by S. E. Akers
I turned to Katie with my final ruling prepared, eyes imploring her heed. “If you ever see a walking mistake — JUST RUN.”
Katie grinned. “So he’s hot.”
Sneer curling, I leaned over and clicked off the lamp.
“That’s all I needed to know,” she said, her voice almost humming. “Good-night.”
“Good-night,” I mumbled, still wondering what the in hell had gotten into her. I kept my gaze focused on the shadowy ceiling while I cleared all thoughts of that particular monster from my mind. Then one by one, I marked off the four corners with the names of the fiendish foes that lay at the top of my To-Be-Banished list right now. Maybe my wishful thinking was hoping its magic still held true with respect to any other requests aside from marriage, since this was officially my second time sleeping in the room. And if by some remote chance that proved true, I was rooting to wake up to the one I’d dedicated to the chimera. Of course I wouldn’t thumb my nose at the imp’s assigned spot either. I hated that little winged-bastard just as much.
I pulled the amethyst out from under my shirt and gave it a few strokes. Maybe I should’ve named the corners padded isolation-room, shock therapy, brainwashing, and lobotomy? Anything that would help get my head screwed on straight and numb my heart from its incessant ache.
It wasn’t long before Katie’s snores flooded the room like a symphony of chainsaws. I got tickled at the sight of Tux lying on his blanket with his head dug under his front paws. Even he was having a rough go of nodding off with the wood-chipper cranking at full-force. I whispered to Tux and directed him to the section of bed in front of me with a few pats. Soon I found myself snuggling up to something that wanted to show me a little affection. Maybe not the kind I really want, I thought as I gave his bullish head a quick rub. But right now, I need something — less any humping, of course.
The past two days whirled through my head as I lay there. I felt rested, but I was nowhere close to being one-hundred percent recharged. Considering our supernatural run-in today, you’d think my last thoughts would have been over the dicey nature of that potentially “hexing” situation, but they were actually about the little boy from the park yesterday. My eyes fell to a close feeling so regretful that I couldn’t heal him. The weight of that failure eventually brought my heavy-hearted lids to a close. I’d about reached my limit for stumbles and was breathlessly waiting the moment when I was finally able to bust through that diamond ceiling I kept crashing into.
Humph… Where’s a helping-hand from fate when you need to turn things around?
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep when a strange feeling overtook my subconscious. But I didn’t feel an ounce of apprehension like when my mind was commandeered and spirited away to The Darklands. In fact, I felt almost eager to let it carry me away, like I needed the escape from reality.
Dazedly, my eyes gradually opened to a sea of white mist hugging the ground. It rolled throughout my surroundings, tempting my legs to trudge through the tranquil waves. I traveled through the darkness, led by a rustle in the air whispering my name. The mystical haze started to slowly part before my eyes. An idle and empty wrought iron fountain lay up ahead. I found its stillness oddly more curious than anything. The finial atop the magnificent iron tower started to bubble as I approached. Glistening streams of water slowly began trickling down to the lower well. The closer my steps carried me, the stronger its force grew, and the quicker the tiers spilled with water. I was only a few feet away when I noticed a soft glow lingering in the bottom reservoir. Gradually the light ascended the levels, mounting in fervor until the luminance had completely bathed the fountain in the most rapturous violet hue. I ran my hands through the colorful cascading sheets, invigorated by the cool streams and feeling utterly enchanted.
A set of hands clasped on to my arms from behind me. And despite the strong and unyielding force behind their hold, my eyes remained locked on the falling water, soothed by the undeniable tenderness their touch radiated. The next thing I felt was the length of my hair being swept onto my shoulder while the light graze of fingertips left an electrifying trail lingering behind their pull. My eyes drifted to a sweet close as Tanner drew me back closer to the brawn of his chest and then I felt his mouth envelope the base of my neck. His lips rolled over my skin, caressing a soft and silken path, while the sultry warmth of his tongue stoked my insides with rampant fires that an entire ocean couldn’t quell. Soon the wrap of his powerful arms began filling me with the most intoxicating bliss, enrapturing my soul helplessly. I didn’t have a care in the world and wished the feeling would flow into a thousand forevers. The magic his touch exuded finally forced my eyes open feverishly. I sensed the rush of the water building right along with my heaving breaths, and I couldn’t restrain the want surging inside me any longer.
