by Nicola Marsh
Banish
www.harlequinbooks.com.au
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
USA TODAY bestselling author Nicola Marsh writes flirty fiction with flair for adults and riveting, eerie stories for young adults.
Based in Melbourne, she has published 40 books and sold over 4 million copies worldwide. She writes contemporary romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon and Entangled Publishing. Her first indie release, Crazy Love, was a 2012 ARRA (Australian Romance Readers Award) finalist. BANISH, a thriller with Harlequin Teen Australia, is her young adult debut, closely followed by the release of a paranormal YA series starting with Scion of the Sun (Month9Books).
She’s also a Waldenbooks and Bookscan bestseller, a multi-finalist for awards including the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, RBY (RWAus Romantic Book of the Year), HOLT Medallion, Booksellers’ Best Award, Golden Quill, Laurel Wreath, More than Magic and has won several CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Awards.
A physiotherapist for thirteen years, she now adores writing full time, chasing after her two little heroes, barracking loudly for her North Melbourne Kangaroos footy team and her favourite, curling up with a good book!
She also loves interacting with readers.
She blogs at http://nicolamarsh.blogspot.com
Tweets incessantly http://twitter.com/NicolaMarsh
Chatters on Facebook http://facebook.com/NicolaMarshAuthor
Answers emails at [email protected]
Come say hi!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO TAKE A hint of an idea and turn it into a book involves a lot more than planting my butt in a chair and writing. Mega thanks to the following people who helped along the way:
• The fab team at Harlequin Teen Australia for being as excited about Banish as I am. (Especially Michelle Laforest, for convincing me at a Harlequin dinner on the Gold Coast to submit Banish for consideration. Haylee Nash, for a super speedy read/acquisition/offer. Lilia Kanna, for being amenable to juggling deadlines and her smooth coordinating skills.)
• Editor Glenda Downing, for helping me polish Banish and make it shine.
• Fellow Aussie YA writer Kathy Bradey, for doing a beta read of Banish in its early inception. Your insight was much appreciated.
• Author Deborah Blake, whose online course Witchcraft for the Paranormal Author and excellent book Everyday Witch A to Z sparked a million fab ideas in my head and helped clarify plot points for me. Good stuff!
• Agent Suzie Townsend, who mentioned a while back young adult thrillers would be the ‘next big thing’. She was right! Thanks Suzie for your insightful publishing knowledge.
• Fab authors and great writing buddies, Natalie Anderson and Soraya Lane. Nat, thanks so much for taking the time to read and edit Banish when I had other plans for it. Soraya, thanks for your words of wisdom when I was weighing up options/offers for Banish. Our daily cyber chats mean the world to me. You’re both fantastic!
• The three gorgeous guys I live with. Hubs, you make me laugh daily. Kidlets, I adore you. You’re the loves of my life. I can’t wait until you’re old enough to read this book!
For the two special little guys in my life. You make every day seem brighter, bolder and filled with endless possibilities. Love you infinity plus infinity!
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
About the Author
PROLOGUE
TIME TO PUT the past to rest.
I edged towards the door leading to freedom and clasped the knife, its weight reassuring in my hand. Ignoring the pain in my palm where it had accidentally sliced as I’d bolted to escape, I focused on the kitchen doorway and waited. Waited for him to come after me.
A shadow fell across the doorway and using both hands I raised the knife, holding it high and extended, like a Samurai. He stopped at the kitchen door, malevolence radiating off him. He raised a finger and drew it across his throat in a slow, deliberate slit. “You’re dead.”
He stepped into the kitchen, the absence of emotion in his icy glare almost as terrifying as the slow curling and unfurling of his fingers. I had no doubt those fingers would end up wrapped around my throat.
“Give me the knife, bitch.”
The insult didn’t freak me out as much as the uncanny timbre of his voice; how much he sounded like my dead ex. Wish I’d noticed the resemblance sooner. Would have saved me the hassle of carving up his ass. For there was one thing I was sure of: I’d managed to endure this god-awful week so far, no way would I go down without a fight.
My trembling fingers convulsed around the knife, gripping the handle tighter as I lowered it to chest level. “Make me.”
The eyes of the guy I’d once trusted glowed with hatred.
A second before he lunged at me.
I feinted to the right, slammed my hip against the sink and cried out in pain.
He laughed, a chilling sound that had me scrabbling faster as he came straight for me.
I swept the glass on the draining board to the floor and dodged to the left.
He kept coming.
Panic clogged my throat as I rebounded against the wall, hard enough to rattle the crockery in the dresser. I should have baulked, should have screamed, should have run. Instead, an inner strength I hadn’t known I possessed snapped its leash. Clawed its way to the surface, howling for freedom.
He must have seen something in my expression because he hesitated.
I didn’t.
I screamed my fury, desperate to lash out.
Unable to rein in my rage, I slashed.
