by Diane Farr
“Go?”
“It’s a euphemism, honey.” Her voice was silky. “I hear Lance tried to take the Power from you and couldn’t do it. You wouldn’t let him.” She shook her head, feigning regret. “Too bad. Something tells me you’re going to wish you had trusted him, back when you had the chance.”
All this time, I had been lounging on the gazebo steps. Suddenly that didn’t seem like the best defensive position. I got slowly to my feet, absently dusting the back of my jeans with my hand. “Well,” I said. “I think I see your point. Fifty spellspinners is one too many, huh?”
“That’s right, sugar. You not only put us in danger with the sticks—you make us all weaker. And that—“ she stepped a little closer. “Just won’t do.”
The air thickened with menace. Before I could move or think, Amber vanished. And almost immediately I felt a hard shove between my shoulder blades. I stumbled forward, nearly falling onto the cement path. As I turned to face my enemy, I saw her out of the corner of my eye on the top step of the gazebo—where she had skatched in order to attack me from behind—but she vanished again. Skatching may be Amber’s only power, but she’d turned it into an art form. She reappeared on the grass to my left, running toward me.
Her movements were so quick and unexpected, my brain couldn’t process them. I froze like a deer in the headlights while she rushed and tackled me. My feet actually left the ground and I flew backwards, landing on my back on the lawn with Amber on top of me. Most of the air whuffed out of me on impact, but she wasted no time in making matters worse. Her long, strong fingers closed around my throat.
I had a glimpse of Amber’s furious face above me, her teeth bared in a snarl, her golden eyes narrowed. Then instinct took over.
I don’t know how to describe what happened…I flicked her. Power normally enters my body through the soles of my feet, but lying on the ground like that, it seemed to shoot up into every inch of my backside—my spine, the backs of my thighs, the back of my head, everywhere I was touching the planet. And Amber flew off and away from me like a spat watermelon seed.
I didn’t flick her hard—at least, it didn’t seem so to me. But she slammed into the gazebo with so much force that a shower of dead leaves and sticks slid off the roof and pattered down around her like rain.
I sat up, sucking in air like I’d been drowning. Amber looked stunned. Well, she probably was, quite literally. I dimly realized that her feet were dangling in the air above the ground; somehow I had pinned her to the post. I let her go—again, with my mind, so it’s hard to describe. She immediately slid down to the ground, still with her back against the gazebo. Her knees buckled. She reached behind her and grabbed part of the latticed wall for support, breathing hard and staring at me. Her face was filled with hate, but her eyes weren’t glowing anymore.
“Keep your distance,” I said quietly. There was no need to shout. I was quite certain she’d take my warning to heart. “From now on.”
“It’s not…up to you,” she panted. “Do you think…you can keep us all away? By yourself? You can’t.”
A voice came out of the shadows behind me. “She won’t be by herself.” Lance stepped into the circle of moonlit lawn surrounding the gazebo. His anger seemed to fill the entire space, making the air around us pulse and turn red, swirling with dark images. I was amazed that Amber could stand upright against the onslaught of Lance’s anger—until I remembered that she couldn’t pick it up the way I could.
Amber’s eyes shifted from my face to his. “You can’t choose her over me.” Her voice, despite sounding winded, sounded perfectly certain. “You can’t.”
“Amber.” Lance’s soft voice sounded almost regretful. “I already have.”
I stared at him. A chill ran down my spine—or was it a thrill? I don’t know what my reaction was, apart from surprise.
Amber’s reaction was clear. She was livid. “Why, you lying little s.o.b.—who do you think you are?” She started toward him, but something in Lance’s face, or mine, stopped her in her tracks. She licked her lips, her eyes darting from Lance to me and back again. I sensed her uncertainty and realized she was afraid.
I got to my feet—wincing a little; she had really knocked me down hard. But I thought Lance and I should show her a united front.
