Hexed (The Gwen Sparks Series Book 4)

by Nelson, Stephanie

  I PUSHED THROUGH a curtain of ivy. Birds chirped overhead while sunlight sliced through the tree branches and cast intricate patterns against the forest floor. Bright purple, pink, and yellow flowers grew in clusters, some nearly as tall as me. Tiny little sparks of light flitted around the plants, leaving trails of light in their wake. Moving toward one, I bent at the waist and inspected the glittering bug. Only, it wasn’t a bug. The little creature had the body of a human, its features delicate. Its eyes were wide, too big for its tiny body and the greenest green I’d ever seen. It flew up and hovered near my nose, causing me to go cross-eyed for a moment. Its iridescent wings flapped, sending showers of purple and yellow dust into the wind. I stared in awe and reached a finger out to touch it.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” a voice said behind me.

  Spinning around, I found the woman from the mirror standing in the middle of the clearing. Her long dark hair rested against the front of her shoulders, and she was clothed in a long white gauzy dress.

  “Why?”

  “Pixies,” she said, taking a couple steps closer, “prefer to be admired from afar. If they dust you, you’ll be itching for days.”

  I turned at the waist to look down at the fluttering little bug. Two more had joined it, zooming around the flower like hummingbirds.

  “Have you thought about what we talked about?” The woman asked.

  Spinning around to face her, I said, “There wasn’t much to think about. You want me to surrender my life, and I want to live.”

  She nodded, her lips in a thin smile. “As most do, but immortality is not within any human’s reach. Everything fades eventually. Are the leaves not beautiful upon their death?”

  I scrunched up my face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The woman stepped closer. “It means there is a certain grace in death. Autumn is a time of dying, yet so many relish in its beauty. It is not to be feared.”

  “Do you not fear dying?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest. No matter how beautiful this place was, all the talk of death caused a foreboding chill to climb up my body. I wondered why this woman didn’t kill me herself if she wished me dead.

  “Fear it?” she questioned, her voice holding a hint of surprise. “Some days I wish for it.”

  My eyes widened. “Why?” Was this woman suicidal? As horrible as it sounded, I almost wished she was; at least then it would explain her odd obsession with death.

  She smiled wider as though entertained with my disbelief. “I have existed for many lifetimes, always watching the world and people change, yet not changing myself. It grows tiresome.”

  “You said immortality is not real.”

  She tilted her head to the side, her eyes watching me with amusement. “I said immortality is not within any human’s reach.” She watched me for a few long seconds, waiting for me to understand what she was saying.

  “But, I’m not human,” I said. “They tell me I’m some sort of witch.”

  That made the woman chuckle. “Being magical does not mean you are not human, Gwen. All supernatural beings are still considered human. They’re just a different species of human.”

  I understood why witches and vampires would be considered human, but what about all the others?

  “So, werewolves, fairies and elves are still human?”

  Amusement filled the woman’s eyes. “Yes, just a different species of human. The humans now believe they have evolved over the years, but it is the fairies, elves, werewolves, and witches that have evolved. Since regular humans outnumber the evolved, the supernatural beings hid their magic from the world.”

  “Until the Great Revelation in the eighties,” I said, remembering the mini history lesson Micah gave me.

  The woman nodded in approval. “Yes, until the Great Revelation.”

  “So, what does that make you?” I asked. “You speak as though you’re immortal.”

  “We have gotten off topic,” she said, ignoring my question. “The point of this visit is not to discuss me, but rather your predicament. Death will come to you whether you embrace it or not, Gwen. I wish for you to die peacefully.”

  My stomach twisted in knots. “My friends are working on a solution. It’ll work.” Even as I said the words, I could hear the doubt in my voice.

  The woman’s face relaxed as her she looked at me, but didn’t see me. Slowly, the color leached from her eyes until all that was left was white. “In two moons the sand will run out and electricity will find its home in your chest.” Her voice was monotone, so different that the sweet musical tone I’d heard before.

