by Tessa Adams
Still, I don’t know what to do about it. And even if I did, it would have to wait a few hours. I need a nap, desperately.
But when I open my front door, it’s to find Lily sitting on the sofa with Brandon, while Kyle lounges on my favorite chair. The big black trunk that functions as a coffee table as well as storage for my unused pairs of cowboy boots holds a wine bottle, three wineglasses and what looks to be a hastily put together fruit and cheese tray.
I can’t help it. I look at Lily like she’s crazy. Does she really think, after everything that happened last night, that this is what I need? To entertain the guy I inadvertently ditched? So much for being psychic.
“Hey, Xandra,” Kyle says, shoving to his feet. “Are you feeling any better?”
Do I look like I’m feeling better? I don’t say it, but I come close—which is yet another clue that this little get-together is a bad idea. I mean, I haven’t glanced in a mirror lately but I’ve got a pretty good idea about what I look like and better is definitely not it.
“Not really,” I tell him. “We were slammed at work today and last night was…difficult.”
“We heard.” Brandon speaks up from where he’s cuddled on the couch with Lily. “A homicide detective got in contact with us this morning, to verify your alibi. I have to admit it freaked me out a little, especially when we turned on the news and saw the murder at Town Lake. The newscaster mentioned that the body was found by an unidentified woman and we put two and two together.”
“You did?” I can’t keep the horror from my voice. The last thing I need is to add being hounded by reporters to this mess.
“Oh, don’t worry. We won’t tell anyone.” Kyle places a comforting hand on my lower back. Or at least, I think it’s meant to be comforting but all it really does is piss me off. It’s a pretty personal move, and one date or not, I don’t like Kyle assuming that he has the right to touch me like that. I take a couple of steps away, until I’m just out of reach.
“They wouldn’t do that.” Lily pipes in for the first time. “Kyle and Brandon were worried, so they stopped by to check on you. Make sure you were doing okay. To be sick and then have to deal with what you did”—she shudders—“is awful.”
It is awful, and I can’t help wondering how much Lily has told them. Normally she’s very closemouthed, but she’s crazy about Brandon and I’m afraid confiding in him wouldn’t feel like a betrayal of me. But the last thing I need is for a bunch of wizards to find out what’s going on here—especially one who works for the ACW. If things get worse, as those damn tarot cards say that they will, I don’t want to have a bunch of people privy to the inner workings of the case. Especially Council members. It will just make it that much harder to ensure Nate, Declan and I all escape this with our lives.
Which is just one more reason why I want to lie down for a while instead of making small talk with two guys who don’t interest me at all.
I start to excuse myself—surely, after the night I had they can’t take offense if I back out of whatever plans are brewing—but I glance over at Lily and she looks so happy snuggled up next to Brandon that I just don’t have the heart to do it.
So instead of showering and falling face-first into bed as I had originally planned, I end up sitting on the floor next to Kyle, eating grapes and talking about sports, Austin, Ipswitch and the ACW. None of those topics interest me particularly, but they keep Kyle talking happily, which means all I have to do is pretend to listen while I zone and remember to make an appropriate noise every once in a while.
Still, when he starts talking about the Council members like he knows them, I get interested despite myself. As a group, they’re notoriously reclusive and while my parents have met them all at one time or another—usually when their policies clashed with the Council’s wishes—I’ve met only three Council members in my whole life, two of whom have since died.
“What exactly do you do for the ACW?” I ask when Kyle stops to take a drink. “I thought you headed up their PR team?”
“I do. But I’m also an enforcer of sorts,” he tells me with a grin that I find a little creepy under the circumstances. “It’s all tied together.”
“An enforcer? Of what?”
“Council laws, mostly. Your coven is one of the best, but some of the others aren’t so good about following Council dictates and sometimes even the basic rules of Heka. I travel around, making sure all is going well in those covens. And, of course, I also help the Council deal with other magical creatures. The cats and fairies are particularly troublesome,” he says with a grin.