She lowered her head like an animal at bay. “You’ll never get away with this,” she told Lance. “They’ll come for you, too. Is that what you want?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”
Amber’s laugh was breathless and disbelieving. “You think they won’t? You think they’ll let you make any old choice you want? You’re dreaming, lover.”
I shot Lance a mental message. Can I send her away? I’m tired of this.
The corner of his mouth twitched, but his gaze remained leveled on Amber. Best to let me deal with her.
So I crossed my arms and waited, eyeing Amber sourly. She was looking back and forth between the two of us again, sizing up the situation. A gust of that strange September wind hit me, flapping my jacket. I felt my hair fly out around my head in a halo, writhing like Medusa’s snakes. Maybe I looked scary; I dunno. All I know is that Amber straightened and took a step back.
“All right,” she said, still speaking to Lance. “Protect her if you can. But they’re taking her down. Don’t blame me if they take you down, too.” And she vanished.
I knew she was really gone this time. The negative energy lifted like a lid popping off.
I let my breath out in a whoosh. “Wow,” I said. “That was interesting.”
“I’ll bet,” said Lance wryly. Then he looked at me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” My tone may have been a tad frosty. “Where were you, by the way?”
“Walking.” He did not sound happy about it. “Did you know Cherry Glen has a noise ordinance? I can’t ride my bike here after ten p.m.”
“Well, that sucks. Did you forget how to skatch?”
I saw his jaw clench. “No, I didn’t forget how to skatch,” he snapped. “I couldn’t skatch. Next time, cupcake, don’t arrive so friggin’ early.”
My confusion must have registered because he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Can’t get through to her,” he muttered to himself. “Jeez.”
“What?”
“The banishment. Remember?” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I can’t skatch to wherever you are.”
Realization dawned. “So…because I was already here, you couldn’t skatch to the park?”
“You got it.” Disgusted, he strolled off down the path toward the drinking fountain. I followed. “When I tried, nothing happened. By the time I figured out what was wrong and headed out on foot, Amber was ahead of me.”
I felt an urge to apologize. I quashed it. “Oh.” He drank, then turned back toward me, wiping his mouth with his hand. I was conscious of an urge to reach up and do it for him. Quashed that, too. “Why did you tell me Amber wasn’t powerful?”
“She isn’t.”
“She acts like she is.”
“She’s…well-connected. Her grandfather and her great-grandmother are on the Council.”
“Her great-grandmother?” I was impressed in spite of myself.
Lance, predictably, read my mind. “She’s a hundred and two.”
“Wow. I could tell she was older than you, but I didn’t think—“
“Not Amber.” Silent laughter shook him as he appreciated my little joke. “Amber’s twenty-three.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Still a tad old for you, Lance. Sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He started strolling back toward the gazebo. “Six years isn’t so much. And you gotta admit, she’s a looker.”
A low growl started in my throat. Lance grinned. He was enjoying this. “Jealousy is good for you,” he said.
“For people in general? Or me personally?”
“You personally.” He stopped and glanced around the park. “Is there somewhere else we could go?”
> “Not yet.” I hated to admit it, but I was starting to feel a little shaky. It’s not every day that someone tries to kill you. At least not in my world. A reaction was setting in.
Lance looked me at sharply, frowning. “You need to sit down.”
I didn’t argue.
“The steps will be okay.” I weaved slightly as I headed back to the gazebo and plunked my trembling body down on the shallow wooden steps. Lance sat beside me, silent. And by silent, I mean I couldn’t hear his thoughts, either. “Talk to me,” I said faintly. “I’ll listen. It’s time you told me about her.”
He was still frowning. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Anger licked through me. “Nothing? How about the fact that you’re supposed to have a baby with her?”
Now he looked uncomfortable. I’d never seen Lance Donovan look uncomfortable before. “Well, that’s not carved in stone.”
“Amber thinks it is.”
