by E. M. Moore
I blinked at Travis. That was the nicest thing he’d ever said to me.
“Well, according to Randy and Gabe.”
Asshole.
“Anyway,” I said. “I’m glad Granny could get a hold of someone.”
“Me too,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
18
The guys were practically walking on the walls when Travis and I got back. Probably worried sick we’d kill one another on the drive back alone. Liam raised his eyebrows at me when we got back, and I just shrugged. There really wasn’t anything to tell. We had a conversation without wanting to kill one another, so maybe that was a plus. He also hadn’t made a move on Mandy, so I was pleased even though I kept telling myself that was not the reason why I wanted to tag along in the first place.
I was glad I did though. Seeing Mandy reunite with her Mom reminded me of Granny. Finding people was her specialty. They would come from miles around asking for Granny’s help about kids, dogs, moms, and dads. She was attuned to people like that, which was probably why she latched onto Travis to get him to help find me. Why she chose Travis, I had no idea. Maybe I could ask her next time she popped up into one of my dreams.
Large hands wrapped me in a hug from behind. I yelped in surprise only to be surrounded by maple. I breathed Randy in deep and relaxed as he carried me into the living room and situated me on his lap. Liam was already there, a pen tucked behind his ear as he chewed his lip. Gabe, too, stood by the windows, but came forward to join us all. “Coven meeting?” he asked.
Liam grabbed at the pen behind his ear and threw it at the table mumbling something about not having his laptop here. Surprisingly enough, Travis plopped down on the sofa next to Randy and I. As we sat there, moments before anyone said something, I felt complete. They were having a coven meeting, and I was here, too, like I was part of the coven and we all realized it. They weren’t the bad guys and apparently running away from them had done nothing but harm me. Thanks, Granny, for that wonderful nugget of advice. I was supposed to be here, and it didn’t matter that that scared the shit out of me, I had them. And I could have more moments like how we’d helped Mandy. Instead of using fake, or watered down, voodoo, I could be more like Granny. More like the witch she always wanted me to be. Maybe Salem was negotiable. I could talk to them about moving. It was so…warm in New Orleans.
“My first thought is,” Liam said, all business, and not caring that I was having an epiphany. “I think Mandy had her mind messed with too much. Someone who looks exactly like her?” He shook his head. “I’d be more apt to believe that whoever was messing with her dressed someone up like her. In the shadows and everything, she just assumed it was a perfect representation of her. Nothing really to go on there except her description of Jay.” He turned to me. “You didn’t see anyone else except for this Dupre guy?”
“Not a soul,” I said. “Except for the person who tried to get us at the cafe too. Does that mean they were magic-wielders and we got it all wrong? Or did the same person who spelled him the first time get to them again?”
“Weak minds,” Travis said.
The guys all nodded, but I just stared at him. “Care to elaborate?”
“Weak minds are more susceptible to manipulation. My guess is he was spelled again. They don’t want people who can think for themselves. They want a zombie who will just do their bidding.”
“But he—” My tongue got stuck in my throat. “He tried to—”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t a bad person, Norah,” Travis said, his green eyes boring right through me. Wow. Had I noticed his eyes were that striking before?
Not the time, I reminded myself. “Right,” I said, nodding and looking off toward the ocean.
With Liam prompting, I gave them the entire story about how I had known Dupre, done business with him, and what he’d told me about this other powerful guy—Jay, presumably—and how they seemed to know more about us than we did about them.
“There’s one thing I think we can all agree on,” Randy said, the tone of his voice even more authoritative as it rumbled in my ear and even vibrated my shoulder where it touched his chest. “We’re stronger together. That means no more trying to leave us, Norah. We still have to figure out what ties us all together, and why we’re stronger together.”
“That’s something we have over them,” I said, remembering Dupre’s words to me. “Dupre seemed sure this guy knew what he was talking about and he said our magic wouldn’t work to find one another. He was wrong.”
Liam tapped his chin. “I don’t know. Finding you was your grandmother’s doing. It wasn’t magic at all.”
“That’s something we’ll have to look at then,” Gabe said. He hadn’t said much yet, and when I finally did look over at him, he seemed distracted.
“Well, I don’t know about you all,” Travis said, “But kicking ass and rescuing people makes me tired as fuck. I think I’ll catch some sleep. Liam, you mind?” Travis asked, pointing upstairs.
Liam shrugged. “Take whichever one you want. Except—”
“Yeah, I know, buddy.”
Gabe stood, too. “I’m exhausted.”
He left without a second glance, and I frowned after him. Randy gave me a quick squeeze and set me on the cushion next to him. “Liam,” he said, tilting his head toward me. “Norah needs some answers from you that I’m sure she’s been chomping at the bit for since we got here. I’ll leave you two alone.” He took a couple steps away and turned. “Feel free to come find me afterward, though.”
A flush of heat swamped my body. Randy winked and then left Liam and I alone. After watching him walk away, I got up and moseyed over toward Liam. I sat down and nudged my shoulder with his. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He smiled, but it didn’t last very long on his face. He went back to his serious, pensive look. The one that made me find him adorably attractive in the first place. “I bet you do have lots of questions.”