I’m intrigued, despite myself. “Really? What kind of trouble do they get into?”
“The leopards think everything’s a game and they hate following rules—any rules. I spend most of my time reminding them of the agreements that exist between all the different magical groups and convincing them to play along. As for the Fey”—he shakes his head ruefully—“they just don’t want to listen to anyone and it infuriates them that the Council thinks they have the right to tell anyone who isn’t a witch what to do.”
I kind of agree with them. The ACW is made up exclusively of witches, wizards and warlocks—so obviously, that is where their loyalties lie. How can anyone expect the other groups—the shifters, the Fey, the water creatures, the blood mages—to live under our rules then, especially when they don’t have vested representation in the Council that sets the rules?
My parents and I have had this discussion numerous times, and while they always come down on the side of the ACW, I’ve noticed that lately, even they are beginning to see that such uneven representation can only lead to problems.
But when I say as much to Kyle, he shuts me down pretty quickly. “You’re not old enough to remember what it was like before the Council seized control,” he tells me.
“And you are? They seized control from the others over seventy years ago.”
He smiles. “I’m older than I look.”
“Obviously.”
We move on to other topics, but I never really get over what Kyle said. I know his paychecks come from the ACW, but still, his blind allegiance to a group that I find both power hungry and narrow-minded disturbs me.
As for the fact that he’s so much older than I am…that kind of bugs me too. It shouldn’t, especially considering the fact that Declan’s age has never bothered me and he is obviously older than Kyle.
But Kyle isn’t Declan, a little voice whispers in the back of my head and I have to agree. Declan might be dark and mysterious and I might not be able to count on him, but he isn’t corrupt like the Council is. Or, at least, he wasn’t eight years ago when we talked, and while I don’t know much about Declan, I remember his vehemence on the subject and doubt anything has changed in less than a decade.
Suddenly, I’ve had enough. I’m tired, miserable, stressed out and more worried than I can ever remember being in my life. Sitting here making small talk with a guy who seems very nice but who is obviously not going to knock my socks off anytime soon, seems like a waste of time.
I stand up abruptly, not even bothering to wait for Kyle to finish the story he’s telling about his beloved Lakers. “I’m sorry,” I say when he pauses and everyone looks at me. “I didn’t sleep at all last night and I’m still not feeling very well. I think I need to get to bed.”
“Oh, of course.” Brandon climbs to his feet. “We’ll get out of your hair, let you get some sleep.”
“Right.” Kyle rises more slowly and there’s a look in his eyes that I’m not sure I like. I can’t place it, exactly, but I think I’ve offended him. I try to feel bad, but frankly I’m too exhausted to care. Not to mention pretty damn offended myself. He and Brandon have to know I’m running on fumes and it didn’t matter to them at all that they were making me uncomfortable by staying. Which means that my removing myself from the situation shouldn’t bother them either.
As they head to the door, they say a bunch of things that I’m too tired to listen to, so I just nod and try not to scream at
them to get the hell out. In the end, after checking to make sure I’m really okay, Lily decides to go with them—for which I am eternally grateful. The last thing I want is to listen to her dissect her entire conversation with Brandon, sentence by sentence. Usually, her effusiveness about a new guy doesn’t bother me, but I haven’t slept in close to forty hours and I’m done. Nightmares or not, I’m getting some sleep.
I lock the door behind Lily and the guys, then stumble into my bedroom. Sitting neatly on my dresser are the binder, books, jar of herbs and cowboy boots that I shoved into the trash at Beanz hours ago. I stare blearily at them for a few seconds, trying to figure out how Salima managed it. But it’s too complicated and I’m too tired, so in the end I just turn away and fall face-first onto my bed. Spitting out a feather from my pillow is the last thing I remember before oblivion hits.
Thirteen
I wake up some time later, heart racing, my own breath harsh in my ears. Something’s wrong, though I’m not sure if that’s true in reality or just in my dreams.
