For a moment, she debated leaving the stone in the tent, but she knew it would be safer on her than anywhere else. She wasn’t letting it go until she’d found her brother.
Stepping from the tent, she inhaled and tried to relax into her magic, to let it guide her. On one side, she could feel the comforting presence of Shaneesha, her best friend. On the other, the chaotic, twisted magic of Sagely, and the presence of a faery. But those were her companions. If someone was nearby, it was not a witch. She could have sensed the magic of an intruding witch, even one from another coven.
Moving slowly, she knelt and unzipped Shaneesha’s tent.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
Shaneesha sat up at once, shaking her braids back. “Who’s here?” she asked, her voice alert. Her snake slithered to the door of the tent and raised its head, peering out into the darkness beyond Raina.
“I don’t know,” Raina said. “But we’re in danger.”
“Yeah, duh,” Shaneesha said. “I know that.” She leapt from her tent into the dark forest where they had set up camp for the night. “Let’s get out of here.”
Before they could warn the others, a branch cracked nearby. Shaneesha threw up her hands, gathering her magic. Raina gripped her knife in one hand and pressed her ankle against her seal pup, steadying herself.
Another twig snapped, and leaves rustled as someone approached.
“Should I make a light?” Shaneesha asked. “Or will that tip them off to our location?”
“I think they already know,” Raina said as a figure moved between the trees.
A flame shot up from Shaneesha’s hand, illuminating her dark, coppery skin and the nearby forest. Behind Raina, the other tent unzipped, and Sagely stepped out, her red hair a mess. At the same moment, the figure emerged from between the trees.
“Don’t take another step,” Raina growled.
But when the man stepped forward, she dropped her hand, momentarily too surprised to wonder what it meant. This was no evil fae, or even a strange witch. It was her first magic tutor, the short, rotund Majori who had patiently tutored her through the first year of her abilities, when her magic was still erratic and wily.
“Majori Ory,” Shaneesha said, her shoulders relaxing. “What are you doing here?”
“Did you escape Viziri?” Sagely asked, excitement coloring her face as she stepped past Raina in her red cowboy boots.
“Why—yes, I did,” Majori Ory said, his voice faltering a bit.
“Are the others okay?” Sagely asked. “Do you know where they are? We’re on our way to find them now.”
Fox emerged from the tent, his wavy black locks a tousled mess. He narrowed his eyes at Majori Ory. As much as Raina longed to block him from her former mentor, to throw a wall of ice between them so he wouldn’t dare think of harming a warlock from her coven, she held herself back. His suspicion aroused her own.
“Why can’t I feel your magic?” she asked Ory.
“Get away from him,” Fox cried, leaping across the clearing to where Sagely had nearly reached Ory. Fox landed between them and blocked Sagely from taking another step.
“It’s one of our members,” Sagely said, sounding annoyed. “This is who we’ve been looking for. He can lead us to the others.”
“We’re not going anywhere with this asshole,” Fox growled. “Not until I know he’s no danger to you.”
“He’s not a danger,” Sagely said.
“I don’t know,” Raina said. “How did you get away, Ory? Where are the others?”
“I came back for you,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Shaneesha asked, her own magic flickering with suspicion.
“We’re waiting for you,” Ory said. “The master has sent me to collect you.”
The master? Gag. Was that what Viziri had his minions call him?
“Oh, hell no,” Sagely said, knocking Fox’s arm down and stepping up beside him. “We’re not going anywhere near that psycho. He got what he wanted. He got my void magic. So he can live without us—and you.” With that, she grabbed Ory’s arm and pulled him closer before turning to Raina.
“How do we get him back?” she asked. “Is there a spell to cast off whatever hypnosis he’s under?”
“I must return to the master,” Ory said. “I have to complete my task.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Fox said, grabbing the Majori’s other arm.
“You must let me go,” Ory said, offering no resistance. “I have only until morning to report back to the master. The master requires more magic. He wants the four witches who unlocked the void magic within the faeling.”