  Moving toward me, she reached a hand out to rest against my shoulder. “They will succeed at their assignment.” Then she shoved me backwards. I gasped, my arms flailing out to my sides, as I prepared to hit the ground hard. However, I never hit the ground. I continued to fall through an abyss of darkness, my arms connecting with the breeze stirred up from my descent. My hair whipped up and around my face and what little breath I had caught in my lungs.

  “Gwen, wake up.”

  Someone was pinning my arms at my sides and shaking me. My eyelids snapped open, and I found Dorian leaning over me. I panted as I fought to catch my breath, my chest heavy with the effort. Releasing his grip, Dorian sat on the edge of the mattress and stared down at me. Sitting up, I pulled my knees to my chest and ran a hand through my hair.

  “What’d you dream about?”

  “I don’t think it was a dream,” I told him. I didn’t know why I’d been holding off on telling Dorian about the woman in the mirror, but after this last visit I knew I needed to tell him.

  “Was it Aiden?” Dorian asked, moving so that he faced me. “Did he pull you into one of his dreams.”

  “Aiden?” I asked in confusion. “No, it was a woman.”

  “A woman? What woman?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, she never gave me her name.” I released a heavy breath and scrubbed a hand over my face. “I think it may be who hired Ms. Willow. This is the second time she’s visited me, and both times she’s tried to convince me into surrendering my life.”

  Dorian stared at me, the tightness in his jaw accentuating the angle of his face. Without the sunglasses, I could stare straight into the depths of his thundercloud eyes. The fogginess darkened so much that I half expected to see lightening flash through them.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  I straightened my spine and lifted my chin. “Because, I thought she had a good point. The only thing that makes me special is that I’m sleeping with Death. It’s not right. I’m not right.”

  “Not this shit again,” Dorian snarled, standing up and turning his back to me.

  I scrambled out of bed, angry that he was angry with me. “Tell me I’m wrong, Dorian.” I moved around his body so I could see his face. He stood with his arms folded across his expansive chest.

  “Tell me you’ve done this before, that you’ve restored a soul out of the goodness of your heart.” As I waited for him to respond, to look at me, my subconscious whispered something in his voice. I closed my eyes as it played through my head. “You know what scares me? The idea of a world without you.” I couldn’t remember the conversation leading up to that statement, but I remembered an alley and my back pressed against a brick wall, Dorian kissing me even though he looked as though he wanted to kill me.

  “I haven’t,” Dorian said, snapping me out of my memories.

  My eyes opened. “What?”

  “I’ve never restored a soul,” he clarified. “Just yours, and no matter how pissed you are at me, I don’t regret doing it. You can bitch at me all you want, tell me I’m wrong, but it won’t change the fact that I would do it again given the chance.”

  Ignoring what he said, I asked, “Were you and I in an alley at some point in the past?”

  Dorian had been looking down at the floor and looked up at when I asked. “Why?”

  I recited the words back to him that I’d heard in my mi
nd. “Did you say something like that to me?”

  Dorian nodded, his jaw slackening. “Yeah, and it holds just as much truth now as it did then.” Moving toward me, he wrapped his arms around my body and hugged me to his chest. I didn’t know why these small pieces of my memory were resurfacing, but I had to hope that my memory was slowly coming back.

  “I don’t want to hear about me restoring your soul again,” Dorian said against the crown of my head. “It’s done and because of that I’m able to hold you in my arms right now.” He leaned back, and I looked up at him. “Tell me about the woman.”

  Nodding, I stepped out of his arms and sat in a chair near the window, pulling my legs up. I really wanted some coffee and a shower, but there were bigger issues. I proceeded to tell Dorian everything, beginning with how the woman showed up in my mirror. When I was done, Dorian sat at the end of the bed and bent over, resting his arms on his knees.

  “Do you think it’s Hecate?” I asked.

