When I stepped forward to join him, Gwenlyn seized my hand. “Morgan, no way. It’s probably a trick.”
“He won’t hurt me.”
“He already has.”
“Gwenlyn.” I took her firmly by the shoulders, trying to impart some sort of reassurance through what I hoped was a confident facial expression. “Keep an eye on the spirits. The coven can’t see them. If any of the ghosts break away from the tree, let someone know. I have no idea what Dominic has planned next.”
“Don’t die,” Gwenlyn ordered.
“I don’t plan on it,” I replied. With a nod at Cassandra, I broke away from the rest of the coven in order to meet Dominic at the bench beneath the yew tree. Hesitantly, I sat beside him.
“You’ve got a little something…” He reached out to brush the dried turmeric paste from my hair, but I smacked his hand away.
“Don’t,” I said.
He held up his hands in acceptance. “No touching. Got it.”
“Call them off, Dom.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
In a rush of emotion, I found my hands around Dominic’s throat, pouncing on top of him and bending him backward over the bench. It was only the sheer surprise of my attack that prevented Dominic from defending himself.
“Call them off.”
“Okay, I’d officially like the ‘no touching’ thing to go both ways, please,” Dominic choked out.
I tightened my grip, watching as Dominic’s face turned purple. Bizarrely, he seemed unconcerned with my hold on him.
“You don’t want to kill me, Morgan,” he huffed. He didn’t look quite so handsome when he was the same color as a ripe plum.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Dominic snapped his fingers together and, in a flash, a horde of spirits yanked me off of him with no effort at all. Ronan, one of Dominic’s chosen cronies, snapped his teeth at my ear. He held me securely around the waist, preventing me from attacking Dominic again, while the other ghosts stood between Dominic and me like a spiritual shield.
Dominic rose from the bench, massaging his throat. I felt oddly pleased at the sight of his reddening neck, though I wished I had thought my actions through. As I glanced around, I noticed that several members of the coven had dropped, drained completely of their craft. The ghosts, on the other hand, only seemed to grow stronger, as if feeding off of the coven’s power. I suddenly understood. Because Dominic was using the originals’ power to strengthen his spirits, the present Summers coven wasn’t able to defend themselves. They could only add their witchcraft to that which stemmed from the yew tree.
“Everyone, stop!” I ordered.
The coven needed no other persuasion. With a collective sigh of relief, the remaining witches withdrew their magic, each witch catching her breath. The ghosts dimmed, proving my theory correct.
“Caught on, have you?” Dominic said, smiling.
“How are you doing that?” I asked. “It’s my family’s power, not yours.”
“You’re not wrong there,” he said. He ran a hand over the new finger-shaped bruises on his neck. “Fortunately for me, your family chose to channel their power through a natural entity. Any witch is able to connect with the yew tree, as long as they have the proper ritual.”
“And I assume you discovered this ritual in Mary Summers’s diary?” I prompted. I resisted the urge to pull away from Ronan’s grasp, knowing that he would only take the opportunity to restrain me through an alternate method. “Why did you even give it to me?”
“You forget that I still hope you’ll help me with raising my mother and sister,” Dominic said as he approached Ronan and me. “Connecting with the yew tree is only the first step. I’ll need all the assistance I can get to pull my family back to this earth.”
“You can’t do it, Dom,” I gasped, exasperated. “It won’t work.”
Gently, he caressed my cheek. “Oh, Morgan, of little faith.”
“I thought you weren’t playing God,” I said, wanting more than anything to separate myself from his touch.
“No, you thought that. I, on the other hand, have complete faith in myself.”
And with that, he turned from me and stepped up onto the bench beneath the yew tree. It had begun to rain again, transforming Dominic into a silhouette against the streetlights behind him. He stood loosely upon the bench, his hands relaxed by his sides, his eyes closed, and his head tilted up toward the upper branches of the yew tree. Then he took a great breath and began to sing.