“So he wants us,” Raina said. So much for Viziri not bothering with an earth witch.
“Not gonna happen,” Shaneesha said.
“Can we bind his magic?” Sagely asked.
“His magic is…gone,” Raina said.
Shaneesha held up her hand, casting more light from the fire in her palm over their campsite. She tossed a little fireball onto the embers of their fire, knocking away the ash and casting a warm glow over their huddled group.
When Ory stepped closer, Raina shuddered. His eyes were still a blank void. He was under the dark warlock’s control. His own magic, the magic of the Winslow Coven, was gone. That’s why she hadn’t felt him. If he had anything left, it was only his internal flame, the spark that nested inside all witches like a dormant spring in the dry season.
He only had to absorb more magic from the world around him, and it would begin to flow again, replenishing the spring until it became a stream again. Witches were only the vessels that carried magic, a channel through which it flowed from the invisible energy field into the physical world. But for some reason, he hadn’t been able to access more magic to feed his source flame. All he had was the void magic Viziri had put inside him, which was now controlling him somehow.
“How do we get him back on our side?” Sagely asked, stepping away from Ory as if he were now tainted. Which he was, but it was a bit ironic for Sagely to recoil from him, since he was tainted with her type of magic.
“You don’t,” Ory said. He moved to follow Sagely, but Fox jerked him back.
In one swift motion, Ory pulled out a pistol from his belt and fired it at them. Raina was knocked backwards. She didn’t feel any pain, just a punch in the center of her chest. Only when she landed on her back did she realize she’d been hit. She stared up at the stars high above the trees. Branches swayed in the currents of the wind like seaweed. From far away, she heard another gunshot.
Four
Sagely
Everything happened so fast. One minute, Sagely was asking her coven sister how to save Ory from the mind-control he was under. The next, she was watching her fall to the ground with a bullet in her heart.
Shaneesha and Seeley both screamed at the same time. Seeley dove for Raina, his mouth open wide as he honked and wailed.
“One down,” Ory said, swinging the gun towards Sagely. “Two to go.”
Just as the shot went off, Fox wrenched Ory’s arm in a complete circle. The sickening crunch of bones and cartilage snapping made Sagely gag.
With a shudder, Ory sank to his knees.
“You bastard,” Shaneesha screamed from where she was kneeling over Raina.
“Want me to kill him?” Fox asked, his smoldering chocolate eyes eager.
“No,” Sagely said. “He’s still one of the coven. Take his gun away, and we’ll take him with us.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Fox said sarcastically, but he plucked the gun from Ory’s hand and shoved it into the waistband of his pajamas.
Ory didn’t resist or move. His head remained bowed, and his shoulders shook. Sagely was pretty sure the guy was crying, and a pang of sympathy went through her. Not that she wanted Raina to die, but if she had to choose between Ory and Raina…
Suddenly, Ory lifted his head, and for a second, his eyes cleared. They were no longer void of everything but the swirling b
lackness of Viziri’s magic. Instead, a dull red glow took them over. Before she could warn the others, a bursts of fireballs flew from his eyes like bullets.
That’s new.
Without waiting to see if he’d hit Shaneesha, Sagely spun and delivered a sidekick to his ear. His head snapped around, and the fiery bullets pelted the ground and Fox’s arm. With a growl, Fox flung Ory away from him.
Ory stumbled forwards, his eyes darkening to black again. Sagely recognized the plodding, zombie-like walk of one of Viziri’s puppets. She blocked Ory’s path and delivered a front kick directly to his groin. A grunt escaped him, but that was all.
Apparently, he had a puppet’s ability to feel pain, too.
In other words, he didn’t.
His eyes began to glow red again as he focused in on her.
“Get down,” she yelled to Shaneesha, who was still tending to Raina.
