by Anna Abner
Holden, though, worked off of different instincts. “How long are you gonna ignore Jolie?” he asked gently. “She just wants to get to know you.”
She didn’t know how to explain to Holden the feelings churning inside her.
Becca remained silent as she followed him outside and climbed into the passenger seat of his stripped-down Jeep.
Ignoring people was becoming second nature. Luckily, he didn’t seem bothered by it.
“Last I heard Cole had woken from a nightmare spell like yours,” she said as he rolled the vehicle onto the street. “And disappeared. Anything I’m missing?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth compressed into a tight line. “I remember how disorienting it was coming out of that spell. I couldn’t tell what was real. And he was in it for a lot longer than I was.”
“I hope he’s okay,” she said, but Cole’s loitering around the Dark Caster’s meetinghouse said otherwise. What reason could he possibly have to go there?
Turning her palms up, she studied them. She’d accessed her new necromancy powers once. To save Holden from Derek Walker, a top member of the dark cabal. But she hadn’t tapped it since. Honestly, she never wanted to again. If there were a pill to take necromancy away, she would swallow it. But it wasn’t so easy. For the rest of her life she’d be able to cast magic and see spirits of the dead trapped on earth. Whether she liked it, or not.
“We’ll make sure he’s okay,” Holden promised. “I owe the guy.”
But when they drove into the parking lot of the burned out building, the whole place was deserted.
“Damn it,” Holden swore, hitting the steering wheel. “Dani’s gonna kick my butt.”
Becca snickered, couldn’t help it, imagining the tiny woman fighting a full grown man, but Daniela’s power didn’t lie in her physical form. She was a witch. And terrifying.
She stifled her laugh.
“Some chick came and picked him up.”
Becca jumped at the sound of the young man’s voice. She’d never get used to spirits popping up at random times.
Tony, David Wilkes’ teenaged spirit companion, appeared beside Holden. Dani and David were spending a lot of time together and sometimes sending a spirit messenger was faster than a phone call.
Tony added, “Dani told David to tell me to tell you—”
“We get it,” Holden snapped. “Where is Cole?”
“On the move. Dani’s meeting us. I’ll navigate.” As if he were corporeal and not a hazy image, Tony swung into the back seat and pointed north. “It’s up Western.”
“This lady,” Holden said, “who was she?”
With the wind whipping around the cab of the Jeep, Tony’s reply was no more than a whisper in Becca’s ear. “I don’t know her, but she drove off and no one’s seen Cole since.”
Chapter Two
The world remained a little hazy around the edges. Either Cole had released too much blood or not eaten enough in the last few days. Or both.
It was strangely quiet in the car without Stephanie around. Eerily quiet.
She’d be back eventually, but for now he needed peace and quiet to think things through. His mind, though, wasn’t exactly cooperating.
Maybe Stephanie was right and he was an idiot. Riding around with this hot, little necromancer with the bouncy chestnut curls might be the biggest mistake of his life. He readjusted his T-shirt bandage, wincing as half a dozen shallow cuts reopened.
She maneuvered her car slowly into a residential area and the gentle swaying of her dull gray Honda nearly put him to sleep. Cole felt every particle of exhaustion within him, and his head fell back. He dozed, moron that he was, because no more than a moment passed before the woman was shaking him awake.
“We’re here.”
Here was a nice house in a neighborhood of identically nice houses. He steadied himself against a wave of dizziness and followed her to the door. The woman knocked, and then rang the bell. No answer. She knocked louder.
“Carver! Open up!”
Nothing.
Leaning against the wall beside an empty flowerpot, Cole asked, “Who’s Carver?”
“My handler. I’m supposed to bring you to him.”
Cole nodded, his head as heavy as a watermelon. “Guess he went out.”
“Hugh,” she said to her spirit. “Go and see if he’s in there.” A few moments later, the young man returned.
