Forgotten Magic

by Eden Butler

  “He’s not mine.” I had my door open and my butt on the seat before Bane made it into the parking lot.

  “No? Well, shit, maybe I should change my plans and keep you company this weekend, Miss Jani.”

  Engine running and my hand on the wheel, I’d smiled up at Wyatt and laughed at the glint in his eyes and the way he hadn’t looked at my face. “You’re a hell of a lot of trouble, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then I’d probably be better off ignoring everything you just told me.”

  Wyatt shrugged and glanced to his left as Bane walked closer. “It’ll probably keep me from a busted nose if you do.”

  “Well, I’d hate to come between two secret-keeping friends.”

  “You do that, Jani, and I’ll owe you one.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  And I had, just then as Wyatt strolled into the kitchen followed by a younger, smaller version of himself. The Rimmell genes were excellent and Wyatt still had the same soft features that were exaggerated by the smooth shape of his jaw and the whirl of green in his hazel eyes.

  “You here so I can collect?”

  Wyatt’s laugh was still loud, still carried around the room with very little effort. He remembered. “Never said a thing, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why’d I still end up with a bloody nose that weekend?”

  He leaned against the counter, sizing me up, looking like he wanted to see the differences, the similarities from the kid he had met that one time, years ago.

  “Got me,” I said, folding my arms as Wyatt kept looking me over. Only this time I didn’t mind the examination. This time I could stand the scrutiny a man often gives a woman. They could look all they wanted. At least until I shut them down. “I didn’t tell a soul.”

  “How you been, Jani?” he finally asked, ignoring the shifter next to him when he cleared his throat.

  “Good. Only back for this one job.” At my side, Mai shuffled her feet, and I finally pulled my gaze from Wyatt’s handsome face. “This is my twin sister, Mai.” A nod and Wyatt shot her a smile.

  “Twins? Wow. That seems a little unfair.” My sister and I both frowned at Wyatt’s friend when he laughed, his gaze volleying between us. “Two beautiful women, twins at that, in one small town. Not fair at all.”

  “Look at you with the flattery,” Mai said.

  “I call ’em like I see them, miss.”

  Wyatt slapped his friend on the shoulder. “This is my little cousin, Joe Arvel. He’s from our pack in Columbia.”

  Pleasantries were exchanged, handshakes were given, and at Wyatt’s explanation, I noticed how similar the two shifters were to each other—same narrow eyes, same elongated noses, and each had high cheekbones that made their eyes nearly vanish when they smiled. But where Wyatt was sandy-haired with a few waves touching the back of his neck, Joe had dark, thick hair cut short and tight.

  “So, this is the famous Janiver Benoit?” Joe asked, waving off his cousin when Wyatt elbowed him. My cocked eyebrow had Joe shrugging. “Sorry, but Bane said you were the best at finding lost things.”

  I bet he did, and just for a second I wondered what else Bane had said to the two cousins.

  “She is the best,” Mai said.

  “Oh, Joe, there you are,” we heard as Lennon walked into the kitchen. He offered me a nod, then smiled easy, but still the professional. “Mr. Iles said that you and Wyatt...” Lennon nodded to the pair of them and then moved his gaze back toward me, straightening his spine when that gaze stopped on my sister.

  There was a quick pull against the lines that we all seemed to feel. My skin went warm, tingled like I’d run around a carpeted room in fuzzy socks, and Wyatt and Joe stepped back, away from Lennon as though he threw off a pheromone only the shifters could sense. At my side, Mai’s voice hummed, but she shook her head, blinking when Lennon cleared his throat. “Miss…that is, Mrs. Phillips. How…how are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thank you, Lennon.” I’d never seen Mai so timid around a man. I’d certainly never seen her fidget the way she did then with her foot bouncing against the tile floor. She’d never had to be timid before. My sister was beautiful, with her skin a shade or two lighter than mine, and she had beautiful natural waves in her hair and light eyes that shone against her complexion. Men gravitated toward her without any encouragement on Mai’s part.

