Meagan waited until he wasn’t looking at her, and then studied him over, concerned. He didn’t look good. Actually, he looked like a goblin freshly pulled from the water, but it was what she saw in the depths of his eyes that left her feeling disconcerted.
He seemed different somehow. Very, very tired at the least.
“Katelyn, give me your life pendant,” he instructed softly, holding his hand out. His eyes were on the sleeping vampires, so he didn’t see her expression of worry.
But Meagan nudged her and nodded. She had a feeling she knew where he was going with this.
Katelyn took a deep breath and unlatched the necklace, giving it to her history teacher. He looked up when it landed in his palm, then turned to Meagan. “We can duplicate this. It’s a spell I haven’t yet taught you, but you’re more than ready for it now. And if we do it together, it’ll work twice as fast.”
She nodded. “But what about them?”
“I have a hunch….” Lehrer frowned as he looked over the vampires again.
“You have a hunch that if we place the life pendants on them, it’ll lock them in their human forms.” She’d had the same passing gut feeling, but had been afraid to voice it.
Lehrer met her gaze. Again, she was struck with the new depths to his eyes, and the worry inside her ratcheted up a notch.
He nodded and looked away. “These pendants contain within them the essence of life, and a vampire’s essence is shrouded in death. One might cancel out the other.”
Yes, but which one? Thought Meagan. It was another thought she chose not to voice. “Let’s give it a shot,” she said instead.
“Very well, but we’ll need to add a stipulation that will prevent the amulet from harming anyone who wears it, or it’ll end up burning a hole through them while they sleep. Place your hand over mine,” he instructed. She laid her hand over the life pendant, sealing it off between their palms.
“And repeat after me.”
It was much less of a drain on Meagan than she’d expected it to be, but then it had become quite clear that October Land amplified her magical abilities. They seemed to have done the same with Mr. Lehrer. The duplication spell took two people to cast, which was both fitting and ironic. Within minutes, the two had created seven new pendants – one from Katelyn’s pendant, then two more from those two, then four more from those four.
“Plenty to go around and extra just in case,” Meagan said as she took one of the pendants and secured it around Shawn’s neck. Lehrer did the same with Nathan.
“Can they take them off again?” asked Katelyn as she lifted up Nathan’s hand to remind everyone about the black gloves they both wore.
“Probably,” said Meagan. “But why would they want to?” If she was given a choice between being herself and being a bastard, blood drinking monster –
“You know,” said Katelyn, “ the whole ‘sleep all day, party all night, never grow old, never die’ thing.” She was quoting The Lost Boys.
“You forgot the ‘but you must feed’ part,” countered Meagan.
Both girls found themselves considering that then, and the whole thought of drinking blood was so wretchedly disgusting to them, they simultaneously shivered at the thought, and the discussion came to an end.
“What now?” Katelyn asked as they moved away from the two sleeping vampires and back toward the forest line. It seemed the only way to go.
“Now we locate Logan,” said Lehrer.
That was obvious, but Meagan hadn’t suggested using magic to find her friend before because a location spell would just tell them where she was. And that was a little like saying, “She’s in New Mexico,” and if you didn’t know where the hell New Mexico was relative to where you were, then you were out a good bit of magic and nowhere closer to your goal.
None of them seemed to know anything about October Land, what it looked like, or even how big it was. So a location spell wasn’t going to be of any help.
“Are you going to cast another spell like Meagan did to find you?”
Lehrer looked at Meagan in surprise. But she held up her hand and shook her head. “I didn’t cast a location spell – it was a sock finding spell. You’re wearing the ones I gave you for Solstice last year. I noticed when we were packing to come here.”
Lehrer’s brows raised and he looked down at his ankles, lifting his pants legs to reveal a gray and white striped cashmere pair. “They’re warm,” he said by way of explanation.
“I’m glad,” Meagan replied, smiling.
“They’re also big enough to go over my feet right now,” he added, gesturing to the size fifteen hiking boots they’d had to buy him before heading into October Land. They’d just been fortunate that Wal-Mart carried extra, extra, extra, extra, extra large sizes in just about everything. They’d gotten his clothes there too.
“That was a sock finding spell?” Katelyn exclaimed. “Holy shit, girl. You are so gonna have to come over to my house. I’m pretty sure our dryer is actually a dimensional mouth that eats single socks.”
Meagan smiled.
Mr. Lehrer nodded in seriousness. “That was quick thinking,” he commended Meagan. “Good job.”
She tried not to blush.
“You were right in thinking a location spell wouldn’t do you any good,” he continued. “In fact, for Logan I was thinking more along the lines of….” He trailed off suddenly, rubbed his big forehead with his massive hand. He closed his eyes.
“Mr. Lehrer?” Meagan moved toward him, but he held up his hand.
“I’m fine. I just can’t think of what it’s called when you try to find water in the desert. You know. With that stick thing.”
“You mean dowsing?” supplied Katelyn.
Mr. Lehrer didn’t look surprised, exactly, but he had an expression on his goblin face like he’d just been proven right about something.