Dominic’s singing voice was just as polished and tranquil as his regular tone. He crooned a strange hymn in Latin, which echoed throughout the square as though it lived in every raindrop. The tree, as if in response to Dominic’s song, began to glow with a steady white light. It grew from the roots upward, illuminating the town square with a fair, crystalline magic. The sight of the yew tree, alive with a power that seemed brighter than the sun, was breathtaking. I was stunned by the beauty of Dominic’s ritual, taken aback by the way my heart seemed to lift toward the yew tree, as though my soul were offering itself up in return for a spare bit of the tree’s purity.
And then the light shifted. As Dominic’s song grew louder, resonating within my very being, the light drained from the yew tree. It was then I realized that Dominic had pressed his hands to the trunk of the tree, and the light was transferring from the tree to Dominic. As the light filled him, Dominic began to glow as well. Transfixed, I forgot that Ronan had a hold on me. I forgot that Dominic was planning to raise the dead. I forgot that this entire incantation was a sign that things, yet again, would undoubtedly change within Yew Hollow.
There was only Dominic, whose beautiful blue eyes now shone with the light of the tree, whose skin seemed to radiate with sunlight, and who looked more like a god than ever before.
Chapter Nine
In Which My Best Efforts Fail
As the light subsided, leaving the town square illuminated only by a few streetlights and the stars, Dominic removed his hands from the trunk of the yew tree. For a few moments, I only watched his shoulders rise and fall with the action of his breathing. The square had gone quiet, all of us entranced by the organic beauty of the spell. It was nothing like my previous experience with power transference. Despite Dominic’s skewed intentions, the ritual itself was too sublime to discount. Now Dominic embodied that elegance. It seemed to emanate from his very pores.
My brain caught up with my common sense. Dominic was distracted, staring at his hands as though he couldn’t believe the ritual had worked. If there was one last chance at detaining Dominic before he could raise the dead, this was it.
“Gwenlyn,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. Her head tipped toward me ever so slightly to indicate that she was listening. I nodded toward Dominic, whose back was to us, hoping she understood the subtle gesture.
She nodded back then nudged Laurel, who was standing next to her. My silent idea spread through the coven. One by one, their eyes turned to me. I waited until I had everyone’s attention then nodded once.
All together, the witches directed attack spells at Dominic’s back. He froze as the rainbow of auras rained down on him, and a tiny bit of hope sprang from my heart. Dominic fell to his knees, seemingly overwhelmed by the coven’s collective offense. But then Dominic’s shoulders shook as if we were laughing, and he stood again to face the coven.
“No more of that,” he said nonchalantly.
And to my great surprise, the coven immediately withdrew their attack spells. They stood casually with their hands by their sides.
“What are you doing?” I demanded of the witches. “We had a shot!”
It was then I realized that Laurel and Gwenlyn, who were standing closest to me, made no attempt to indicate that they had heard me. I waved a hand in front of Laurel’s face. Her eyes had glazed over, and her gaze remained focused on Dominic. Gwenlyn stood in a similar fashion, and as I looked around
, openmouthed, at the other witches, I realized that each and every one of them was waiting for Dominic’s next command.
“It’s quite marvelous, isn’t it?” Dominic asked as he finally moved away from the yew tree to approach me.
“What have you done to them?”
“Nothing at all,” he replied, still walking slowly toward me. “They’re simply following the requests of the holder of the original coven’s power.”
“You.”
“Correct,” Dominic said. “I’m going to send the coven home. They don’t need to be involved with this next bit. All I need is you.”
“I told you I wouldn’t help you raise the dead,” I said firmly, holding my ground as Dominic reached me.
“Morgan, I’m trying to be reasonable here,” he said. “Look, if I was really some kind of malicious magician, I would have put your family in mortal peril and hung it over your head.”
“You robbed them of their free will,” I said, indicating the zombie-like state of the witches around me. “How is that reasonable?”