  She never had to cajole or flirt. And she’d never done the awkward, anxious thing when a man she liked paid attention to her. So this, between my sister and Bane’s guard, was just plain weird. We all stood there a moment, watching, it seemed, for who would speak again, Lennon or Mai, and when this ridiculous back and forth shyness would play itself out.

  Finally, with Joe clearing his throat, Mai stopped staring at Lennon and the guard nodded at her. “I’ll just…I’m…” And with that she stepped away from the counter to fuss with the cabinet next to the fridge, out of sight of Lennon’s gaze.

  “Pardon, Joe, Wyatt…Mr. Iles says your pack will head out first.”

  “Nice to meet you, Janiver,” Joe said, shaking my hand again, and I blinked, pulling my attention away from my sister’s odd behavior. Joe’s skin was rough with calluses on the inside of his palm, and as he gripped my fingers, a cool, relaxed sensation passed from his skin to mine. It made me wonder if Joe had a little more than shifting magic beneath that tall, wide frame.

  Wyatt nodded, gave me a small wink before he left, and I ignored that flirty smile as I took my hand back from Joe. “Please, call me Jani. Everyone does.”

  “Or Miss Benoit,” Bane said, coming into the room. Wyatt slapped him on the back as they met at the doorway, but I waved Joe off, doing my best to remind myself that Bane was the client. If he didn’t want anyone being too friendly, that was his prerogative.

  Still, I didn’t need him speaking for me. “Jani is fine. It was good to meet you as well.”

  From my peripheral, I could make out Mai’s shifting gaze, how she watched Lennon as Joe left and the guard listened as Bane said something to him in private. This skittish, shy twin burgeoned close to sad. “Here.” My sister frowned when I handed her a glass bottle from the counter, whiskey with a bite, but she didn’t outright refuse it.

  “I don’t…”

  “Please. You’re a smitten kitten. Have a drink. You’ll be all on your own with Lennon tonight. You’re gonna need liquid courage.”

  “Look who’s talking.” She handed me the bottle, glancing toward the two wizards as they chatted. Well, Bane chatted and Lennon nodded after every instruction his boss gave him. “Mr. Senior Year Fantasy will be right beside you for thousands of acres. You’ll be sleeping under the moonlight three feet from him.” With his fiancée and our brother in tow, I thought but didn’t mention. I still choked on the liquor and my twin laughed. “Uh huh, now who’s the smitten kitten?” She laughed when I flipped her off and then kissed my cheek. “Be safe. Be smart,” she said, leaving me in the kitchen with that bottle and the Fantasy.

  Another swig, this one going down with a burn.

  “That’s not going to hinder your reach once we get out into the forest and you try to search for the Elam?”

  “No,” I said, closing my eyes when Bane stood next to me. “It’ll heighten it.”

  “So you say.”

  I took another sip. “I do.” Then another before I nodded at the black runes that were tattooed around his forearms. I couldn’t make out their meaning, but knew there were many Celtic and some Druid markings that seemed vaguely familiar. A majority of the patterns looked Viking influenced. They weren’t tattoos, really. They were marks of knowledge, lessons taken and given, used to hone his craft.

  “Some of us didn’t need to train in Norway with thousand-year-old mages to learn our craft.” Made a little bolder by the liquor, I stepped into Bane’s personal space and ran the tip of my fingernail over the runes wrapped around his forearm. “All these runes, all that pain and blood, I never o
nce had to suffer so much for my craft.”

  “Maybe,” Bane said, taking the bottle from me, “if you had, you wouldn’t need the liquor.”

  “Maybe I like the liquor.” My tongue was heavy in my mouth and I wasn’t sure why my voice had suddenly lowered or how I could feel the ley lines whispering against my mind.

  But Bane wasn’t drinking, and he seemed able to control how the lines affected him. He was too versed in blocking raw magic. Still, he didn’t seem wholly unaffected, and for whatever reason, he at least didn’t object to how closely I stood in front of him. “You strike me as the type of witch who likes things that are bad for her.”

