Halfway Hexed

by Kimberly Frost

  There were locked file boxes on the floor. They were kind of heavy, but I thought that I might be able to carry them back to my car one at a time. Then I’d really find out what WAM and the Conclave were up to. I found a jewelry pouch, and dumped the contents out onto the bedside table. All delicate little chains and tiny charms. No stolen brooch.

  The longer I searched, the more worried I got. Did she have it with her? So unfair after getting my hopes up with the open window. I’d just finished looking under the mattress when I felt a sharp pinch in my thigh and pain spread out, flash-fire style.

  I crumpled to my knees, turning my head just in time to see the gun in Gwen’s hand. I arched back, but not fast enough. The butt of the gun cracked my skull, and everything went black before my head hit the carpet.

  Chapter 20

  My ears felt like someone had filled them with cotton, but I still heard her voice when I woke up.

  “. . . him getting involved with a well-controlled, politically savvy low-level witch with potential, I could see. Or even a human being with exceptional intellect and magical leanings. But you?” she scoffed.

  My wrists ached from being pinned under me. I was lying on the grass, and Miss Spy-Perfect Wardrobe had taken off her tailored jacket and rolled up her silk sleeves, so she wouldn’t get dirty while she shoveled.

  Shoveled? Uh-oh!

  She dumped new dirt on the pile next to me and some of it rolled down the mound onto my legs.

  “Why are you digging?” I asked, rolling from side to side, trying to get into a sitting position.

  She glanced at me with an ice-water look. “If you try to get to your feet to run, I’ll decapitate you with this shovel,” she said calmly.

  I froze. Decapitate? No matter what else happened, I was determined to keep my head and my body together. Even if I was going to die. I had come into the world in one piece and that’s how I planned to leave it.

  When I was sitting up, I spotted Mercutio’s body lying next to mine. I let out a cry of fury and half-rolled, half-crawled to him. I was rewarded with a sharp whack across my shoulder blades, which knocked me face-first to the ground. The good news was that, lying across Merc, I could feel that he was still warm and breathing. Something sharp was jabbing me in the belly and I moved slowly to get off it.

  I realized it was a tranquilizer dart stuck in Mercutio’s side. Had that been what she’d shot me with, too? A tranquilizer dart? Just like Scarface? Were they working together?

  “Can I sit up?” I asked. “I won’t try to stand.”

  “Yes, you may sit, if you like.”

  I positioned myself so that Mercutio’s body was behind mine.

  “So how come you’re going to kill me? Isn’t that kind of a stiff penalty for breaking into your room?”

  I used my cuffed hands to pull the dart out of Merc.

  She flung dirt onto the mound. “It’s nothing personal.”

  She tossed the shovel on the ground and marched over to me. She grabbed Mercutio by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from me, then stabbed him with the dart again.

  I spewed a string of curses that would’ve made a sailor blush.

  She smiled at me. “Look at you,” she said with a sniff. “You tripped the wards on my motel room and then hung around waiting for me to show up and find you. Pathetic. Couldn’t even recognize simple protective wards.”

  Wards. Of course. A witch’s magical security system. Except I couldn’t feel magic, so I hadn’t felt a thing when I’d crossed them.

  “Where’s Johnny?”

  “Nursing a headache. He’ll never even remember coming to the hotel.”

  At least he was okay.

  “Isn’t killing me kind of extreme? John Barrett offered me like a scholarship to go to school in London. Weren’t you supposed to wait for me to say ‘no’ before you killed me?”

  She waved off the suggestion, like killing me was no worse than shoplifting a pack of gum. “Do you know what Bryn said when we spoke about you?” she asked, hopping down into the hole and dragging the shovel in.

  “If I had to guess, I’d put my money on something other than ‘Kill Tammy Jo.’ ”

  “You know . . . never mind what he said,” she murmured. “Suffice to say that you have to die.”

  “He probably said that he likes me because I would never sit around and let my boss put a needle necklace on him.”

