“Come here,” I said softly and held my hand out for her.
When her soft fingers slid against mine, I almost sighed. Warm, intense energy shot up my arm. Do not give in. She’s a distraction. You can’t afford distractions. I took a shaky breath then pulled her to her feet. I meant to let go of her hand, but my fingers refused to get the memo. Her royal blue eyes met mine from mere inches away. They were the most amazing color, and there was something not quite human about them. They were too blue, but they were perfect. She leaned in, and our noses brushed. She smelled like flowers, like walking into a florist shop or through a wild garden in the mountains.
Something happened inside me. It felt like two glaciers slamming into each other and sending a tsunami of emotion rolling through me. Back away from the distraction NOW. I cleared my throat and took a step back. She groaned, but I was going to pretend I didn’t hear it. My sanity depended on me not hearing it.
Focus. What were we talking about?
I asked if she was okay… She said she’s worried about her magic not coming back— AH. Magic. Okay, I can do this.
“Give me your hand, Moonshine,” I whispered.
“Moonshine?” she said with an eyebrow arched as she placed her other hand in mine.
“Because you are intoxicating and debilitating.” I raised our joined hands up to her waist level. Her pink magic spread over my hands and coiled around my wrists, and it felt like an extension of herself. To anyone watching from afar, this would’ve looked like some romantic moment. “And yet I crave you.”
Her eyes widened and her cheeks turned red.
Reeeeeeeal nice, Jackson. Way to be misleading.
I cleared my throat again and shook my head. I focused my eyes on the magic around her hands. “Take a deep breath. Your magic is an extension of yourself, so you can call upon it at will. It’s like a fine-tuned muscle. Now, call it back in.”
She nodded and licked her lips. Her chest rose as she inhaled…and then her pink mist faded away. She frowned and stared at our joined hands. “Now what? How do I get it back out?”
“Just push with your mind. Will it to do as you want.” I summoned my own magic to my hands. Deep scarlet mist billowed out from between our hands. “Your turn.”
“Okay,” she said with a shaky voice.
For a few moments, nothing happened, and then I felt a rush of cool energy on my face. Little vibrations tickled my fingers and palms. A puff of pink mist poked out from between her fingers, and then it poured out like a geyser. She grinned and did this cute little bounce.
“Oh, damn. Here I thought I’d catch y’all making out.”
Bettina and I jumped at the sound of Tegan’s voice. I dropped her hands and spun…and found the High Priestess standing right beside us with her hands on her hips. Making out? I wondered what would make her think we could’ve been doing that. I hadn’t touched her in front of anyone, and definitely not since Tegan had gotten into town.
“Tegan,” Bettina hissed, her cheeks bright red. She balled her hands into fists at her sides, pink magic coiling around them. “Shhh.”
She shrugged and arched one black eyebrow. “What? Oh, you mean don’t say anything to embarrass you in front of a guy? Like, and I’m just free-ballin’ here, but you wouldn’t want me to say anything like…‘Oh my god, it’s the hot guy’? Or, ‘You were right, even his voice is hot’? No wait, or was it ‘Even his name is hot’? Damn, I can’t remember now. Must’ve been the horror of the moment that has clouded my memory.”
Hot guy? I frowned and glanced back and forth between them. What am I missing here?
“Tegan, that was different!”
“You’re right. My brother was there, and Tennessee was strictly forbidden, by punishment of having both of our magic and Marks stripped.”
Tegan grinned, and I could totally see how everyone thought she’d once turned to darkness. There was something terrifying and wicked in the sharpness of her smile and the sparkle in her eyes. I was suddenly on alert and terrified of what was about to come out of her mouth.
“Myrtle is waiting for you two, so I came out here to see if you’d finally progressed from ‘eye-banging his sexy British ass’—her words, not mine,” Tegan said to me with a wink. “So you’ll have to work quicker next time. I’ve got to cool you two off now. Come on.”
Bettina gasped. “Tegan!”
But Tegan just shrugged and said over her shoulder, “Karma is a bitch.”
