the smoke from escaping and then opened her oversized bag and perused the contents.
“We need stealth,” I told her.
She nodded, reaching for a small vial filled with flat, black liquid and shaking a few drops into the jar. The contents exploded in a silver spray that dripped slowly down the inside of the jar.
“Intuition,” Deg added. Mandy threw him a tight smile. “I got this, Witch.”
He expelled air through his nose and leaned against the counter as Mandy selected a vial of purple dust, sifting some into the jar. The silver and purple met in a flash flame that left behind a blood red liquid which shimmered under the overhead lights.
Next she grabbed a small jar of a gray paste that she dipped her finger into and scraped off into the jar. Nothing happened but as the mix hit the shimmery ooze at the bottom it seeped slowly into it, disappearing as if it had never existed.
“What was that?” I asked, curious despite my reluctance to appear stupid.
Mandy lifted the jar and eyed the contents carefully, shaking it a bit. “It’s my strengthening additive. It will enhance everything we add to the potion, doubling its power.”
“You forgot Eye of Newt,” Deg mumbled sourly.
I bit the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. Mandy just shook her head. “Respect, Deggart. Everyone has her own way of doing things.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he told her, throwing me a look that carried meaning I couldn’t decipher. “As soon as you return the favor.”
She stamped her foot, turning to him so quickly the jar slipped out of her fingers. I lunged for it but it danced away from my touch, hanging on the air near Mandy’s shoulder. She put hands on hips and glared at Deg. “Look, Witch, I understand your ego won’t let you get over that whole gargoyle thing...”
“It’s not ego, Mandy. You almost got us killed...”
“...but my methods work if you give them a chance,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Except when they don’t.”
“I’m not your damn Familiar!” she shouted angrily. The potion jar jiggled with agitation on the air and I tried again to grab it before it shot off and smashed into the wall.
“No!” he shouted back, advancing on her. “You killed him.”
I jerked back, my eyes going wide. “She what?”
Mandy threw me an impatient look. “He’s being overly dramatic.”
“Did you or did you not give Rick a spell for gargoyle extinguishment that failed?”
“Yes, of course I did but...”
“And did the gargoyle subsequently eat him?”
I gasped, my hand flying to cover my mouth. I took a step back as horror swept me. “Eww!”
Mandy shook her head, turning to me with an earnest expression. “It didn’t happen like that, I assure you.”
“As I recall, you assured Rick the potion would work too.”
Mandy stamped a foot. “It should have worked!” Her gaze shimmered suspiciously. I looked at Deg and he must have noticed the unshed tears too. Unfortunately, his reaction to them was vastly different from mine.
“Cut the crying act, Amanda. I’m not falling for it again. And I’m not going to stand back and let you harm LA!”
That just pissed me off. “Whoa! It’s not your place to protect me. I’m fully capable of protecting myself.”
Deg threw up his hands and stalked out of the kitchen. I felt kind of bad for yelling at him again when he was just trying to keep me safe, but Dangit! I couldn’t have him thinking he had power over me. He wasn’t my Witch and I wasn’t his Familiar. Despite what our magic seemed to believe. And the sooner he got that through his thick head the better.
“LA?”
I blinked, realizing Mandy had been talking to me. She held the jar again and the potion at the bottom was a glossy, silvery green. “This is ready. Are you?”
I threw a last glance toward the door Deg had disappeared through and nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s see what we can see.”
CHAPTER TEN
WE WENT INTO MY STUDY, which consisted of a twelve foot by twelve foot room with built in bookshelves on three walls. The fourth wall had a set of French doors leading to my small back yard. The brick patio beyond the doors was bordered in planting boxes filled with herbs and flowers for my spells. The room contained no furniture. There was only a large, handmade rug in the center with a protective circle woven into it.
Mandy smiled when she saw the rug. “Nice. I should do this at my place.”
I couldn’t stop a grin from forming under her approval but I quickly squelched it, chastising myself. I didn’t care what any other magical being thought, I told myself. I especially shouldn’t care about the opinion of an apparently dangerously cocky Witch. “Thanks. Shall we get started?”
As we sat down in the center of the circle, the door to the study drifted open and a tiny head popped through the opening near the floor. A pair of startling green eyes blinked over at us before a tiny body slipped through on a plaintive meow, short striped tail snapping. “Hey, Mabel. How’d you get out of the sanctuary?”
The kitten rubbed herself against my thigh and lifted her head so I could scratch under her chin. She narrowed her eyes as my fingernails did their magic and her purr rumbled loudly through the room.
Mandy made a small sound of pleasure and reached a finger out to scratch the tiny kitten between its velvety black ears. “She’s adorable.”
I smiled. “I know, right? I’m really tempted to keep her.”
As if approving my suggestion, Mabel gave a happy chirp and dropped to the ground, going belly up so we could scratch her soft, round tummy.
