I can’t imagine what the other covens would think if they knew, and I wonder how many other things my father has hidden from them. I swallow hard when I think how he must know that I’m like my mother and that he feels he has to get rid of me like he did her.
Unable to lie still anymore, I throw back my blankets and walk quietly toward the door. I ease it open so I don’t wake Toni and slip into the hallway. I think about going to Keller’s room, but instead I wander the halls. My meanderings don’t stop my thoughts from racing, but at least moving around expends some of my nervous energy.
I end up in a hallway that’s new to me. I hear music and walk toward it. At the end of the hall is a small study with a large bookcase covering one entire wall. A large, dark wood desk sits directly in front of the books. I look to the right as I enter through the double glass doors to see a grouping of chairs and couches facing each other in a square. Stretched out on one of the couches on her stomach is Piper. I must make a noise because she looks back over her shoulder.
“Oh, hey,” she says.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
She pulls up into a sitting position and crosses her legs yoga-style. “You’re not bothering me,” she says. “In fact, you’re saving me from physics.”
I cringe as I walk toward the couches. “I hated physics.”
“You’ve taken it already?”
“Yeah. Have to get all that stuff out of the way so we can learn how to torture people.” I try to sound flippant, but I can tell by the look on Piper’s face that she knows how much the circumstances of my time within the coven weighs on me.
She gestures toward the couch opposite where she’s sitting. “Have a seat.” When I hesitate, she gives me a pleading look. “Don’t force me to go back to studying. I think my head will explode.”
“That would be messy.”
She laughs as I slide onto the soft, thick cushions of the couch. “Couldn’t sleep?”
I shake my head. “Too much on my mind.”
“Sucks having to shoulder so much when you should be going to the movies and sneaking out with your boyfriend.”
“I can’t even fathom a life that simple anymore,” I say. “I used to think about doing those things when we took care of the covens.”
“You don’t anymore?”
I grab a fringed pillow and hug it to my chest. “I try not to think this way, but it seems so beyond the realm of possibility now.”
“Because of what happened with Barrow?”
“Yeah. That and the fact we have no idea how to stop them. I feel like every time I take one step forward I then take ten back.”
“At least you’re not in this alone,” she says.
“True. Although I still can’t believe it sometimes. I was prepared to live my life alone.”
“Tell me about how you and Keller met.”
I smile at the memory, though it scared me at the time. “I was hiding in the woods after engaging my magic to speed out of the way of his truck, and I saw that he was holding both a gun and a bloodstone used to track supernatural beings.”
“Did he find you?”
“No, he left. But imagine my surprise when I went to school for the first time a few days later and there he was. But he didn’t realize what I was until later.”
“And it didn’t matter to him?”
“It wasn’t quite that simple, but we eventually got past it.”
Piper sighs in that dreamy way. “I think it sounds so romantic, like star-crossed love.”
“Sometimes it seems too star-crossed. I live in fear of hurting him.”
“I think you would worry less about that if you’d seen the two of you today from where I was standing. I got chills when I saw how he was able to calm you, even with your power so unstable.”
I remember all the times he’s taken the edge off my darkness before, and something about that tickles at the back of my brain. I get the feeling I’m missing something important.
“It’s obvious he’s head over heels in love with you, too,” Piper says. “And I get the feeling it goes both ways.”
I can’t help smiling. “I want nothing more than a normal life where I don’t have to be afraid for either of us. I got a taste of that when we were back in North Carolina, and when I left it felt like I’d ripped the heart from my chest. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“I believe you. I’m envious of you.” She shrugs. “I dream about having something like that.” For a moment, she looks sad. As if she believes the possibility of that happening is about as likely as the moon turning green. She taps her open physics book. “Maybe I’ll become great at physics and get me a hot science geek.”
An idea starts forming in my head, and it has nothing to do with science geeks. I smile.
“What?” Piper says.
“Nothing.” I nod toward the textbook. “Want me to help you study?”
“I thought you hated physics.”
“I do, but I got an A. Plus, maybe it’ll be a cure for my insomnia.”
We spend the next couple of hours alternating between me quizzing her and talking about our two lives. I learn that she wants to be a clothing designer in New York.
“That sounds so cool,” I say. “Your aunt certainly is stylish, at least when she’s not working at the library.”
“Yeah.” A bit of the spark goes out of her voice. “I won’t be able to do it though.”
“Why not?”
She gestures vaguely to the room around us. “When you’re born Bane, there are certain expectations.”
I lean forward with my forearms propped on my knees. “I was expected to conform to the expectations of my coven, too, but I refused. Don’t let anyone else tell you what to do with your life. If you want to go to New York and be a designer, you do it.”
