“Just relax, Mrs. Court, and give me your hands.”
Adrian, or Hedrick, as he went by these days, was barely visible through the narrow gap between the velvet curtain and the doorway leading into the back room where Raj was crouched on a low stool. On the other side of the curtain, the dark chamber was lit with dripping candles. Adrian sat in front of his client at a round table covered in a midnight-blue tablecloth. The setting looked better suited to a psychic reading than a healing session.
Luckily Raj could see in the dark. If only he could absorb an entire book with the touch of his palm instead of flipping through a tome on the art and magic of healing terminal diseases.
Adrian had told Raj he’d be fixing a migraine, not a brain tumor.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when the shady warlock pulled a fast one on him. There was a reason the coven had stripped Adrian of his powers. The man couldn’t be trusted. Adrian did, however, pay cash under the table to those who accepted employment working for the famed Hedrick the Healer. Basically, Raj was doing Adrian’s work for him.
Before losing his powers, he’d called himself Adrian the Avenger, and it was his business of avenging that had cost him his powers.
Adrian Hedrick Montez.
Rumor had it he started out in his early youth as Montez the Magician before going on the whole avenger kick. Rumor also had it that Adrian’s body wasn’t his own. The body one chose for themselves said a lot about a person. Adrian’s was about twenty-two years old, tall and muscular with thick brown hair and a snap-your-panties-off smile practically guaranteed to get the bastard laid whenever he wanted. The smooth, smug voice that went with the face grated on Raj’s nerves when Adrian next spoke.
“Now I’m going to blindfold you, my dear. Do not be alarmed. The eyes have a tendency to want to open and I need to ensure they stay closed while I take a look inside your brain.”
As Adrian tied the blindfold over Mrs. Court’s eyes, Raj silently slipped into the chamber and took the seat Adrian had vacated. Mrs. Court’s aura crackled. That’s what had tipped Raj off about a serious illness to begin with. Without the curtain blocking his view of her, he saw that Mrs. Court transmitted a distinct white.
“Now I’m going to put my hands on your head.” Adrian’s voice would be coming from behind Mrs. Court, but Raj supposed that added to the illusion of his powers.
Raj reached forward. Mrs. Court’s tight curls felt crusty under his palms. The woman must have used half a canister of aerosol. Raj leaned forward and lined his eyes with Mrs. Court’s covered eyes. He closed his.
There were bright horizontal lines running across his mind. They were faint and brilliant all at once. Raj worked his fingers through Mrs. Court’s curls. He applied his finger pads to her scalp like suctions. The lines moved up like a ripple in the wake of a disturbance.
Raj searched the lines, scrolling through them like text on a machine. But he’d reached the end and seen nothing. He started backwards, slower. Everything looked the same. For all he knew, he was looking at the same static and fuzz he’d see if he were sitting alone with his eyes closed.
This was crazy.
Raj had once tried to make his sister well and she’d only had a common cold. Plus it’d been his sister—he’d had every motivation to heal her. If he’d had the ability to, he would have transferred the cold to himself instead.
Raj spread his fingers wider, as though they were little antennas and all he needed was to pick up the tumor’s signal. But now he couldn’t move the image up or down. He was stuck inside a static void.
At least Adrian was keeping quiet. Raj swore if he heard the man say, “I think I see something” or “Interesting,” he’d take his speech from him.
Perhaps not the best idea. Powers or not, Adrian was not a forgiving man. Raj would just have to shoot him a look. But he couldn’t even make out Adrian’s breath.
Raj leaned back, relaxed his hold. His mind wandered as though in meditation and then he saw it: a dark mass near Mrs. Court’s parietal lobe.
Raj nodded.
“I’ve located the tumor, Mrs. Court,” Adrian said. “I need you to stay relaxed while I do more probing.”
Raj began squeezing his eyes again at the sound of Adrian’s voice and lost sight of the tumor for a moment. Relax. He breathed in and out until his inhalations matched the length of his exhalations. Concentrate.