CHAPTER ONE
ONE WEEK EARLIER
ALL THE TIMES I’d sabotaged Mom’s spells as an adventurous kid, hidden Aunt Angie’s althame or used runes to pelt the snotty brat next door had come back to haunt me. Maybe there was something to my family’s Wicca Threefold Law after all: whatever you dished out would come back three times worse.
My history assignment on pagans definitely fell into this category.
I didn’t want to research paganism. I’d lived it growing up and witchcraft wasn’t for me. Not after I’d seen the results on my mom.
“Staring at that paper isn’t going to get it done.”
My head snapped up and I tried not to gawk at Ronan. I’d done enough of that while trailing after him, filming his after-hours tutoring with high school kids for another assignment. He’d noticed. Assumed my interest was for his incredible sax playing and not for his all-round hotness, thank goodness. We’d been emailing ever since. General stuff. Music chatter. Video clips. Casual.
If he’d been the music teacher at school I would have signed up for extra tuition in a flash. Instead, I made do with admiring him from afar twice a week when he came in to tutor kids after school. Then again, if he was a teacher here, we pro
bably wouldn’t be corresponding via cyberspace and striking up what I’d like to think of as a friendship.
He’d been so patient answering my assignment questions and, like me, was a bit of a geek for facts. Kinda inevitable I’d developed a monster crush. Not that I remotely thought for one moment it was reciprocated. Why would a guy like him be interested in a beanpole strawberry blonde with blah-blue eyes, no curves and a nasty habit of picking at her cuticles?
I pushed the paper away with the tip of my pen. “The subject’s pretty boring.”
Especially after I’d had firsthand experience with dancing around a maypole on Beltane, constructing a broom with aromatic herbs, bright foliage and finishing with a spritz of glycerol to make it last, and sneaking a copy of Mom’s The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, a witch’s must-read.
I braced at Ronan’s nearness as he tilted his head to one side. “Pagans: Witches Or Whackos by Alyssa Wood,” he read aloud. “Witches sound cool to me.”
“Not if you grew up with them,” I muttered, mortified he’d heard. He laughed and slid onto the seat next to mine. The school library, a cosy cavernous haven I loved for the quiet, shrunk with him sitting so close.
He stared at me, assessing. “You’d be the least likely person I’d pick to be a witch.”
“That’s because I’m not.” Heat flushed my cheeks as he raised an eyebrow at my vehement denial.
“Good to know.” He winked. “In case you had an urge to turn me into a toad.”
Not a bad idea, if I got to kiss him to turn him back. Like that thought helped my blush.
“I’m not into magick.” I made a mockery of the statement by knowing the correct spelling added a K on the end, as I twirled a pen between my fingers. It slipped and landed in the centre of my blank page. Of an assignment comprising the bulk of my grade this semester. Due tomorrow. That I’d deliberately ignored the past two weeks in the hope it would vanish. Pity I didn’t believe in wands.
“Why don’t you write it from a sceptic’s viewpoint? That would be interesting.”
“Because paganism exists.” Worse luck. “It’s a part of history and Jackass Jackman wants facts, not a debate.” Trust me to land the only history teacher on the planet who was into Wicca stuff as much as my family.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, just an idea.”
I winced. “Sorry. I’ll be pulling an all-nighter to get this done and I’m a little tense.”
“What can I do to help?”
I struggled not to gape at this cool, twenty-one year old, part-time music tutor offering to pitch in on a high school paper.
“Thanks, but you’ve probably got band stuff on—”
“I’ll research, you write.” He flipped open the nearest text in my pile of books and I slumped into my chair, content to watch him, wondering what he’d do if I hugged him in gratitude.
When I continued staring, he glanced up, a smile crinkling the corners of his warm hazel eyes. “You’re not writing.”
“I’m thinking.”
The crinkles fanned outwards. “By the lack of words on that page, you’ve been doing a lot of that.”
If he only knew.
Thinking about Wicca raised other issues I’d rather not face; issues I’d run from when I’d left Broadwater for New York City six months ago.
This assignment didn’t scare me. The repercussions of acknowledging my past did.
I managed a tight smile. “Start reading.”
“Bossy as well as witchy. I better watch out.”
I opened my mouth to protest but he laughed and I ducked my head so my hair draped across my face. Besides, what could I say? My mom used to be devout Wicca, my aunt is a renowned high priestess urban witch and I was certified mundane?
I didn’t believe in magick. Not any more.
“Okay, here’s your beginning.” His finger trailed under the text and I stared at his hand, fascinated by his long, strong fingers and clean, square nails. “Wicca is a modern religion based on ancient pagan practices. Paganism refers to all nature-based religions.”
His low voice soothed, leaving me mesmerised rather than studious.
“Says here all Wiccans are witches and all witches are pagans, but not all witches are Wicca.” He glanced up, his frown comical.
“My mom’s Wicca. It’s a spiritual thing based in nature, where she follows changing seasons of the year.”
He pointed at the text. “Wheel of the Year?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s all wrapped up in the cycle of life, death and holidays.”
“The holiday part doesn’t sound so bad.”