“Okay.” He sighed and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees so he didn’t have to look at me while he spoke. “The Council chooses which spellspinners get to reproduce. There’s so few of us, we have to be careful about pedigrees. So there’s nothing personal about it. It’s just, you know, what’s best for the race. Amber and I make a good match. We’re not closely related, and…” His voice trailed off and then he shrugged. “Amber’s not so bad. She just doesn’t like you.”
“When you have a baby with someone, you are linked to them forever.”
“Well, yeah. In a way. But—“
“In a way?” I was trying not to get upset, but I couldn’t help it. “In a big way! How can you say there’s nothing personal about that?”
Now he looked at me, frowning. “Zara, you’re thinking like a stick. Amber’s no threat to you.”
“She tried to kill me! And don’t tell me she’s not powerful enough. I know she’s not as powerful as I am, but she could do it. All she needs is better luck and some advance planning.”
“And an order from the Council. Trust me, Zara, she just lost her temper. She won’t really try to kill you unless the Council tells her she can. And she doesn’t have that yet.”
“Yet?”
“I honestly don’t see that happening.” He was trying to reassure me. “If the Council decides to move against you, they won’t send someone like Amber to carry out the directive. Certainly not alone. They know you’re powerful. They’ll probably send a group.”
“And what are you and Rune and Amber, if not a group?” I was definitely feeling shaky now. “And where is Amber? I don’t think she went to Denny’s for a piece of pie! She’s going to the Council, Lance. She’s going to tell them what happened here tonight. They’re going to send a freaking army.”
I could feel my words hitting home. He hadn’t thought about that, but now that I’d said it, he acknowledged it was likely. Likely that Amber would run to the Council. And likely that they’d listen to her.
I was on a roll now. “Don’t forget what she said about you. You can’t side with me against them, Lance. They’ll take you out.”
“I have to side with you.” His angry eyes bored into mine. “We have wholesoul.”
“Do they know that?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Why is it such a freakin’ secret?
“Because it doubles our power. Don’t you know that? Can’t you feel it?” His frustration was palpable, a moving, breathing thing to me. And I knew it wouldn’t be that to anyone else on earth. “Our combined power is a threat to all of them. If they find out we’ve got wholesoul before they’ve accepted you, Zara, that fact alone will make up their minds. They’ll kill us both rather than let us rule over them.”
I felt my eyes widen in amazement. “But I don’t want to rule over anybody.”
“Me neither. But we could. And that will be all they need to know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I told you it was rare, right? Wholesoul?”
I nodded, speechless.
“And I think I also told you that we have no written history.” He frowned in concentration. “Rune knows more than the rest of us. There’s a lot of oral tradition, you know. Legends and lore. And some of it is about wholesoul.” Humor gleamed briefly in his kryptonite eyes. “Which some of us think might be a fairytale. Since nobody in our times has ever had it.” Until now.
I had a flash of realization. “You were among them. You didn’t believe in wholesoul.”
“Right. But I recognized it when I felt it. Any spellspinner would. We all know the stories. And in the stories, usually the two people with wholesoul join forces and, you know, overpower the others. Sometimes spilling a lot of spellspinner blood in the process. There were a couple of terrible wars in our past—hundreds of years ago, but still. People remember. They tell the legends around the campfires at Spellhaven.” He gave me a slight, ironic smile. “So our having wholesoul is going to make matters worse for you.” Until it makes it better.
An emotion flared in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in him before. It took me a moment to put a name to it, but then I realized it was tenderness. Lance felt protective of me. I ducked my head to hide the foolish little smile that was playing around my mouth. I hated to appear weak in front of him.
“Is it always a male/female thing? Wholesoul?”
He shook his head. “Once it was a pair of brothers. That was a long, long time ago. There were a lot more spellspinners then, but they weren’t as powerful. Our power dilutes when there are too many of us.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Amber told me.”
