by Tessa Adams
I can’t help feeling a little guilty at the excitement in her voice, at least until she continues, “Salima deserves every penny I’m paying her! I can’t wait to tell her about your progress—she’ll be as happy as I am. And I’m sure she’ll be calling you with some suggestions as well.”
“Fantastic. I can’t wait.”
Either my mom doesn’t notice or she chooses to ignore the singular lack of enthusiasm in my voice. “I have a good feeling about this, Xandra. I’ll come up next weekend and we’ll have a girls’ day. Get facials, work on potions. It’ll be so much fun.”
I want to argue, but it won’t do any good. Once my mother has her mind set on something it doesn’t change easily. Besides, nearly burning to death tonight made me realize something. “I love you, Mom.”
There’s a startled little silence and then she says, “Oh, Xandra, I love you, too.”
I hang up before things go from mushy to maudlin. I debate for a few seconds, but my questions are nowhere near answered and I need someone who will give it to me straight. My mom would freak out, Declan dances around the subject, and spells are not Lily’s area of expertise. Which means I need to call Donovan. My brother never lies to me.
He picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Sis. What’s up in the big city?”
I laugh, like he intends me to. “I have a couple questions if you’ve got time to answer them.”
“Sure, why not? The Spurs are losing anyway.” I hear him turn a TV down, then a sleepy feminine voice murmuring in the background.
“I didn’t realize you had company,” I tell him. “I can call back later.”
“Lisa’s not company,” he says, mentioning his fiancée. “Besides, she’s dozing on the couch. Now what can I do for you?”
“What do you know about binding spells?”
Again, there’s that long silence. Coming from him, it makes me even more uncomfortable. “What the hell are you involved in, Xandra?”
I start to tell him that I’m just curious, that I’m exploring Heka and ran across some binding rituals, but this is Donovan. If I trust no one else in the world, I trust him. “I don’t know,” I finally say.
I hear a door shut firmly on his side of the phone and then he says, “Tell me everything.”
So I do. I start with Declan’s reappearance in my life and the body in Town Lake and end with what happened tonight. By the time I’m done, Donovan is cursing viciously. “I’ll be there in three hours.”
“You don’t need to come, Donovan. I told you, I’m fine.”
“Shut up, Xandra. And do me a favor. Check your body out and see if anything’s different.”
I look down at my bandaged wrists and ankles. “Different how?”
“Do you have any new tattoos? Has your mark changed colors? Anything like that.”
I think immediately of the two Sebas on my back. But I don’t know what else has joined them since the last time I looked. “It’s going to take me a couple minutes to check,” I say, climbing to my feet. “Do you want me to call you back?”
“No. I’ll hold. I need to get dressed anyway.”
“You’re not coming.”
He ignores me and I can hear him murmuring to Lisa, though I can’t make out the words. I know her voice sounds a lot more alarmed than it did earlier.
“What if there is something?” I ask Donovan. “What does it mean?”
“Did you find something?” he asks sharply.
“I haven’t even looked yet.”
“Damn it, Xandra!”
“Tell me what it means first.”
“That depends what you find. Hopefully, there will be nothing.”
I get up, walk carefully into the bathroom. My heart is beating too fast and my hands are shaking. Donovan is making me nervous with his doom-and-gloom voice and determination to be in Austin tonight. He’s my older brother and I know he considers it his job to look after me, but sometimes all I need is information. If he’d just tell me what’s going on, I could stop imagining the worst.
I shed my top, then look in the mirror. After wincing at the sight of the bruises—somehow they look worse today than yesterday—I focus on searching the skin beneath them. There’s nothing new on my chest, stomach or neck, and my mark—the one I got on the day I was born—looks the same as it always does. But I wasn’t really worried about the front of my body, anyway.
I take a deep breath, and turn so that my back faces the mirror and I’m craning my neck to look behind me. On my shoulders, the two silver Sebas are still there. I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize nothing else has joined them across my shoulders.
Though they belong to Declan—or maybe because of it—I know instinctively that they aren’t malicious. That they aren’t what Donovan is concerned about. It could be wishful thinking, but I doubt it. I can still see the panic in Declan’s eyes when he crashed through my front door. I can’t believe—won’t believe—that he’s the one who put me in that position.
I tell Donovan that I haven’t found anything and he breathes a sigh of relief. “You’ve checked your whole body?” he demands. “There’s nothing anywhere?”
“I checked my upper body—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“This isn’t like getting a mark from the goddess, Xandra. Dark magic can scar you anywhere.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him. “I’m fine.” But I unbutton my jeans anyway, just so I can tell him I’ve checked. I pull them off, and right there on my inner thigh is a circlet of Isis—only instead of being gold, like mine, it’s black and looks like it’s been branded into my skin.
It looks, I realize with a detached kind of horror, exactly like the markings we found on Amy and Lina.
Fifteen
Donovan makes it to Austin in a little more than two hours. Since it’s usually a three and a half hour drive, I decide not to ask him how fast he was going. Not that he gives me much of a chance to ask him anything—he hits the door shouting questions so fast that I feel like I’m dodging a firing squad. All I need is a blindfold and a cigarette to make the scenario complete.
