Emersyn and her fire were a sight to see. She flung her arms around in elegant arcs, shooting flames at everything that moved. Within seconds, each of the dozen or so demons were engulfed in their own personal bonfire. I smiled and stepped forward to applaud her when something moved from within the flames. My stomach dropped. The demons were still alive. They shrieked and screamed in agony. The sounds of them being burned alive would haunt my nightmares forever.
Emersyn…
My sister stood tall with wide eyes, but she made no move to do something about it. Then I realized it was intentional. She was purposely torturing them for her own enjoyment. My heart sank. I knew they were demons and had to be killed before they destroyed our world…but there was never a reason to literally torture a living creature.
Emersyn?
Nothing. She didn’t even blink.
I summoned all of my magic into my fingers then shot it out. The demons dropped to the pavement in charred, lifeless lumps. I moved forward to the center of their little fight circle, then looked at each creature. They were all dead. My pulse pounded through my body. I spun around to face her.
That is NOT how we do things, Emersyn, I said into her mind. We are not monsters. Don’t act like one.
“But—”
But nothing, I interrupted her. You’re better than that. Don’t forget it.
She looked down at the ground.
I sighed. “Go home and cool off, Em. I’ll have Tennessee give me a ride.”
“Okay.” She nodded then walked over to our mother’s car a few spots over and got in.
I waited until she pulled the car out of the parking lot and onto the main road to turn back toward the school. A shadow crept out from the trees and floated toward me. I raised my hands and let my magic swirl around my fingers. The shadow thickened to black smoke then shimmered with light. Henley appeared in its place. Every time I saw her, it was a knife to the heart. It looked like her, sounded like her, and hell, it even dressed like her. But those red eyes told a different story. In that moment, I knew the little show Emersyn had just put on had not gone unseen by the monster living in my friend’s body.
She grinned and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, well, well, High Priestess. Darkness suits you well.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tennessee
I’d checked the entire east side of the gymnasium. Emersyn wasn’t there. Since my phone hadn’t rung, I assumed no one else had found her yet either. A group of students blocked my path for the side doors. I growled and my magic spilled out of me. It shot through the air in little invisible pulses. But I felt them. The students flinched and looked around until they spotted me marching toward them. They jumped out of my way, parting like the Red Sea. I smiled and nodded at them as I walked through.
Or at least I thought I did.
I shook my thoughts of the Sapiens away and ran down the steps to the sidewalk. Neither Emersyn, Henley, or Tegan were anywhere in sight. But they were there somewhere. I pushed my magic out of me, sending my energy out into the night air in search of someone else’s. Then I felt it. Tegan’s magic reminded me of the Old Lands. It was strong and ancient. It was a force to be reckoned with. My magic slammed into it like running into a brick wall.
Wait, why is she using magic? My pulse quickened. She must have found Henley—or worse. I sprinted across the grass and raced for the front of the building toward where I felt her aura radiating power. I ran around the corner of the gym and skidded to a stop. Emersyn was nowhere in sight.
But Tegan stood face-to-face with Henley.
I froze in place. They weren’t fighting. There were no weapons out. Henley was smiling. And not in that I’m-about-to-kill-you way. If it weren’t for the red eyes, I would’ve thought by their calm demeanors that that was the real Henley. The magic I’d felt lingered in the air around my soulmate, but she wasn’t actively using it. I glanced at the ground and spotted a few dead demons. Well, that explains her magic. But what is going on here?
I wished for the millionth time I could communicate telepathically like Tegan did. It would’ve been so convenient. Maybe there was some way she could make us be able to? Maybe there was a spell in the Book of Shadows? I’d only gotten to see it once, and only for a short time, but I knew there were all kinds of things in there. Including birth control potions.
My cheeks warmed. Focus, Tenn. I shook those thoughts away and refocused on the two girls in front of me. I was too far away to hear the words they were saying, and reading lips had never been a skill of mine. If I moved closer, I risked the chance of spooking Henley off. Tegan could handle herself, and I was here if she needed it. My chest burned like someone had lit me on fire. So I knew she knew I was close.
