Spell of Vanishing

by Anna Abner

  “I know you are.” There was no doubt that she was a good and decent person and she wouldn’t have tried to wound anyone if her nephew’s life hadn’t been at risk.

  She didn’t run away. That was a good start.

  “I read the alien-hunting schoolgirl books.” She dug half a dozen Galaxy Academy comics from her bag. “I really liked them. Maybe you could recommend some more?”

  “Of course.” If she was serious, there were about a hundred comics, just off the top of his head, he’d love to introduce her to.

  She crammed the comics back into her bag, fussing with the contents. “How have you been?” she asked, perfectly polite. But the dots of color on her cheeks told him she was just as unsettled as he was.

  “Awful,” he answered honestly. “Miserable. Lonely.”

  A hint of a smile curved her mouth upward. “I’ve been depressed. Achy. And immeasurably lonely.”

  He smiled to match hers. “Does your immeasurably lonely trounce my simply lonely?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He took a step nearer. And then another. And then she was in his arms, exactly the way he remembered, exactly the way he needed her.

  “Oh, I missed you,” he groaned, smelling sweet jasmine in her soft curls. “I wanted to call. Believe me. Every five minutes.” And it had been a challenge fighting those urges.

  “I walked around with my phone in my pocket,” she said, laughing lightly, “wanting to call you. Wanting you to call me.”

  “I should have.”

  She kissed his throat, her mouth peppering his jawline with tender kisses. But then, just as he decided to pull her into the storeroom to prove to her how much he’d missed her, she stepped away.

  “I brought something for you.” She produced a sketchbook from her ridiculously large purse. Shy again, her fingers danced upon the cover. “I thought we could start a new spell book. One full of helpful spells.” She showed him the first page. She’d pasted Rebecca’s joy and light spell onto the paper and written a description under the Latin in English.

  Fills the caster with unimaginable joy and positivity. Temporary.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  He accepted the book and stared at her work until it went out of focus. “I think that’s a fantastic idea.” He closed the book and set it on a shelf of manga novels, to free his hands to hold her. “I think you’re the most considerate, beautiful, curious woman I have ever met.” He took her by the hand and started backing his way toward the storeroom. “And I’d like to spend a couple of hours proving it to you.”

  At the threshold of his inner sanctum, he swept her into arms. Squealing in surprise, she clung to him, enveloping him in her familiar scent.

  “Oh, thank God.” She laughed. “I thought I was going to have to beg.”

  Kicking the door closed, he assured her, “That would be okay, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Seven months later

  The ski lift shuddered past the final tower, and Cole shifted slightly to his left. The minimal rocking he caused had Talia grabbing the chair’s armrest like they were nose-diving from thirty thousand feet.

  “We’re going to have to get off soon.” He pointed at the quickly approaching exit ramp of dirty snow. “Easy does it. Skis flat. Knees bent. And then glide away from the chair.”

  “Sure.”

  She did not look confident, and he tried really hard not to smile. He wasn’t laughing at her, more like amazed at how adorable she was.

  “I’ll be right beside you,” he promised. “But I’m not going to grab you. It’ll only throw you off balance.”

  “Right.”

  The chair swung over a mound of muddy, streaked snow. Cole waited for her to exit first, partly afraid she might stay aboard and take the return ride. But she was a brave woman. Sucking in a deep breath, she set her skis on the downward slope and pushed off the chair.

  And immediately fell in a tangled heap of arms, legs, and ski poles.

  As gracefully as possible, he swung around her and came to a stop three feet away.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Just perfect.” She dragged herself far enough away from the lift to prevent the next people in line from crashing into her.

  Cole dug in his skis and pulled her to her feet. “That was a great first try.”

  “How are you so good at this already?” she complained, swiping flakes of snow from her new insulated pants.

  “I don’t know.” He helped her straighten herself out. “Good genes, maybe.”

  The next chair lift approached and Caitlyn exited like a true pro, gliding off the ramp and kicking up dry snow as she turned a one-eighty to face them.

