by Anna Abner
Nothing happened right away, so she focused on Derek and all the little things she could see.
The muscles in his chest bunched beneath the white button-down, and as her gaze traveled across his wide shoulders and down his tense biceps, his hands fisted. She scooted closer to see better.
Derek squeezed his eyes closed. “It’s starting to burn.”
“This is magic?” She reached out a tentative hand, but stopped short of touching him because the hair on his arms stood at attention as if drawn to her. She moved north and they stretched north. She pulled her hand south and they followed.
Finally, she couldn’t take the suspense anymore and laid her palm flat against his flesh. A spark of static electricity shot through her.
Derek flinched, his eyes popped open, and the tension vanished with a whoosh of breath.
“What does it feel like?” she whispered, refusing to remove her hand. Rather, she kept it gently upon his arm.
“Lightning.” He glanced at her fingers, but he didn’t pull away.
“Could you always do magic?” she asked.
“I was born this way,” he explained. “I always saw ghosts, but I first channeled magic when I was twelve.”
“It must have been amazing for you.” She pictured a skinny twelve-year-old version of Derek, innocent and uncertain, learning to wield such a gift.
“I thought it was the greatest blessing in the world. I thought it made me special.”
“It does.”
He slowly shook his head. “The more I use it the more I think it’s a curse.”
She didn’t believe that for a moment, but she refrained from arguing. She didn’t have the first idea what magic was about.
Instead, she considered the possibility of being like him soon. “What happens if the demon gets inside me?”
The muscles beneath her fingers tightened. “It won’t happen.”
“But what if it does?”
“Then I’ll cast it out of you.”
Her fingers dug into his arm. “You’re a good person, Derek Walker.”
With a disbelieving huff, he withdrew his arm and scooted out of reach. The electricity between them faded.
“You have no idea what I’ve done,” he said sadly.
“Will you tell me?”
He was quiet for so long, she was certain he’d refuse. Gradually, though, he began to confess. “In March I started casting a demon-summoning spell on Rebecca. The same spell hurting you right now.”
“I don’t understand.” The spell on her was horrible and perpetrated by evil people. Derek couldn’t have…
“I did to Rebecca what they’re doing to you. And the night my summoning spell finished, a demon possessed Rebecca, turning her into a necromancer. That’s when Holden stole my memories and left me on the side of the road like a piece of garbage.”
She thought back to the way he and Holden fought like a pair of rabid dogs every time they were in the same room. “Is that why Holden hates you?” she guessed.
“It’s why he took my memories. It’s why he almost killed me in April.”
There hadn’t been a car accident. The fantasy she’d believed for four months had never happened. Derek hadn’t lost control, driven into an embankment, and smashed his head on a steering wheel. Holden had punished him for targeting Rebecca.
Jessa wanted so badly to touch him, to offer comfort because it was obvious Derek believed he’d deserved to be punished and probably still did.
“You’re not that person anymore.” She didn’t need any further evidence of how much he had changed. It was obvious. “Would you hurt someone now?” she countered, knowing the answer, but needing him to know it.
“I hurt Rebecca,” he said. “I liked her, but I caused her pain. For no good reason except that I could.”
Jessa recalled Rebecca’s migraines around the time she closed her business, the same time Derek had his so-called accident. Had it been Derek’s fault? Had he truly been tormenting her in secret?
It didn’t matter. Whatever his past crimes, he was a different person. “You deserve a second chance the same as anyone else.” She believed that wholeheartedly. “And I will see the good in you.”
But he wouldn’t respond. She stared at his bare arms and relived the spark of electricity. To test whether it was a fluke, she poked his wrist. Quick, before he could pull away, and energy crackled.
“Why does it feel like this when we touch?” she demanded. No one else had ever given off a charge.
“Because of the summoning spell,” he said sadly. “Magic covers you like a second skin. The power in me reacts to it.”
“Fascinating.” She poked him again, but this time she didn’t experience a warm tingle. Her headache popped, and she grabbed him for support.
“It’s worse,” she cried. The throbbing was pushing past nine on her personal scale. She lost sense of time or place, knowing only Derek’s flesh beneath her fingers as the pounding in her head galloped on and on and on…
“I’ll help you to bed.” Without waiting for an answer, he lifted her into his arms. The movement caused a wave of nausea, but she couldn’t have stood on her own, and she was grateful. The next thing she knew, she lay upon her bed and Derek was covering her with a blanket.
“Stay,” she begged.
The blanket soothed her into a half sleep, but she caught his reply before she blacked out.
“Jessa, I just can’t.”
* * *
Derek stood over Jessa’s bed for a long time, him and the demon on her shoulder, keeping guard. She fell asleep, but her rest was fitful. The lines across her forehead and around her mouth never completely disappeared.
Stay, she’d said.
If only he could.
But keeping on task was imperative. In fact, it may mean the difference between Jessa being touched by evil or a near miss. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by the intense desires she brought out in him.
If Holden couldn’t break the summoning spell, someone else could. He pulled his phone and called Willow.
“Can your casters break the summoning spell, or not?” he greeted when she answered.
“Hello to you too,” she sniped. “And we’re working on it.”