  “She said you’d die in two nights?” Dorian asked, ignoring my question. I thought back to what the woman said about in two moons the sand would run out and electricity would find its home in my chest. An involuntary shiver made its way through my bones, chilling me from the inside out.

  “Yes and that they would be successful in their assignment,” I repeated. “Do you think she means the NAWC?”

  Dorian nodded. “I don’t know who else it would be. We need to call Fiona and see what progress she and Ethan have made with the spell’s ingredients.” He rose and started toward the door. Without the barrier of his leather jacket, I could see the width of his back and the stretch of his T-shirt as it circled his muscular biceps. He really was magnificent to look at.

  Stopping at the door, he turned. “Get dressed, and we’ll get breakfast. Aiden doesn’t have a damned thing to eat in this house.”

  I nodded and he slipped out of the room. Standing, I was about to head downstairs to retrieve my bag when I noticed it sitting near the dresser. Dorian must have brought it up last night after I fell asleep. I don’t know why, but that made me smile.

  Dorian and I went to a small café called Espresso Self for breakfast. I had the best cream cheese muffin and a large mocha latte. We were currently at the grocery store to get food for Aiden’s house. We’d ended up taking Lauren’s white Mercedes, stealing her keys from the counter, and leaving a note. Dorian assured me that she wouldn’t be up until this evening, but I still felt the need to leave a message letting her know. Besides, we couldn’t carry groceries on the back of Dorian’s bike.

  “Look at us being all domestic,” I said with a laugh as we moved down another aisle. Grocery shopping with Death and acting like everything was normal was just funny. Dorian grabbed a couple bags of chips and threw them into the cart.

  “Cupcake, you’re the only woman in this world that could domesticate me.” He accentuated his statement with a sexy smirk. I enjoyed the playful banter and imagery for a few seconds, knowing that if things didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be around long enough to play house with Dorian. Ignoring that thought, I grabbed a box of microwave popcorn and tossed it into the cart.

  Turning into another aisle, Dorian grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels while I scanned the wine selection, choosing two different sweet reds. When I heard Dorian chuckling behind me, I spun around and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “What?”

  “Why did you choose that wine?”

  I looked down at the bottles in my hands. “I don’t know, it sounded good?”

  The side of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “It’s because you love sweet red wine, and that’s the brand you always buy.”

  “Maybe my subconscious knows me better than I do,” I told him, placing the bottles in the upper part of the cart.

  “Or maybe your memories are resurfacing,” Dorian offered. “First you remembered something I said to you, and now you choose your favorite wine.” We were smiling at each other, standing in the middle of the alcohol aisle, when Dorian’s cell phone began ringing.

  Reluctantly, he pulled the phone out of his pocket. “Hello?”

  I began moving down the aisle, trying to give Dorian privacy while also trying to listen to what he said. I had a feeling that if he was getting bad news he’d try to hide it from me.

  “Distilled water and lemons?” Dorian’s voice held a hint of doubt. “Yeah, we’re grocery shopping right now actually. Uh huh. No, we’re staying at Aiden’s. I’ll fill you in when you get there. Bye.”

  Half turning, I asked, “Who was that?”

  “Fiona, she needs us to pick up lemons and distilled water.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about purifying for the spell. They’re meeting us at Aiden’s tonight.”

  I stopped walking. “They found all the ingredients?”

  Dorian nodded. “Yeah, sounds like it.”

  Tears sprang into my eyes as my lips stretched into a huge grin. After days of wondering whether or not I would survive, if Flora would suffer for my survival, we finally received a piece of good news.

  Dorian lifted me into his arms so that my feet dangled off the floor, and kissed me. I laughed against his mouth as he twirled me around. This news was a rainbow popping through the raincloud following me. For the first time in days, I felt like I could breathe.

  I LEFT GWEN a little while after we got back from the grocery store. I’d been jittery all morning after hearing about the woman visiting her. I knew who it was, knew I needed to track her down and talk to her. I’d called Bree to hang out with Gwen until I got back, knowing she’d keep an eye on her without trying to hit on her. I didn’t trust any of the men spirit walkers to be alone with Gwen, or Mariana for that matter.