  “Geez, bro,” she greeted. “I can’t believe you’re making me go down the bunny hill with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said, though he was secretly thrilled she’d stayed behind with him and Talia. “Why aren’t you off with Mom and Dad on the black diamond runs?” He gave her shoulder a playful shove. “Not that I don’t want to hang out with you.”

  She grinned. “I want to see my big brother. Something wrong with that?”

  “Not at all.” He steadied Talia and the three of them wobbled and slid toward the top of the hill.

  “You’ve really never skied before?” Caitlyn asked, leading the way. “We spent every winter in Aspen.”

  “I was the sick kid, remember?” he asked. “I wasn’t allowed to.”

  “But your surgery was ten years ago. You haven’t been since?”

  He chuckled. “I live in eastern North Carolina. Not a lot of mountain ranges in my area.”

  “Please tell me you at least surf, then?”

  “I was a little distracted with other things.” It was a reflex to lean over and capture Talia’s mouth. She moaned a little in surprise, and then again in pleasure. “I love you so much,” he murmured into her ear.

  “I love you,” she whispered back.

  “Ugh,” Caitlyn teased. “How many times are you gonna do that? So gross.”

  Chuckling, they each took positions at the top of the hill. It looked a lot steeper at the crest than it had from the lodge down below. It didn’t matter that it was the shortest and slowest hill on the mountain.

  Some of those old fears resurfaced, the ones from way back when he was a sickly kid afraid to climb stairs in case the exertion gave him a heart attack.

  Then Talia grasped his hand. “You got this, honey.”

  He blew out a long breath as he stared deep into her eyes. She knew him, inside and out, and she still stuck around. Insane, joyful, terrifying love ballooned inside him, making his bones feel elastic.

  “Let’s do it,” he agreed.

  Smiling sweetly, she suggested, “Together?”

  “Together.” Always.

  THE END

  Excerpt from the final chapter of the Dark Caster series:

  Spell of Shattering (Dark Caster #4)

  Chapter One

  With a little pressure, Derek Walker punched his boning knife through the throat of a dead Silver Salmon. Working the knife like a saw, he removed the head and tossed it into the trash, and then got to work gutting the unlucky creature. Bright fish blood swirled in the lake below, creating an abstract waterscape.

  Bo’s voice carried over the sound of the lapping tide. "Ice is the strongest element there is," he shouted at Stubby.

  They were certainly surrounded by the stuff. Bits of frost clumped in Bo’s scraggly beard, heavy snow clung to drooping tree limbs, and gray clouds swept across the sky ready to shower ice upon their heads at any moment. Derek hoped the storm would hold off a little while longer, though, at least until the men finished fishing.

  "Bullshit." Bo’s friend Stubby dug through the nearby cooler but came up empty. The six-pack was long gone, and it wasn’t even ten a.m. Frustrated, Stubby spit brown tobacco juice into the mud. "Fire's stronger than ice."

  Derek shifted weight from one foot to
the other and skidded in the mud, catching himself on a rock. It may be August in Alaska, but the wet ground around Bear Lake at first light was cold and seeped through his sneakers.

  "No it ain't," Bo argued. "Glaciers carved up the earth, you dummy. A few drops of frozen water will break boulders." He waved Stubby off. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  Stubby seemed to take the argument personally. "Fire melts ice. End of story."

  Derek prayed it was, but of course, it wasn't. Bo and Stubby could argue for hours over the most accurate brand of deer rifle, the stoutest superhero, or the most potent tequila. The latest debate over nature’s most dangerous element could rage on for days.

  Derek sliced up two beautiful fish fillets and wrapped them in paper for his boss’s dinner. Most likely, Derek would sear them on the grill with some peppers and serve them up tonight to a small house party of world-class belchers and bearded survivalists on Bo’s deck.