Mandy and I both laughed, for a moment lost in the joy of petting the wriggling baby. But after a minute Mabel nipped playfully on Mandy’s finger and jumped to her feet, bouncing away from us as we laughed. She jumped onto one of the lower shelves and climbed up to sit on a thick, dusty volume of transformative spells.
Which was our cue to get to work.
Mandy placed the spell jar at the center of our protective circle and looked at me. I nodded, lifting my hands and working my fingers on the air as I spoke the spell to close the circle. A beat later it snapped closed with a sizzle that brought the kitten off the shelves to sit at the edge of the rug. She cocked her head, narrowing her expressive gaze as Mandy reached out and opened the jar.
She grasped my hand and immediately began chanting her spell. The silvery green potion shimmered as if shaken and then began to climb the walls of the jar, oozing through the opening at the top and sliding down the sides. As it hit my warded rug it sizzled, turning instantly to mist. The green-tinged mist rose in a circle above the jar and spun there, gathering speed as Mandy’s chanting gained momentum.
Magic filled the circle, its sulfurous scent making my nose twitch and calling to my own energy, which throbbed against my skin in time to my rising heartbeats. Mandy’s fingers were cool in mine, her grip loose. She calmly built the magic within the circle, dropping her head back as it slipped over us, caressing my skin with moist, slightly clammy fingers.
The feel of her tracking magic was so very different from mine. But within
its constraints I could feel the elemental building blocks of stalking energy. The energy formed a passage through the layers of time and space, like a portal that allowed us to visualize the location of the one we sought.
At first the swirling black hole that opened in the air before us hid our prey, cloaking him in a curtain of obscuring magics. I felt the strength of his warding against my skin, like a dozen bees stinging my flesh. My stomach tightened with dread, reacting to the ominous warning within the ward.
I fought the urge to slap at the biting magic, knowing it would only make it worse. Our only respite from the pain was to push forward, surging past his wards until we could see his face, read his magic signature.
The mist lightened somewhat, turning charcoal gray, and I could see movement through its opaque surface. Mandy’s chanting sped even more, until her words tumbled together so quickly I couldn’t tell one from the other. But I could recite the magic from memory, the Latin as well-known to me as my own mind. She squeezed my fingers and I complied, joining my voice with hers as the mist continued to swirl, lightening another shade.
The violence of the ward’s reaction had become almost unbearable. It felt like razor wire digging into the surface of my skin, so violent in its purpose I thought if I looked down at my arms they’d be bleeding.
My voice grew louder as I dug deep for determination. We almost had him. We were so close. I could feel his panic in the renewed assault of his wards. But as close as we were, there was no shadow of a specific signature written in the mist. We were near enough to tracking him that I should have been able to read the mark of his magic imprint. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see it. The mark was there, but it was a chaos of identities, almost as if we were dealing with several people instead of just one.
The moment I had the thought the mist disappeared and I was looking at the back of someone’s head. The focus was tight, too tight to tell if it was a man or a woman. I had the sense it was a man, but as the figure turned, wide blue eyes fixing on me with a deadly glint, I felt their evil power like a punch to the gut.
And something about them was uncomfortably recognizable.
Beside me Mandy’s chanting faltered. Her fingers tightened on mine and I felt her stiffen as the hard, blue gaze turned to her and widened slightly.
A slender blonde eyebrow lifted in silent question and Mandy jerked her hand from mine just as a surge of deadly energy shot from the portal. “Get out!” Mandy shrieked, the energy spearing into her chest, right where her heart would be.
She stood jerking, her eyes wide and filled with terror and her limbs flopping as the magic threw her around like a rag doll.
I screamed her name, knowing I had to do something to help. But I couldn’t think of a thing to do, other than step in front of the energy myself. I was moving forward to do exactly that when a yowl filled the air.
I spun as a small, midnight form shot off the ground and flung itself at the portal. The tracking gateway exploded outward with a shriek and then collapsed upon itself, closing to a pinprick on the air and then snapping off with a whine.
Mabel’s tiny form dropped to the rug and lay unmoving.
I realized as I threw myself at Mandy, that the tiny kitten had probably saved both our lives. Unfortunately, I was terrified she’d done it at the expense of her own.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DOOR TO THE STUDY slammed open and Deg called my name. I looked up and my expression must have been as horrified as I felt. He hurried over. “What happened?”
“He hit her in the heart with a major power blade. She’s not breathing.”
Deg looked angry. “You contacted him without me?”
I huffed out a breath. “This is not the time. We need to help her.”
Deg shook his head. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“Whatever.” I placed my hand over her face and closed my eyes, beginning a chant to locate Mandy’s life force. If I could find a spark maybe we could help it grow and strengthen. Deg moved closer and started a chant of his own. It wasn’t Latin and I couldn’t follow it entirely but I did catch a couple of the words from the Demonic Script and it made my heart race. Was he using black magic?