Raj’s mother had taught him everything he knew about healing spells. It had been her dream for him to train as one of India’s mythic pranic healers. Raj didn’t want to live in India. He liked America. And he had no desire to become some spiritual woo-woo witch doctor who most likely meditated eight hours a day.
But at the moment he needed money.
Raj cleared his mind. The dark mass loomed like a mountain at dusk. He tried to make it disappear and when that didn’t work, he picked at it. He chiseled. He hammered.
Maybe if he indicated to Adrian that he’d been successful and Adrian told Mrs. Court the mass had been extracted, she’d heal herself with her own belief that everything was going to be fine. The placebo effect.
Or she might return, demanding her money back, or worse, put out bad PR about Hedrick the Phony.
Raj dropped his hands to the table and opened his eyes. What had his mother told him about the most gifted healers? They didn’t need to put on a show of physical contact and they worked with their eyes open.
Raj bore into Mrs. Court’s forehead.
He felt Adrian slip around the table and stiffen beyond his right shoulder.
Suddenly, Mrs. Court’s forehead peeled open before Raj’s eyes. He could see blood and tissue and brain.
Adrian must have seen it, too. He inhaled sharply and barely managed a whispered, “Hold very still, Mrs. Court.”
In Raj’s mind the tumor had been black. Now it glowed cream and white. There was a bright, blinding edge around everything inside Mrs. Court’s head. Raj tugged at the tumor gently with his eyes. It began detaching from her brain. Wispy, silk-like threads broke away, freeing the lump. The tumor floated forward as he pulled it out. Once it left the open layer of her head it disappeared in an eruption of tiny sparks that drifted down like shiny particles after an exploding firework, and then disappeared altogether.
Raj sealed her forehead.
The room was silent and then Mrs. Court gasped. “It’s gone.” Then she whispered, “It’s gone, isn’t it?”
Raj looked at Adrian and nodded.
Adrian sounded all blustering showman once more. “That’s right, Mrs. Court. I have successfully removed the tumor from your brain.”
She reached for the blindfold and as she did, Raj ducked behind the velvet curtain, thinking once again that an invisibility spell would have come in handy.
“You are a saint, Mr. Montez.” Mrs. Court’s voice was muffled through the velvet curtain. “Bless you, young man.”
Adrian studied Raj carefully after Mrs. Court had paid and gone.
“What was that back there?”
“A miracle,” Raj replied sarcastically.
“I’ve never witnessed a healing spell work that way.”
“I like to give it my own touch.” Raj’s smooth voice covered the shaking of his hands. His mother had once described a healing session like the one he’d performed on Mrs. Court. She’d told him the mystical tale of a pranic healer in India who’d opened a man’s chest up with the power of his mind to extract the patient’s cancer.
While there were a few hundred pranic healers in India, she said only three were able to do so with what she called “the extra bells and whistles.”
Raj shrugged.
Luckily, Adrian was back to business. “I’ve got a good one for you tomorrow. Woman wants twenty-twenty vision.”
“Let me guess,” Raj said. “She’s blind.”
Adrian grinned. “Think you can make a blind woman see again?”
“Easy.”
Adrian laughed and slapped Raj on the shoulder.
“Confidence. I love it. You know what they say about magic—it’s ten percent ability, ninety percent determination.”
And another hundred percent study. Raj was going to have his nose in the books all night now. Granting sight to the blind? There were any number of claims that spiritual healing could cure a person’s terminal illness, but cases of the blind regaining full sight were as rare as a phoenix.
Well, no one could say Raj backed away from a challenge. “What time?” he asked.
“Mrs. Ling’s coming in at ten.”
“In the morning?”
“Is that a problem?”
“I already missed school today.”
Clearly that hadn’t been the correct answer. Adrian stiffened and looked sideways at Raj. For a man without power, he still knew how to hold an intimidating stance. “Make Mrs. Ling see and I’ll pay you double.”