  She smiled. “Actually, that is fairly close to what he said.” Dirt flew out of the hole.

  I wriggled hard to get the chain connecting my wrists under my backside. I had to get my arms in front of me.

  “He thinks you’re incorruptible,” she continued. The shovel paused as she laughed. “As if such a thing were possible. Everyone is corruptible. Sometimes it’s necessary to dabble in darkness. Look at Bryn. He finally tapped into the black magic cache he got from outsmarting a demon. For years, he resisted using that power, which was free for the taking. His by rights. Until recently. He seems to be running a bit wild now that you’ve come into his life.”

  “His by rights?”

  “Usually, when one taps into black magic, one has to pay a price. But Bryn has a source of black magic that he earned with his wits a long time ago. So far as I know, he’s never used it before now. Maybe he thinks you’re such sweetness and light that you’ll ward off any dark powers that might take an interest.”

  “Why do you care what Bryn thinks or does? You guys broke up.” I bent my knees to my chest and inched the chain under my feet. I could barely breathe while I did it, but I got my bound wrists in front of me.

  “We didn’t really break up. We took a break. Temporarily. He left to spend some time with his father. I never expected him to actually stay in this ridiculous town. Our lives were perfect when we lived together. When you’re out of the way, I’ll have him again. And it’s for his own good. Someone has to get him out of here before evidence of his connection to the Underground is uncovered.”

  I kept my eyes on the hole as I knee-walked to Mercutio. I pulled the dart out of him and tossed it into the grass, then looked around for a weapon. Where was her gun?

  With a whoosh of air, she was out of the hole and advancing on us. I jumped to my feet and crashed into her. We flew across the dirt and tumbled into the hole. The landing jarred me, but I didn’t let it stop me. We fought like our lives depended on it, which in my case it did, of course.

  I slammed my palm into her nose, and her blood sprayed all over us. The noise she made was half-scream, half-banshee wail. I got the shovel away from her, but she was fast and before I could crack her in the head with it, I felt a sharp slice along my side. She’d gotten her gun out and shot me again! I was only grazed by the dart, but I could feel that it had broken the skin.

  Damn her!

  My bloody hands slid along the handle of the shovel. I tried to knock her out, hoping I might wake up first, but my hands got wobbly too soon. The last thing I remember was her big swollen nose in my face while her hands choked my throat.

  I woke with the weight of the world pressing down on me. It felt heavy and kind of soft actually—at least the part on my face, which I realized a moment later was Mercutio. I inhaled kitty fur and fought the urge to sneeze.

  I was groggy and suffocating, maybe hallucinating, but being cocooned in the earth with my blood seeping into the dirt wasn’t nearly as scary as it should have been.

  I tried to move my arms, but couldn’t. I needed to reach into a pocket of power with my mind, not my hands.

  H’llo Earth, it’sssme. Tammel. Tammy Jo, I said in my head, as I fought the urge to take a deep breath. I needed air. The more alert I became, the more I needed it. I tried to concentrate on a spell. Any spell, I thought frantically. My heart throbbed in my chest, and I choked on dirt and Merc’s fur.

  I know I’m a mess, and I don’t have much clout.

  But I’d really appreciate it, if you’d just spit me out.

  I felt the ground move. I clamped my
fists until they cramped.

  Don’t have much clout.

  Please, spit me out!

  Don’t have much clout.

  PLEASE! Spit! Me! OUT!

  There was a horrible wrenching, like my arms and legs were being pulled from their sockets. Then the ground exploded and flung me out of the hole.

  I landed on the ground with a rib-cracking thud. I sobbed out a groan and grabbed my side. Every breath hurt.

  I tasted dirt in the back of my throat and coughed, sending spikes of pain through me.

  “Uh,” I moaned, trying to stabilize the pieces of my ribs that were grinding against each other.

  “Mer?” It was as much as I could manage. As I forced myself to roll onto my uninjured side, tears trickled from my eyes. I kept my arm pinned to my left side, trying to keep it as still as possible, but every centimeter of movement was a knife, every breath like a shard of glass shoved into my flesh. I saw Merc lying in the dirt.