I opened my eyes to ask and gasped. Deg sat cross-legged beside Mandy, one hand on the warded rug and the other flat against her chest, just above her breasts. An orange light pulsed from the hand touching Mandy and his shoulders drooped, fresh lines of weariness etching his handsome face.
I watched in amazement as Mandy’s chest began to rise and fall, her eyelids fluttering softly.
When I was sure she was going to pull through, I touched him on the shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Deg, it’s okay now. You need to stop.”
His head was lowered nearly to his chest and his color wasn’t good. It too closely resembled the pale gray ash we’d seen at the Familiar, Inc. fire. Still, he didn’t stop. His color faded to white and his mouth was pinched, lips cracked and bleeding.
I tried to pull his hand away from Mandy and received a major shock that speared through me, sending me scuttling backward on a yelp. “Deg, stop it, now!”
He jerked and sucked air, closing his hand to extinguish the energy. But when he opened his eyes the whites were crimson with broken blood vessels. He sat back, scrubbing a badly shaking hand over his jaw.
“Oh my god! What did you do to yourself?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like somebody sucked half the life right out of you.”
His cracked lips firmed and he shoved slowly to his feet, his broad back curved with weariness.
Mandy began to stir almost immediately. Her eyes blinked open and she tried to sit up. “What happened? I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“You were zapped by an energy arrow as thick as my arm,” I told her, eyeing Deg worriedly. “Deg, are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look good.”
Mandy took one look at him and frowned. “Deggart, what did you do?”
His smile was grim. “Something I probably shouldn’t have.”
She stiffened. “You shared your life force with me, didn’t you?”
My mouth fell open. “Is that even possible?”
Mandy groaned, holding her head as if the room were spinning.
It was a stupid question, not worthy of an answer. Mandy had been a breath away from dead and Deg had brought her back to life.
“I didn’t do it just for you,” he said softly.
I reached out as he swayed, nearly hitting the rug face first. “You should lie down.”
He nodded. “Just for a minute.”
I helped him lie back on the rug and he sighed, patting my knee with a still shaking hand. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, tell me what you did. Why did you ground yourself in the protective circle?”
He blinked in surprise. “You noticed that, huh?” He actually smiled. “Good work.”
Though the smile transformed him, making him look a bit more like the wickedly handsome Witch he’d been before draining himself nearly dry, I frowned, offended by his praise. “Let’s cut the condescension shall we?”
His smile disappeared. “I didn’t mean...”
“Forget it.” I didn’t want to hear excuses. I wanted explanations. “Just tell me what you did.”
He took a deep, shaky breath. “What I’d intended to do all along, except that I had to infuse the magic with healing properties too.” He threw Mandy an accusatory look. Clearly he blamed her for our little foray into unsanctioned tracking. I’d have to set him straight. Later. After he explained what he was about.
“I simulated the signature of the power he sent into Mandy. Then I infused the protective circle with it so it would have built in warding when we tried to read it.”
I frowned. “I tried to scan that energy. It was a chaotic mess.”
Mandy nodded, finally pushing to her feet. She stopped, wobbling slightly and bent forward, hands on knees.
“I did too. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was a dozen people combining energy.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Deg said, his sexy mouth set in a grim line.
“But that’s not possible,” I told him. “Besides, we saw the culprit. It was one person.”
Deg’s eyes went wide. “You saw him?”
Mandy and I shared a look. My pulse picked up at the memory of those hate-filled eyes. “Actually, it was just his eyes.”
“And a fringe of light-colored hair,” Mandy added.
Deg’s color was returning and he seemed more comfortable. When he sat up he no longer looked like he was going to fall over. He frowned, resting his forearms on his knees. “Somehow then, one person is channeling the power of several magic users.”
“That’s never been accomplished before,” Mandy said, looking doubtful.
“I think we can safely say this guy, whoever or whatever he is, isn’t our usual magic user.”
“True,” she admitted.
Then I remembered what Tabitha’s soul form had told me. I looked at Deg. “That makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” he asked, frowning.
“What Tabby told me when I read her residual life force.”
He looked surprised but nodded for me to continue.
“Her message was impossibly cryptic, but she mentioned the web and the barrier.”
To Deg’s credit he caught on quickly. “Both sources of collective magics.”
“Yes.”
We stared at each other a beat, sharing the moment of revelation and, in my case at least, considering potential consequences.
Mandy cleared her throat, drawing our attention back to her. “Don’t forget the shared web is dead. Right now the magic community is blind to what everyone is doing.”
I realized in that moment what she was telling me. Shock made the room spin. My heart pounded and my knees weakened. I lowered myself to the rug before I fell. One hand slid down to caress the soft strands that hummed slightly from the infused magic. “Gods.” The implications were terrifying. “So he’s taken the web.”