Cursed Magic

by Madeline Freeman

  This isn’t going to work. He’s too heavy for me, and there’s no way I’ll be able to navigate over the bumpy terrain once we get into the trees. I need another plan, but there’s no time. Blast after blast of blue lightning flies our way, and I flinch each time. I don’t know how we’re going to get away. If the spell surrounding this location has been broken, it’s possible the others could find us, but are they even looking? I assured them I’d be able to save Owen, that they only needed to concern themselves with Fox.

  “I’m going to call for help,” I say, releasing Owen and pulling my phone out.

  A voice in the back of my mind tells me there’s another way—a quicker and easier way—but I ignore it. The pressure of the Influence on my consciousness grows with each passing moment. I’m afraid if it gets much stronger it could drive me mad, or make my head explode. It wants out even more now that there’s a battle going on. But I can’t let it, because letting it out means trapping me behind that wall, and I can’t risk that.

  My thumb slides over the screen of my phone, unlocking it, but before I can place a call, a jolt of electricity knocks it from my hand. My yelp of surprise is nothing compared to the sound that comes from Owen as a second wave hits him in the arm.

  He’s not strong enough to keep a shield around us.

  Instinctively, I put myself between him and our attacker.

  “We have to run,” Owen says through gritted teeth. “Once we’re in the woods, maybe we can find somewhere to hide.”

  “You can’t move,” I say, remembering the last time he tried to get to his feet.

  He shakes his head stubbornly. “Think I’ve got enough adrenaline to get me going. It’s our only shot.”

  Pain sears through my shoulder as I’m struck again. Owen’s right: The only chance we have is to put some distance between us and this madwoman. “Okay.”

  “On three,” he says.

  I nod. “One. Two. Three!”

  To my great surprise, Owen’s able to get his feet under him. When we start running, he keeps pace with me. We’re going to make it. Calling for help with my phone isn’t an option anymore, but maybe the adrenaline will give Owen enough of a boost to enable him to contact one of the psychics with his abilities. All we’ll need to do is lie low until help arrives.

  I’m nearly to the trees when Owen releases a scream of agony. By the time I turn, he’s already on the ground.

  I know it’s bad before I make it to his side. Although he was hit in the back, the energy must have gone straight through his body. There’s a new whole in his shirt and the wound is visible on his chest. She must have decided she’s done playing, because this hit is worse than any of the ones we’ve taken so far.

  I crouch beside him, and Owen’s eyes find my face. “You need to get out of here,” he says, his voice weak.

  I blink, and hot tears stream down my face. His face is ghostly pale and his fingers are trembling. “I won’t leave you.”

  “I can’t let you die for me.”

  A sob bubbles up through my chest and I struggle not to release it. He can’t let me die for him—but isn’t that exactly what he’s doing for me now? Because there’s no doubt in my mind Owen is dying. There’s blood, though not nearly as much as I would have imagined. His damaged skin is charred black and his breaths are coming in gasps.

  This is my fault. It’s all my fault. The only reason Owen is here at all is that he has the misfortune of being loved by me. I thought the danger to him was the darkness inside me after I killed Seth, and then I feared the Influence would do something to hurt him, but now I know better: just being around me has put his life in danger.

  “If you’re going to say your goodbyes, I recommend you do it quickly,” calls the woman from behind me. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “I’ve never seen someone last long after hit like that.”

  I turn to glare at her. “Why did you do it? What could you possibly get out of killing him?”

  “I was aiming for you,” she says easily. “You should hear Brody going on and on about what a perfect assassin you’ll make for us. And the high priestess eats it up. He’s her favored child who can do no wrong. And she sent me here to help him.” She tips back her head and lets out a laugh that makes the hairs on my arms stand up. “Can you imagine? As if I would do anything to help him. I want to see him fail. He doesn’t deserve to be our leader, and I’m going to show everyone how wrong they are about him. If I kill you, he loses everything.”