  The sound I made was barely human. I moved faster than I could stand and shrieked in pain. By the time I leaned over him, I was crying outright.

  I scooped dirt from his mouth and banged his limp body. She’d put another damn dart back in him, and I yanked it free. I pressed his chest and blew air into his mouth and sobbed.

  I don’t know when he started breathing again. Maybe he was breathing the whole time, but too shallow for me to realize. I only know that when he started to retch up dirt, it was the best awful sound I’d ever heard.

  I leaned on my right arm, held my side with my left, and asked God for forgiveness. In advance.

  “I was just gonna be a pastry chef. You know I was,” I said as I picked Merc up and arranged him over my shoulders like a shawl. “But here I am.” I ground my teeth together as I stood up, spears of pain tearing through my side.

  “She buried Mercutio and me alive. If I weren’t half faery, I’m sure I’d be dead.” I panted shallow breaths, trying to steady myself. “I think You understand,” I rasped and then clenched my teeth in pain and fury.

  “Some folks—” I wheezed out a breath. “Some folks just need killing.” I felt the tears drip off my jaw as I started forward. “That’s all I’m gonna say about it.”

  By the time I got out of the woods, I was slightly less homicidal. I was surprised to find myself at Macon Hill. She’d brought me to the tor and to the woods where I’d almost been killed the week before. What was it with these Conclave jerks? Did they all carry the same playbook?

  Merc had woken up. He stumbled along groggily, but I didn’t fill him in on anything. I figured he was still too full of tranquilizers to concentrate.

  Bryn lived near the tor, but I was in too much pain to walk all the way there. Instead, I stopped at Magnolia Park and waited for someone to drive by that I could flag down. Ironically, the first person to show up was Edie, but, being a ghost, she doesn’t have her own car.

  “What in the world happened to you? You’re covered in dirt.”

  “Could you go get Bryn?”

  “No, I won’t! You’re not supposed to be seeing him. Why don’t I get Johnny Nguyen? Of course, I’m not sure he’ll want you in his car like that. I’ll tell him to cover the passenger seat with a sheet.”

  “Not Johnny. Things are too dangerous for him to be around me right now. Why don’t you get Bryn? Being involved with me is pretty likely to get him killed.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Really,” I said, lying down on the bench.

  “All right then. I’ll appear to Johnny and ask him to call that son-of-a-bastard, Lyons. First tell me what you wanted to tell Melanie. I’m not sure how long I’ll last over here with the locket there.”

  “I need her to come home. This trouble is pretty big. I need her help.”

  There was dead silence. I turned my head to see if Edie was still in the park. She was.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked, frowning at her.

  “Well, her powers diminished while she was underhill and . . .”

  “And?” I demanded.

  “She’s stuck in the UK. There’s some sort of curse trapping her there. If she wants to restore her power, she’ll have to find a way to lift it.”

  “A curse. Of course there is.” I put an arm across my forehead. The dirty grit on my arm rubbed across the dirty grit on my face. I grimaced.

  “Is my grandmother alive?”

  “What?” Edie asked sharply.

  “My grandma. Momma and Aunt Mel’s momma? Alive or dead?”

  “I’m going to get the candylegger.” With that she was gone.

  I sighed. Alive then. Darn them.

  “For the love of St. Patrick,” Bryn sputtered. “What happened?”

  “You want the good news or the bad news?” I asked, sitting up with a terrible grimace.

  “Bad, first,” he said, grasping my shoulders to steady me.

  “Your ex-girlfriend tried to kill me because she thinks I’m in the way of her getting you back.”

  “Gwen? Gwen did this?”

  I nodded. “Carry me,” I said, putting my arms out.

  He picked me up and I groaned when his hands pressed my broken side.

  “Stop! Put me down!” I rasped.

  “What? Why?”

  “You can’t squeeze my left side. Nobody can. I’d rather stay here—live here, if I have to.”