  It surprised Derek he could even wield a knife or a BBQ grill in his condition. The memory spell Holden Clark had hit him with four months ago had devastated his mind. Literally. He may as well have dropped him headfirst from a forty-story building onto broken glass and concrete. Holden had stolen every single memory, skill, and instinct Derek possessed, leaving him alive but hollow.

  Waking in a hospital bed blank and vulnerable had been the most terrifying moment of his life. He picked up the second fish and attacked it with the knife.

  Generally, the work he did as Bo’s assistant was exhausting, which suited Derek just fine. He didn’t need the money. He needed the distraction.

  Actually, it wasn't that much different from the work he’d done in Auburn as Rebecca Powell's assistant. Then, he’d redecorated houses, delivered paperwork, sometimes picked up coffee and her dry cleaning, and most of the time surfed on his computer or chatted with Jessa McAvoy, the adorable junior agent working as Rebecca's protégé. Here, he bought groceries, cooked rudimentary meals, lugged trash to the dump, and drove Bo home when he drank too much.

  Whether it was good living or not didn’t enter his mind. It was just living.

  "All done, boss," Derek said with effort, throwing the last of the slimy scraps into the trash and tucking the fillets into the cooler. It was a constant struggle to form words and transfer them to his tongue. He was getting better, but he feared he would never be whole again.

  "Anything else?" Derek asked, rinsing his bloody hands in the icy lake.

  "Yeah, run into town and get another twelve pack, will ya'?" Bo asked.

  "Sure." He ambled for Bo’s pickup, jingling a ring of keys as he went.

  “You’re putting too much weight on your bobber again,” Stubby accused. “You’ll never catch anything that way.”

  “You don’t know what you’re yammering about,” Bo shot back. “I’ve caught twice as many fish as you have, and that’s just today!”

  Derek climbed into the truck before he caught Stubby’s reply.

  He didn't care. He didn't care about much anymore. Even after the memory-destroying spell had been reversed, he still wasn't the same. Like tying shoelaces. He just couldn't get it. No matter how many YouTube videos he watched, he couldn't make the bunny go round the tree or the fox go in the hole or whatever nonsense he was supposed to do with ease. It worried him how much he didn't remember. What else was gone, never to return?

  Kissing, for one. Surely, he must have kissed a woman at some point—he was a grown man—but he couldn't recall specifics. Or even gather the desire to try it again. It seemed silly to him. That and sex. Bizarre, pointless endeavors when he had other much more important stuff to worry about.

  Like how he was…

  "…A huge fucking disappointment," the spirit spat at him. "A total waste of good space. You think you deserve a second chance? What have you ever done…"

  A grizzly of a dead man with a full beard and hunters cap hovered beside Bo’s truck, a gleeful smile on his pudgy face. For the past four months, the ghost had been his unwanted but constant companion.

  Derek tuned out the ranting. It was getting a little easier. Night was the hardest. Trying to sleep while a nasty ghost screamed obscenities and curse words at him from the ceiling was challenging. Ear plugs only muffled the noise. They didn’t erase it completely.

  The irony was, Derek was especially good at shield spells. With a spirit’s assistance, he could produce an invisible barrier impenetrable to both magic and spirit chatter. With a spirit of his own, Derek could cast banishing spells on all the ghosts the Dark Caster sent to torment his every waking moment. But Derek didn't have a spirit companion anymore. Robert had been destroyed back in Auburn, North Carolina in the magical fiasco that had stolen Derek's memories. And a necromancer without a spirit was just a man.

  Almost the way a stray, foul-mouthed ghost couldn’t do any real damage without a necromancer to channel his spirit power.

  He and the taunting soul were in the same boat—stuck with each other and frustrated.

  It didn’t make listening to his insults any easier.

  “Go away,” Derek murmured.

  “What’s that, you miserable piece of crap?”

  Clenching his jaw, Derek glared through the mud-streaked windshield at his new boss reclining in his favorite camp chair.

  “Lost your voice?” the spirit taunted. “Loser,” he chanted. “Imbecile. Idiot.”

  Alaska seemed far enough away to be safe.