“Tons,” I told him, honestly, “But you don’t owe me any explanations. We can just sit here if you want.”
“It’s okay. Might as well get it out in the open now.” He sat back and pulled me along with him. My head hit his chest, and I picked my legs up to cuddle into him. “This is my parents’ house. My birth parents. They were Natural witches.”
I’d kind of sort of heard that term before. Granny and I were Natural witches. We had magic in our blood.
“They gave me up when I was a baby. I was adopted by a nice set of parents who were really good to me. I used to imagine all sorts of things about my birth parents, though, like how they were too poor to afford me, or that they were too young, or all these other things about them knowing they wouldn’t be good parents so they did the right thing and gave me up to someone who could be a good parent.”
“It was tough being a witch when I was younger. My adoptive parents didn’t understand why I could do certain things. In school, I was teased for being the weird kid. I had nothing to go on about why I was the way I was. My parents couldn’t help me because they knew nothing. It…sucked. But still, I got through it. When my parents realized there was something more to me, they took me to a psychic. Turns out this one actually knew what she was doing. She told them I had powers and encouraged them to practice Wicca so they could have a way to relate to me. Things in my life started to get better after that, and then I got the call to be in the Order. I met Randy first off and his knowledge of Naturals was so much more than what the psychic had. I finally felt like I’d found a home.” He took a deep breath. “That’s when I found out about my real parents.” He shook his head. “They weren’t unfit at all. They just didn’t want me. So, no, I don’t like coming to this house because it’s theirs. I don’t like the shit ton of money I have in the bank account because it’s theirs. They didn’t want me so why would I want anything of theirs.”
I squeezed him tighter, hoping I could soak up some of his pain. “Where are they now? Your real parents?”
“Dead.”
>
My heart skipped a beat. The way he’d said it didn’t open it up for discussion, so I just let the word hang in the air. “They’re stupid for not wanting you, Liam. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met.” I looked up at him and kissed him softly on the lips, trying to transfer all the feelings I had for him in one kiss, in one moment. It was virtually impossible to do, but when I finally did pull away, he seemed much lighter as if I’d somehow eased some of his burden.
“It doesn’t bother me all the time,” he said. “Just…being here is hard. I feel like I’m trespassing, like I’m somehow getting the life they didn’t want me to have.”
“Fuck ‘em.”
His eyebrows raised.
“I mean it,” I said, pulling away. “Fuck. Them. This house is beautiful and sure your parents are shit, but you should be able to enjoy what they denied you, Liam. If I were you, I’d be throwing fucking parties in here, having someone else clean the mess up, just to do the same thing the next night. Screw it. It’s your stuff.”
He chuckled and rubbed his jaw. “Maybe one day I’ll feel like you, but not today. The only thing I am happy about is that we can stay here for right now and not have to worry about intruders. This place has magic upon magic. It’s literally a spelled fortress. No one’s getting through here. This is the safest place in the world for people like us.”
He looked simultaneously pleased, and pissed, to have said those words, like it ate at him a little on the inside to admit that this place helped him. Instead of answering, I leaned back on him and curled into him tighter. He kissed the top of my head and we both just sat there, staring out at the storm that was bulldozing up the coast. Lightning crackled through the air in a dazzling light display I’d never witnessed before. Nature could be so scary, yet beautiful at the same time.
19
Gabe, Randy, Liam and I stood in the outcropping at the back of the estate. It was a grassy area surrounded by enormous boulders that lined property before dipping down into the ocean. There were no remnants of the storm that had gone through last night. The sun shone down so much so that I could finally relinquish Liam’s hoodie I’d confiscated. It wasn’t New Orleans heat, but the sun here in Salem seemed to warm me from the inside out.
Or maybe that was the guys.
Randy raised his hands over his head, his body rippling with muscles. My mouth gaped open just watching the nuances of his exterior. Damn. This guy.
“Are you paying attention?” Gabe asked.
I shook my head as if I was literally coming out of a trance—a Randy-infused gawk-fest was more like it. Tearing my gaze away from him and his muscle tank, I looked up at Gabe. He wore a knowing smirk, and I couldn’t help the smile that curved my lips at being found out. “I am,” I told him. “I’ve seen Randy do it before, remember? It’s you and Liam who haven’t seen how awesome we work with one another.”
Gabe cocked his head. “I believe I know how awesome we work with one another, Love. I seem to remember…” He brought his hands up and started counting on his fingers.
“Okay! Okay!”
He snickered and gave me a devilish grin. “Looking forward to adding to it. I’m not sure what the proper protocol is, but can I claim helping you later when you need it?”
“Fuck off,” Randy said.
Both Gabe and mine’s gazes darted toward him. His face still held the serious expression he used when calling forth his magic, but good to know he still half-listened to what was going on around him.
“I think—” Liam started to say.
No doubt Liam’s thoughts would’ve been heaped in common sense about who should help relieve me of my energy after training with magic, but hell, I so did not want to go there. I held a hand up, and Liam peered over at me, his eyebrows raised. “Maybe,” I said, starting out softly. “We should just wait and see what happens.” I shrugged. “Maybe the other times were flukes.”