  Standing on the side of the house, hidden by a tall evergreen bush, I closed my eyes and concentrated on Amara. I didn’t actually need to leave to do this, but I didn’t want to explain to Gwen where I was going or what I was doing. It was better if she didn’t know that a Fate had been trying to talk her into surrendering her life, and that I was friends with said Fate. She would twist it into some bullshit about how it was proof that she shouldn’t be alive, like I didn’t know that. When someone’s ticket is punched, that should be it for them. And Gwen was only half right when she said the reason she was alive was because we slept together. I’d slept with a lot of women in my lifetime—a lot—and I’d never saved any of them from death. No, the reason she was alive when she should be comfy in the Flora cemetery was because I…loved her.

  My eyes snapped open, frustration at my lack of concentration caused me to grumble. I’d actually told her I loved her, and she hadn’t said it back. I still didn’t know what that single tear meant, if it was out of happiness or sadness. Was it because she didn’t remember me or because she didn’t feel the same way?

  Tipping my head up, I studied the sky as though the answers would be written in the storm clouds rolling in. Shaking myself out of it, I bowed my head and closed my eyes again. I needed to see Amara and figure out what sort of game she was playing. As Death, I have many different talents, one being able to transport myself to anywhere in the world. Since I was the only angel of Death, it came in handy when I needed to pop over to another continent and deal with an unruly soul. I’d been so focused on Gwen that I hadn’t concentrated on work. Luck was on my side though; everything had been running smoothly—until now. The balance of life and death was so out of whack that it played hell with my senses, almost like a compass being thrown off near a magnetic field. My inner compass’s needle was bouncing every which way but straight, but I knew that was because there was a soul living when it shouldn’t be.

  Air began to swirl around my body in a gentle vortex as I concentrated on finding Amara. I pictured her face, the feel of her essence, and the wind picked up. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing outside of Aiden’s house, but in on a beach. Another little trick of mine was being able to tell exactly what part of the world I was in. Currently
, I was standing on a beach in Oahu, Hawaii. The bright sun beat down against my black leather jacket, such a difference from the stormy gray sky I’d left behind. White sand shifted under my feet as I made my way over to where Amara lay sprawled out on an oversized towel.

  Her long dark hair was plaited on the side, resting against her shoulder while big black sunglasses protected her eyes against the glare of the sun. She wore a white bikini that left little to the imagination and, despite my feelings toward Gwen, I found myself appreciating her body. She and Gwen had similar builds, lean and curvy in all the appropriate places. I smiled down at her as my eyes came up to the swell of her breasts. They were nice enough, but my body didn’t react toward Amara’s body the way it would have before Gwen.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit?” Amara said, not sitting up to acknowledge me. My head lifted to survey the beach. There were about nine other people sunbathing and four swimming, no one close enough to hear our conversation. Shrugging out of my leather jacket, I sat down beside Amara’s towel with my knees bent.

  “You wanna tell me why you’re visiting Gwen?” I asked.

  A little smirk bent the side of her mouth up. “I knew having that vision in front of her would tip you off. You always were a perceptive one.”

  “Amara,” I said in warning.

  She sat up, stretching her arms behind her, and stared out at the sea. “You have disregarded the rules, Dorian. You took fate into your own hands, and it needs to be corrected.”

  “I’m working on fixing it.”

  Amara finally looked over at me, her features neutral as she spoke. “Yes, the little spell Gwen told me about. It won’t work, you know that, don’t you?”

  I ground my teeth together. “It will. I’ll kill the rogue before he has a chance to touch her.”

  Amara stared at me for a long moment, tilting her head to the side. “You’ve gotten attached, Dorian.” She shook her head as though she pitied me. “They are not cut from the same cloth as us, you know that. They are fragile and expendable while you and I carry on through the millennia. She will never be one of us.”