Double. Now Adrian was speaking Raj’s language. He was still twenty dollars shy of paying off the amulet. “I’ll be here,” Raj said.
Adrian grinned. “Good.”
* * *
When Raj stepped outside he had to blink to adjust his eyes. Compared to Adrian’s sealed-off lair, it was downright bright outside even for an overcast afternoon.
“Raj!”
Raj felt his heart soar. “Aahana!” He whipped around. His ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him. His little sister stood on the sidewalk not six feet from him. She looked older than he remembered—a mini adult in her khaki pants, black pea coat, scarf, and beret.
Her grin widened. Raj felt his own lips moving up as though Aahana were a ventriloquist controlling the strings on his face.
He lifted his arms and she ran toward him, but before she made it a voice broke in like cracked glass and stopped his sister cold.
“Aahana! Keep away from him!”
Aahana no longer advanced, nor did she retreat. She kept her ground—her expression a mixture of pleasure and pain.
His mother’s words might have been hasty, but her advance was not. She was still a beauty—tall, slim, dark-skinned with straight, silky hair that flowed past her shoulders. Men and women were forever staring at Raj’s mother. She was no blond-next-door and certainly hadn’t adopted the friendly American smile.
Raj straightened and narrowed his eyes at his mother. How dare she look at him with that menacing stare? He was a healer even more gifted than she. She ought to treat him with respect rather than as a child or monster. And she ought to stop treating Aahana like a child while she was at it. Aahana was in junior high now and a beauty in her own right. She was lighter skinned like their father and her smiles came naturally except when their mother was agitated.
“Hello, ladies,” Raj said evenly.
“Come on, Aahana, we’re going.”
“But I want to say hi to Raj.”
Their mother’s voice went up an octave. “Aahana.”
Aahana’s face fell. “Yes, Mother.”
Raj thought that was the end of it, but then his mother pushed a stray hair from her face and asked, “How’s your father?”
“Same old.”
His mother pursed her lips. “Some things never change.”
“No, they don’t,” Raj said. He wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it felt good to match her cold tone and stare.
“What are you doing in this part of town?”
Raj folded his arms over his chest. This was too much. His mother had abandoned him with a drunkard and wanted to play the parental card. “What’s it to you?”
“I know what you’re doing,” she answered for him. “You’re visiting Adrian.”
“He goes by Hedrick now.”
His mother’s eyes narrowed. “Aahana, we’re going.”
Raj tipped his head before turning. “See you around.”
* * *
As usual, it was Mrs. Baxter who answered the front door and greeted Raj when he stopped by. “Hello, Raj. Shay’s in her room with Max.”
Raj hesitated in the doorway. “Maybe I should come back.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Baxter said, opening the front door wider. “They’ll be happy to see you.”
Raj wasn’t sure if he felt like seeing the happy couple. And for all he knew they were in the middle of a steamy make-out session. He chuckled to himself. Shay and Max—nope, couldn’t picture it. Raj stepped inside the foyer. Mrs. Baxter tilted her head toward the staircase.
“Thanks, Mrs. Baxter.”
Her smile never wavered—like a Stepford Wife. “You’re always welcome.”
Raj didn’t have to knock at Shay’s door. It was open. He could hear Shay's and Max’s voices before he even reached it.
“Le livre d’étudiant! What’s wrong with that?” Shay demanded.
“It’s ‘le livre de l’étudiant,҆” Max said. “To show possession of a noun you have to use de plus the definite article.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t think my sentence is wrong, either.”
“Check with Madame Girard.”
“Just because she’s a teacher doesn’t make her right all the time.”
Raj’s lips quirked. Imagine if Shay and Max showed half as much interest in their magic as in French grammar. “Knock, knock,” Raj called out.
Max smiled instantly. “Raj, how are you, buddy?”
Raj took Max’s outstretched hand and shook it. “Keeping out of trouble.”
Shay still looked peeved. If a French native were in the room she’d probably insist that she was right and they were wrong. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Raj dug inside his pocket. “Here’s fifty-five dollars and I’ll have another twenty to you tomorrow.”