I whipped around in a chest pounding frenzy, aching for sweet relief. Thunderbolts flashed in my eyes just as soon as they connected with the two forest-green pools propped above a pillowy pair of bloodstained lips. The brunt of my angered fist flew up and across Damiec’s jaw straightaway, knocking the bastard clear from my sight. I stretched my eyes as I searched for the Bloodstone Talisman in hopes of pummeling him with another, only to find myself tossing in the murky shadows of Katie’s bedroom. Something heavy brushed against my feet that automatically forced my legs into several swift kicks. A loud “thud” pounded the room as I reached around to grab my hilt from underneath the pillow. I lurched forward in the bed with my wand now drawn. The diamond blade shed enough light on the situation for me to realize that I’d actually kicked the Boston Terrier clear across the room. He bounced off the wall and fell onto the floor with a harsh “thump”, leaving behind a telling pooch-looking outline marring the sheetrock.
“SHIT!” I yelled. With an anxious jerk, I retracted the wand, tossed it aside, and sprang out of the bed. Surely some of his bones were broken. Hell, maybe all of them?
I was about to start feeling out his injuries when Katie rose from all the commotion. “What’s that noise?” she groaned.
“I had a bad dream, and I kicked the daggone dog across the room,” I whispered anxiously. I may have been trying to keep the volume down, but Tux kept on barking at full-force. I’d barely laid my hands on him when Bethesda burst into the room.
“What’s going on?” she asked, winded and half-awake.
“The dog got kicked out of the bed,” Katie huffed and then dove into her pillows.
Tux charged straight for Bethesda’s awaiting arms. “Are you okay, baby?” she coddled, firing kisses left and right. “Did the mean old girl kick my baby? Don’t you worry, sweetie. She won’t hurt you ever again.” And she wasn’t casting a shred of her accusatory glare my way.
Katie shot back up. “Trust me . . . If I were going to off something, I wouldn’t leave a mark,” she snarked. “Go on Bethesda. Go back to sleep.” She gave her pillow a few heated smacks. “You’ll see.”
“Come on, Tux,” Bethesda grumbled. “I’m taking my watchdog with me — just in case.”
I stared at the empty doorway, unable to shake off the uneasy feeling coiling my gut.
“What’s wrong, Shi?” Katie asked. “Did you hurt him?”
“No,” I replied. “He was fine.”
“Well, you’re not,” she stated. “There’s blood on the back of your shirt.” I turned to the mirror and lifted up my hair. Sure enough, my bandage was gone, and my wound was bleeding.
“It hasn’t bled for a couple of days,” I said.
Katie spotted my bandage in the bed lying next to my hilt. “Maybe you accidently pulled it open?” Katie tossed it to me and then flipped back over. “Hit the lights and go back to sleep.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled, not completely convinced. I looked up at the dreamcatcher. All the black tourmalines were still there and intact. So whatever dream I’d conjured, hadn’t come from the diamond…that was certain.
My suspicions whirled me around to the open window. With a ginger and guide
d gust, I blew it down to a close and aimed a stream at its latch. Then for some added assurance, I closed the door and spelled the entire bedroom with no entry or exit until dawn.
With my nightshirt changed and bandage slapped back in place, I grabbed my hilt and crawled into bed. I kept it clenched in my hands as I lay there pondering. No, this wasn’t the first time I’d had a dream influenced by a conversation, or an event, or even something I’d watched on TV. However this one felt different, much different. Disturbingly real, if possible? Whether it was Katie’s curiosities or not, something had definitely triggered it.