My face was suddenly on fire. I wanted to look at her, but I definitely did not want to at the same time.
Tegan spun and her long black hair whipped by my face. A glowing white box appeared in front of her, and then my feet were sliding across the dirt without me moving them. There was a flash…and then we were inside a room made entirely of stone. Gen, Harlan, and Trey jumped.
Trey cursed. “I’m never gonna get used to that whole flash pop-up thing.”
Tegan chuckled and then she was gone.
“Sorry…I…uh…was showing her how to summon her magic.” I ran my hand through my hair and avoided Bettina’s gaze. Tegan’s words kept echoing in my mind. Has Bettina been talking about me?
“Where did she go? And where are the Cards?” Bettina asked from behind me.
Now that she mentioned it, I realized belatedly that the five of us were alone in the room. The room was empty, except for a short wooden table that held a bowl of glowing white orbs. No chairs. No windows. I didn’t even see any doors.
Gen shrugged. “They said Myrtle needed only us for this…whatever it is we need to do.”
That was somehow not comforting. Or maybe I was still reeling from whatever had just happened with Tegan.
Bettina walked over to the table and bent over to look at the orbs. “What are these?”
“Personal portals.” Myrtle strolled into the room with a leather satchel in her hands. “They only work once each, and can only transport one person at a time.”
“Whoa, cool.” Harlan leaned over the bowl. “How do they work?”
“You would concentrate your mind on where you want to go and then throw the orb to the ground at your feet and you’d be transported.” Myrtle smiled and gestured to the far side of the room. “Please, if you’ll all stand in a circle around the amethyst crystal I have on the floor.”
I turned and spotted the huge piece of raw amethyst standing about a foot tall. “Um, pardon me, Myrtle. Perhaps I missed it, but what is it we’re doing?”
Myrtle smiled and patted my shoulder. “The five of you witnessed something unknown, something we can’t yet explain. So I’m going to perform an old spell that will allow me to save a visual copy of your memories to review after you’ve left. It won’t hurt you.”
The five of us exchanged nervous glances as we walked over to the amethyst and got in a circle formation. There wasn’t much I’d seen, at least not that I knew. A lot of chaos in the dark and then the one shadowy monster that had attacked Erin and Trey. I wasn’t even there when Timothy and Bettina were attacked.
“Now, please, take your neighbor’s hand and close your eyes.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to who was next to me when I stopped walking, but as I closed my eyes and grabbed ahold of the hand next to me, I knew exactly who it was. Heat burned into my right hand and traveled up my arm. Every nerve ending tingled and buzzed. Bettina. I was too aware of her. She had too much of an effect on me. But I had no idea how to make it stop.
Someone gripped my left hand. It was either Harlan or Trey, judging by the size of their hand. Yet it didn’t really matter. It could’ve been the Loch Ness monster, and I wouldn’t have cared.
Myrtle chanted in the ancient language, yet I heard nothing I could understand. I was fluent in the language, yet each word was gibberish to my ears. All I heard was the pounding of my heart and Tegan’s words on repeat. Bettina invaded my senses, and we were only holding hands.
Memories from the Old Lands flashed through my mind as Myrtle’s spell wor
ked through me, but all I saw was Bettina. She was intoxicating. She shut my brain off and turned me to warm, gooey putty. She was my own personal brand of moonshine, and I wanted more.
I am so screwed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Bettina
My eyes rolled. I gasped and shook myself. I sat upright and blinked. My eyes burned, my eyelids heavy and desperately wanting to close. It was some time later, and the sun hung low in the sky like it, too, wanted to take a nap. I couldn’t have said how much time had passed exactly because the magic of the island had taken my clothes and replaced them with a ceremonial gown—which was fine, except that my cell phone was in the pocket of my jeans. There wasn’t a clock on the wall, and no one appeared to have a watch on.
Scratch that. Tennessee had a watch on, but he was on the other side of the room looking like a devastated mess who was one breath away from chopping someone’s head off, so I wasn’t about to ask him. I frowned. He’d looked fine a minute ago. Menacing and brooding, sure, but emotionally calm. What did I miss? My body kept trying to pull me to sleep. It’d been a long day, but ever since Myrtle and Tegan did that spell to unblock my magic, I’d been wiped out.