“‘Tis dark and empty, miss.” Hugh’s thick British accent and old school English, along with his black, homespun slacks and white shirt without a stitch of modern embellishment suddenly made sense. He was an old spirit, stuck on earth for decades, if not centuries.
“Crap.” Talia made a circling motion in the air with her finger. “I guess it’s back to my place. He’ll call later.”
Cole concentrated on stepping across the driveway without face-planting. Lift, step, lift, step. Because if he lost focus, he’d be ass up on the concrete. The starvation, sleep deprivation, and blood loss were all catching up to him with a bang. He climbed into the car and fell asleep so quickly he didn’t remember closing the door or buckling his seatbelt. Maybe he hadn’t.
The next time Talia shook him awake they were parked inside a narrow, one-car garage with bare, unpainted sheetrock walls.
“Come on in, and I’ll straighten everything out.”
“I want to see the Dark Caster.” Had he said that already? It seemed an important point to make. “I want in.” Something about keeping psychotic, mortal enemies close.
“Fabulous,” she said, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “Welcome to the team.”
Maybe he fell asleep again, but the next thing he knew the passenger door hung open and the woman was crouched beside him, checking the pulse at his bloody wrist.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Where was his shirt? How long had he been walking around bare-chested? His surgery scar was too obvious there between his pecs. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but he didn’t exactly show it off, either.
“I’ve been having a rough couple of days,” Cole grumbled. Like monumentally rough.
The stranger residing in his blood, the one that had made him stab his mother and sister to death and then squeeze Dani’s throat closed, had overpowered his resolve inside the sickeningly tangible nightmare spell. Or had it been Cole alone on a killing spree? He couldn’t remember what was real.
“Can you walk?” Talia asked.
“Sure.” He used the doorframe to leverage himself upright, but the moment he fixed his feet under him, the room tipped and the lights blinked out. He didn’t even feel it when he crashed to the concrete floor.
* * *
“Just perfect.” Talia was a school nurse, not a doctor. She could take blood pressure, recognize head lice from sand, and diagnose pink eye at twenty paces, but she didn’t have the equipment or capability to give her new guest a saline drip and sterile stitches in those ghastly cuts.
“‘Tis not proper,” Hugh complained. “He should not be here.”
“He’s not very threatening,” she observed, squinting at his open wounds. On top of the bleeding cuts, his left wrist was bruised and swollen, maybe broken.
Her cell phone chimed, a cascade of tinkling bells. She checked the screen hoping it was a text from the Carver, but it was her friend Jillian.
Where are you? You’re supposed to meet me.
Feeling like a horrible friend, Talia turned off her phone. There was no way she could go dancing and drinking at Jitters now.
“And when he discovers what we have done?” Hugh countered. “He will be plenty threatening then, I’d wager.”
“Shh,” she warned her spirit companion. “He’s as dangerous as a half-drowned cat. He can’t even stand up.” Which was a problem when she wanted him inside her house, not sprawled on the garage floor.
The best Talia could do at the moment was to cast a healing spell on Cole and hopefully get him mobile again. She gripped his wounded arm and blood squis
hed between her fingers.
Power ran across Talia’s limbs, like a barely controlled subterranean current of electricity. It passed from Hugh and into her, and then she propelled it into Burkov’s body.
“Heal,” she said.
No caster magically set a broken bone or re-grew missing fingers. Well, maybe some casters could, but not her. Which meant Talia was on her knees in the garage, choking on the stench of engine oil and gasoline while the cold concrete floor numbed her bare legs.
Using magic for personal gain was cheating, which was why she wasn’t as skilled as some of her peers in the cabal. A good, old-fashioned healing spell, though, was a no-brainer.
Long moments passed, and she studied her unexpected houseguest-slash-prisoner. She was very curious about a scar down the length of Cole’s breastbone, faint but visible through a patch of fine hair. It probably wasn’t random or accidental because his self-inflicted marks seemed to be isolated to his arms. But how had such a young man been through heart surgery?
With a groan, Cole came to.