  The laughter came quickly, the first I’d released in over a week. Just then, I didn’t think about the darkness that took me with Freya’s death. Something light, almost sweet came into my head and I glanced at that bottle, only just realizing that I hadn’t been drinking whiskey at all.

  “Berry Burn wine?”

  “You didn’t know?” He laughed, scrubbing his face. “Circe, Jani. I thought you were more careful.”

  Shrugging, I let the elixir work through me, enjoying the way its potency made everything feel electrified and sweet. Dipping my head back, a sudden reminder of the worst possible thing for me—the wizard standing inches away—seemed so attractive, so sweet, and I licked my lips, my inhibitions lowered as I watched him.

  Unbidden, a memory of that solitary day when I’d bitten the forbidden fruit and I forgot myself for just a moment filled my head. “And, baby, you’ve got no idea how much I like things that are bad for me.”

  Bane blinked. I blinked and just for a second I savored the silent room, the energy that built between us then. “Did you…did you just call me baby?”

  It was if he’d unstoppered a drain and I twirled down into its belly. Berry Burn wine or not, I immediately sobered. Mortification, humiliation, it had to be all over my face, easily read in my expression. But I was not a witch who would admit defeat or mistakes made so quickly. I was a natural survivor. I’d say anything to weasel my way out of a tight spot. Or utter humiliation.

  “No.” There was a touch of humor in my response—forced and clearly fabricated—but it didn’t stop me from making that sound or stepping back when Bane held my wrist.

  “You did.” He pinned me in the corner of the counter with that wide body nearly engulfing me in shadow and heat. “Damn.” Bane came so close, mouth too near my neck as though he was just managing to control himself and not devour me right then and there. “Why do I like that?”

  I knew why and just then, I hated that he didn’t. Because you claimed me! Ten years ago, I wanted to scream. Because I am yours, because you belong to me.

  Some part of him had to know the truth, despite the block I had put on his memories. Somewhere, behind all that power, the knowledge, the lists of lines of duty and expectations, lay the hidden memory of that one blissful afternoon with me in that empty classroom. The day our nexuses melded. The day we claimed each other.

  The way Bane looked at me, the deep focus of his gaze on my mouth, shifting across my fingers brought us closer and closer to the edge of something that could mean nothing but misery. For him, at least. And I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to stop it.

  All around us seemed to settle, every sound, every scent, just like it had that day, just like it had the first time we kissed. The only sound I could clearly hear was the steady, rhythmic pulse of his heart and mine—two separate bodies moving toward each other, closer, nearer until Bane’s stubble grazed on my cheek and he held my head still, insistent between his fingers.

  I had only to tilt my head back a little. Move my chin, wet my bottom lip and he’d take my mouth. It was all there on his face. Expressions that told a thousand stories, made a million promises, and I wanted them all inside me with him, where he was meant to be.

  Just one small movement and it would be done.

  Bane tilted my chin, held my face between both hands now and I heard him come closer, waiting, making my mind up that I would only take a taste…

  A taste that wasn’t mine.

  A touch that belonged to someone else.

  Eyes shut tight to clear away Caridee’s perfect skin, her perfect hair—the flawless Rivers coven regalia that Bane deserved. The one taught over and over to us as expectation. Certainties that had never been changed. The way the Cove existed so that there was no upset, no chance of shaming all of the Cove by letting the mortals know what we are and how we lived.

  Expectation.

  Certainty.

  Things that had been constants for everyone in the Cove. Each coven depended on the other. Each den, every pack, all connected.

  The way of things.

  The things I’d left behind.

  The things Ronan had tried to topple.

  The things I was there to recapture for my family.

  And, louder than any of that came the scream…Freya’s scream.

  She was gone. My friend was gone and I had to find who killed her.

  Before I realized I’d uttered a sound, the word came out, my hands pushing against that wide chest and “Parley!” echoing around the kitchen.

  Bane steadied my hands when I tried to push at him again, holding me by the shoulders so I wouldn’t leave. Eyes wrinkling as he squinted at me, the expectation was evident. He wanted clarification. He wanted me to explain why I’d used the most antiquated, passé respite possible in our world.

