“Yeah, I guess.” Goddess, make them listen. They might have despised me, but they were still my people. A stab of guilt hit me, that instead of reuniting the two fae courts, I’d divided us into three. “But not until after our field trip with the witches.”
• • •
The next day at dawn, Liam and I stood amongst a circle of guards, as per Andrew’s insistence. I’d tried talking to him before we regrouped with the witches, but he acted too agitated and cut me off with barked instructions every time I opened my mouth. Apparently, he’d been up half of the night planning how our visit to Talawen’s glen would go. Liam had reiterated what Neve had told me, that Andrew’s current state was due to what had happened in Freymoor, and he needed to work it out on his own.
Why alone? Men. How could I reassure my guard if he wouldn’t talk to me? Liam had told me to let Andrew be, labelling it guy stuff, and I supposed I had no choice for the time being, but soon, Andrew and I would be having a talk. If I could overcome my tendencies toward suffering in silence, then so could he.
Meline rubbed her arms as she scanned the clearing where Talawen’s tree had once stood. “This is old magic,” Meline said between chatters of her teeth. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Thomas?” She faced her companion who wore a grim expression of tight lips and dark bags under his eyes. Apparently, sleeping in the belly of a monster had disagreed with him.
“There are layers of more than one type.” Thomas spun in a slow circle. His large, calloused fingers stretched out, as if feeling the texture of the air. “A confusion spell, maybe? Or a concealer spell? It makes me feel heavy, like it’s suppressing my magic. Definitely earth magic, though.”
If I’d been a dog, my ears would have pricked up at that. “Are you saying that’s a good thing that it’s earth magic? Can you do anything to lift it?” Not that I had a clue how all of the magic mumbo-jumbo worked. I didn’t even know how mine worked. I’d begun to feel like a bit of an idiot for not having questioned the mechanics of what stared me in the face every day.
Meline turned to her companions. “What do you think, guys? The old stuff is always the most unpredictable, and this is more ancient than the dirt itself. It might blow up in our faces, but I think we need to risk it.”
“Whoa.” Neve held up her hand, while the other restrained Andrew from rushing toward the witches. “What do you mean ‘blow up’? As in literally? Kaboom?”
A wry smile slid across Meline’s lips as she shrugged. “There’s no way to tell. Maybe?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d have said she was enjoying herself. “Do it,” I said.
“Not while you’re here, they won’t.” Andrew’s glare said he wouldn’t be swayed.
“I agree.” Liam stepped in closer.
I took a moment to find the right words. “Look, I know we have to be cautious and all that, but we don’t have time to piss around. We’ll go and stand over there until we can’t feel the prickle of the magic anymore. If Andrew sees a problem, he can stop time, and we’ll jet.” I met everyone’s gazes within my immediate circle. “Good?”
“Works for me,” Andrew said, a grim threat in his stare toward Thomas.
Through a sigh, Liam said, “Fine, but I still don’t think it’s enough. I’ll take you into the in-between the instant I feel it’s necessary, and you won’t argue with me.” To Brígh , he added, “Can you See anything?”
She kicked at a stick and plunged her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “No. Same deal when I tried to see Talawen. There’s something blocking my vision here. Likely the magic.”
“About that,” Cas said, “do you suppose Talawen somehow learned the Magi’s magic? Or did the magic she used to conceal the Old Ones belong to the trees themselves?”
That was a really good question, one I hadn’t thought of. “I bet Laerni would know, and you can ask her yourself when we get back.” I smiled at him. “Good work, detective plum.”
While he grinned and elbowed Andrew in the ribs as if to say ‘Aren’t I so smart?’, I started for the edge of the woods. To Meline, I said, “If you can get these pieces of shit out in the open, then have at it.”
A thought froze me for a split second: what if what we were about to do led to Brígh’s death? How could I know what decision would change our grim future, or if it would be the one that put our foot down on the land mine threatening my aide? I grabbed her and shoved her behind me, ignoring her startled cursing. My hair would be grey by the time I figured it all out.