“Stay down,” she advised, laying her hand on his chest. He was cool to the touch. “You passed out.”
“Where am I?” Cole craned his neck to see around the car. “Where’s Steph?”
“You’re in my garage. And you made yourself invisible to her. She left in a huff. Don’t you remember?”
“That really happened? I thought it was part of the nightmare.”
“It was real.” Talia removed her hand and scrubbed it on her shorts. “You had heart surgery? Blood loss could damage your heart, you know.” He could have another attack.
“Transplant when I was twenty.” He sat up with exaggerated care. “I had a degenerative, congenital condition.”
He looked like he’d recovered well. Under the dirt and unwashed hair, he was well muscled.
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty.” He eyed her carefully. “You?”
“Twenty-five.”
He nodded as if it made perfect sense. “Am I still in North Carolina?”
“Yes, in Auburn.”
As Cole tried to stand, Talia offered her hand, but he refused to take it.
“Do you have your meds?” she asked. If he’d had a heart transplant he would have to take prescription medicine the rest of his life, but he didn’t possess a bag. She was fairly sure he didn’t even carry a wallet.
“I stopped taking those a while ago.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s a very stupid thing to do. Maybe you should be in the hospital right now.”
“I just got out of the hospital. I need to rest. Please. On a bed, preferably.”
Her bed? She pictured his long, lean body curled upon her pretty pink sheets, and it sent a spike of undefined need through her.
Unexpected need.
Unsatisfied, though, because that was so not going to happen.
“Let’s get inside.” She held the garage door open and followed him into her kitchen. Decorated with cheery yellow curtains and sunflower patterned hand towels, it was her favorite spot in the house.
Burkov looked more ill among the colorful household accessories, his black whiskers in sharp contrast to his pale cheeks.
But there was no way she was allowing the dirty stranger into her bedroom. Some spells required personal objects. He could steal her panties and have her coughing blood in no time.
She led him to the living room instead. “Make yourself at home.”
Grumbling incoherently, he flopped onto the sofa and leaned back his head.
Having a man in her personal space was an uneasy experience. Talia had been single and living alone since Eric moved out in September of last year. Not that she was counting, or anything, but long enough that he’d met someone else while she’d languished in solitude.
It was the only reason she was fantasizing about Cole Burkov. She’d been deprived of intimacy for too long.
Time to end all the excitement and get Burkov off her hands.
Under the yellow-checkered rug in the kitchen she’d drawn a permanent spell circle with generic glyphs. Something for both everyday and even emergency use. Talia rolled the rug way and stood in the circle.
Hugh didn’t have to be told what to do. He silently sent her a small bump of spirit power.
She called upon Johanna, one of the Dark Caster’s spirit companions. She didn’t show up. Like Talia’s handler, she too was MIA. Not that she ever obeyed Talia’s commands or anything, but it would’ve been nice to know what the hell was going on. For once.
What was she supposed to do with Burkov now?
She was about to give up when a spirit blinked into her kitchen. Michael, another of the Dark Caster’s messengers. He wore a black and white striped prison uniform from sometime in the distant past. The Dark Caster collected ex-cons. Along with born necromancers. Like her.
“Michael,” she greeted tersely. She didn’t enjoy the DC’s lackeys, alive or dead, but she forced a smile because she was trying to prove her loyalty and all that crap.
“You have Cole Burkov?” Michael appeared as thrilled to be dealing with her as she was dealing with him.
She glanced at the man in question slouched on her sofa. Michael hadn’t noticed him yet. “Yes. I picked him up from the meetinghouse.”
“Good. I will return with further instructions.”
“Wait.” She lurched nearer as he shimmered, turning see-through. “Where is the Carver?”
“Dead.”
Well. Talia wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. She despised the cold-eyed psychopath who was overseeing her forced induction into the cabal, but how had he died? If he’d been killed, which seemed likely considering his personality, who killed him? The DC? Or one of his enemies?
She gazed across the room at Cole. He was slumped across her sofa, twitching in his sleep. The antithesis of the evil mastermind the Carver implied he was.