After answering every other question or so for what feels like forever but is probably more like thirty minutes, I hold up my hands in the universal time-out symbol. “Whoa, Donovan, I’m not sure you’ve breathed since you walked in the door. Let me make you a cup of tea and then we’ll keep talking.” What I’m really saying is that I need a break, but he doesn’t appear to be listening.
“I don’t want a damn cup of tea.” He bites the words out like bullets and as I look at him I’m reminded what a formidable wizard he is in his own right. Sure, being the heir to the Ipswitch throne gives him a little extra oomph, but even without it, he’s packing a lot of power. Power that he has very much on display as he prowls down the hallway to my bedroom. I follow him, noting as I do that he’s wearing his ass-kicking boots. Usually he runs around in a pair of plain well-worn brown boots that he’s had for years and just gets resoled when they need it.
But this pair, black and fancy and more formal than any other pair he owns, tells me he means business. Because these are his ceremonial boots, the ones he wears on the Solstice and other big holidays when he has to channel a lot of power to a lot of people. If possible, my tension ratchets up a notch.
“Jesus,” he says when he sees my room. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
“I was, yes. How did you know?”
He ignores me. “Take your pants off.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to see the mark.”
I walk over to my dresser, pull out a pair of short pajama bottoms that I usually wear in summer. “I already told you, it’s not a mark. It’s more like a brand. Which is better, right? Because it means whoever does it isn’t strong enough magically to tattoo the mark.” Without thinking, I stroke my fingers across the Seba on my palm, the mark that showed up all those years ago when I was with Declan by the lake.
My brother shoots me a look
of disgust. “I think you’d remember some guy coming in here and branding your thigh.”
“I don’t remember anyone coming in and casting a spell to tie me to my bed either, but that obviously happened.”
It wasn’t a prudent thing to say, as my brother growls low in his throat. He actually growls. It’s a noise I’ve never heard Donovan make before, one I know I never want to hear him make again.
I close the door and hastily change from my jeans to my pj’s. A quick glance in the mirror tells me the bruises on my legs aren’t too bad—especially after Declan healed the ones on my shins and calves. Which is a good thing—telling him I experienced what Lina went through is one thing. Him seeing physical evidence is quite another. After all, my brother isn’t exactly loaded with patience right now. Not to mention the fact that I think he’s about one more disaster away from dragging me back to Ipswitch and handcuffing me to Mom.
With that in mind, I’m back out in under a minute and still Donovan scowls at me. The scowl only darkens when he sees the silver dollar–sized brand on my inner thigh. He squats down in front of me and places two fingers on it.
Agony, white-hot and overwhelming, shoots through me and instinctively I jerk away. The pain’s bad enough that I stumble and nearly land on my ass, probably would have except Donovan reaches out and catches me. If possible, he looks even more grim than before.
“Do you know how to get in touch with Declan Chumomisto?” he demands.
“Yes.” Dread pools in my stomach. After that kiss, I’m not ready to talk to Declan yet. Especially since, if he’d just been a little more forthcoming I could have asked him all the questions I’ve been asking Donovan and spared all of us the trauma that comes with getting him involved. “Do you want me to call him?”
“I don’t know yet. Now that I’m here, take me through everything that happened again.”
I do, and am just about at the part where I free myself when he reaches out and touches the brand again. This time I do fall down from the pain, my eyes rolling back in my head as I fight to stay conscious.
“Stop doing that!” I yell at him, punching him in the arm when I can finally breathe again. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Does it hurt when you touch it?”
“It stings a little, but nothing like when you do it.”
If possible, he looks even more grim. “Damn it, Xandra, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“You tell me. You’re the one freaking out.”
He points at the brand. “That brand is a product of the blackest Heka there is.”
“Well, that’s a big surprise. I thought it was a white wizard who tortured and raped those poor women before branding them.”
“You’re not hearing me.” He holds up a hand at about eye level. “This is where regular practitioners of Heka are. Down here”—he holds his other hand at neck level—“is where your average sociopath or practitioner of dark magic is.” He moves his first hand down to waist level. “Someone who can make those kinds of brands is practicing dark magic way down here—at a level so far removed from the Heka you and I know that it’s a perversion to even refer to it by the same name.”
His words make me nervous. I can’t pretend otherwise. But even more than that, they get me curious. “Where would a warlock fall, Donovan? Someone with Declan Chumomisto’s capabilities?”
My brother’s violet eyes darken until they’re almost black. Then he holds a hand far to the left of where he’d held any of the others. “Declan Chumomisto operates on an entirely different plane from where the rest of us are,” he tells me with a grimace. “He is not someone you want to mess with.”
Me messing with him is not something I’m worried about. Him messing with me, however? Of that, I am absolutely terrified. Especially when I can still taste him.
“Hey, Xan, you look like you could use these.”
I glance up from the order sheets to find Travis standing at the door to my office, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of Advil in the other.
“Bless you,” I tell him, disregarding the directions and pouring three Advil onto my palm. “How did you know?”
