by Anna Abner
“Nothing about this is funny,” he grumbled. “But how can I help?”
Dani popped her knuckles, every one, and then inhaled a deep, calming breath as her magic crackled along her nerve endings.
“You can stay back.”
She laid her palms against the brick wall beside the door and marveled, as she always did, at the sensation of power passing in waves from her body directly into the cold stone.
Her fingertips frosted over. Bricks froze and cracked. Her body heat ticked lower as it fueled her magic.
“Dani?”
“Almost finished.” Her breath puffed white.
The bricks splintered but didn’t break. Dust filtered down around her feet as she neared her threshold, but the concrete stayed firm.
She thought of the deer she’d healed and afterward sitting hunched in her car in front of the heater vents. Wasn’t getting home and delivering David to his son even more important than that animal’s life?
“Dani, you’re—”
Panicked that he’d touch her, she broke contact with the wall to stumble out of his reach.
“Don’t touch me,” she squeaked. Her power was out of control. She would hurt him.
“I won’t,” he snapped. Returning to the far side of the room, he crossed his arms over his chest. “It didn’t work, did it?”
Some new fissures and a lot of red dust lay on the ground, but there wasn’t anything near a human-shaped hole in the wall to escape through. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything meaningful. The deer she’d cast on had probably leapt into the trees and dropped dead a moment later.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, curling in on herself to save whatever heat she had left. “I can’t.” Her teeth chattered, making her voice choppy.
“You’re freezing.” After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed his mattress off the floor and approached. “I won’t touch you. Don’t worry,” he said, and then bent the cushion around her like a tent. Surprisingly, it helped insulate her body.
Tires rolled over gravel. A car door slammed. Dani stared at David’s mess. Window parts hanging from the frame. Brick and mortar dust on the floor. No point trying to minimize it. A blind man could figure out what they’d been up to. And what they hadn’t done—a demonic-summoning spell.
“Has it been twelve hours already?” he asked.
Quiet voices, and then the heavy door swung open, revealing the barrier spell, Jeff, and the Carver.
“Constringo.” Dark webs slithered up both Dani’s arms, completely binding her magic.
Impotent hatred for these two men pulsed like lava through her veins.
“The Dark Caster is not pleased with your progress. Or lack thereof.” The Carver wore a different suit today, a blue one that clashed horribly with his red hair. “And I’m not thrilled with the mess you made. I don’t see any spell circles. A necromancer can’t cast without a spell circle. You’re not even trying, are you?”
“You’re going to let us out,” David said, “because you don’t want the police kicking down your door. You don’t want to go to prison.” He caught her eye, and she wondered how he stayed so calm. However he did it, his quiet authority gave her strength. “Let us go, right now, and neither of us will say anything to anybody about you. We’ll tell the police we ran off on a lovers’ tryst, and that will be the end of it.”
The Carver did not appear to approve of David’s plan. He tapped Jeff on the shoulder, and the other man spoke in Latin.
Pain. All-encompassing, brain-zapping pain. Like she was a lamp, click went her switch.
* * *
David opened his mouth to plea, again, for their release when Dani made a half-choking, half-screaming noise and went down hard, her whole body seizing like she’d been jabbed with a live wire. She squealed in pain, and he dropped to his knees beside her. But what could he do? Magic was real and he had no defenses.
“Stop it! Please,” he begged the men, too afraid to touch her. He sensed the pain rolling off her in waves. Time seemed to stretch and stretch until he didn’t know how long he’d been bending over her as her body spasmed.
“You’re killing her!”
Finally, finally, Jeff spoke a foreign word and she went limp. David brushed the hair from her face, but she didn’t react.
“Do I have your attention now, you arrogant little shit?”
David counted to five before looking up because if he didn’t calm down first, he would attack that door until he knocked himself out. “I can’t do what you want me to do.”
“I don’t understand either of you. You don’t know the target. What do you care? And the witch has already blinded a kid. I know she’s up for mayhem.”
“Shut up,” David hissed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dani would never hurt a child. She was, without a doubt, the most beloved care provider at Happy Trails. Ryan adored her. David had requested her when he was looking for the best teacher for his son. There was no way she’d hurt a child.
“What a poor little innocent you are.” The Carver sighed dramatically. “She was just a kid herself when she put a spell on her high school sweetheart. Didn’t she tell you?”
No. Dani would never…
“Regardless,” the Carver continued, “what you can and cannot do isn’t important to me. Because here’s what you will do. Wake the bitch up and cast a summoning spell on the man in the photograph. Fail to do that and I’ll have to find you a new witch because this one will be dead.” With a disappointed shake of his head, he collected his lackey, closed the door, and drove away. Only then did the dark webs disappear from Dani’s arms.
David hardly registered the casters’ departure because he couldn’t tear his eyes from Dani. He’d never felt more useless. He lived in a rational, human world. What was a normal person supposed to do against magical creatures?