  Bryn knelt down in front of me and lifted my shirt. “God damn it.”

  I looked down and saw the mass of swollen red and purple bruises covering my lower ribs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “All right, put your arms around my neck.” I followed his instructions, and, in the end, he cradled me kind of like I was sitting in a chair. We got to his car and I climbed in. Merc sat on Bryn’s lap instead of mine. That’s why Merc and I are best friends.

  “What’s the good news?”

  “Turns out I’m hard to kill. Shot, choked, and buried alive. Then shot like a cannon ball out of the ground, and, so far as I can tell, not dead. Pretty sure being dead doesn’t hurt this bad.”

  Bryn reached over and stroked my hair.

  “This is . . . worse than I thought,” he said. “You can leave. I’ll take you to some Underground members. It’ll be dangerous, but—”

  “Let’s talk about it after you wash the dirt out of my hair.”

  It was the oddest shower ever. Mercutio walked around Bryn and me in circles, hissing whenever the jets of water splashed on him. Motrin and Tylenol weren’t nearly strong enough painkillers, so I drank rum mixed with pineapple juice from a squeeze bottle while Bryn soaped up my skin.

  I stood under the warm spray facing Bryn as he massaged my scalp. Yep, there was definitely magic in those fingers. I tipped my head back to rinse the shampoo away, and Bryn kissed my shoulder.

  “I’m too hurt,” I said as his hand slid down my spine to the curve of my back. He drew me to him, so our bodies touched, cool and slick from the water.

  “I’ll ease the pain,” he whispered against my mouth. His black lashes were spiked together, framing those intense blue eyes.

  “Nobody tells prettier lies than you,” I whispered back.

  His mouth caught mine, and his kiss was gentle, just a caress really, as the tip of his tongue touched mine questioningly.

  He mumbled against my mouth in Gaelic, and I felt the magic, rich and complex spinning out of him.

  “Speak English,” I said, and he did.

  She comes down from the mountain

  Through mists of dawn;

  I look and the star of morning

  from the sky is gone.

  The misty mountain is burning

  In the sun’s red fire,

  And the heart in my breast is burning

  And lost in desire.

  I follow you into the valley

  But no word can I say;

  To the East or the West will I
follow

  Till the dusk of my day.

  “That’s beautiful,” I whispered.

  “From a Celtic poem by Thomas Boyd.”

  I slipped my fingers into his hair and drew his mouth to mine. The kiss was more than a caress.

  Maybe it was the liquor buzzing in my head. Maybe it was the magic. Or his sexy voice whispering pretty poetry, but the pain dampened.

  “I’m not sure about this. I want . . . but you’d have to be so careful with me. So careful it might not be good. Probably wouldn’t, but I couldn’t take—”

  He brushed his lips over mine. “I’ll be more than careful. I’ll be what you need.”

  Arms around his neck, legs around his hips, our tongues tangled together, he carried me to the bed and sat on the edge with me on his lap facing him. He had his hands on my hips, holding me just away from the part of him that wanted me most.

  He glanced to the cut-glass skylight then back to my eyes. “Give me your body, and I’ll give you mine.”

  “Isn’t that what we were doing?”

  He smiled and kissed me, but briefly. Too briefly.

  Blood of my blood. Bone of my bone.

  Two bodies, one. Never alone.

  “Blood of my—” I started to repeat what he’d said, but he stopped me, touching a finger to my lips.

  He stared into my eyes, and I could see the universe there, just behind his half-lowered lids.

  “That spell is a circle that would bind us together. If you say the words too, you’ll close the circle,” he said.

  I was so tempted, but stayed silent.

  “Blood of my blood,” he said against my mouth, and the words wound together like our bodies. He pulled me onto him, connecting us with the last word. The magic swallowed us both.

  It wasn’t that the pain was gone. It was only that I didn’t care about it. The rhythm was slow, agonizingly so. The corded muscles in his arms were taut, his control absolute. Only when I dug my nails into his shoulders and moved back and forth faster did he match me.