Shay didn’t look at the money or take it. In fact, she wasn’t looking at him at all. She was turning away. His lips turned down. “What?”
Shay faced him. “I don’t think you should give Gray the amulet.”
Max took a seat at Shay’s desk and bent his head over a textbook.
Raj folded his arms and redirected his attention to Shay. “Why?”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Me? Get hurt?” Raj laughed. The sound reminded him of gagging. “I can’t get hurt.”
“Of course you can.”
Raj frowned. “I need that amulet. Did you make it or not?”
“Of course I did.” Shay turned abruptly and went to her desk. “Excuse me,” she said and reached over Max to pull open a top drawer. Max leaned to one side as Shay extracted an iridescent-blue sachet bag. She loosened the strings and pulled out the amulet. It dangled from her fingers about three and a half inches.
“It’s beautiful,” Raj said. He hoped Shay would give it to him tonight. He had a couple more days to pay her the rest of the money before Valentine’s, but he’d feel better if he had the amulet now. That, and he wanted a chance to look at it before he gave it away.
Shay grinned and dropped the amulet back inside its pouch. “One of my best,” she said. She held it out.
Raj stared at her outstretched hand a moment.
“Go ahead, take it. I know you’re good for the remaining payment.”
Raj didn’t need further encouragement. He snatched the pouch. Shay raised one brow before lowering her arm.
“Thanks.” Raj flashed Shay one of his devil-may-care grins. “I’ll let you get back to your conjugations.”
“Stay awhile,” Shay said.
“Nah, I’ve got my own studying to do.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “No kidding. Where were you today?”
“Classified.”
Shay gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. It felt good; she rarely joked around like that anymore. “Maybe I’ll have to beat it out of you.”
Max half laughed, half grunted from Shay’s desk. He turned around to face the room. “And she could do it, too.”
Raj grinned. “I can withstand a bit of torture.”
“Ah, but can you withstand a truth spell?”
Raj squeezed the
amulet in a protective fist and tucked it under his folded arm. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Shay stared him down then laughed, relaxing her shoulders as she did so. “Of course not, that’d be a violation of a witch’s rights.”
Behind her, Max nodded his agreement.
Chapter Seven
Gray entered her house quietly. God knows she should have slammed the door, but she didn’t feel like seeing or speaking to her mom or sister and that meant not drawing attention to herself.
Forgiveness was out of the question.
Then again, in order for forgiveness to be denied in the first place it would have to be requested, which Charlene had not done.
“Where were you?” Mom asked.
Gray hadn’t noticed her sitting in a dark corner of the living room.
She answered with a flippant, “Out.” Gray kicked her shoes off and headed for the stairs.
“Charlene feels terrible about what she did,” Mom said. “I know it doesn’t excuse her, but it was Ryan Phillips’s idea.”
Sure, blame pear-faced Ryan Phillips. That’s what minions were for—to take the fall.
Gray glanced sideways at her mom through narrowed eyes. There was a tight frown and faraway look on her face.
“Ryan’s been a bad influence on Charlene,” Mom said.
Gray gripped the banister railing and took the first step up, proceeding forward before her mom could say anything more. She locked herself inside her room and put a pair of headphones over her ears. Jem’s “They” began playing. Gray turned up the volume.
At some point, she woke lying atop her bed. Her iPod was beside her on the nightstand. She still had her jean skirt and embroidered blouse on.
Gray tried to sit up, but found she was stuck on her back. A second attempt failed.
What the hell?
Then suddenly Raj McKenna materialized at the foot of the bed.
Gray tried to scream, but no sound emerged. The grin on his face was full of wicked intention. He took a step closer until the bed sheets brushed his thighs. His jeans were tight; even his ribbed cotton tee clung to his torso. He was muscled. More muscled than Nolan, less than Blake, but not as top heavy and bulky as her sister’s ex. Gray swallowed and it was no longer to scream. Raj’s eyes gleamed in the dark.
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