David slid one of the pillows beneath her head. Gazing into her pale, hauntingly beautiful face, he recalled their one and only date. And the pain of her refusal hurt a little less. Maybe witches weren’t like other girls. Maybe it hadn’t been the humiliating rejection he’d built up in his mind. Maybe he should have toughened up, given her a chance, and asked for a second date.
A moan broke from her lips, and she opened those bottomless brown—nearly black—eyes. Her brows drew together. “David?”
“Lie still. You had a shock.” At least that’s what it had looked like to him—a blast of torturous magical electricity.
“That ugly tub of shit son of a bitch.” She leaned up on her forearm. “I’ll kill him.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’m getting us out of here.” Now. Dani was not suffering through a pain spell again. Him performing a demonic-summoning spell was out of the question. That left David with only one option—get the hell out of there.
“How?”
He was never climbing out the window or thru the wall, not without a crowbar and a circular saw. That plan was off the table. There must be another way.
David surveyed their surroundings and his makeshift tools. A door and window sealed shut with magic. A whole lot of freshly laid brick walls. Concrete floor, plaster ceiling. Maybe he’d been going about this all wrong. Perhaps the way out wasn’t through the wall, but through the ceiling.
His pulse racing, he turned over the recliner and took inventory. Bolts and nuts, thick cardboard, stuffing, and long L brackets. Without making it obvious he was tearing it apart, he removed the bolts and the hardware and piled it all in the middle of the room.
While Dani watched, he dragged the recliner, its metal feet screaming against the concrete floor, all the way against the wall beside the door. He’d learned from his first messy attempt at escape. If the Carver returned, he wouldn’t be able to see David’s handiwork.
The drywall was soft and crumbly. He scraped quite a bit off with his L bracket, and debris showered his tan slacks and white dress shirt in plaster flakes and dust. On the other side of the drywall were pink ins
ulation pads, which he tore away. He poked his finger at the exposed two-by-fours supported by thicker floor joists. Solid wood was going to be a little trickier to break, but if he adjusted the size of his hole, he and Dani could squeeze through the sixteen inches or so between joists. Except he didn’t have anything with teeth to saw through the wood.
He glanced at Dani, who was still seated on the floor. He didn’t know much about magic or witches or any of this supernatural stuff. Like most rational adults, he’d considered that sort of thing part of fairy tales and gooey chick flicks. Now that he’d seen it with his own eyes and felt it down in his bones, his brain was screeching through a difficult U-turn into hesitant belief.
If she could cook up a spell or a potion or something to assist their escape, he’d be an idiot to refuse the help.
“You strong enough to fire up that witch magic?” David asked.
It took her a few moments to get her bearings and climb to her feet, making him feel like a jerk for asking her to do anything after what she’d been through. But she seemed eager to help, and he couldn’t deny he really needed her.
“What do you want?” she asked. “Heat or cold? I haven’t practiced any wood destruction spells.”
“You’re the expert.”
She poked her finger through a hole in the recliner’s fabric. “Um.” Then she widened the hole. “Okay.” Dropping her hands, she tilted her head up to see him better. Though she was twenty-four, she looked younger and more fragile than her years.
She was beautiful. No, that didn’t do her justice. Dani Ferraro was gorgeous. A knockout. A woman he couldn’t get out of his mind no matter how hard he tried. David knew that much from personal experience. Her rejection after their one-and-done date at Papa Luigi’s hadn’t been easy to get over, but something had been missing. And it had hurt to admit it because he liked her.
“I’ll create a flameless heat to scorch it, but, uh.” She moistened her bottom lip with the pink tip of her tongue. “I have to hold your hand for it to work.”
He hadn’t touched her bare skin since their date a year ago. But he recalled exactly how soft her face had been as he’d cupped it. And the warm, gentle pressure of her mouth. He’d thought he’d found someone special, and then she’d stiffened into a stone replica of Daniela and wrenched from him.
But that was a long time ago, and she was just a woman. A witch, yes, and achingly beautiful, but just a woman. He could touch her now and not feel anything. He was strong enough to manage that.
Dani raised her hand. After a beat, he grasped it, and her fingers were delicate and cool in his palm.
“My magic will pass through you and into the metal thingy.” She nodded at the L bracket in his other hand. “It should be safe for you as long as I’m focused, but there’s no guarantee. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Right. She’d already done enough of that. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine. “
Magic hit David like a pipe to side of the head. His whole body jerked with the force of it, and he tumbled off the recliner, falling butt first onto the unforgiving concrete. The breath whooshed out of him, and he was temporarily paralyzed.
“Oh, my God!” Dani rushed to his side, but thankfully didn’t touch him again. Not yet.
“I’m so sorry! Please tell me you’re okay.”
“Wow.” He concentrated on inhaling and exhaling, unable to do much more for a couple minutes.
Her magic had been cold and sparkly with a mind of its own as it arced up his arm. Like an invading army of billions of foreign ice cells. A very unexpected and uncomfortable sensation.
“I hurt you.” Tears shone in her eyes. “Holy shit, are you okay?”