“Tennessee, you cannot be so hard on yourself,” Myrtle said softly and shook her head. She looked at him like a grandmother might look at her grandchild.
Not that I would know. My own grandparents had passed away before I was born.
“Can’t I, though?” Tennessee groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. Silver rings I hadn’t noticed before glistened in the setting sunshine peeking through the windows. “Twelve years I was in the park with her and never spoke to her. Worse, I intentionally kept my distance from her. All that time she was alone.”
Myrtle leaned forward and took his hand in hers. “Now you listen to me, all four of you. Do you remember when you first showed up in Salem in 1692? Remember I told you then that you couldn’t tell us anything? Saffie and I had the same rules. For three centuries, we prepared, knowing that you’d come back into our lives, and we’d have to pretend to be strangers until after Samhain. Yes, it was hard, but those twelve years to you were a blink of an eye compared to how long we’ve lived. We were just thankful we knew which year Salem’s Prophecy was to be fulfilled. We had an end date, and I know my Saraphina was counting down the days.”
“I just feel bad—”
“Don’t.” Myrtle sat up and shook her head. “Things haven’t been easy since then, but we knew we would see you again. That made all the difference in the world. Especially for Saffie. When you arrived in Salem, you already thought of my daughter as a close friend whom you cared deeply for. She knew this and she was so proud of that. We cannot change the past, so to be sad over it is merely a waste of potential happiness.”
My eyes rolled again. Stop it. Stay awake.
I frowned and shook myself awake. “Wait, Saffie is your daughter?”
“Yes.” Myrtle’s eyes widened. “You’ve met her?”
“No, but I’ve seen her texts.”
Myrtle frowned and turned to Tegan. “Texts?”
Tegan grinned and it was so, so wicked. “When we got back, I bought her a cell phone so we can talk to her while we’re not in Tampa. I taught her how to text message.”
Myrtle gasped. Her face paled. “Y-y-you gave her…a phone? An actual phone?”
“Yes.” Tennessee smiled and nodded. But then he frowned. “Myrtle, when is the last time you spoke to her?”
“We write to each other, with some of her Fae magic, but…” Her silver eyes darkened. “I have not heard the sound of her voice in…almost two centuries.”
Tegan made a strangled kind of cry. “Goddess, Myrtle, I am so sorry. Do you have a phone here on the island?”
Myrtle nodded with unshed tears in her silver eyes. “Yes, we have one landline and one cellular, although that one only works sparingly.”
Tegan pulled a crystal necklace out from under her white dress and held it in her palm. There was a puff of golden light, and then a large, leather-bound book sat in her hand. I gasped and sat up straight. She gripped the chain of what had been a necklace, and then it was suddenly a pen.
WHOA. That was cool.
As Tegan began writing in the book, I made a mental note to ask her how she’d done that later.
“Okay, I’m giving you three phone numbers. The first is mine, the second is Tennessee’s—because I want you to be able to reach us for whatever reason.” Tegan tore a little piece of paper off one of the book’s pages, which was the most out-of-character thing I’d ever seen my best friend do. She smiled and handed the paper to Myrtle. “The last number is Saffie’s. When you’re ready, call her.”
“I don’t know. What if she doesn’t want—”
“She does,” Tegan, Tenn, Royce, and Cooper said at the same time.
Tegan chuckled. “We told her we were coming to see you. I promise you, she’d do anything to hear from you. I didn’t know you had phones here, so I didn’t tell her it was an option. But she did ask me if I could also buy you a phone. So when you’re ready—”
My eyes rolled, and then I was suddenly standing in a dark forest. No, no, no! Damn it, Bettina, wake up! I wanted to hear that story. Myrtle was over three hundred years old. She was a living legend. We’d studied her in several of my classes. She was one of the wisest people in our entire race. If there was a problem someone couldn’t figure out, they went to Myrtle.
I wanted to hear every word she said, even if it meant nothing to me.