The three coven-folk joined hands, facing the long grass at their feet. Another jolt of electricity piled into the already highly charged atmosphere.
At the edge of the trees, a few feet beyond the faintest prickle of the Magi’s spell, we stood to watch.
“What are they doing?” Brígh squinted. “They’re just standing there.”
I rubbed my arms, unable to chase away the new prickling on my skin—cooler and gentler than the Magi’s mojo—growing worse by the second. I could have sworn a horde of angry, stinging fire ants paraded on me. “They’re definitely not just standing there. Can’t you feel it?”
“I just hope we get to pound something today,” Andrew said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know,” Cas said. “I thought all this magic stuff would be … I don’t know … flashier. More exciting.”
Liam patted him on the shoulder. “Careful what you ask for, bud.”
Gallagher shuddered. “Agreed. My veins feel as if they are trying to flee my body.”
A rumble, and the forest wavered, followed by a momentary slam of emotions and thoughts that weren’t my own: joy, elation, also anxiety. Gallagher held his head and locked gazes with me, his opaque eyes wide.
“Anyone else hear that?” Creepy didn’t cover it. I pulled my senses in closer in case it happened again.
Liam swung me to face him, scrutinizing me with intensity as he went spelunking in my head. “Hear what? What happened?”
The guards moved between me and the three magical Musketeers who were still holding hands. Their lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. As I peered over Andrew’s rigid shoulder, the trees faded again. In the momentary crack in the magic, I caught a glimpse of something white on the ground behind Thomas. A dark form stood over it.
The emotions charged me again. Gallagher cried out with hands over his ears. I managed to stay standing by a narrow margin, continuing to stare at what lay on the ground. A person with white hair. I knew that hair. The bottom dropped out of my stomach as I turned to pure energy, bolted forward and screamed, “Nix!”
13
Shouts behind me seemed distant and unimportant as I streaked by Meline and her crew. “It’s fading,” I said. “Keep them here!”
The cloaked form standing over Nix tilted up. A woman’s eyes, green as the grass around her feet, opened wide. Her form and Nix’s wavered as if heat waves danced between them and me. She reached for him, gave his arm a frantic tug, but when he didn’t move, took off like a frightened deer into the forest.
The instant I laid my hands on his still form, his body solidified. Had my touch alone brought him from their plane to ours? I shook Nix. “Can you hear me?”
The others reached me a second later. Aside from their death glares heating the back of my neck, they remained silent.
Gallagher knelt on the other side of Nix. Eyes closed, he placed his palm on the other man’s face. “He’s alive. Barely. His consciousness has been suppressed. I think once we get him away from whatever this is hanging in the air, he’ll recover.”
Immense relief flooded through me. Although he wouldn’t be any too happy that I’d rescued him, I still wanted him to be okay and hoped Liam wouldn’t freak about that. Not to mention, Nix had been with the Magi and could probably deliver some much needed information on t
he subject.
Thomas screamed behind me. As I turned, vines claimed his ankle and jettisoned him backwards. He reached for us, the look of utter terror burning itself onto my retinas, as he faded into nothing at the edge of the trees.
The two witches cried out, too, as did Brígh, as we all gaped at the place where Thomas fizzled out like the remnants of a dream.
“Get out of here,” Andrew said. “Now! All of you.” He took off into the woods before I could protest. My pulse jacked into overdrive as I wondered if that would be my last glimpse of him. Neve started and stopped as if torn between going after him and staying with me.
“I will not leave them—” I stopped my protest when my attempt to reach out for Thomas’ mind yielded nothing. Gallagher’s hand on my arm confirmed he couldn’t find him, either. “Can’t you show us their realm again?” I asked Meline, who appeared as if she’d been struck by lightning, mouth open in a silent scream.
Amanda shook her blonde head and swiped away a tear strolling down her pale cheek. “Not without Thomas. We’d need a third at least.”