  “Is that what this is about? Some play for power?” I shake my head. I don’t even care. It doesn’t matter—nothing matters except Owen. I turn back to him and my heart aches. His breaths are more ragged than before and his eyes are going glassy. He doesn’t have much time left.

  This insane woman wants me dead? Fine. Then this is how I’ll die. I’m done fighting. I don’t want to live anymore, not if my whole life is destined to be a series of events like this. How much more can I lose? My life could go on without Owen, but do I want it to?

  He lifts a shaking hand and I clasp it. His lips move like he’s trying to say something, but no sound comes out. I lean closer, hoping to catch his words, but it’s no use. The strength is leaving his hand.

  I lock my eyes on his. “I love you.” I press my lips to his, tasting the salt of my tears. A moment later, his mouth goes slack, and when I meet his eyes again, I know he’s gone.

  “Do it,” I call, keeping my eyes on his face. Even if I somehow managed to get away, this woman would just come after me. And if not her, someone else—Brody trying to make me his assassin, or some as-yet-unknown entity wanting something from me. I never signed up for any of this. I only ever wanted a normal life, but it seems fate never had one in the cards for me. Faces float in my mind’s eye—my mom, Jodi, my dad. All my friends—Felix, Griffin, Tucker, Lexie. But I can’t think about them. I can’t worry what my death will do to them when it’s painfully obvious my life is the real problem. If I choose to go on, how long will it be until someone decides to use one of them against me? I can’t have any more blood on my hands.

  “Aren’t you even going to turn to face me?”

  I ignore her. I curl forward, resting my cheek on Owen’s chest. A fresh wave of tears fills my eyes when I don’t detect even the slightest rising and falling there. I’m ready.

  An explosion goes off in my head, so intense and violent I’m sure I must be dying, sure she must have aimed her spell at my skull. But I’m not dying. I’m on my feet. Time seems to slow. I watch as the blue electricity sails through the air toward me and I raise my palm between me and it. It freezes in midair before disappearing, leaving behind the barest wisp of smoke.

  Every inch of my body is on fire with the familiar burn of Influence. I fight to win control, but nothing I can do makes my arms or legs obey. I watch what’s happening, like a passenger catching glimpses out the windows of my own eyes. My hand slashes through the air and the woman’s tank top splits open from just below her rib cage on one side to just above her hip on the other. A split second later, blood blossoms out of the open wound, soaking the red fabric surrounding it, causing it to glisten in the sunlight. Her eyes go wide—perfect circles of surprise. In another second, she crumples to the ground, her eyes still open but unseeing.

  The immediate danger contained, the Influence dials back in intensity from a raging fire to a low simmer. Sensing a chance, my consciousness lunges forward in an attempt to take control of my body once more. For the moment, the wall between me and the Influence is weakened, but I don’t know how long it will last. If it goes back up and I’m on the wrong side of it, who knows what could happen.

  But maybe having access to the Influence isn’t such a bad thing—at least for the moment. When I talked to Jodi about stopping my heart, she warned that bringing someone back from death was dark magic. But what is darker than the Influence inside me? Maybe one good thing can come from the evil sharing my body. I have to try.

  I turn, ready to attempt to wiel
d the Influence on Owen, but his body is gone. But it can’t be. He was just here. Right here. Where could he have disappeared to? Did I move when the Influence took over? I search the ground, but he’s nowhere in sight. There’s only one body in the clearing, and it belongs to that woman.

  I turn my gaze in her direction, but what I see doesn’t make any sense. The woman had been wearing a tank top, but the person lying on the ground now is in a T-shirt. A green T-shirt. My mind struggles to make sense of what I’m seeing. That’s where she was standing—I’m positive. Then why doesn’t it look like her?

  I stumble forward in jerky steps, my heart twisting and sinking with each step.

  It’s not the woman.

  It’s Owen.

  Bile rises in my throat and I retch on the grass, but I can’t unsee the slash across his abdomen, the blood shimmering in the sunshine.

  It was all a trick—some kind of illusion cast to confuse me. For all I know, the woman I thought I killed doesn’t even exist. Instead, my spell hit Owen.