It sounded like another brush-off. “She’s growing weaker. She slept for hours today.” He recalled enough of his former life to know that go-getter Jessa never napped.
“We didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily,” she said, “but we’ve been casting in Holden’s farmhouse pretty much all day.”
If they’d had any success, though, she wouldn’t sound as if she were quoting an obituary. “What happened?”
“We tried locater spells,” she said. “We tried to break her spell. We tried summoning the cabal’s spirits. Nothing worked.”
He sighed into the phone.
Willow added, “We’re going to your house in a bit. There are a lot of us, and Talia says the cabal’s numbers have dwindled. I think if we power up, we can take them.”
He supposed it was as good a plan as any. “Don’t underestimate them,” he warned.
“Don’t worry,” Willow assured with a soft chuckle, “we can take care of ourselves.” She said goodbye and hung up.
He couldn’t sit still after laying the phone on the kitchen counter. Willow’s casters were large in number, but they didn’t wield the kinds of dark magic Paul’s cabal did. He wanted to believe she could handle the coming fight, but worry over the outcome had him pacing the floor.
There weren’t many things that calmed Derek’s turbulent emotions. The alcohol had helped, but the initial buzz had worn off. Exercise and carpentry worked, but he didn’t have tools to build anything, and he had to stay in the apartment to keep an eye on Jessa. So, he did what had always come naturally for him. He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt and redecorated.
As a child, decorating had been an escape from an unhappy existence. As an adult, it had been a fun way to spend his time when he was t
oo lazy and unmotivated to start his own design company. Now, it was a much-needed distraction. A form of therapy.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t tear up and replace the hideous lime green carpet or re-paint the blah eggshell walls, but there were other small changes he could make to Jessa’s apartment. First, he unplugged and disconnected all the electronics on the entertainment center and spritzed each box with cleanser. Then he traded it with the sofa, grunting as he lifted an end of the surprisingly heavy piece of furniture.
“This isn’t helping,” Jolie called from the kitchen window.
Derek was very good at ignoring annoying spirits, and he hardly registered her words.
Rather than take her bait, he arranged a bookcase against the wall opposite the front door, categorizing its contents onto different shelves according to size and color and adding random knick-knack pieces between sets of books to break up the patterns into pleasing subgroups.
“Don’t ignore me!” Jolie screamed.
The book of modern poetry flew from his hand as if pulled by an invisible string.
For a moment, he stood there, his arm suspended in the air, staring at the fallen book. Finally, he met the ghost’s angry eyes.
“How did you do that?” Demons sometimes controlled electricity, but he had never heard of a spirit affecting the physical world. If she could move physical objects, she could do anything.
“Explain to me,” she said, “how moving furniture is helping my sister out of the summoning spell?”
“It’s not,” he agreed. “But it’s helping me calm down and focus.” He gave her a questioning look. “Are you going to tell me how you made the book move?”
Jolie clenched her jaws closed.
“Fine.” Turning his back on her, he returned to his task, organizing the shelves until everything was perfect.
But the windows were a problem. He hated blinds, preferring either undressed windows or chic curtains. He couldn’t open the blinds and risk the cabal spying on them, and he didn’t have time to order drapes. So, he went through the women’s linen closet at the end of the hall. It turned out Esmeralda slept on a twin bed and she owned lots of sheets. Derek chose a gorgeous indigo set that worked well with the green carpet and set about cutting them up.
He would reimburse Esmeralda for the fabric. Tonight, creating beauty in the midst of chaos was more important than the actual materials.
“Did you tell Jessa you used to work for the same guy trying to kill her?” Jolie called.
He’s not trying to kill her, Derek thought. He was trying to possess her with a demon. But Jolie was getting on his nerves, and he didn’t respond. He could tell by the tone of her voice she didn’t actually want a heart-to-heart conversation, anyway. She was pushing his buttons, hoping to get a rise.
She wasn’t the first spirit to chirp in his ear in the hopes of driving him mad.
“What kind of a person casts spells to hurt people?” Jolie continued. “Huh? Derek? What kind of a person does that?”
He carried a kitchen chair into the living room and set it in front of the first window. Carrying the new valances, pushpins, and some string, he stepped onto the wooden seat.
“Stop ignoring me!”
The chair tipped sideways so suddenly, Derek couldn’t regain his balance before he was on his ass on the floor.
Jessa emerged from the bedroom wrapped in a comforter, her hair tousled, looking like a sleepy goddess.
Her gaze swept his changes to the room. “What have you been up to?”
Derek returned the chair and then abandoned the curtains on the sofa. “Redecorating. I couldn’t sleep. Do you mind?”
Jolie’s voice echoed through the room. “Stay away from her!”
Jessa shook her head, tendrils of silken blonde hair coming loose from the blanket and falling over her shoulder. “It looks much better.”
“Go back to bed. I’ll be quiet.”
Yawning, she returned to her room. The door clicked closed.
He spun on Jolie. “Outside,” he growled. “Now.” Taking the stairs two at a time, he skidded to a stop on the stoop, the very edge of his barrier spell.
Jolie faced him from the yard, her arms crossed. “Stay away from Jessa.”