Piper’s reluctant acceptance of her fate lights a fire in me. If the covens are no longer an issue, Piper can go anywhere and be anything she wants. Toni can go back to her family and her band. Keller can go home, mend things with his father, and hunt things that pale in comparison to dark witches. Egan and I will finally be truly free to go after our own dreams and be with the people we love without fearing we’re putting them in danger.
“You know what else?” I say. “I’ll be the first one to buy one of your designs.”
Piper smiles. “Something in all white, perhaps?”
I know she’s referring to the whole white witch thing, but an image of me in a wedding dress pops into my head. I do my best to push it away. Even if the covens were no longer an issue, marriage is way, way down the road. But the image lingers and causes my heart to warm. It makes me feel tingly all over, in a good way.
Piper closes her book. “I better get to bed or I’ll fall asleep in the middle of my exam tomorrow.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.” She gets up and heads for the door. Right before she steps out of the room, she stops and looks back at me. “Thanks again, Jax.”
“You’re welcome. Glad to use that physics stuff for something useful.”
“Not just for the help with the studying. You’ve made me believe that maybe anything is possible.”
Long after she leaves, I think about what she said. I am suddenly anxious for the arrival of morning so I can test my own limits of possibility. I’m a white witch, and I’m going to find a way to make that the entirety of who I am. I’m going to become what my mother and so many others before her never got the chance to be. And I’m going to make sure that no one else, human or witch, ever has to die at the hands of a dark witch again.
I end up sleeping on the couch in the study, and despite only a few hours of rest I head to the training room well before anyone else. The sooner I master my power, the sooner we can move on to the next stage in my plan.
But as I experiment with magic, I find myself shaking and unstable. That mixture of light and dark I felt yesterday has abandoned me. Today I
feel mainly dark energy with only the slightest hint of light, as if it’s retreated to some place far away. Determined not to be defeated, I keep practicing. And it must be working because I start feeling more light drifting toward the surface, pushing at the edges of the dark.
“You okay?” Keller says from behind me.
I spin, startled at his appearance. “Yeah. Guess my mind was elsewhere.” Like on the curious changes in my power.
Throughout the morning, Sarah puts me through a series of exercises with my power. With each one, I feel like I’m gaining a fraction more control. Not a ton, but a little is better than nothing. Hey, at least I don’t blast a hole in the wall today. We’re about to wrap up the morning session when I get an idea.
“I want to do one more thing,” I say.
“Okay,” Sarah says.
I look at Keller. “I want you to go to the farthest point from this room.”
He stares at me in confusion. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe nothing.” But maybe everything. “Humor me.”
After a moment of hesitation, he nods and heads out the door. Once he’s been gone long enough to reach the end of the underground facility, I tap into my magic. The air stirs around me as if a breeze is blowing, and the darkness coils slowly in my middle. I search for the light, but it’s disappeared again. It takes longer than I like, but I pull the darkness back under control.
“Jax?”
I look up to see Sarah watching me. “Did any of the white witches that you know about try to leave their covens?”
Sarah looks genuinely surprised by my question. “No.”
It seems so simple that part of me doubts its truth. But I think about my mother, the only other potential white witch who tried to leave. She didn’t succeed, but I don’t think that’s why she never tapped into her white magic. “Bring Keller back.”
“Care to fill us in?” Egan says.
“In a minute. I need to check one more thing.”
When Keller returns, I immediately try to access my light power, and it’s there again. “This is going to sound corny, but I know why my white witch powers manifested and no one’s before me has.” I look at Keller. “They’re at least partially fed by love. If all the other potentials were living within the confines of the covens, they didn’t have that to draw on. They didn’t have anyone to love them.”
“But you loved your mother,” Toni says.
“It’s not the same. That was instinctual, a child’s love for her mother.” I smile at Keller. “It wasn’t something I chose.”
Keller looks dumbstruck. “Me?”
I laugh a little. “Yeah. I think you’re the key. This kind of love is different. It’s . . .” I avert my gaze, embarrassed to be admitting my deepest feelings in front of everyone. “It’s all-encompassing.” Romantic love versus familial.
Egan claps him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, dude. You just became a witch battery.”
“See how much of your white magic you can use,” Sarah says.
Reluctantly, I break eye contact with Keller and reach back inside myself. Energy crackles at my fingertips, as easy as taking a breath. I pull more energy up through my body, down my hands and into my fingers. Electric bolts of magic escape my hands and dance around my entire body. Again, the air begins to stir. I let it build slowly until I feel first my hair lift away from my neck then my feet easing off the floor.
Yes, that’s it. Release me.
I gasp and fist my hands, closing off the magic. I drop to the floor, my breath ragged. Keller is instantly beside me, his arm wrapped around my back.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. I take comfort from his strength next to me.
“The darkness.” I press my palm to my forehead. It’s hot to the touch, as if I have a fever. “It’s there, and it wants out.”