Dominic snapped his fingers. At once, several ghosts separated themselves from the yew tree to join him.
“Take this motley assemblage back to their house,” Dominic ordered them. “Remain there unless I send any further instruction.”
The ghosts rounded up the witches and herded them away from the town square. To my absolute horror, none of my family members tried to resist the pull of the ghosts. Even Gwenlyn, who was able to see the strings manipulating the coven, turned from me and followed the coven up the hill, away from the square. I let them go. Despite Dominic’s hold on them, I felt utterly relieved that they wouldn’t have to be involved in the next part of Dominic’s scheme.
As the procession of witches and spirits faded into the darkness, I turned back to Dominic. “Why haven’t I been affected in the same way?”
“You’re a medium,” Dominic answered simply. “I work through the spirits. Since you and I have similar abilities, you aren’t affected by the ghosts as others are.”
“What about Gwenlyn? She’s a medium, too.”
He gave a shrug of his shoulders and a smile. “I suppose she’s too weak minded to resist.”
I looked up at the remaining ghosts. They now sat in the branches of the yew tree like strange, glowing cats, waiting for Dominic to give them further orders. I spotted Ronan near the top of the yew, balancing precariously on a springy bough of the tree.
“What now?” I demanded of Dominic. “Ready to raise the dead?”
Dominic chuckled. “No, the ritual for that takes a little more preparation. Nothing savage, of course, but I do need a few things.”
“What sort of things?”
Dominic ticked off a list on each of his fingers. “Wine, honey, candles, bay leaves, dittany of Crete—what am I missing—oh, and some kind of musical instrument. Bells would be best, but anything will do. I don’t suppose you play guitar, do you?”
“No, and before you ask, I gave up piano when I was five.”
“Damn,” he said.
“Besides, I think the town apothecary is out of dittany of Crete.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, the shipment only comes in once a month.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “You’re messing with me.”
“What town still has an apothecary, Dom?”
He laughed. It was an odd moment, the two of us standing there, discussing ingredients for a spell to raise the dead in such a blasé fashion. Perhaps my attempt at nonchalance was a coping mechanism, my sarcasm being the only line of defense I ever knew how to fall back on. If anything, I could only hope to distract Dominic long enough to get the upper hand over him.
Dominic wrapped an arm around my shoulders as if we were best friends. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
I shrugged him off. “What part of ‘I won’t help you’ didn’t you understand? There are only so many times I can say it.”
“Exactly! I’ll wear you down eventually.”
“No, you won’t, Dominic.”
His expression hardened, his eyes solidifying like sapphires. “Morgan, I’ve given you the option of doing this the easy way. Please don’t make me up the stakes.”
“You’ve already pod-peopled my family,” I reminded him. “That better be reversible, by the way. What else could you possibly want from me?”
“I need you for this ritual, whether you involve yourself willingly or not,” he said. Behind him, the ghosts in the yew tree seemed to be getting restless.
“Why me?”
“One, because you’re a medium, and two, because you’re the strongest of the Summers coven,” Dominic said. “I need someone with Summers blood for part of the ritual.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” I muttered then said more clearly, “I still won’t do it.”
Dominic grimaced. “I was afraid you might say that. Ronan?”
Ronan detached himself from the yew tree to float behind Dominic. Dominic’s ritual seemed to have strengthened Ronan’s physical appearance even more. His muscles rippled beneath his T-shirt like a bodybuilder’s during an extreme workout.
“You rang?” Ronan said to Dominic, leering at me.
Dominic refused to break eye contact with me as his next order left his mouth. “Unless Morgan consents to help me, I want you to find Teagan and kill her. She’s in Room 12 at the local inn.”
My mouth dropped open in horror. Ronan, alternatively, buzzed with joy over this new assignment. He pumped a fist in the air like a frat boy at a beer bash.
“You can’t do that!” I said to Dominic.
He shrugged. “You can stop it. Just help me with the ritual.”
