A real smile curls around his lips now. “When you have gone at least a day without causing a natural disaster on a grand scale.”
I give him a sour look. “Not funny.”
He chuckles. “I disagree.”
“Will you please be serious?”
He leans forward and takes my hand in his, lacing our fingers together. “Alright, I think you should demonstrate how wild your magic is. Grandmother and I can reverse whatever damage you cause.”
I frown and pull my hand back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Did he seriously just roll his eyes at me? “Xandra, I am not insulting you. I am simply asking you to demonstrate to my grandmother how much work you have ahead of you before you have mastered control over your magic.”
“Really? You’re not insulting me? Because it certainly sounds insulting to me.”
“Speaking the truth and being insulting are two different things.” Now he looks almost as irritated as I feel.
“Maybe I should demonstrate to you how much control over my magic I do have.” My brain is trying hard to protest because my mouth is being outrageously unrealistic, but I choose to ignore it. I stand up and over my shoulder, I say, “Are you coming or not?”
Something about the dumbfounded look on his face makes me stop. And that’s when my brain kicks in again. The kitchen is quiet, but not because of the protection circle, anymore. Finally, Dad asks, “Where is Kallen?”
“Um, right there,” I say pointing to where he’s clearly sitting at the table. Why are they all looking at me so strangely?
“You are the only one who can see him, dear,” Isla says and there’s a triumphant gleam in her eyes.
“What do you mean? He’s right there, sitting next to you.”
“He is still in the circle he threw up so he could speak to you privately. I am assuming he is stunned into inaction by the fact that you simply walked out of it. Generally, the person who made the circle is the only one who can breach its walls.”
Mom’s left hand is covering her mouth and her eyebrows are practically at her hairline. “Are you truly able to see him?”
Okay, they’re starting to freak me out. “Yeah, he’s sitting right next to Isla and he’s looking at me as funny as you are.” Looking closely at Kallen again, I realize he’s not really staring at me. He’s staring at the spot where I walked out of his circle. He can’t see me just like no one else can see him. I guess this pretty much confirms my freak of nature status. But who cares? These abilities are pretty cool. Though, I am getting annoyed by how everyone’s eyes except Isla’s are moving back and forth between me and where Kallen should be, like they’re in a trance or something. It can’t be that big of a deal.
“Oh, good lord, just come out of there already,” I say as I move my hand through the faintly shimmering air that outlines Kallen’s circle.
With the most self-satisfied look I have ever seen on another person, Isla turns to the even more stunned Kallen. “I believe you were saying something about Xandra’s inability to control her magic?”
Kallen narrows his eyes at me for a moment before he answers his grandmother. “Does it really count when she does not even know what she is doing?”
If I was closer to him, I’d kick him. I really would. But, -Isla just seems amused. “When the outcome is consistently the desired one, does it truly matter if it was done with or without the knowledge of the mechanics behind it? I do not know the mechanics of that toaster over there, but I trust that it would brown my bread if I desired it to do that.”
First, I didn’t think she even knew what a toaster was since they don’t have them in the Fae realm. And second, did she just seriously compare me to a toaster? Right at this moment, I’d be okay with them both going back to the Fae realm and staying there.
Kallen turns to his grandmother and points an accusing finger towards me. “Do you feel that? That is how much magic she pulls when she is only a little upset. When she is truly angry, she pulls too much to control or contain.”
Okay, it’s true, I didn’t even realize that I was pulling magic until he mentioned it; but, he’s wrong about one thing. I’m not just a little upset. I’m truly angry. “What would you like me to do to show you how much control I have right this minute? How about this?” I imagine the lukewarm cup of coffee in front of him pouring in his lap and some of my magic rushes out of me to make sure it happens. Muttering a strong oath, he pushes back from the table and stands up. The bottom of his t-shirt and the lap of his jeans are soaked like he wet his pants.
Dad laughs but tries to cover it up with a cough even though ghosts don’t cough. Grandma’s biting her lip to keep from laughing and Mom lets out a little giggle before she manages to get control. Kallen has a completely outraged expression on his face when he looks back at me. Which turns into a satisfied grin when my hot chocolate escapes the table and ends up in my hair. I’m about to retaliate when a young voice says behind me, “That’s wicked. Xandra, you have to show me how to do that!”
I twirl around and my little brother has a grin a mile wide on his face. I can’t help laughing, even if my hair is dripping hot chocolate on the floor. “Sorry, buddy, you have to wait until you’re seventeen to have your magic unbound. Then you can have as many food fights as you want.” It’s customary for Witches to bind the powers of children until they reach the age of seventeen. They believe that magic in the hands of children is too dangerous.
“That sucks,” he pouts. Turning towards Mom, he says, “Can I come out of my room now? There’s nothing to do in there.” Mom had sent him to his room when Isla arrived. Even though he has been touched by some of what has happened recently, we’re trying to keep the really dangerous stuff from him. Grandpa had been here, too, but Grandma sent him back to his hotel so he didn’t hear any of this conversation. He can’t be trusted.
“Zac…,” Mom begins.