Henley smiled and stepped back. She held her hand out and said something, but I couldn’t hear it.
Tenn, Em went home. Now, I have to do something. Don’t freak out, I’ve got this, babe.
I barely had time to register Tegan’s words in my head before she took Henley’s hand and they disappeared. Together.
Chapter Nineteen
Tennessee
“Are you sure she didn’t come home last night?”
Cooper sighed and leaned his forehead against my dashboard. “Easton, for the eight hundredth time, I’m positive she didn’t come home.”
Easton leaned forward between the seats. “But how can you be so sure?”
“Yeah, she could’ve climbed in through her window.” Braison popped his head into view, over Easton’s shoulder.
Then she would’ve seen me. When I left school, I’d gone straight to her house and climbed through her window. Emersyn had been in there. I’d told her what went down. She then asked me to wait with her, that she didn’t trust herself to be alone if Henley came looking for her, too. So I’d agreed to sit outside their window and wait. It was somewhere around the tenth time Emersyn checked on me that I realized she knew. Tegan must have told her about our connection. It was kind of a relief. I’d never had such a long talk with Em until last night.
In the end, I’d woken up in the grass at sunrise to find my soulmate hadn’t returned.
“No. Emersyn said she stayed up all night,” Cooper said without picking his head up. “Besides, I was up most of the night. On the couch, waiting for her to come home. I’d been waiting to talk to her about that little charade at the dance.”
“Oh…” Braison rubbed his jaw. “Hey, I didn’t know she was going to wear that, nor did I know just how well they could tango.”
“I’m not surprised at all that Deacon can tango like that,” Easton said with a grin. He wagged his blond eyebrows. “Playa has to have moves.”
Don’t put that image in my head. But it was too late. My brain played it back with vivid clarity. I clenched my teeth and took a deep breath through my nose. It meant nothing.
Cooper growled and turned to glare at Easton. “Deacon knows the law. No putting moves on my sisters. Once we find Tegan, he and I are going to have words.”
Easton rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “That reminds me…did it work, Braison?”
I looked in my rearview mirror in time to see Braison’s cheeks turn as red as his hair.
He chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”
The traffic light turned green, so I refocused my eyes on the road and drove forward. It was somewhere around noon on a beautiful, cloudless sunny Sunday. A little after ten, the word had gotten out that Tegan hadn’t come home yet. That was when I’d admitted what happened with Henley. My father had then split us up into groups and sent us on a hunt to find her. The four of us had been driving around downtown pretty much since then. We circled and circled, but there was no sight of her.
Cooper sat up and turned to stare out the passenger window. “I still can’t believe you just let her leave with that thing.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t exactly have a chance to stop her. They teleported, Coop. I’m fast, but I’m not that fast.” Trust me, I tri
ed.
As I drove through an intersection, I glanced down the street to my left, but a wall of heavy rain blocked my view after a few blocks. I frowned and looked straight ahead. That’s odd. I leaned forward and peeked up at the sky, but it was a crystal clear blue day. I tapped my finger on the steering wheel, thinking. Florida had weird weather patterns. It was perfectly normal to have rain on one street and clear skies on the next. Except that wasn’t just rain… It was a monsoon with a sky so gray you couldn’t see through it. I gripped the wheel and made an illegal U-turn.
“Whoa, what the hell, dude?” Cooper yelled once we were driving the other way.
I sped back down toward the intersection and turned right. My heart pounded in my chest. Up ahead, there was a gray wall in a clean line across the street. A chill shivered down my spine. My magic soared to the surface, the same way it did when I was in combat. My power sensed danger before I did.
“Tenn, man, what’s going on?” Easton said behind me.
Heat flared in my chest, burning through my skin like a wildfire. Tegan. I knew I recognized the energy in the air.
“You feeling all right, Tenn?” Braison asked softly. “You don’t look so good.”