“It doesn’t work, you know,” Katelyn continued. “It’s an unconscious psychological trick the mind plays on the dowser’s arms and it’s been proven ineffective over tons of other methods –”
“Yes, I know,” Lehrer cut her off, but not in an unkind way. He was actually smiling, although it was a tired smile. “But ours will work. Because unlike dowsers, we really are magic.” His smile turned into a tusk-filled grin, and Meagan couldn’t help grinning as well.
“The problem is,” he continued, “just as you needed my socks, we need something that either belonged to Logan or is associated with her in some way.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment as they looked down at themselves, holding up their arms, checking their fingers and pockets. “Shit,” said Katelyn. She looked down at the sweater she was wearing, a thick knit cotton yarn number in pastels that was perfectly flattering with her long blonde hair. “Logan gave me a gorgeous sweater for my birthday and I didn’t wear it because I didn’t want it to get ruined on this trip.” She dropped her sweater in frustration. “Instead, I wore this hideous thing.”
“It isn’t hideous,” said Meagan, confused.
“Not at all. You look quite lovely in it,” agreed Draper.
“She gave us those necklaces too, remember?” Meagan said. “The best friend necklaces. But we wore the life pendants instead.”
“So no one has anything belonging to or associated with Logan?” Lehrer asked.
They shook their heads.
“I can help you,” came a new voice. It was familiar, but changed. It sounded hollow and deep and surprising.
The party turned, their guards up. Meagan felt more magic pool into her hands, ready to be used in defense.
A handsome teenage boy stood several feet away. The problem was, he was standing directly on top of one of the pools of water. And he was see-through.
“Alec,” Meagan breathed.
Alec Sheffield smiled and gave a little, mega-cool wave. “Hey.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It felt like the entire universe waited.
The Harvesters waited, their collective bre
aths held, their eyes glued to Sam and Logan. The fire waited, its flames respectfully low and unnaturally quiet. The storm overhead waited, its spinning slowed and its lightning for the moment held back.
Sam and Logan stood facing one another, a mere foot apart. Sam’s tall form towered over her, but for all the potential destruction housed within his beautiful, hard body, there was infinite gentility in his gaze.
Logan had warring memories within her, two minds unconsciously battling it out for space in her thoughts. There was the promised soul of Ciara, and then there were the memories of Logan’s family. They were all bittersweet memories, none of them perfectly happy, none of them perfectly painful.
His fangs were clearly visible, promising and threatening when he spoke. “You have a choice to make, Logan. Do you keep Ciara’s promise? Or do you defy the fates yet again?”
“Ciara was in love with another,” Logan returned calmly. “She did not give her soul to you. Fate made that choice for her, and it wasn’t Fate’s choice to make.”
“If people do not belong to the fates for them to do with what they will, then nothing does. All that happens does so because the fates deem it. It is not always what you wish, but that is the price of mortality.”
Logan felt her blood pressure rise. She hated that reasoning. “You’ve just told me that life isn’t fair,” she countered. “I hate it when people tell me that. Life would be so much more fair if less people spouted that crap and more people did something to make it fair.”
Sam’s gaze hardened, turning from mercury to steel. It was a moment before he spoke. But when he did, his tone had lowered, and there was leaking power in his words now. “Then you would defy the fates.”
White lightning split the sky overhead, casting the masquerade floor into stark contrasts of light and dark. Thunder, its violent brother, came rumbling along after. The Harvesters looked up, fidgeting nervously in their seats.
Logan, however, remained as she was, her gaze trapped in Sam’s as if held there by chains. “I have a life to live, Sam. Just like Ciara did.”
The lightning that had been dancing through the skies now dove for the ground, shooting into the forest nearby and cracking a tree in half. The sound shocked the universe for a moment, and the ground shook.
“When will the living stop using their lives against me?” Sam asked.
“How about when you stop using death against them!” came a new voice – but a familiar voice.
Logan spun around to face it, but before she could even fully lock her eyes on the newcomer, Sam was snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her back against him. She slammed into the solidness of his chest, let out a cry of surprise, and then shuddered. Her eyes became heavy-lidded.
Wonderful, terrible heat immediately seared through Logan beneath his hand, reaching past the material of her midnight dress to scorch her skin and spread across her body with insidious, delicious wickedness.
Sam lowered his lips to her ear. “See him now, Logan, for it is the last time you will lay eyes on the interloper.”
It was Dominic.
Logan’s lips parted. She wanted to cry out to him, to tell him to leave, to run away and protect himself, but Sam was pouring his magic into her, drowning her in warmth and pleasure. It was sinking lower, curling into forbidden places. She felt her head drop against Sam’s shoulder. She couldn’t help it.
“Let her go, Sam,” Dom demanded.
Sam ignored him, choosing instead to speak to Logan as if Dominic was of such inconsequence, he didn’t bear paying attention to. “You won’t miss them,” he told her gently.
It was the same thing he’d told her at the dance weeks ago.
“Remember?” he asked, and she did. “I told you, Logan. I won’t let you.”
She believed him. She believed that if there were a force in the universe capable of making her forget her family, her mother and father….