“You mean besides the fact that your very fine brother has spent the entire day sitting in the corner of the café and glowering at anyone he deems suspicious—which is our entire clientele, by the way. He even gave poor Mrs. Rodriguez the evil eye and she’s got to be eighty.”
“Eighty-four last September,” I correct him, downing the pills with a big gulp of coffee. I burn my mouth in the process, but I don’t even care. I’ll do anything to stop the headache currently pounding away at the muscles at the top of my spine.
“Right. Or, it could be the fact that Officer MacCutie stuck around way too long today—and there was absolutely no flirting. You didn’t even make a design on his coffee.”
Damn straight. I’m not exactly thrilled with Nate right now—especially with the way he kept staring at my brother and the way he keeps sniffing around, trying to dig up information about Declan. And me. Of course, he wasn’t feeling very flirtatious either—I guess my being a murder suspect puts a damper on that whole thing.
“Or”—Travis pauses dramatically—“it could be the fact that it’s the afternoon of New Year’s Eve and you’re hiding back here working on orders that you won’t send in for two weeks when you could be in the front wishing all the customers a Happy New Year.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I’m being antisocial.” I lean my head down and rub a hand over my aching eyes. “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”
“No rush. I just wanted to make sure you were alive.” But he doesn’t leave. Instead, he comes up behind me and starts rubbing my neck, exactly where the blinding tension is gathered.
I all but melt into a puddle right there at my desk.
“Why are you so good at that?” I ask, laying my head on my desk to give him better access.
“Remember masseuse Jack? He taught me everything he knew.”
“Remind me again why you broke up with him?”
Travis shudders. “He was the worst snorer ever. I couldn’t sleep, like, ever. Remember? After a few weeks, I was a zombie.”
I do remember, but still—“For back rubs like this, I’d put up with a hell of a lot of snoring.”
“And yet, you have me, so you don’t have to.” He finishes up, then gives me a quick hug. “Happy New Year’s, gorgeous! Meg just came in and I am out of here—I’ve got to go home and get ready for a big night out on the town.”
“Be careful,” I tell him, feeling more like his mother than his employer and friend. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
He laughs. “I’m young and hot. Of course I’m going to do something stupid. A lot of somethings, if I’m lucky.” He pauses, grows serious. “But before I go, I just want to make sure that your gorgeous, glowering brother will be seeing you home. You don’t need me to stick around?”
My heart melts as quickly as my muscles did. “I’m pretty sure Donovan won’t let me out of his sight, like, ever,” I assure him.
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought. More power to him.”
If only he knew just how much power Donovan already had. “Have a great time, tonight. Kiss a few hotties for me.”
He snorts. “I think you have enough trouble on your hands between Officer MacCutie and tall, dark and adorable from yesterday. Any guys I kiss tonight will be all for me.”
He disappears from the doorway and I stand up to stretch. If Travis is off, then it means it’s close to five o’clock—which in turn means I’ve been hiding back here for close to two hours. It’s a miracle Donovan hasn’t poked his head in just to make sure I haven’t made a run for it. He’s been über-protective since he saw the dark Heka mark on my thigh yesterday. While he hasn’t called Mom and Dad yet, he did put in a call to the Council—one they’ll return because he’s the heir to the Ipswitch throne—to get their take on the whole warlock/serial killer situation.
Plus, Travis wasn’t exaggerating when he said Donovan hadn’t moved from his spot in the corner of Beanz. Except to introduce himself to Nate and glower at the masses a little, that is.
I spend about ten minutes more straightening up my office—no one wants to start the new year with their desk completely covered—before making my way out to the front. But when I get out to the front counter it’s to find Donovan nowhere in sight. A little frisson of alarm works its way down my spine and I start to ask Meg where he went just as a couple of college kids mosey in. I help Meg fill their orders—even going so far as to draw party hats in the foam at the top of their coffee—but the whole time I’m freaking out.
The second the kids wander away from the front counter I turn to ask about Donovan, but she’s way ahead of me. “Your brother, who is super-hot by the way, left a couple of minutes ago. He asked me to tell you that he has a meeting with the AWC, but he’ll be back in one hour to pick you up.”
“The ACW?” I ask.
“Yeah, something like that. Oh, and a crazy-hot guy came in looking for you right before your brother left. I don’t know what he wanted, but whatever it is Donovan took care of it. They left together.”
When she says crazy-hot, my mind goes immediately to Declan. Not that it’s been far from him all day, but still. “The guy. What did he look like?”
She smiles a Cheshire cat kind of grin. “He was dark, really dark. Not just his hair but the whole package, you know what I mean? He just gave off this dangerous vibe that had every woman in the place giving him a third or fourth look. You know what I’m talking about.”
Did I ever. “Did he have a tattoo right here?” I gesture to where my own mark is.
“Yeah, he did. Except it was kind of like a starfish. You know, like the one on your palm, only black.”
I nod, a feeling of disbelief moving through me. So Declan stopped by and he and my older brother—who fewer than twenty-four hours ago warned me to stay as far away from him as I can get—have taken off for parts unknown? It doesn’t make sense. My brother barely knows Declan.