  I crawl to his side, desperate to find something—anything—to indicate my eyes are deceiving me. I press my fingers to his neck, hoping to detect some trace of life, but no blood surges beneath my touch. This can’t be real, but I can’t deny what I’m seeing.

  I turn and vomit again until it feels like there’s nothing left inside me. What have I done? What have I done?

  There’s movement in my periphery. Brody enters the clearing, a look of smug satisfaction on his face. Without warning, the Influence surges forward with such ferocity I stand no chance of beating it back. The burning beneath my skin seems to extend until a ball of fire hovers above my outstretched palm. Brody deserves to die. He orchestrated all of this. I want nothing more than to throw this fire at him, to incinerate him.

  But I don’t want to kill him—not really. I don’t want any more blood on my hands, even Brody’s. I can’t give in to the Influence. I focus all my energy on keeping my hand still. I can’t make the fireball disappear, but I can keep myself from throwing it.

  “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  Brody holds up his hands, but not in a way that suggests he surrenders, or that he is even the slightest bit afraid of what I could do to him. Instead, it’s a show of mock innocence that makes my fingers twitch with the desire to end him.

  “I didn’t make you do anything. I simply allowed you to find your true self. You’ve been trying to fight it for some time, but you’re a killer in your bones and you know it. It’s not just the Influence. You stabbed Seth through the heart without it; you could have gotten away from Kai without blowing him to pieces—but you didn’t. Don’t you see what I’ve done here? I’ve set you free. Now you can be you really are without anything holding you back.”

  I stare at the fire in my hand. I could easily launch it at Brody. I want to. But wouldn’t that prove his point? It’s true, I felt the darkness in me long before the Influence spell. It’s part of who I am. And Brody doesn’t even know everything. He doesn’t know about the time I conjured a fireball so large it nearly stole the air from the room the witches were in because I thought they’d tried to kill Felix. Maybe Brody’s right. Maybe I’ve been pretending for too long that I’m normal, but that’s really not what I am. It’s not who I am.

  The Influence surges forward again as if in agreement. Was it fate that brought the Influence to me? I knew what having it inside me would mean, but I let it in anyway. I tried to tell myself I was saving Crystal and Dana, but what if I was really saving myself? What if altering the timeline and releasing Seth and connecting with Owen, what if Sasha contacting Brody, what if everything that happened since I moved to Clearwater was all orchestrated to lead to this moment? What if this is who I was meant to be all along?

  My eyes drift from the fireball to Owen’s lifeless body and grief swells in my chest. If that’s true, was Owen always meant to die by my hand? I don’t know if I can live with that.

  Maybe I don’t have to.

  I’m growing weaker by the second as I fight against the Influence. Just moments ago I realized I don’t want my life to be a series of struggles leading only to heartache. Maybe it’s time to give up.

  I allow my consciousness to stop struggling against the Influence. Once I let go, my ego, my self, sinks down into the depths of my mind, and waves of the Influence crash over me.

  ***

  I close my hand and the fireball disappears. I roll my shoulders and stretch out my fingers. This is more like it. No more vying for control or straining for dominance. This is the way it should have been from the beginning, but that silly girl fought me. In all my various incarnations, I’ve never encountered anyone so set against letting me in and allowing me to use my full power. But that won’t be a problem anymore. She won’t be a problem anymore.

  To my left is the body of the boy she loved—the dull one who bored me with his devotion. He was so concerned, so considerate. I never understood his allure. I much preferred the other boy I found in the depths of her memories. Fox. He didn’t hesitate for a moment the night I showed up at his door, even though I know for a fact his girlfriend had left only minutes before. He claimed the deception made him uncomfortable, but it never stopped him from being with me. Far more interesting.