While Liam scooped up Nix, Neve and the rest of the guards herded us at a run back toward the cars we’d arrived in. Cas dragged Meline, who cried and demanded we go back for Thomas. I wondered if the two of them were more than colleagues. Anguish like hers didn’t come with anything but the loss of one loved by the deepest places of a person.
When we reached the two vehicles in the field, I jammed my fingers into my hair and paced, my breath coming in the form of wheezes in my throat. “I hate having to run. Damn them, for making us run from them!”
Liam blocked my way, but I needed to move. “Lila, stop.”
“No. We need to go after Andrew. And Thomas.”
“Andrew can take care of himself. We need to regroup at Iress. Nix might be the answer we’ve been looking for to put an end to this thing once and for all.”
“But what about”—unable to speak non-wobbly words, I pointed to the trees—“I won’t leave him to die like that. We can’t even … if he’s not on our plane, then I can’t …”
I realized, too late, that I should have kept my mouth shut because Meline’s cries turned into high keening sounds that tore my heart into a thousand shreds of bloody meat. Ashamed I’d lost it in front of strangers, I wrapped my arms around her, surrounding her in my Light until she quieted. “I promise you, one way or another, I will find peace for Thomas. I’m so sorry.”
When I released her, the look in her purple eyes could have melted stone. Flames danced behind them, burning hot and promising pain. She scrubbed wetness from her face with the heels of her hands and cleared her throat, taking on a deadly quiet. I knew that stillness. I used to get that way right before I went psycho on someone’s ass.
“The rest of the covens need to assemble here immediately,” she said. “We uncovered only about a hundred square feet of what’s there, and from what I sensed, there’s a lot more. We need to be careful, though. I’m thinking there’s more to this than meets the eye because I detected mostly containment here, not just concealment. Someone’s trying to keep someone inside more than keeping others out. If you can lend us one of your cars to get back to Toronto, I’ll arrange everything.”
A prison? Had the Goddess confined her children as well as created the elf and fae realms? That couldn’t be it or they wouldn’t be still wreaking havoc. I eyed Meline for a second before nodding to Cas, who handed over the keys to the first vehicle. The witches took off like hellfire, while the rest of us lingered.
Panting signalled Andrew’s return a moment before he dashed out of the woods. “Nothing. A whole goddamned lot of nothing.” The glassy sheen to his eyes suggested there was more.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s a pond. That’s it.” He heaved Nix up with Cas’s help and positioned the unconscious man between them in the back of the remaining car—a Suburban that ran on something fae.
Neve’s subtle brow raise suggested she’d tell me about it later.
The two girls and Gallagher took the middle bench, and Liam drove while I rode shotgun, all of us silent until we reached Seven Gates. The instant Liam turned off the engine, Andrew blurted, “I don’t want Nix in the city. He doesn’t respect you as his queen. He said so himself.”
I scrambled out of my seat, which wasn’t easy sporting my rotund belly, and waited for the rest to get out. They left the broken and bloodied Nix inside.
“Leave guards on him if you like, Andrew,” I started, “but they beat him nearly to death and were about to do lord-only-knows-what to him. Not to mention he’s been within their camp or village, or whatever’s in there. He’s seen what we’re up against. I know you’re on edge, but on this one I’m right.” I put my hand on Gallagher’s arm and stared into his tired eyes. “The second he wakes up—”
“No need to speak it.” He tapped his temple, the universal telepath sign for ‘I can hear what you’re thinking’.
I nodded, feeling sick for asking Gallagher to get every detail out of Nix’s head at any cost. If it wasn’t enough that I’d ripped my former captain’s darkness open like a rotting barrel to spew its flavor into him, asking Gallagher to mind-fuck Nix was even worse. Knowing how much Nix hated me, he might not be forthcoming with information. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let him go without making him spill his guts, no matter what that made me. Just this once.
“Neve, you’re with us.” Liam started for the opening that would take us to Dun Bray.
“And Brígh,” I added. “I don’t want her in Iress while those hags want to lobotomize her.”