“Can’t you feel that energy?” I asked through clenched teeth. “Because I can, and we’re heading right for the source.”
Cooper gasped. In my peripheral vision, I saw him look back and forth between me and the storm in front of us. “You think that’s her?”
I knew she was nearby, whether or not she caused the storm. However, I couldn’t tell him that. “If she’s not causing it, then it’s flocking toward her.”
A few seconds later, rain slammed against my windshield. I held my hand to the window, and the water stopped hitting the glass. Everything around us was drenched. The streets flooded as high as the sidewalks. Leaves and garbage floated by like they were in a river rapid. The roar of the rain drowned out any other sounds. My Jeep Wrangler was made to handle this kind of weather, but I pulled over alongside the park.
My chest burned so bad I thought smoke would come out of it.
“THERE SHE IS!” Easton yelled from the back seat.
I spun around to look out the window into the park and found her in an instant. She stood in the center of the park, still wearing her promiscuous costume. I jumped out of the car before I knew what I was doing. I moved closer, needing to talk to her. She stood there frozen in place, staring into space, completely soaking wet. My shirt and pants clung to my skin in a way they hadn’t been mere moments ago, so I knew I was drenched but I paid it no mind. My focus was on her. She looked pale and tired. Her black makeup ran down her face. She’d switched out her red heels for her black combat boots. Her upper body was covered under her leather jacket.
Wait. She went home. When? Had she really gone home in the two-and-a-half-hour window no one was there?
“Tegan!” Cooper yelled from suddenly right beside me.
I frowned. I hadn’t yelled for a reason. I didn’t want to spook her. Something about her demeanor scared me.
“Yo, TEGAN!” Easton shouted from behind me.
I walked forward, wanting to close the distance between us. If she heard them yelling her name over and over, she didn’t acknowledge it. We made it about halfway to her when lightning struck the ground in front of me. I cursed and jumped back. I took another step, and lightning struck again. I froze in place. Cooper and Easton moved forward, and two bright white bolts the size of a tree hit the ground in front of them. Grass and water went flying through the air. I frowned. They were standing on opposite sides of me—that was no coincidence. That was intentional.
“This is her,” I whispered. I’d suggested it could’ve been a product of her power, but I was wrong. This was a storm of her making on purpose.
“Did you know she could do this?” Cooper mumbled back.
She turned and faced us head on. My pulse quickened. My legs burned with the need to run up to her. I wanted to hold her in my arms and ask her what was wrong. Because something was definitely not right. Her gaze met mine, and my feet carried me forward. Lightning hit the ground around us, but it didn’t block my path again. Her pale eyes were distant and heavy, but I couldn’t fathom why. I blinked through the water pouring down my face. Yet her stare held mine.
I opened my mouth to call out for her, to ask her to talk to us, when a black sedan pulled up between us. What the hell? I gripped the hilt of my sword, ready to fight whoever was inside. Tegan’s gaze held mine for a long moment, then she opened the door and climbed inside.
Chapter Twenty
Deacon
I’d never been the stalker type. I’d never intentionally tried to be where someone was and have it look like a coincidence. But then I met Emersyn and everything changed.
My soulmate was a conundrum. She confused the hell out of me. I never had a problem reading people, figuring out who they were and what they were about. Even before I became the Devil. It had always been a gift of mine. Which was probably what made me a candidate for the Card in the first place.
But with Emersyn? Nothing. I had no idea what she was about. When I tried to use my magic to read her desires, it was a hazy, thick, dark cloud. It was smoke. I was starting to wonder if she was somehow cloaking herself. She was powerful enough. And it wouldn’t surprise me. She didn’t seem to care for me, though I couldn’t fathom why. I thought we’d made progress during our quest to the Old Lands. She’d stopped looking at me with blatant animosity. But then we got home, and she barely acknowledged me.