For long seconds, I lie here in the dark, half-asleep, half-awake, trying to figure out why I’m so alarmed.
Did I hear something?
Am I not feeling well?
Do I have to pee?
There’s nothing distressing in the answers—everything sounds and feels fine. So why am I awake?
I’m still on my stomach, face half buried in my favorite pillow, and I start to roll over to find a more comfortable spot. Except I can’t.
I can’t move.
Can’t sit up.
Can’t swing my legs off the bed or move my limbs at all.
Can’t do anything but turn my head and wiggle my hips a little.
I have one more moment of confusion, of noncomprehension, then panic grabs on to my stomach and squeezes before zinging outward like an electric shock. I yank at my arms, my legs, try to twist and turn, even buck against what feels an awful lot like restraints, but nothing happens. I’m stuck, tied spread-eagle and facedown to my bed.
And I have no idea how it happened.
By now my heart is pumping so hard and fast that my whole chest hurts. I try to catch my breath, but I can’t—every inhalation is a jagged saw cutting through my lungs and the perceived safety of my dark and quiet room.
I’m suffocating, drowning in my own fear and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. There’s a tiny part of me that’s still in control, that tries to tell me to calm down, to think. To reason this out.
But the words aren’t getting through. I’m too busy screaming and yanking, wrenching and trembling to pay attention to anything else. Even myself.
I jerk against the restraints until my legs cramp up and my wrists burn. Something thick and warm rolls down my palms to my fingers and I realize that all my struggling has drawn blood. The knowledge brings on another freak out, and still the restraints don’t budge an inch. Neither does the panic.
“Is anyone there?” I scream. “Lily? Kyle? Brandon?”
There’s no answer.
“What’s going on? What do you want?”
Still no answer.
Images of Lina and Amy are running through my head and all I can think is that I don’t want to end up like them. Please, Isis, don’t let me end up raped and mutilated, my body dumped for some other unsuspecting woman to find.
“Hello?” I call out one more time. My voice is hoarse from all the screaming and now my throat hurts too.
No one answers, and finally it gets through to me. Either there’s no one here or whoever it is is playing with me and won’t answer anyway. So unless I can calm down and think, I’m pretty much screwed either way.
Exhausted, terrified, furious, I rest my cheek on the bed and for the first time since I realized I was tied down, I try to think past the terrified buzzing in my head.
Experimenting, I wiggle my right wrist. It burns and more blood leaks onto my hand, but I ignore the pain. Instead, I try to concentrate on what the binding feels like. I can’t really tell though—the broken skin and throbbing make it impossible to isolate the feel of the bonds.
I focus on my feet instead. They’re sore, but I don’t think I’ve bloodied them yet.
I twist my ankle in a circle, feeling the hard wood of my bedpost against the bottom of my foot. I try to focus on the bonds, to figure out if they’re rope or cloth or metal, but I can’t actually feel anything. I know I’m being held down—I can feel the pressure, the inability to lift my foot—but when I actually try to concentrate on texture, it’s like there’s nothing there. Nothing soft or hard or cold or hot or silky or rough. It’s the strangest thing.
I turn my head to the left again—that wrist isn’t bleeding as badly as the right, plus it’s closest to the faint light leaking in through the sliver in my curtains. I wiggle my fingers, just to check if I can see them move. I can, barely, but it gives me a point of reference. I look about four inches south and find my wrist, slickly shining.
If I look closely I can see the width of my wrist along with the line of blood encircling it. But if I can see that, it means there’s nothing there to block my view. No rope or handcuffs or fabric. Nothing tangible at all.
Which means I’m being held, tied across my bed, by nothing but a spell.
It’s a hell of a time for me to realize that I should have listened to my mother and her damn witch whisperer. A little magic would go a long way right about now.