My mother, she thought suddenly, at once seeing something with a semblance of clarity. Her mother turned to alcohol in order to escape the pain of her life. Just like Logan turned to pen and paper. But how much more pain would her mother be forced to endure and attempt to escape if she lost her daughter?
An infinite amount, she thought. It was supposed to be the worst thing that could happen to a person – the loss of their child.
“They will forget you,” he told her, also just as he had at the dance. “I will make sure of it, Logan. For you, I will make them forget. For my queen.” More luxurious bliss flooded her body, drawing a low, soft moan from between her parted lips.
She was having a hard time concentrating. But…. was that what she wanted?
To be forgotten?
“Let her go!” Dominic bellowed. But now Logan’s eyes were closed, and she wasn’t paying attention to him any longer. Not really. Sam was all-encompassing. A sensation rode her that she’d only ever felt once before – in those moments of intense ache and longing after Sam had bitten her.
“It’s so easy,” Sam told her. His hand moved on her stomach, gripping gently – but firmly. Claiming her.
She caught the scent of roses, strong and seductive. In her mind’s eye, she saw a field of black roses that stretched to the horizon, ebony satin against a twilight sky. This time she knew what they were. As they grew further away, they mixed and mingled with gravestones. Little by little, the roses died away, the head stones took over, and the field of roses became a massive, sprawled cemetery.
Beyond the cemetery, on a cliff overlooking the dotted landscape like a behemoth over the sea, stood Samhain’s castle.
“You won’t have to worry about them any longer.” He kissed her ear lobe gently, and then placed another kiss on the side of her neck. A wretched, feverish chill rushed through Logan, causing her head to swim.
Why was she fighting? She didn’t stand a chance against him.
“Let me in now, Logan. Fulfill your promise to me and join me. I will show you eternity. And I will spare the boy.”
The boy…. He meant Dominic. Of course, Dominic Maldovan would seem a boy to the immortal and ageless Lord of the Dead.
There was a commotion somewhere, and lightning and thunder again played hide and seek with one another through the Autumn sky.
Something niggled at Logan’s mind. She was losing ground.
The sound of flesh striking flesh was like an injection of strength. Someone was fighting.
Sam swore softly, so very close to her ear – close to her neck.
“Logan, don’t do it! Damn it, let her go you son of a bitch!”
Sam pulled back, straightening behind her. “Silence him!”
Logan opened her eyes. Sam’s grip on her tightened, a steel band that refused to give up what it had claimed.
“I don’t think so!” came a female voice from the dark tree line. Everyone froze, and Logan could feel Sam shift behind her, no doubt turning to see who it was.
Logan looked too. Lightning arced with fury, lighting up the masquerade grounds like a massive fire. It struck everywhere, sending trees up like roman candles.
Logan drew a breath of wonder when she saw who it was at the tree line. The spell had worked. “Meagan!”
Meagan looked directly at her – and then she looked at Sam over her shoulder. “I second Maldovan’s motion,” Meagan said. “Let her go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
With her eyes open once more and Sam’s flood of power temporarily dissuaded, Logan was able to see what was happening around her.
Dominic was being held by three of the Harvesters. It was clear he’d been hit many times; there was blood on his lip and beneath his nose. But whatever wounds he had sustained were healing quickly, and the look on his face was one of utter loathing and ferocity.
Meagan Stone, Katelyn Shanks, some man Logan had never before seen, and some kind of monster, entered the masquerade grounds, the four of them looking for all the world like a line of archangels to Logan.
A crackling blue light h
ad pooled in Meagan’s outstretched hands. Magic.
“I said let her go!” There was no further warning. Meagan seemed reared to go. She reached up, yelled something archaic at the tops of her lungs, and cast out her magic as if it were a literal ball that she could throw. That crackling blue energy shot from her arms and into the air like a rainbow of lightning.
Everyone seated around the bonfire scrambled, and behind Logan, Sam acted fast. He yanked her around him, shielding her with his body as he raised his own arms in self-defense.
A red wall of force blocked the magic, acting like a shield as the blue ball slammed into it with incredible force. Sparks of opposing power shot out in all directions, forcing some of the Harvesters to duck behind the log benches or cover their heads with their arms.
In the next moment, Sam was striking back.
Logan cried out in shock and fear when he appeared to actually reach up and command a lightning bolt straight out of the storm overhead. It shot from the tempest’s swirling eye and aimed directly for Meagan.
But rather than engulf her in its fire, the bolt streamed around her like water, and was dissipated as it reached the ground. She remained miraculously standing, though her hands were pressed hard to her ears and her eyes were closed.
The sound was incredible.
Logan heard the first part of it, but that first part was so loud, the rest of it was hidden behind the loud ringing of ear drums that had either been damaged or had closed up in self-preservation.
She stepped back from Sam and watched in that numb ringing as Meagan’s group was hit with the force of the lightning blast and went sailing several feet back. Katelyn and the others hit the ground and rolled, all three coming quickly once more to their feet.
Logan’s gaze skirted to Dominic. Their eyes met.
Here we are again, thought Logan. It was one of those time-altering thoughts that struck you when the world was falling apart around you. It allowed you to step back and see everything in slow motion and from a distance, as it was meant to be seen.
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