I turned to the window and gave my hilt a long, taut squeeze while my mind wrestled with an appalling thought. Or possibly SOMEONE…
CHAPTER 17
With both of us still shaking off our exhaustion from yesterday’s retail-excursion, Katie and I spent the dwindling hours of my last day participating in one of the most time-honored and cathartic of best-friend traditions — vegging out in front of the TV to watch movies we’d seen far too many times and pacifying our tummies with unlimited zombie-grabs of popcorn. And Diet Coke. Lots of Diet Coke.
Katie laid her head on my shoulder. “One more?” was out of her mouth before the credits started rolling.
I glanced at my watch. It was already pushing five o’clock. I knew I should start heading back, but I felt so torn about leaving—correction—more like torn about my impending return. Since I still hadn’t heard from Tanner, my mind spent the day conjuring a plethora of various scenarios regarding his demeanor, understandably, and all of them hinged upon that first glance. Most of what I’d envisioned fell within the range of bland to bleak — and that was even with me holding his phantom crystal up in the air like a prized marlin when I hopped out of the car.
“Okay,” I agreed and nodded towards my bags already sitting beside the door. “But just one more.”
Katie wrestled away the blanket as she sprang off the futon. “What do you want to watch?” Her mad search came to an end when her arms emerged from the crate flashing two DVDs in her hands.
My choices turned out to be The Hunger Games or Mamma Mia!, both of which had my bottom lip sinking into a frown. Despite my sentimental fondness of that particular musical, having to sit through two hours of something I could repeat verbatim in my sleep was about as much fun as watching paint dry. And frankly, I didn’t need nor want a reminder of how badly my bow shooting sucked. Monday afternoon weapons training would be here soon enough.
“Why don’t we let Bethesda pick?” I whispered to her head.
Katie’s arms sagged to the floor in a dramatic pout. “NO!” she whined telepathically. “She’ll pull out Practical Magic. She plays it ALL THE FREAKING TIME!”
Seriously? “Kind of like you and Mama Mia!?” I rebutted, smiling.
Katie shot out a loud gasp and then clutched the DVD over her heart.
“Just sayin’,” I giggled innocently.
Katie darted her eyes towards the corner of the loft. “She’s busy anyway.”
Bethesda had been running around the kitchen area for the past two movies grabbing ingredients left and right and then dropping them into a small cauldron sitting on one of the lit gas burners. Whatever concoction she was working on made the whole apartment reek of stinky herbs and burnt wood, with a hint of patchouli. I only prayed the questionable scent stayed the heck out of my hair this time.
“What is she doing?” I asked.
“Trying to cast a spell similar to mine so some fortune will come her way.” Katie’s reply may have been hushed, but her smirk spoke volumes.
I shook my head and turned up the heat on my glare. Katie had snuck down to her car and gathered up her haul from yesterday while I was taking a shower. However, not a single one of those flashy shopping bags had made it to her room. She’d strategically staged them all over the living area — on every table, vacant chair, and any bare enough spot on the floor. And the little show-off didn’t stop there. Katie had intentionally woken up her cousin with some pretty heavy hammering. I’d just emerged from the bathroom to see Bethesda rushing out of her bedroom to the sight of a Newbury Street explosion in the middle of the apartment and Katie hanging her new set of car keys on a nail beside the door, beaming as bright as a neon sign. Oh yeah… And the “ping” from her modest finger-flick was the height of subtle.
“What?” Katie shrugged innocently.
I hoisted my palm as I rose to my feet. “Don’t even,” I scolded and then strolled towards the kitchen area. “Bethesda? Do you want to pick the next one?”
I could practically see the name stamped on the DVD spinning in her eyes. “Practical Magic?” she suggested.
“That’s fine,” I replied, tuning out Katie’s “I-told-you-so” echoing in my head.
Bethesda passed a quick glance Katie’s way. “Thank you, Shiloh.”
“You’re welcome.” I turned to my bosom friend, who was now laid out on the floor in protest. “Put it in, Katie.”
“And thanks again for the things you picked up for me yesterday,” Bethesda added. “It was so thoughtful.” The uptick in her tone was clearly for Katie’s benefit.
“I was happy to do it.” I scanned the various ingredients scattered all over the butcher-block island. “So? Whatcha cookin’ up in here?”