“But wholesoul makes you strong. So these guys were trouble. They conquered and they ruled, and they weren’t nice about it. Finally the rest of the spellspinners rose up against them. By the time they were deposed—well, murdered—there were only forty-nine spellspinners left. That’s when the Council was formed and the rules were set up. And there have been forty-nine ever since.”
I cut my eyes sideways at him. “You realize,” I said drily, “that last summer you told me there had always been forty-nine spellspinners.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I hadn’t paid that much attention to the stories. Rune fixed that, on our way here. In the car.”
Wind suddenly roared and rustled all around us. Fallen leaves danced across the path. I shivered. “So wholesoul won’t protect us,” I said softly. “We’re strong, but not invincible.”
“Right. If the others band together, they can outgun us. So to speak.”
I pulled my jacket tighter around me. We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the restless night grow wilder. Autumn was coming. The world was about to change. It was growing colder.
And Lance couldn’t put his arm around me to keep me warm.
Chapter 8
On Saturday I colored Meg’s hair. Nonny let us use the kitchen—on the condition that we (1) be careful (duh), and (2) read the instructions all the way through, twice, before beginning. We skipped the ones in Spanish, but apart from that we were true to our word.
We had some bad moments when we saw that the goo covering Meg’s head was turning greenish-black. But when she stepped out of my shower, having washed it all out, her mousy brown curls had miraculously turned to the glowing auburn depicted on the package. I assured her she was a vision of loveliness.
She looked doubtful. “Loveliness?”
“Cuteness,” I amended. “You’re a vision of extreme cuteness.”
It honestly surprised me what a difference mere color made. I always thought she looked fine before—and she did, of course. So I thought we were just doing this to boost her confidence. But the color suited her, and I mean everything about her: Her skin tone, her eyes, her personality. Meg was born to be a redhead.
A lengthy discussion of colors ensued, wherein most of my clothes were pulled out, tried on Meg, and strewn around the room. Meg had brought a bag of Bridget’s cast-off makeup and clothes, and we experimented with redhead-suitable lipsticks and stuff too. This was a heady expe
rience for a girl who had never thought of herself as pretty. Meg’s exuberance was infectious. Sunshine streamed into my bedroom, Meg danced around, and I laughed more than I had in ages.
After much argument and hilarity, we put her in a sea green tank top (mine) and a pair of white shorts (Bridget’s) and sashayed over to the nursery to show the new Meg to Nonny and Tres. Nonny pretended not to recognize her, much to Meg’s delight. Tres’s appreciative grin was icing on the cake. This, Meg declared as she hopped on her bike for the ride home, was the best Saturday ever.
But as I watched her sailing back toward town on her bike, red curls gleaming in the afternoon sun, a sudden foreboding clutched at my vitals and wiped the grin right off my face. It was like being punched by an invisible hand. I think I actually staggered. Frightened, I turned and ran back up the gravel driveway to the safety of home like a toddler runs to its mother.
What is it? What is it? I collapsed on the porch swing and sent my spellspinner feelers out, seeking Lance. I didn’t find him, but I found…something. My mind encountered a wall of menace pushing toward me. I’d never felt anything like it.
My instinct was to turn away, but I forced myself to stop and examine it instead. My breath was coming in short gasps and my teeth were clenched, but I didn’t notice that until later; I concentrated with every fiber of my being on this, this bulldozer inching down Chapman Road, seeking to level Nonny’s house.
Would it hurt Meg? The terrifying image of my best friend pedaling innocently toward it, whatever it was, propelled me to my feet, gasping in fear. She would be traveling right through it, with no protection whatsoever. Because this thing had a location—it wasn’t just some amorphous threat. There was something coming for me. And it was coming down Chapman Road.
Almost immediately, I heard the roar of a motorcycle in the distance. My heart leapt with relief. At the time, I didn’t stop to think how odd it was that Lance’s approach was so welcome to me. It just was. I may not trust him completely, but compared to the monster rolling my way, Lance was a knight in shining armor.