“I got this,” Fox said, leaping six feet into the air. He came down on Ory’s back, knocking him flat just as a rain of fireballs sprayed from Ory’s eyes. Several hit Sagely’s arm and sizzled into her flesh. She cried out and swatted at them, as if she could knock them away as easily as sparks from their campfire. Instead, they burned into her flesh.
A menacing laugh trickled from Ory’s mouth as it twisted into a wide grin. His eyes were empty of everything but magic as a stream of crackling energy began to tendril out from them like Shaneesha’s green snake. Except these were aiming straight at Sagely.
“Stop,” she commanded, but Ory’s maniacal grin only widened. As the tendrils of electricity reached for her, she sidestepped, but they swerved to intercept her path. The moment they touched her, they twined around her like live wires, sparking across her skin and sizzling her flesh. She screamed, trying to leap away, but they only tightened around her middle, squeezing the breath from her.
“Help me, Fox,” she cried, summoning the little magic she’d gained since giving it all to Viziri.
“All right, old man,” Fox growled. “If you don’t stop, messing with a faery’s lady is the last thing you’ll ever do.”
Instead of ceasing, the stream of electricity began to burn into Sagely. Smoke drifted up from her charred shirt, choking her as she fell to her knees.
“That was your chance for mercy,” Fox growled. He twisted Ory’s head around until his neck snapped.
At the same moment, the stream of electricity snapped, releasing Sagely from its stranglehold. Sagely leapt forward, but it was too late. She dropped to her knees beside Ory’s head, now twisted at a grotesque angle. The instant he died, she felt an empty space open inside her like a pocket where his presence had once been. Into it, the void magic he’d released upon his death slipped silently.
“What did you do?” she cried, looking up at Fox.
“You’re welcome,” he said bitterly.
“You killed him!”
Fox peeled off his shirt, the arm of which was smoldering and smoking from the fireballs that had hit him. Several holes were burned into the flesh of his arm and one side of his torso. Sagely tried to hold onto her anger, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from ogling Fox’s small, sleek body. She’d never seen him without a shirt, and some part of her had expected him to look as soft and feminine under his clothes as he did with them on.
Instead, he was built to absolute perfection. His shoulders were wide compared to his narrow hips, and his muscles were like knots of solid steel. In the scant light of the tiny fire Shaneesha had lit, shadows played over the ridges of muscle on Fox’s chest and shoulders. Which Sagely should totally not be looking at, considering he was injured and she was furious at him.
Turning her attention back to Ory, she crouched over him and touched his shiny bald head. He’d been her favorite teacher—an easy, encouraging one. He hadn’t challenged her much, but he’d built her up, made her believe she was worthy of the magic Quill had gifted her to make her a witch. And now he was lying dead on the ground, like a chicken with its neck wrung.
“I can’t believe you killed him,” she said, her throat tight.
“It was him or you,” Fox said with a glower, raising his mouth from where he was sucking at one of the wounds on his arm, trying to stop the burning. “I chose him.”
Though Sagely knew he was right, she couldn’t quite get used to the callousness of the fae. She knew they held life dear, the same as witches. But they only held dear the lives of their own people. She was going to have to work on that with Fox. If he wanted to be in her collective of husbands and guardians, he couldn’t run around murdering people, no matter how evil they seemed. That wasn’t the way of witches. When Quill had killed a faery, he’d been devastated with guilt. Fox didn’t look like he gave a flying flip. He was busy using his special fae healing abilities to heal his own wounds.
A shiver ran through Sagely when she remembered his mouth on her wound.
A wound he made, when he bit the crap out of you.
She had no idea how she was going to go through with this marriage. Fox was like his name—a little, vicious, sly animal. He even had sharp teeth and pointy ears.
“What are you smiling at?” he asked.
She startled, not having noticed him watching her.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Want me to heal your burns?” he asked.
A shudder of pleasure traveled through her at the thought of his mouth on her skin.