“Actually, we were just going to go outside and see whose magic is better, mine or Kallen’s. Why don’t you get your coat and boots on and you can join us.” Mom crosses her arms over her chest and gives me the evil eye, but she doesn’t say anything. Zac runs off with a grin to find his coat and boots.
Turning towards Kallen again, I say, “Are you ready?”
He chuckles. His anger from a minute ago has dissolved into a combination of disbelief and amusement. “You seriously want to do this? I am not going to go easy on you. I will show you how a Pooka warrior will fight.”
Like that scares me. Okay, maybe it does a little. Or a lot. Regardless, I nod. “I seriously do.”
He inclines his head towards me and sweeps his hand towards the kitchen door. “Alright, after you.” As he’s speaking, the wet spots on his t-shirt and jeans magically disappear and a black winter coat covers his now dry t-shirt.
Chapter 2
After a quick stop in the bathroom to rinse the coffee out of my hair, I grab my heavy winter coat and snow boots from my room. The part of my mind that is trying to be rational about this has been bound and gagged and thrown in the trunk of the oh, so mature part of my brain that wants to prove Kallen wrong. The most annoying thing? Isla still seems to be greatly amused by the whole thing. She hasn’t said anything, but the twinkle in her eyes speaks loudly enough to prove it to be so.
Once we’re outside, Kallen turns around. “How do we do this? I seem to recall that the Cowans had a procedure for fighting duels back in the day. Shall we adhere to those rules?” He walks about twenty paces away and turns back towards me.
I shake my head and roll my eyes. “I can’t believe I’m dating a guy who’s over three hundred years old. Maybe I should take pity on you and let you back out. I’d hate for your old and decrepit bones to give out on you if I get too rough.” I hear someone snicker. I think it was Zac. He’s standing next to Mom, Dad, Grandma and Isla and he’s loving this. I heard him tell Dad that this is better than a video game; that says a lot for him. Even Aunt Barb left her lab she has set up in the garage to
come watch this. It’s going to be humiliating if I don’t prove my point. Unfortunately, I’m starting to forget what the point is I’m trying to prove other than Kallen annoyed me.
Instead of responding to my gibe, Kallen smiles and says, “You did not answer my question.”
What was his question again? Oh yeah, how are we going to do this. I haven’t a clue. “Um, what do you think we should do?”
Now he snickers. “Let us start with something small.” In an instant, a crossbow appears in his hand. And it’s loaded. And pointed at my heart.
With my hands on my hips, I give him what I hope is a threatening glare. “You wouldn’t dare.”
The last word is barely out of my mouth when he pulls the trigger. Immediately, I crouch down and put my hands over my head and wait for the arrow to hit me. After several heartbeats, I realize it didn’t it. I peek out from under my right arm and Kallen’s obviously amused, but that’s not what I’m looking at. I’m looking at the wall I threw up between us that made his arrow bounce off of it and fall harmlessly to the ground. With red cheeks, I stand up; embarrassed I didn’t have more faith in my magic.
His head is cocked to the side and he has a smirk on his face. “You will not inspire fear in your enemy if you crouch in fear yourself.”
“I didn’t expect you to try to shoot me in the heart with a crossbow,” I say accusingly.
Kallen shrugs. “If I did what you expected, it would not be a true example of warfare.”
He makes it sound like it’s going to be World War III or something. Fine, I can play dirty, too. Focusing on the arrow, I push magic towards it and it goes hurtling back towards him. Not fast enough, though. In the flash of an eye, a raven zooms from the spot where Kallen once stood and it soars to the top of the closest tree.
“That’s cheating!” I yell up to him. Fairies each have an animal that they can shift into. Kallen’s is a raven. I don’t have an animal yet. I do have Angel wings, but they only come if I truly need them. I can’t call them at will.
In response, Kallen’s raven form sweeps down from the tree like a dive bomber and I fall back in the snow to avoid a beak in my face. Okay, now I’m really, really mad. And fortunately for me, the madder I get, the better control I have over my magic. As he makes another fly by, I roll to the side and put a wall up just on the other side of me. It goes up so fast, and he’s flying so quickly, that he can’t avoid running into it. The sound of his beak and wing hitting the wall makes me cringe. I think I may have actually hurt him.
Before my eyes, Kallen’s raven form disappears and there’s my now naked, or sky-clad as he would say, boyfriend lying in the snow. A large bruise is forming on his cheek. He must have turned his head at the last moment to save his beak from breaking as he hit the wall.
Biting my bottom lip, I crouch next to him. I’m trying very hard to ignore the fact that all of his lean, muscular glory is lying exposed in front of me. “Um, are you alright?”
In response, I get a scowl that slowly turns into a smile. “I’d feel much better if you kissed me.”
That’s a no-brainer since I love kissing him, and I feel badly that I actually hurt him. I lean forward to bring my lips to his. But he doesn’t kiss me. I don’t know where he got them (maybe Isla brought them?), but the next thing I know, I have three Fairy darts sticking out of my arm. When the poison from Fairy darts enters my system, my body metabolizes it as alcohol and I become drunk. These must be some really potent ones, because the effect is almost immediate.