“No,” I growled.
“Last chance.”
“NO.”
Dominic waved to Ronan. “Sounds like she’s made her decision, Ronan. Off you go.”
As Ronan soared off in the direction of Teagan’s hotel room, I said to Dominic, “We spelled Teagan’s hotel room, remember? Ronan won’t be able to get in.”
Dominic walked around the base of the yew tree, gazing up into its leaves and admiring the remaining ghosts. “Unfortunately, the protection spell won’t work.”
I crossed my arms. “Why not?”
“First of all, because I smudged the line of black salt on my way out of Teagan’s room. Furthermore, that spell was created by the Summers women,” he said. He picked a twig from the tree and began to twirl it between his fingers. “As such, anyone with the same power can dismantle the protection spell, just like that.”
He snapped the twig in half to illustrate his point.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, though my hands trembled at the thought of Ronan finally enacting revenge on his wife.
Before Dominic could respond, a shrill scream ripped through the air. My heart stopped. The scream had come from the direction of the inn. It had to be Teagan. I turned from Dominic and sprinted away, not bothering to glance over my shoulder to see if he was following.
When I arrived at the inn, panting, I kicked open the door to Teagan’s room to find more than one surprise waiting for me.
“Gwenlyn?” I breathed in disbelief.
Sure enough, Gwenlyn stood between Ronan and Teagan, her hands barely visible beneath the dark green of her witchcraft. Ronan, a look of pure frustration etched across his beefy face, attempted to force through the pulsating glow of Gwenlyn’s shield but didn’t seem to be making much headway. Teagan cowered behind Gwenlyn in the corner of the kitchenette, covering her head with her hands as Gwen’s shield sparked and sputtered.
“Morgan!” Gwenlyn squeaked with relief. Her face had drained of color, and a sheen of sweat was visible on her forehead. She wasn’t strong enough to battle with Ronan’s new powers. It was evident in the tremor of her hands.
With Gwenlyn distracted by my entrance, Ronan took a step back and body-slammed her shield with renewed vigor. This time, Gwenlyn couldn’t hold him off. The
forest-green buffer vanished, and Gwenlyn fell back into Teagan. Ronan, his face stretched into a satisfied smile, reached out for Teagan.
Without thinking, I flung myself across the room and tackled Ronan. We connected with a loud smack, his absurdly large muscles just as solid as they would be had he still been alive. It was like running into a brick wall. The crashing together of our bodies knocked the wind out of me, but I still managed to wrap my arm around his neck, preventing him from reaching Teagan.
As I struggled with Ronan, Gwen surged to her feet. She looked wildly around the kitchenette, caught sight of the knife block, and flung herself across the room to reach it. Ronan pitched me forward, over the top of his head, and slammed me down onto the kitchen table. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gwenlyn raise a butcher’s knife above her head. She swung it downward, thrusting it into the middle of Ronan’s back. He roared in frustration, releasing me to reach around and yank the knife out of his ribs. I took the opportunity to roll off of the table and help Teagan to her feet. Together, we staggered toward the door of the room in the hopes of escaping Ronan’s rampage.
Suddenly, the butcher’s knife embedded itself in the doorframe, perilously close to taking a chunk out of Teagan’s nose.
I spun around to see Ronan take Gwenlyn by the throat and lift her into the air. My lungs felt devoid of air as Gwenlyn’s face reddened above Ronan’s meaty fist.
“Hand her over, Morgan,” Ronan growled, ignoring Gwenlyn’s fingers scrabbling against his hands.
I edged in front of Teagan, reaching slowly for the knife sticking out of the wall. “Put her down, Ronan.”
“I’ll trade you,” he said with an abhorrently pleased grin. “One bitch for another.”
Behind my back, I wiggled the knife back and forth, hoping to free it from the plaster. “You’re a better guy than this, Ronan,” I said, feeling the lie on my tongue as it left my mouth. “No one has to get hurt.”
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