I meet Keller’s eyes so close to mine. He kisses my temple, and I glance up to see Egan and Toni in front of me, effectively shielding me from the Bane without looking like it’s deliberate. They all know I don’t mean just my dark power but whatever I pulled out of the earth at Shiprock.
“You have to show it that it can’t win,” Sarah says. She steps up beside Egan and looks down at me. “If you keep backing away because you’re scared, you’ll never defeat it.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I say.
“What’s too dangerous is the covens amassing their forces and us with no way to fight back. You know yours won’t stop until they kill you, and they won’t think twice about killing whomever they have to in order to find you. I won’t stand by and let that happen.”
The darkness snaps inside me, making a mockery of the bracelet on my wrist. It wants to lash out at Sarah, but I yank back on it and focus on the goodness I feel in Keller. Sarah’s right. I have to keep working until I am in complete control.
For the next couple of days, we spend nearly every waking moment practicing. My progress is achingly slow, but at least it’s progress. The longer I work, however, the more I feel like a caged animal. Trying to ignore the feeling, I push myself too hard and take another sizeable chunk out of the wall.
“I’ve got to get outside, see some daylight,” I tell Keller, Toni and Egan one night after another long day.
“Maybe Sarah will let you out for a day,” Keller says. “And I think it’s time we told her about the Beginning and Ending books, that we have them. Maybe there’s something in there that we’re missing and they’ll see.”
I know that’s highly unlikely, but I don’t say so. But on the off chance that Keller is right, I’m willing to follow that road and see where it leads.
“We don’t have the Ending Book,” Egan says.
“But we can get it.” I stop pacing and place my hands on my hips. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
After the guys head to their room for the night, I close the door and lean back against it.
“What were you hiding from them?” Toni asks me.
“You sure you’re not an observer witch?” I ask.
“Nope. Just your average teenager, if by average you mean runaway, truant and friend of witches.”
I cross to my bed and sit down facing her. “I’m going to ask if Piper will go with us.”
“Why? Don’t you think they’ll want to send one of the adults with us?”
“I’ll make the argument that we’ll just look like a group of friends out spending a Saturday together if it’s Piper.” I tell her about my conversation with Piper that night in the study.
Toni’s eyes widen. “You’re totally going to set her up with Rule.”
“At least let them meet each other, see if there are any sparks. When she was talking about her life, it seemed so lonely. That’s when I remembered Rule saying something similar, that he’d never met anyone he could share his real self with until he met me.”
Toni claps. “It will be so awesome if they get together.”
“They’ve got to like each other first. There are no guarantees.”
“It’ll be a shame if they don’t. I mean, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. And Rule’s not exactly hard to look at either.”
I think about Rule and Piper together, but then my thoughts drift to Keller as they so often do.
“You okay?” Toni asks.
I nod. “But I can’t stop thinking about this connection between Keller and me.”
“Yeah, seems like you’ve got all kinds of connections.” Toni smiles, but it’s a bit shaky.
“You know the only reason I have it with Egan is because we’re both witches. That’s all.”
“I know.” She lies on her side and picks at the edge of her blanket. “I just wish I had something like that.”
“What you have with Egan is special, more so because there’s nothing supernatural at play. He loves you. And even though I don’t need my connection with him to know that, I can feel it, too. He was miserable without you.”
“He said that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
&
nbsp; She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. “You ever wonder if we’ll all stay together after this is finished, if we make it through it. I mean, you hear about how life-and-death situations bring people together. But do they stay together after the high-stakes danger is past?”
“Toni, you don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve known Egan a long time, and before he met you I would have bet my life that he could never feel about someone the way he feels about you.”
She rolls back toward me suddenly. “We’ve got to kick these witches’ asses so we can get back to Baker Gap. I cannot wait to stroll into school hand in hand with Egan. We’ll be normal couples going to ball games, studying for tests, going to prom someday.”
“Toting your drums to gigs, hunting evil spirits,” I say.
“Okay, so semi-normal.”
We laugh and talk about normal things like breaking curfew and going to prom. When Toni threatens to get a prom dress that looks like Kaylee’s layer cake dress from Firefly, I tease that maybe I’ll dress like the glamorous Inara.
“Good grief, Keller will have to beat all the guys off with a baseball bat.”
Even though I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, the normal girl inside of me sort of likes the idea of Keller defending my honor. “I really do love him,” I say. “More than I ever thought I could love anyone.”
“I know. I think that’s the thing that’s going to save us all.”
It seems cosmic somehow that love might be the thing that fuels the defeat of the covens, which are made up of anything but love. I imagine that pendulum swinging closer to the middle, bringing things back into balance.
Chapter Seven
“I want to get out of this building for a while,” I announce at breakfast the next morning.
“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Amanda says.
“What’s not a good idea is me going stir crazy because I haven’t seen the sun since I don’t know when. I want to breathe some fresh air.”
Magick (Book 3 in the Coven Series) Page 8