“Oh, it’s a little something I’m working on,” Bethesda admitted as she fumbled with a few of the jars on the counter. She held up the posh suede journal I’d picked her up at Barnes & Noble yesterday, face glowing. “I’m making this my first official entry in my brand new grimoire. It’s a fortune spell.”
Katie strutted over to the island with her narrowed eyes leading the way, scanning her ingredients. The condemnation they blasted was downright obscene. “You’re doing it wrong,” my BFF chided.
Bethesda slammed the journal down on the counter. “I’m combining several different spells,” she explained. “There’s no right or wrong way — Not yet!”
Katie gave her shoulders a passive shrug. “It just looks like overkill to me,” she said. “I didn’t need all that.”
The acidy glares being passed between the two cousins shored up my theory. I knew exactly why they weren’t getting along. Both were trying to one-up the other with witchcraft — each on their own tireless crusade to prove whose hands waved the bigger wand. Bethesda may have kicked-off this rivalry by not letting her own flesh & blood cousin into the coven, but that didn’t justify Katie coming off as a straight-up sand-kicking schoolyard bully.
“No, Katie,” I interjected. “You didn’t need all that stuff — just your friend to inherit some money.”
“WHY?” Katie huffed mentally.
“Oh, you know good ’n well why, Miss I’m-going-to-be-a-better-person,” I reminded her.
With a theatrical stagger, Katie wobbled to the bathroom, pretended to pull an imaginary knife out of her back, and then practically flung herself inside with a melodramatic collapse. “Traitor!” she whimpered in my head and gave the door a pissy slam.
“Hey, those were YOUR WORDS,” I threw back. “And for the record, a real traitor might take your cousin by that Ferrari dealership you mentioned on their way out of town,” I giggled. Needless to say, I didn’t hear another peep after that pricey threat — well, except for the raspberry she trumpeted.
I turned back to Bethesda. “Do you remember the woman I was with at Katie’s funeral?”
Bethesda averted her stare. “Yes,” she acknowledged awkwardly.
Her reaction wasn’t that surprising. Beatrix’s taunts regarding her “witch abilities” that day were pretty cutthroat. “Well, she’s the one who passed away.” I noticed Bethesda’s eyes hollowing the longer they stared at the bubbling cauldron. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
“I—I should have said something more that day,” Bethesda muttered.
I took a staggering step backward, eyes flaring. “You knew?”
Bethesda lifted her head and nodded shamefully.
My
thoughts raced back to our conversation at the funeral home. I remembered her threatening Bea with a warning about a person’s words coming back to haunt them in the end. The funny look on her face when she was clutching her copper medallion stuck out the most. My stare fell to the curious circular pendant, still hanging in its same raunchy spot. Then a pang struck my heart as Bethesda’s last word to Beatrix boomed in my head. Soon, I recalled just as ominous as her tone had sounded before strutting out the door.
“How?” I asked, a bit angered and a whole lot intrigued.
She held up her medallion. “With this.”
That’s what I thought… “What is it?”
“An amulet . . . A very special one,” she said. “It connects a person’s soul with their destiny — their final destiny.” She flipped it over to reveal a gleaming green surface on its other side. “This is just a thin veneer of colored glass, but it’s hiding a tiny sliver of shaman’s stone. They’re extremely rare,” she insisted. “This is the only one I’ve ever seen.” Her finger followed the flow of the markings under the glass. “That’s what these lines are, the striations in the stone. It’s a pretty clever camouflage. I think it kind of makes it look like a malachite, don’t you?”
After all of my up-close & personal encounters with that particular banded green stone, my wary eyes could spot a real one blindfolded, on the other side of the globe. “Um, a little,” I fibbed. Since my gemstone lessons had only carried me to the P’s, I had to ask. “So how does a shaman’s stone work?”
“It’s intuitive,” she revealed. “It reads a being’s life-force and reveals how much time they have left on earth. The glass disguises the stone, but it also helps reflect its glow. The fainter the light, the closer the person is to their earthly end. But it only has a range of six months.”