Mimicking her, he folded his arms across his chest. “No.”
“You’re just as bad as the Dark Caster,” she accused. “You’re only here to make his job easier.”
Derek didn’t, as a rule, do a lot of groveling, but Jolie had him cornered. Without her power, he was helpless against the cabal. So, he steadied the anger burning just under the surface, and leveled with her.
“I’m only going to say this once,” he began. “I used to work for Paul. I used to cast black magic for him.”
“You’re just as evil as he is,” she fired back.
God, he hoped not, because evil like that was impossible to completely shake. “No.”
“But close.”
Derek dropped his arms and stared at the grass, sparkling from the recent rains. “Yes.” But placing him and Paul on some cosmic scale of good and evil wasn’t productive. “I cast spells for him, but I’m not that man anymore.” Before Jessa had called him home, he hadn’t cast a single spell—light or dark—in four months.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “There’s no way you show up at exactly the same time she gets attacked.”
“Jolie, I love her.” The words surprised him as much as they did Jolie. But they were some of the truest words he’d ever spoken. Of course he loved her. Jessa was everything light and good he’d been missing. “And I didn’t just show up. Jessa asked me to come.”
“You love her?” Jolie stared at him like he’d grown fur. “What are you talking about?”
He laughed, feeling nearly weightless. He couldn’t wait to run upstairs and tell Jessa. “I love her. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“But that’s…” Jolie shook her head like it was a nervous tick. “What happens when something doesn’t go your way and you lose your temper? What happens to Jessa then?”
He laughed again, tipsy from his admission. “Jolie, not a single thing has gone my way since April, and I haven’t gone dark. I haven’t even thought of casting black magic. It didn’t even cross my mind.”
“But—but –”
“Jolie,” he said, turning serious. “Can we please call a truce? I need you. You’re the only spirit I trust not to betray me or secretly be a spy for Paul.”
“You really love my sister?” she asked.
“Yes. I really do.”
Seconds ticked by as she studied him. “Okay.” She tilted her head back to stare at the sky. “Truce.”
“Great.” He turned toward the stairwell.
“Wait,” she called. “I have something to tell you.”
Impatient to get upstairs and talk to Jessa, he reluctantly waited on the stoop. “What’s wrong?”
“Holden is keeping you like this on purpose. He didn’t give you all your memories back because he doesn’t trust you,” she said in a rush.
Derek blinked, uncertain he’d heard her right. “He what?”
“He told the coven he only gave you about half your memories back because he thinks otherwise you’ll grovel to the Dark Caster and be evil again.”
The anger from earlier—no, the rage at Holden that had been building for months—boiled over. “Son of a bitch,” he swore, grabbing the door and slamming it. “That liar. That two-faced—” Holden had looked him in the eye and never said a word. “Who does he think he is?” Did he believe himself to be Derek’s magical parole officer? Well, that was crap. Derek didn’t need restraints. He needed his memories back.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Jolie said.
He opened the door and considered slamming it again, but simply swung it gently to and fro. “It’s not your fault.” It was Holden’s.
“What are you going to do?”
He was tempted to drive to wherever Holden wa
s and finally fight it out. “Nothing yet,” he decided, glancing up in the direction of Jessa’s bedroom. “But thanks for telling me.”
His heart racing, he bounded up the stairs and into the apartment, slowing at the edge of Jessa’s bed where she lay sleeping. He nearly shook her awake to tell her he loved her. To tell her everything he’d been holding inside for so long. But the demon attached to her shoulders sneered at him, so vivid Derek knew the spell would be complete soon.
He let her rest.
Far from exhausted, but with nothing left to distract him, Derek stretched out on the sofa and tried to sleep. He must have dozed off because he woke sometime later, his heart beating double-time.
At first he thought the screaming was coming from far outside the building, which he wasn’t going to worry about, not when Jessa was curled up in bed beneath his shields, asleep and safe. But the sound grew louder and nearer until it was too close and too loud to ignore.
“Derek,” Jolie screamed. “Hurry. It’s a trap! You have to help them!”
The vibrations from her voice nearly ruptured his eardrums. “I can’t leave Jessa.” Thank God, she couldn’t hear spirits or Jolie would’ve woken her up, and that would really piss him off.
“Did you hear what I said?” It didn’t seem possible, but her screaming grew louder. “They won’t listen to me! No one will listen to me!” The floor vibrated so hard the entertainment center danced away from the wall.
He sat up, showing her his palms. “I hear you,” he promised. “Jolie, I’m listening.”
Slowly, the tremors died down.
“They don’t know what they’re walking into,” she rattled off in super speed. “I went ahead of them. I saw the spirits and the witches and the glyphs. They’re all gonna die.”
“Hold up,” he said. “Who are ‘they’?”
“Your coven!”
“I don’t have a coven,” he said flatly. The Raleigh group had never included him. They knew of him, and sometimes self-righteous people like Holden messed with him, but Derek had never belonged to them.
“You know what I mean,” she shouted. Jolie’s spirit started vibrating again, flickering like an old-fashioned filmstrip. “You have to help them. If they all die then who will save Jessa from the demon?”