“Would y’all stop flirting and maybe help me save our sister’s life?” Shaneesha snapped from across the clearing. She’d peeled off her shirt and was holding it pressed to Raina’s chest.
Sagely ran to her side. “Is she going to make it?”
“We’re going to have to give her some more magic,” Shaneesha said. “We need…a water witch.”
“So the only person who can heal her is…her?”
Fox laughed. “Witches.”
Sagely cast him a murderous glare. “It’s not funny. She might die.”
“Then can I have my stone back?”
Ignoring him, Sagely turned to Shaneesha. “I’ll give her what I have left, the magic Quill gave me. But it’s…not all light. Will it hurt her?” She didn’t add the last part of her thought—that it might turn against Raina because her own feelings for Raina were just a bit ambiguous.
“Listen, you can make your magic help or harm,” Shaneesha said. “That’s all up to you. You’re the only one who can control your magic. If you use it to destroy, it’s destructive. If you use it to for good, it will come out good. I’m giving her as much of mine as I can. But I need some of yours, too. If we can just wake her up, she can heal herself.”
Sagely took one of Shaneesha’s warm hands in hers. With her free hand, she grasped one of Raina’s limp hands. Her ring began to glow as she channeled what little magic she still had.
Think good thoughts, she told herself. She pushed away all the memories of Raina being a rude snob and focused on the times Raina had saved her, without being asked. The time Raina had helped her fend off a faerie attack, though she’d just told her she didn’t like her. The time she’d saved Quill, even knowing he was joining Sagely’s collective. The time she’d kept Sagely from Viziri’s control and helped her unlock her void magic. Sagely owed her this much, if not more.
Concentrating as hard as she could, she forced her magic through the connection she had with Raina, though it was hard to do it to a person who was unresponsive. Is this how Quill had felt when he found Sagely dying and shoved enough magic into her to make her a witch? She felt a pull as her magic joined Shaneesha’s, and then that instinctive clutching inside as her selfish side tried to cling to her magic. With a squeeze of Shaneesha’s hand, they both let their magic go at once.
Suddenly, Raina sucked in a loud breath and tried to sit.
“You’re shot,” Shaneesha said, pressing her shoulders back. “You need to use all the magic you got to heal yourself.”
While Raina worked at healing her wounds, Shaneesha wanted to sit
guard, so Sagely crawled back into her tent. Fox was already in his sleeping bag, staring up at the canvas ceiling.
“Thanks a lot for all your help,” she said sarcastically.
“I don’t share the kind of magic you have,” he growled. “I couldn’t do anything.”
“You sure tried hard, though.”
With a frustrated sigh, Fox turned his back. “I offered to heal your wounds, and you weren’t interested.”
“Because I know you can’t heal anything but a faerie bite,” Sagely snapped, turning in her own sleeping bag so her back was to him. “You can’t even heal a burn. You were just trying to trick me again.”
“When have I ever tricked you?”
“Um, how about when you gave me that stone, and let me accept it, and then acted like I’d accepted an engagement ring?”
“You’re the one who asked me to join your collective, in case you forgot.”
“You’re right,” she said, kicking off her sleeping bag and flopping onto her back. It was too hot to use a sleeping bag in the middle of August. “That was my bad. Obviously it was a huge mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake when you were getting something out of it,” Fox said. “When you needed my help, you were all about it.”
“I was under the impression my collective was supposed to protect me.”
“I’d protect you with my life,” Fox growled. “And I have. I didn’t sign up to protect every other witch in the coven. My loyalty is to you. I have no more allegiance to Raina than she has to me. In the last interaction I had with her, she froze my face off with her water magic.”
It was true. Raina hated faeries. Why should Sagely expect Fox to feel differently about her? Raina certainly wouldn’t have bothered saving his life.
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” she said after a moment. She expected him to roll over and make some suggestive comment now that the tension had broken, like Quill always did. But instead, his back remained turned, his sculpted muscles taut with anger.
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