So there I was, on a Monday morning, sitting in my car in the student parking lot waiting for her to arrive. I wasn’t trying to be creepy. I hoped it wouldn’t come out that way. I just wanted to talk to her. There was a lot of really serious stuff going on in our lives, but I just wanted to be a part of hers. If only as a friend. Truth was…I’d never had an actual girlfriend before. Relationships were never something I was interested in. At least not monogamous ones. But I wanted that with her one day. I wanted to do things right. I wanted to do right by her. I just needed her to open the door for me.
I looked down at the clock in my car and groaned. School started in twenty minutes, which meant I’d been sitting there waiting for an hour already. Just throw in the towel for today, Deacon. I reached over and grabbed my backpack off my passenger seat then climbed out of the car. When I looked up, I spotted Devon’s green sedan pulling into the lot. The windows were down, and someone’s long platinum blonde hair hung out the window like Rapunzel in her tower.
Emersyn. My pulse quickened. A moment later my chest burned like a match under a magnifying glass. By the time I hit the lock button on my keys and shoved them into my backpack, she’d parked two rows up from me. I smoothed the front of my gray T-shirt then walked toward her. Act natural. This was just a coincidence. You weren’t waiting for her.
She got out of her car and slammed the door. Then she opened it back up and slammed it shut again but with even more force. I tried not to smile…and failed. She blew her hair out of her face then looked up to glare at the sun. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she hadn’t slept all night. Which I assumed she hadn’t, not with Tegan being MIA.
“Good morning, Emersyn,” I said once I got up to her.
She turned her glare to me. “Does it look like a good morning, Deacon?”
I opened my mouth then shut it. Maybe this is a bad idea. Disengage!
“I. Am. Melting.” She stepped closer to me. “And do you know why, Deacon?”
I swallowed nervously and scratched the back of my head. “Because the UV index and humidity are stupidly high here even in October?”
“Yeah. And I can’t wear a tank top because of you.” Her golden eyes shined as bright as the sun, forcing me to look anywhere else. “Yeah, look at me. In a long sleeve shirt. I just asked Siri, and she told me it’s ninety-seven degrees outside.”
“Uhh…”
“NINETY-SEVEN, Deacon.” She threw her backpack on the gro
und and groaned. “Turns out that I don’t own a single tank top or short-sleeved shirt that covers my chest and shoulder. So I have to melt. Because of you.”
My eyes widened. “Well…I mean…because of The Coven’s law.”
“I’m hot, Deacon. I’m about two seconds away from shaving all of my hair off, and this…this…”—she waved her hand over her chest— “burning thing isn’t freaking helping.”
“Why didn’t you just borrow one from Tegan? She wears tees every day.”
She shook her head in surprise, then blinked up at me. “I… Dammit. Why didn’t I think of that? Why am I such an idiot sometimes?”
I frowned. “I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Em.”
“Am I? Because if I hadn’t stormed off at the dance by myself when I knew that Henley-demon was around, then Tegan wouldn’t have gone off with her,” she cried. “So, once again, it’s my fault.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I moved closer but then stopped myself. We weren’t in a place where I could comfort her. “Em, no one is blaming you. Tegan is a stubborn, strong-willed witch. You said you didn’t even see Henley that night. Which means that she—it—was waiting for Tegan.”
Emersyn opened her mouth then shut it again. She shook her head. “Thank you. I just wish I believed that. I have to go to class now.”
“Emersyn, wait.”
“Sorry for snapping at you. It’s been a rough few…months.” She sighed and turned away from me.
“Well, that went well,” I mumbled to myself.
A warm burst of energy tickled the back of my neck. I frowned and glanced over my shoulder. At first I didn’t see anything, but then out of nowhere, appearing completely out of thin air, was Tegan. She walked across the parking lot, moving toward me but the next lane over. She’d finally changed out of her costume and back into black skinny jeans and her studded black combat boots. The black leather jacket was an interesting choice in the heat. Her long black hair was tied up in her standard messy bun. Her face was void of any makeup, and looked a little paler than normal. Actually, she looked tired as hell. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look so worn out. It made my stomach tighten into knots.
The Broken Witch (The Coven: Elemental Magic Book 4) Page 8