It hadn’t hurt so much as scared him. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to…”
Something was wrong. She was on the verge of breaking down, which was a bit of an overreaction. All he’d done was fall on his ass. No real harm done. He’d shake it off in a sec. Perhaps she, too, was feeling the stress of their imprisonment. But then the Carver’s words came back to him.
“Dani, did you blind someone?” he whispered. “When you were younger?”
A single tear fell and darkened the collar of her scrubs. “They told you about Bailey?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” She wiped her face and then straightened the long-sleeved white shirt under her top. “It was an accident. A long time ago.”
My God. It was true. The toddler whisperer of Springfield had injured a kid. His head spun, and not from her magical punch to the temple. What else didn’t he know about her? What exactly was she capable of?
“Did you kill him?” David asked.
She winced. “Of course not. And don’t look at me like that. I told you, it was an accident.”
Pain shone in the dark depths of her eyes. This was something she tortured herself over—he could see it in her tensed jaw and furrowed brow. But if Dani could blind a person, what else could she do? Because he was stuck in very tight quarters with her.
“How strong are you?” he asked. “Could you kill me with your magic?”
Instead of answering, she ducked her head and scrubbed at her face. Finally, she said, her voice muffled, “I’m not that kind of caster.”
“But could you?”
Dani raised her eyes, now pink and puffy. “I don’t think so. I’d probably kill myself in the process.”
“You understand I had to ask.” He so badly wanted to touch her. A sympathetic pat on the back or a quick, friendly hug. But she wouldn’t like that.
“I know.”
David stood, flexing his arms and shoulders. There was no epicenter of pain, but an overall ache he may have to live with for a while. Magical symptoms seemed to stick around.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Let’s try it again.”
Her expression registered horror. “No. No more.”
“Dani,” he said gently, “I trust you.” And he realized it was true. Gazing into her dark coffee colored eyes he knew she would never hurt him intentionally. Unlike their captors, she used her magic for good.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Positive.”
She nodded. “I’ll tone it down as best I can.”
“Thanks.” He reclaimed the L bracket and climbed onto the wobbly recliner. “I’m ready.”
When she clasped his hand, magic shot up his arm and raced across his shoulders. It was like a hive of tiny insects under his skin, all with a singular goal—get to the wood of the foundation. But he was more prepared this time for the invasion, and he remained on his feet.
Gritting his teeth against the goose bumps and the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, David aimed his bracket at the nearest exposed beam. Her magic didn’t blow the thing away, but the tool, despite being room temperature, scorched the wood black. He kept at it, chipping away splinters of wood, flicking off shiny bits of char, making slow progress, but enough that he felt confident he could get through to the upper floor before the Carver returned.
Minutes passed, probably ten, before Dani’s fingers went from cold to freezing.
“I need to take a break.” She gasped, letting go and plopping onto the floor.
David followed her down. “What’s wrong?” Her face had drained of color, and on an exhale her breath appeared as a white fog between them.
“I’ll be okay in a minute.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked again.
“Don’t touch me.”
Fine. Hands to himself. He got it already, but Dani’s skin had a scary, bluish tint to it, and she couldn’t stop shivering. “What’s happening?”
Dani’s teeth chattered so loudly her words came out breathy and stuttered. “I overdid it. My fault.”
“But what is it?”
Flashing an annoyed expression, she said, “My magic sucks the warmth out of me. I’m like the i
ce witch in that movie.”
He’d never seen a movie with an ice witch in it. Not really his style, but he bobbed his head as if that made perfect sense. “You should have told me,” he whispered. “I would have stopped.”
“I don’t usually cast this much.” She ceased shivering. “I thought I could control it better.”
“This happens when you do magic?”
She curled in on herself, and her glossy black hair veiled her face. Irrationally, he fantasized about running his fingers through it and burying his nose in the soft curls. But this was not the time for sexy daydreams.
“Then you’re not doing magic anymore.” David wasn’t going to put her health at risk. He’d find another way.
“I need a little time before we try it again.” Dani slumped on to her mattress and hugged her knees to her chest. “I’m still so tired.”
She’d made it crystal clear she did not desire his touch, but he had to do something. Maybe it was his paternal instincts firing up or maybe he just couldn’t watch her suffer, no matter how cold she’d been in the past.
He removed his white dress shirt and draped it over her torso. She didn’t respond, and it looked like she’d fallen asleep. Or passed out.
He had to get them out of there.
He climbed onto the recliner. In only ten minutes, he’d scratched a perimeter into the flooring. He had hours to spend on the rest of it. Even without magic, he could break through and get them out before the Carver returned.
* * *
Dani sat up, wrapped in David’s soft-as-silk dress shirt that smelled of him—earthy male and aftershave. She didn’t remember asking for it, but it had comforted her while she’d dozed and helped remove the chill from her bones.
Their last conversation came back to her.
So, David knew what she’d done to Bailey Haas. It had been by far the worst moment of her life. Worse than being abandoned—which she couldn’t remember anyway—and worse than being put in this room. What she’d done to Bailey was cruel and unforgivable and shameful.
But how had the Carver learned about it? However he’d discovered it, she couldn’t wait to see him again and flex her magical muscles a little in retaliation.