Easy for him to say. He hadn’t seen his mom dance naked in the moonlight on Samhain.
“You’ve got a little crease right here.” He touched the skin between my eyebrows, a fleeting graze of his fingertip that had me leaning towards him. “What’s up? Apart from cramming two weeks’ worth of homework into a few hours?”
What could I say? That I’d fled the only home I’d ever known because my boyfriend Noah killed himself the day after I dumped him? That my mom had morphed from eccentric witch to air-talking alcoholic when I hit puberty?
Flattered by his interest and enjoying the attention, I settled for a sedate version.
“I’m just dealing with some stuff.” I picked at the cuticle on my thumb, a habit I’d tried to ditch and failed. “I haven’t seen my mom in six months, and the aunt I live with isn’t her greatest fan. They’ve had their differences over the years.”
Most of them centring on me. I had to give Mom credit in not bowing to Angie’s pressure. My mom respected my wish to be mundane; Angie kept pushing to educate me in witch ways. Thankfully, as Mom deteriorated over the past few years, Angie had backed off. I loved them both dearly but being caught between two witches? Not a good place to be.
“Must be tough.”
I shrugged, not willing to divulge more than that.
Thankfully, he didn’t pry or offer advice. “Shall I keep reading?”
I nodded and picked up my pen, content to listen to his voice as he read, rather than dwell on a home situation I couldn’t change. After ten minutes, the information snippets I’d jotted covered five pages.
“There are some pretty cool pictures accompanying this stuff.” He pointed to a chalked pentagram on rocky ground, a gold chalice and an altar covered in rabbits, chicks and eggs—fertility symbols to celebrate Ostara. “You want to knock old Jackman’s socks off, why don’t you make a trailer of this stuff?”
He swung the book my way. “You choose the pics online, I’ll do the backing music.”
I stared at him like he’d hung the moon and stars. Heck, the whole damn solar system. “That’s genius.”
His bashful smile made something shift in my chest—something bordering on painful and wonderful and hopeful.
“We can do it at my place, if you like?”
A perfectly innocent invitation considering he gave private music lessons to kids there all the time, but the small part of me that had a major crush did a happy dance.
“Sure, that sounds great.” I shoved the books into my satchel, wondering when I could text Angie to let her know where I’d be without looking like a kid who had to check in.
“Here, let me carry that.” Before I could protest, he’d slung the satchel over his shoulder, the faded, worn buttercup leather accentuating his mussed funkiness rather than detracting from it.
The thing weighed a ton so I didn’t mind. What I didn’t like so much was the way I felt around him: comfortable, safe, more than a little yearning.
He hadn’t made a big deal about me tagging along filming him for my music assignment. He hadn’t treated me like a kid, and he hadn’t hesitated to answer the many questions I’d fired at him. Best of all, he hadn’t mentioned my less-than-subtle crush.
The guy played nightly gigs in a band, so he was probably used to girls gazing at him with blatant adoration. Not that I’d done anything so obvious. Not much anyway.
“Don’t you have to check in with your aunt?”
I shrugged, hoping to hide my gaucheness beneath nonchalance. Like I got invited to older guys’ apartments every day of the week, albeit to study. “She’s at a coven meeting tonight. I’ll text her later.”
He whistled long and low. “Covens really exist in New York City?”
“Yeah, tonnes. And that’s not counting the ones she mentors online.”
His mouth curved into a smile that slam-dunked any residual guilt at hanging out with a cute guy I could seriously like given half a chance. “Wonder if I can buy an online spell for a new bass player.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea what some people ask for in those online forums.”
“Try me.”
Surprised by his genuine interest in a topic I usually avoided, I had no option but to elaborate. The guy was helping me out; the least I could do was educate him.
“There are covens all around the country and overseas. Angie’s highly respected, so she runs forums for spell casting, divination, invocations, rituals, ordinations. You name it, she does it.”
“Witchcraft 101, in ten easy steps. I like it.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe I’ll get me a new bass player after all.”
“Don’t count on it. Spells only work if you believe, they’re not for mundanes like us.”
His grin widened. “Are mundanes like Muggles?”
Did everyone in the known universe associate magick with Harry Potter?
“Yeah. We’re ordinary, practical, of this world apparently. While pagans are more involved in otherworldly stuff.”
He made a spooky noise and wiggled his fingers at me. I swatted them away as we left the library, enjoying his banter. It was refreshing to have someone take a light-hearted view on the alternate belief system I’d been brought up with.
Most guys would have made snide remarks or squirmed uncomfortably or changed the subject. Ronan had done none of those things. Then again, as I’d come to appreciate over the past few weeks, Ronan wasn’t most guys.
With his shaggy brown hair tied back in a low ponytail, long-lashed hazel eyes and laid-back smile that made me want to grin right back at him, he was cute rather than gorgeous. Throw in the low-slung skinny jeans, white T-shirt and black leather jacket he perpetually wore, and he channelled a lot of average guys.