  In front of me stands Brody of the Amaranthine. I’ve known of his group for many years, but I’ve never had occasion to meet someone from it. Their reputation is somewhat fearsome, but now I can’t help wondering if it’s not a little overblown. I can smell Brody’s fear. It’s pungent—fear for both his physical body and for something else, something deeper. His gaze is locked on mine with an unwavering intensity, and his muscles are taut, prepared for flight at a moment’s notice.

  Adorable. It’s always the ones who make others fear them and bend to their wills who understand instinctively when they’re out of their depth. He may have been the master puppeteer with the old Krissa Barnette, but his tricks won’t work on me.

  “You can relax,” I murmur. I take a step forward and Brody fights to keep still and not flinch. My lips curl into a smile. “You were right—what you were saying before. This whole setup you orchestrated has set me free. Unlike that silly girl, I would love to fill the role you’ve offered. Assassin sounds like the perfect job for someone of my… appetites.”

  Brody visibly relaxes, tension draining from his shoulders as he releases a breath. “That’s exactly what I like to hear. Now, let’s get going.”

  I smile, leading the way out of the clearing. “Let’s.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Fox

  I ignore Griffin’s shouts as I jump out of his Mustang before he’s even pulled it to a complete stop. The psychics have been dowsing for magic and they all got strong sensations radiating from this spot.

  This has to be where Owen is, and if he’s here, so is Krissa.

  I’m jogging into the small wooded area before the last of the cars even arrive. There are crashes in the underbrush behind me, so I know I’m not the only one heading in already. I’m not the only one who’s worried.

  “Be careful,” Dana calls from behind me. “You have no idea what you’re running into.”

  I don’t look back, but I do slow down. Guilt squeezes my chest like a fist. She still cares about me despite what I’ve done to her. I don’t deserve it, but I won’t reject it and hurt her more. Besides, she has a point. The psychics only detected magical energy coming from this area—they didn’t identify what was causing it. Who knows what kind of spells or enchantments are at work here.

  I wait until the others have caught up with me before venturing further.

  “The magic isn’t as strong as it was,” West says, his voice low. “It’s more like echoes.”

  “I’m not sensing any people,” Bria adds.

  Panic wells inside me, but I try to stuff it down. Just because Bria doesn’t sense anything doesn’t mean something bad has happened. It’s possible there are spells at work that wou
ld keep a psychic from picking up on a specific presence.

  A small hand slips into mine. My first instinct is to pull away. I figure it’s Dana, and I’m not worthy of her sympathy. But when I turn, I’m surprised to see Crystal. Her lips twitch like she’s trying to offer a smile, but she can’t quite make her muscles cooperate. Her blue eyes are full of the same worry that sits in the pit of my stomach.

  “She’ll be okay,” she murmurs.

  It’s not lost on me that her words sound more like a wish or a prayer than an assurance.

  Ahead, the trees begin to thin. We’re coming up to a clearing. This has to be where they’re keeping Owen.

  We all slow our pace as we approach. I glance at the others at the head of the group—Felix, Lexie, West, Tucker—and give a nod. When it’s returned, we lead the way through the last of the trees.

  I scan the area. It’s not particularly large—maybe the size of my basement—but I’m sure I must be missing something. It’s empty. But that can’t be. They have to be here. Maybe Brody cast a glamor to make them invisible. Something has to explain why I don’t see them.

  Griffin, Bridget, and Bria surge forward, but when they see what I see—emptiness—their steps falter. Sasha is the only one who continues further into the clearing.

  “There was magic here, all right,” she says, crouching down beside a deep gouge in the ground. “You can see all the spots where spells got deflected.”

  When I look around again, I’m surprised I didn’t notice the holes and upturned chunks of earth earlier. “It looks like there was some kind of battle.” But that doesn’t make sense. Even if Krissa intended to come alone to rescue Owen, she’s not a witch anymore. She couldn’t be casting spells. And it wouldn’t explain where she is now.

  “Spread out,” Sasha says. “Let’s try to figure out what happened here. Tell me if you find anything.”

  We all do as instructed, but I have no idea what I’m looking for. There are a few scorch marks in the grass near me, but they give no insight into what went down or why.