And they were talking about Saffie. I’d heard all about Saffie. The way she’d helped The Coven the past few months, but even more importantly, she was the reason they’d made it back from the past. Without Saffie, I never would’ve seen my best friend ever again. I might not have ever met this girl, but I felt indebted to her. And this was her mother.
How do I fall asleep during that? I cursed and looked around. I was in a forest of some kind, but not one I’d ever seen before. Trees towered over me like skyscrapers. Branches hung over my head, tangling with the other trees. A golden crescent moon glistened through the leaves far above me. What the hell kind of dream is this? It felt too real. I felt too awake to be asleep. So either I was, in fact, sleeping, or I’d been somehow kidnapped right out from under Tegan’s nose. The latter sounded too terrifying to put more thought into, so I was going to go with weird dream.
I stood in the middle of a trail with nothing but trees and bushes around. There were no animal noises, which was somehow eerie. I took a deep breath, and the scent of pine trees seeped into my bones. Which made sense. I was in a forest, and in real life, Jackson was sitting nearby. Oh, maybe he’s trying to wake me up?
Red fog rose from the ground and trickled through the trees, slithering toward me. My pulse quickened. I scurried backward, but it was coming toward me from every angle. I couldn’t get away. It spread across the ground and covered my feet. It was warm and soothing, like it was luring me to my death. I spun around and sprinted down the path—then slid to a stop.
Deacon stood in front of me, dressed in all white. His sandy blond hair glowed in the darkness. He was a beacon of light. Those violet eyes of his twinkled like stars in a black sky.
I gasped and shook my head. “Deacon?”
He sighed. “Finally. I’ve been waiting forever for someone to fall asleep.”
“Asleep? Wait, so I am asleep? How are you here? Where am I? How are you talking to me? What’s going on? What is this red mist—”
“Bettina.” Deacon raised his hands. “Calm down.”
The red mist poured out of his palms and shot through the air toward me. I gasped and jumped back, my heart pounding in my chest. But then it hit me, and my pulse immediately slowed. The anxiety and fear rolling through my body vanished. I blinked and looked up at him. I barely knew the guy, but I knew he was the Devil.
“Deacon?”
He nodded. “Listen, we’ve been trying to call you guys for hours. There’s troub
le in Eden. People are being kidnapped and snatched off the street. Get home now.”
I blinked and shook my head. “What? I don’t understand.”
Deacon shot more of his red magic right at me. “Wake up.”
“…Saffie’s curse is her story to tell—"
I jumped…and landed on my face on the cold, stone floor.
“Bettina!”
“Whoa.”
“What the hell?”
“Tina, you okay?”
My heart was pounding too loud in my ears to differentiate any of the voices calling out to me. My chest burned. My lungs screamed like I’d just been drowning. I gasped. What the hell just happened?
Someone gripped my shoulders and pulled me up. I flinched and fell backward.
Easy, B. You’re all right, Tegan whispered into my mind.
I nodded and tried to get a grip on myself. The smell of Christmas washed over me. A second later, a pair of eyes the same exact color as the Caribbean ocean were staring at me. Jackson. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear the words. Am I still dreaming? That forest with Deacon had felt so real, just as real as this moment… I didn’t know how I was supposed to know which was actually real.
He leaned closer. “You all right, Moonshine?” he whispered.
Moonshine. I sat upright. Moonshine. He’d only just called me that for the first time, and only once. I doubted I would’ve dreamed that. I blinked and licked my lips. But if this was real, then why did I feel like I was in such a haze? It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t get my brain or body to function normal. Was that why he’d called me that? Did he know I needed an anchor?
Tegan dropped down beside him and frowned. Then her eyes widened, and her mouth curved into the shape of an o. She reached forward and pressed her open palm to my chest…and then the haze cleared.
A few seconds later, she pulled her hand away and cocked her head to the side. “Better?”
I sighed. “Bloody hell, what was that?”
Jackson smirked. “Bloody hell is right.”
The Fallen Witch (The Coven: Academy Magic Book 2) Page 17