She recoiled, her face bright with horror.
“Shitballs!” I slapped a hand over my mouth as if that could take back what I’d said. “Tell me you knew what they would do.” My focus swung to Gallagher, who faced his feet. That same sick look that had come over him when he spoke of Marla returned. “Gallagher?”
“They just said I’d lose my Sight! What do you mean, lobotomize? Not like what it sounds like, right? Like, stirring up my brain like a damn slushy?”
When she began shaking, I grabbed her arms and squared her in front of me. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let them near you. Do you hear me? Over my dead. Effing. Body.”
Her shiny eyes finally focused in on me. “But what if you can’t stop them? I told you they can get me wherever I am with those freaky abilities they didn’t bother to share with me. What will happen to me? And don’t jerk me around, Lila, I mean it.”
My mouth bobbed open a few times, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“It means you’ll cease to be who you are right now,” Gallagher said, saving me the trouble. “They will shatter your mind. It means, you may not remember any of us, not even Cas.”
Brígh broke out of my hold and stomped a few yards away, muttering in angry bursts. Cas followed at a distance, his expression flashing between fury and grief.
I turned to Gallagher. “Why didn’t they tell her the consequences?”
“I did not realize until now they had not.” He wound one of his dreads around his wrist as he often did when nerves got the better of him. “Perhaps they wanted her to break their laws for some reason? Are they threatened by her? Dislike her? Want her out of their ranks? It’s impossible to know for sure. The Overseers were once nurturers, guiders of the Seers until …”
Stepping closer, I put a hand on his arm. “Until what?”
“Until the prophecy that foretold of your coming.”
My stomach lurched.
“Marla. My Goddess-bonded mate.” A shuddering breath escaped Gallagher before he choked it back. “She came to me, terrified of something she’d Seen. I told her to go to Queen Arianne, fully intending to escort her there myself, but I was detained. Before she arrived in the queen’s chambers …”
Liam
expelled a sound of disgust. “The Overseers stripped her mind so she wouldn’t tell the queen.”
Visibly shaken, Gallagher turned away as I tried to hug him. “I will not speak of it again. It is an old wound I alone carry, and it will stay that way. Do not trouble yourself with my ghosts.”
Gallagher had a mate. Why hadn’t I known or thought to ask? If he thought I’d never bring it up again he was sorely mistaken. Wounds that deep needed to be shared, aired out, or they could destroy a soul. I’d lived with the festering pain for a long time. Before Laerni had gotten hold of me, I’d been slowly dying inside.
What had happened to change the Overseers from teachers to cruel police? More questions needed answering, and we had no time to ponder. As I watched Brígh give in to tears and fall into Cas’ arms, I asked, “She regrets telling me now, doesn’t she?”
Gallagher followed my gaze. “She will never admit it, and it causes her a deep sense of shame because she knows so many lives depend on the information, but yes, she regrets telling you about our future and hers.”
Cas and Brígh returned a moment later, hand in hand. She stood tall, eyes free of moisture, a stern resolve taking its place. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell me, but I guess it doesn’t matter. They can go lick a stump for all I care. Let’s go.”
Releasing her man with a quick kiss, she tromped off, tugging her bewildered-looking sister with her.
Liam chuckled. “She’s starting to sound like you. Scary.”
“Hey!” I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or proud. “Wait … is that a good thing or a bad thing? And why is it scary?”
He sped off before answering, while Andrew—giving me a pissy stare—and Cas heaved Nix out of the car and positioned his arms across their shoulders. After one last, guilty glance at my former guard, I nodded to Gallagher and took off after Liam and the pink sisters.
I didn’t like having Brígh too far away from me, so I rushed to catch up. If the Overseers pet whatever-it-was could teleport stuff, then I needed to be close in order to stop it. As I continued to fume about what that old bat wanted to do to her, a thought stopped me dead. “Maybe it’s not your death that’s preventing you from seeing your future.”
Rise of the Magi Page 11