My head swings from the darts in my arm back to Kallen’s smug smile. My mind is getting fuzzy as the alcohol quickly seeps into my brain. I should be telling him off, but what comes out instead is, “You’re naked. I like you naked.”
Kallen grins and leans up from the ground to whisper in my ear, “Maybe someday I’ll get to see you naked.”
“Uh uh, I don’t want to get married yet.” I push him away from me with a great deal of effort because I’m losing some of my coordination. My words are slurred now and barely understandable. But I’m not drunk enough to forget that in the Fae culture, having sex is the equivalent of getting married. Or hand-fasted, as they call it.
He chuckles and clothes himself with his magic as he sits up. He’s back in jeans and a heavy coat. “Then how about if I take you prisoner instead.” As he’s talking, bands of what feel like steel, but scratchier, lace around my wrists and ankles. I’m fascinated as I watch it because he’s pulling it from the ground with his magic and it looks really cool. It’s a rusty color and it’s beginning to irritate my skin a tiny bit.
I look up at him. “What is this?” In my current inebriated state it sounds more like ‘wa’s iss?’
A wicked grin forms on his face. “Iron. Guaranteed to prevent even the strongest Fairy from escaping.
My bottom lip goes out in a pout. “I don’t like it.” I frown as he laughs at me.
Leaning up to give my cheek a light kiss, he says, “You’re not supposed to like it, my little Witch Fairy. That is what war is all about.”
My mottled brain is getting really annoyed with him again. I try to stand up to get away from him but I fall back down – which causes him to laugh even harder at me. I look at him, then down at the iron keeping me from standing, and then back to him. Finally, my gaze settles on the iron again. “You don’t want to be on me,” I slur. “He’s the one you want.” I nod my head in Kallen’s direction.
He’s kneeling in front of me now with raised brows. “Are you seriously talking to the iron?” I nod my head and he sits back in the snow laughing and shaking his head. Until my magic rushes through the iron and it uncoils from me at the speed of light; then recoils itself around him like a rusty colored boa constrictor.
Now that I’m not restricted by the iron, I can stand up. At least I try to. It takes several attempts, but I finally manage. I look down at Kallen’s two faces that are dancing in my eyes, and are making me a little nauseated, and can’t help a giggle at the expression of shock on his face. “If you were nicer to the iron,” I tell him, “it would have liked you better and done what you wanted it to do instead of me.” Pretty confident that all of my words came out correctly and were decipherable, I stumble towards the house. I really need to lie down because the woods are spinning and I don’t want to spin with them.
I forgot about our audience until a round of applause comes from them. I try to smile at them, but I think it comes off as more of an insane grin as I try to control my facial muscles. I can’t do that and walk at the same time.
Aunt Barb comes over to me and takes my arm to steady me. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I shake my head, which makes me almost fall down. “No. Drunk.”
A scowl forms on her brow. “Drunk? How can you be drunk?”
“Fairy dart.” I say pointing to my arm where I’m surprised to see there are still three darts attached to it. Oh, that’s why I’m feeling even drunker than I was a minute ago. I pull at the first dart but I forgot that they have barbs on the end of them. It rips through my skin. “Ow! That hurts!” I pull the other two out quickly and by the time I’m dart free, my drunken anger towards Kallen has tripled. I turn around bringing Aunt Barb with me and through blurry eyes, I look at the snow around where Kallen is lying on the ground. I will it to rise up in a wall at least six feet high. When it falls on him, he is completely buried in the snow. Satisfied, I stumble back around and trip my way towards the house with Aunt Barb’s help.
She helps me back through the kitchen door and to the table where I plop down into a chair. She shakes her head and sighs. “You need to drink some coffee,” she tells me. She walks over to the coffee pot that is still half full from when Grandma made coffee a little while ago and pours out a cup. Then she sets the steaming mug of it in front of me. I lift it to my lips and try a sip, but then I put it back down. I’m more of a tea drinker than a coffee drinker.
Aunt Barb picks up the mug and puts it back in my hands as she says firmly, “Y
ou need to drink all of it.”
I scowl at her but the stony expression on her face tells me she’s not going to budge on this. Resentfully, I put the mug back to my lips and drink more of it. Who made coffee the cure-all anyway, I wonder, as another mouthful of the too strong brown liquid slides down my throat.
The kitchen door opens again bringing in a cold breeze causing me to shiver. After a second, Isla and my mom swim into my blurry vision. I wonder if Isla is mad at me because of what I did to Kallen. I don’t think so because she’s smiling at me – all three of her. I’d better drink more coffee.
Isla sits down in the chair next to me. “You are certainly full of surprises.”
I lift my eyes in her direction but it makes me dizzy so I look back down at my mug. It’s one of the few things in the room not spinning. “Nope, just being me.”
She laughs. Her laugh isn’t the beautiful tinkle that Grandma’s is, but then Isla’s not an Angel, either. Isla’s laugh is nice enough, though. “And what a beautiful creature you are when you are just being yourself. I have never seen anyone react to Fairy darts like this. I wondered why my grandson would go to such extremes to prove his point, but he already knew what they would do to you, did he not?”
Witch Fairy book 3 Page 2