Someone knocked so loudly on the front door, she jumped and her heart thudded painfully against the inside of her ribs.
“Keep Burkov contained until you hear from us again,” Michael said, “even if you have to put him to sleep. Understand?”
Her eyes flickered in Cole’s direction. The knock had woken him, and he stared at her, terror etched into his expression.
She gave him a tiny, almost unnoticeable shake of her head. I won’t put you under.
Not unless she had to and maybe not even then.
She’d tried the bad girl route recently and hadn’t enjoyed it.
“Excuse me.” Talia gestured toward the foyer. “Apparently, I have company.” They banged even louder. “I’ll do what you asked.” She rolled the rug back over the circle and then walked right through Michael’s fading image to answer the door.
A man and a woman stood on her front step flanked by a teenaged ghost and Cole’s soccer mom spirit.
“Who are you?” Talia asked.
“Open the door.” The woman, a murderous gleam in her dark eyes, squared off with Talia. The man beside her laid a hand on her waist as if to communicate, You can’t hit her. Yet.
Beyond them, barely visible in the dim light, was a trio. A tall, brooding man hovered over a leggy blonde like a human umbrella. At his side stood a little girl’s spirit.
Talia pushed on the door to close it in their faces. “It’s two in the morning, and I don’t know any of you.” The woman jammed her foot into the crack and shoved the door wide open. It flew out of Talia’s hands and crashed against the wall.
“I’m Daniela Ferraro. Now, we know each other.” The trespasser’s breath frosted, and her skin turned icy blue.
Oh, shit. She was a witch.
Dani marched past Talia, her gaze sweeping the room without a quiver of recognition of the man sitting only feet away. “You have ten seconds before I turn you inside out. Where is Cole?”
Chapter Three
Dani’s good-looking blond boyfriend put himself between Talia and the witch, without actually
touching either of them. “Stephanie, Tony,” he said to the spirits. “Find him.”
Okay. Talia was missing something. Cole was sitting right there, not even trying to hide. She took her eyes off the witch long enough to search out Cole. In fact, he’d risen on unsteady legs to greet his rescuers, and they still didn’t pay him any attention.
“She’s alive,” Cole breathed, wide eyes on the witch. “I didn’t kill her. Oh, thank God.” He gripped the sofa’s arm until his elbow quivered.
She was alive, yes, but she wasn’t exactly in pristine condition. Besides sporting the same dark circles under her eyes Cole had from a string of restless nights, there was a smudging of bruises around her throat. Ugly, purple and green bruises hard to conceal without pounds of make-up and a scarf. Neither of which she wore.
Someone had tried to strangle her.
Stephanie returned first, agitated and crying. “He’s not here.”
Talia fought the urge to glance at Cole again, but the witch stepped threateningly in Talia’s direction, cutting off any instinct except to flee.
“If you hurt him,” Dani seethed, “I will see you screaming in agony, do you understand? Whatever pain you cause him, I will give you ten times in return.”
Maybe it was the long day Talia had had. Maybe it was dealing with Burkov. Maybe it was the witch’s bristling behavior lending her bravado.
Not even the DC’s minions treated her with so much disrespect in her own home.
Talia directed her thousand-yard stare of intimidation, the one that worked so well with prickly freshmen, at Dani. “Get out of my house.” She hadn’t had many dealings with witches, but screw Dani Ferraro.
“Listen.” The boyfriend lunged forward, playing the good cop. “He’s barely woken from a prolonged nightmare spell. He’s not well. Please don’t hurt him.”
The second man, the tall brooding specimen, offered Talia a fancy, embossed business card. “Call us anytime. No questions asked. We just want to know he’s okay.”
Years of good manners forced Talia to accept the card. She palmed it, read the address beside the graphic of a 1950’s-style diner, and then tucked it into her purse. The same purse sitting not six inches from Cole’s left foot. None of her visitors seemed to notice.