  So far, the worst the Dark Caster had managed since Derek’s escape was the big-mouthed ghost clinging to the inside of the truck.

  Derek cranked the engine and steered away from the lake at a leisurely five miles an hour. Driving was something he had only re-learned since he’d been in Alaska. With the way Bo drank, it was a necessity.

  Derek drove slow. Probably too slow. He remembered, vaguely, driving his former sports car fast on long, lonely stretches of highway, taking turns at warp speed and weaving recklessly through freeway traffic. Not anymore. Now, he was worse than an old woman. He didn't drive the speed limit. He drove under it. When Bo teased him about it, which Bo loved to do at all times about all things, Derek blamed it on the rain and snow, but it honestly had little to do with weather conditions.

  Just one more thing Holden Clark had stolen from him.

  He parked in front of the town's shopping center, bypassing a hardware store, a smoke-filled tavern, and the post office to pull open the heavy glass doors of a grocery store. Derek selected a twelve-pack of cheap, cold beer from the refrigerator case in the rear of the shop, and when he spun around, he came face-to-face with the eighteen-year-old checkout girl.

  "Hi, Derek," she said, grinning brightly.

  It was too cold, too quiet, and too depressing to be so happy.

  "Hello," he returned, veering around her.

  "Going fishing again?" she asked, trailing him down the baked-goods aisle.

  "Bo is." Derek didn't fish. He’d never learned and didn’t see the point.

  "I love to fish," she exclaimed, scampering behind the register as he set the beer on the counter. "I'll teach you how. I mean, if you don't know how. Do you know how?"

  While he rearranged possible responses in his mind, he studied the girl. Lea, read her nametag. She was young and dewy, and he envied the ease with which she spit out words, but something was missing. There was no light in her. An overabundance of enthusiasm, but no inner glow.

  The thought of touching her in any way, let alone kissing her, made him slightly queasy. Definitely uncomfortable. And not in a good way.

  "No, thanks," he said, the same as every other time Lea had invited him somewhere.

  Her face fell. "Oh. Yeah. Some other time."

  He paid for the beer with Bo's credit card and turned to leave.

  "You're gay, right?" Lea called after him. "That's it. You only like boys?"

  He lowered his eyes and exited fast, tossing the beer in the cab of the pick-up.

  Derek had been called worse in h
is life. It hardly bothered him anymore. He knew what kind of person attracted him. At least, he used to know. Since Holden's spell, it was hard to say what turned him on anymore because nothing did.

  He just wasn't interested in being tangled up in someone else's life. Or worse, someone tangling up in his. Because his was a twisted disaster of epic proportions.

  To prove it, as if Derek held any doubts, his least favorite ghost appeared in the seat beside him.

  “Worthless,” he repeated, making his voice purposefully ominous. “Worthless…worthless…worthless…”

  Arriving at the lake a bit distracted, Derek stomped around thick-trunked trees toward Bo and Stubby's camp chairs and silently arranged the twelve-pack in their cooler.

  "Thanks, my friend," Bo exclaimed. "Come pick us up later."

  "I will." Until then, Derek would be working on his cabin. Struggling, he finally spit out, "Text me if you need anything."

  Once Bo and Stubby started drinking, though, they’d be arguing good-naturedly and downing cold beers for hours. Derek would have the rest of the day to himself.

  “…just kill yourself already…you spineless worm…” The Dark Caster’s spirit trailed him toward the truck. “…cut your own throat, and I’ll laugh while you die…”

  Or maybe not.

  Download Spell of Shattering today!

  About the Author

  Anna Abner lived in a haunted house for three years and grew up talking to imaginary friends. In her professional life, she has been a Realtor, a childcare provider, and a teacher. Now, she writes edge-of-your-seat paranormal romances and blogs from her home in coastal North Carolina about ghosts and magic. Connect with Anna at www.annaabner.com. Spell of Summoning is her first novel.

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  Other Works by Anna Abner

  Novels

  Spell of Summoning (Dark Caster Series Book One)