“Statistically speaking,” Liam said, looking confused. “You’re at one-hundred percent. If I were doing a study, you needed relief one-hundred percent of the time after using magic around us. Those are good odds.”
I hid my head in my hands. Not that I minded talking about sex with them, I so didn’t. It was hot as fuck, to be honest. It was just the act of predetermining what was going to happen that kind of put a downer on things. I peeked through my fingers, and Liam looked confused as ever. I stayed where I was in the grass and hooked a finger at him, begging him to come my way. He did so, stopping just in front of me. I shielded my eyes from the sun while I looked up. “I don’t really want to plan out our sexual exploits, Liam Hon. Okay?”
“Oh,” he said, his face falling. He bit his lip, his eyebrows coming together in thought. When he locked gazes with me, he looked sincerely sorry. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know,” I told him. “Let’s just play it by ear. Kind of like how we did in the car last night.”
Liam’s face flushed as Gabe swore. “Bloody hell. I knew I was missing out on something. Next time we save some chick from an idiot, one of you two are taking care of her so I can make sure our Norah is safe.”
Before Liam could say that sounded reasonable, I playfully kicked him in the chin to keep his mouth shut. Spontaneity, I mouthed to him. His eyes sparkled after that and we all returned to what we were doing. Well, I wasn’t doing anything at the moment, just waiting for Randy to show Liam and Gabe what he could do. Travis was back up at the house, refusing to come down with us. I didn’t want to turn around and look, but I had a sneaking suspicion he was watching us from one of the windows. He’d acted weird when we proposed we should try to figure out what our magic could do around one another. Yesterday, it had seemed like we were getting somewhere, but maybe we weren’t. Maybe Travis and I just wouldn’t work out that way. What was I saying? Despite the rush of jealousy I’d gotten yesterday, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to involve myself with Travis in the way I shared with the other guys. Maybe our thing was to just be friends? Maybe he wasn’t into sharing? Maybe I didn’t want to share myself with him?
Energy buzzed through the air. My own magic awakened as Randy cupped his hands in front of him. Within moments, he shot his hand forward and the same thing that happened yesterday happened again. The Earth shook and a crater in the ground opened up, mud and rocks flying everywhere.
“Fucking Christ,” Gabe muttered.
Liam’s arms outstretched to the side, shielding me, and he took a step back. He had evidently thought we’d exaggerated what happened in Salem.
“Sorry about the lawn, bro.”
Liam’s natural stutter came back. “S-seriously? You know I don’t care about that. My turn,” he said, immediately after.
Gabe frowned, but took a step back anyway as Liam made the same motion as Randy. He didn’t wait as long to harness his magic, but an orange glow permeated his hands and stretched out as licks of flames conjured over his fingers and up his wrists. Liam immediately separated his hands and the magic disintegrated in front of us. “What the hell?”
“Was that bloody fire?” Gabe asked. “Were you trying to do that?”
Liam shook his head, his eyes wide. “I was just trying to conjure my magic like I always do. I wanted to put a hole in the ground next to Randy’s, but that happened instead.”
Randy shrugged. “I don’t even know how I did it either. I was just using my magic to send a burst at a target and that’s what happened. Try again, Liam.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. He stepped back with his left foot and brought his hands together in front of him again as he conjured his magic. Once more, an orange glow encapsulated his fists and turned to burning flames around the edge.
“See if you can throw it, Mate,” Gabe urged.
“Where in the hell would you like me to do that?” he asked, his voice tense. “I don’t want to start the whole place on fire. We kind of need it right now.”
“We don’t even know if it’ll actually set fire to anything,” Gabe said,
defending himself.
“Oh, like Randy didn’t put a hole in the fucking ground?”
I got to my feet and approached Liam slowly. His shoulders tensed, and he hunched over as if he was afraid to even move. His body practically pulsed with magic. The closer I got to him, the bigger the flames grew, licking up and over his hands a good half a foot or so.
“Stop,” Liam said, peeking over at me. “Don’t come closer.”
“Send it into the ocean,” I told him, watching the orange ball in his hands like a hawk. “It won’t hurt anyone there.”
Liam closed his eyes. Afterward, he swallowed, then pushed his arms forward in the direction of the ocean. Sure enough, a ball of flames flew through the air, sizzling and sparking when it hit the cresting waves.
“Son of a bitch,” Randy said, all smiles and coming at Liam with a bro hug. “How in the hell did you do that? Fire? What? That’s crazy.”
“My turn,” Gabe said.
Before any of us could stop him, he took the stance I was used to seeing from them, the same one Randy had put me in the other day, and held his hands in front of him. An unsteady wave flowed through my body as if I could feel Gabe conjuring his magic. It felt amenable, fluid, soft. When he thrust his hands forward, my body expanded and contracted. At first, I didn’t think anything happened, but then the wave that had just white-capped near the shore, rose in the air, and then crashed back down in reverse.
I blinked at the spot. Had I just seen that? It looked like something from a movie. “I suppose you’ve never done that either,” I said.
Three sets of eyes turned toward me. I tried to take a step closer to them, but wobbled on my feet. Liam was the first one there, steadying me. “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong, Norah?”