I close my eyes for a second, do my best to think through the adrenaline still racing along my every nerve ending. I don’t know what to do, how to get myself out of this, but I have to do something. I don’t know when—or even if, Lily will be back tonight—and I’ll be damned if I’ll lie here trapped for the next however many hours. I can’t take the vulnerability, especially not when everywhere I turn, women who look like me are being murdered.
When I’m calm enough, I think back over the spells I learned when I was still trying to be über-witch. There were a lot of them, but I don’t think any of them covered how to tie a person down using magic—or how to free them. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have been this spell. Now that I’ve been able to work through the panic, I can smell the stench of black magic all around me. It freaks me out, makes me even more determined to get free.
But how?
I pull against the restraints one more time, just to test them, but of course the bindings don’t loosen at all. In fact, I’d swear they were tighter, but they could just feel that way because of the rawness of my hands and feet. I decide to go with that, simply because I won’t be able to function if I lie here imagining the restraints getting tighter and tighter and tighter.
I clear my mind, try to think of what Salima told me at Beanz today. I was supposed to take the herbs and conjure up an image of my mark deep inside my mind, to use it as a talisman. It’s too late for the herbs, but my mark is never far from my mind, especially lately, so that shouldn’t be too difficult.
I take a deep breath, build a picture in my head of the Heka tattoo I carry embedded in my skin. Round, empty circle topped by a semicircle with points on the end. The circlet of Isis.
I concentrate, focus on it to the exclusion of all else, and mutter the words for a simple necessity spell. At first, nothing happens. And then, miraculously, I feel my restraints start to move. Thank the goddess. I have no idea how I did it and at this moment, I don’t care—all that matters to me is that I’m almost free.
I start to murmur a quick prayer of thanksgiving, but stop before I get to the end of the first line—my bindings aren’t loosening at all. Instead, they’re getting longer, slithering around my arms and legs until the lower half of each limb is completely engulfed by the restraints. Terrific. The first bit of magic I’ve ever been able to perform and it has made everything worse.
Part of me isn’t even surprised. I’d known from the second I first met her that Salima was a quack.
So, what am I supposed to do now? I can actually move less after trying to escape
than I could when this whole thing started.
Quickly, I run through the list of the spells I actually remember—which aren’t that many. Oh, I know bits and pieces of hundreds of spells, but to be certain that I know them word for word, in their entirety, is altogether different. After all, I thought I knew the necessity spell and look where that got me.
The spells I do know are from my childhood, incantations that were impressed on me in school and at home before I even knew my times tables. It’s hard to forget those. But none of them are going to help me out of this predicament.
If I ever find out who did this to me, I swear I’m going to kick his ass. At the moment, I’m more than mad enough to do it, even sans magic. Unable to hold it in anymore, I scream in fury, one long, loud shriek that releases a bunch of tension and ratchets up my anger.
I’m glad of that, glad I’ve moved beyond fear into something more constructive. And though it didn’t work the first time, I pull up my mark a second time. Concentrate. And go for the first spell I learned—an entreaty to Isis to imbue me with the power to perform my most desired spell.
It’s a long shot and I know it—after all, I’m asking for the magic to do a spell I don’t actually know. But the second I murmur the final words of the spell, I feel Isis’s power sweep over me…right before the carpet on the far side of my room bursts into flames.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit. OH. SHIT. I guess I should have been more clear about which spell I wanted above all else at this particular moment. Because now I’ve gone from being tied down to being tied down in a room that is on fire. How the hell am I supposed to get away from this?
The panic is back, as thick and overwhelming as the smoke that is even now beginning to fill my room.
I stare at the flames, which are licking at the ends of my curtains and starting up my wall even as they spread across the carpet, getting ominously closer to my bed with each second that passes. Terror beats at me from every side, and I struggle to think through it. I know I need a water spell but I’m too frightened to grasp anything but a couple of words here or there. I have to calm down, but I can’t. How can I when I’m about to burn to death?