  Parley? Had I really said that?

  “What…did you just?”

  But the black flag had been lifted and measures were maintained even in such…personal matters. Bane was heir to the most powerful coven in the Cove. Even he had to mind the rules we all lived by.

  “I did.” Damn. An inhale to push back the tension crowding between my eyes and I glanced up at him, grateful that I hadn’t spelled him to back away. “Parley. Back off. Don’t…don’t touch me. Talk only.”

  “Why in the hell would you…”

  “I have reasons.” I waved my hand so he’d step back. “Please, I already told you…I have a job to do and a creature to find. I can’t have you being a distraction.”

  “I’m the distraction?” He moved his gaze over my body.

  “Didn’t you say we’re on a time crunch here?”

  He nodded, reluctantly agreeing. “Fair enough.” He stepped back, pulling on the neck of that bottle fisted between my fingers. “We have to get this search going.” He set the bottle on the counter next to the sink. I nodded, started to walk away, but Bane tugged on my arm, his fingers touching right on my skin. Shuddering in my limbs, in his, and his eyes grew wide. He twisted his head to the side like he needed to shake the sensation away, then jerked his gaze up at my face. “What…what the hell was that?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  He stared at me a long time, then at his fingers still gripping my arm before he dropped it.

  “The search?” I said when Bane had stayed too quiet. “I’ll see you out there in ten minutes.” Before I left into the hallway, Bane called my name. Stopping would be stupid. Not stopping, though, might tell him I couldn’t control myself alone with him. He’d already gotten enough of my fear in the past few days. I wouldn’t hand him anymore.

  Eyes, chin twisted toward him, I didn’t dare stare right at his face. I can admit that I was a coward when it came to him. But Bane didn’t seem to care that I wouldn’t look directly at him. He clicked back into control mode. “We finish this…all of this, as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s fine with me.” A little more relaxed now that he was back on task, I turned around. “I’ve got…a life waiting for me in New York.”

  “That’s not why I want to hurry.”

  “Why then?”

  Two long strides put him back in front of me and I immediately cursed myself for stopping. Bane’s mouth was tight, eyes narrowed as though he needed to concentrate on anything other than the rip of energy that bubbled between us. Th
e lines feed off anger, passion, lust. All of those things, with a few other emotions, permeated the room. It made the lines pulse square into us.

  “The sooner the job is over, the sooner we can discuss what the hell that was and what you’ve been running from for ten damn years.”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. He didn’t want to see me huddle against the counter or try like hell not lean across the granite just to get my skin to cool. It didn’t matter that Bane was curious, that he wanted answers. I was there to do a job. I was there to save my family’s name. None of that would include a conversation with Bane Iles about what had happened to us when we were kids. I’d be long gone before then. Again.

  Ten

  Midnight was behind us along with twenty miles of woods, and the forest whispered like it knew something we didn’t.

  “Another half hour and then we rest. We’ll reach the spring by then.”

  The spring. That was what Bane thought had kept me quiet the entire hike into his coven’s property. The deeper we got into the woods, the greater my senses aligned with traces of the amulet left behind. Familiar. Ancient. Part of my brain recognized that faint hint of magic not coming from the ley lines. The Elam had been gone for weeks now and since my arrival in Crimson Cove, the faint whispers had grown louder, hindered only by the constant memory of Freya’s screams dulling them in my mind. The spring was some three miles ahead and as we neared it, the Elam felt closer.

  We walked single file with several feet separating Bane, in front of me, Cari who was virtually on my heels, two guards I didn’t know, along with Joe, Wyatt, and his sullen-looking cousin, Hamill, leading us through the thick woods and my brother taking up the rear. Clover Springs rested near a small settlement of Bane’s folk, fourth or fifth cousins by my estimation, that Bane hardly knew.

  “They are quiet, only two or three families large, and we never see them at the yearly coven gatherings. They always send their regrets and my cousins never have anything but grief to spit about them.”