Forgotten Magic

by Eden Butler

  “Any lie?” Bane didn’t ask, likely knew the answer before he asked for it. He was in my thoughts, privy to the tug of every emotion I felt. He’d have recognized the Judas spell when I spoke it.

  Won’t be that easy. A glance over my shoulder and I knew Bane understood me. They’ll have protected themselves from any detection.

  “Good,” he said. “It’ll make the truth clearer and louder when it comes.” The soft crunch of leaves signaled that he had moved closer, but I was focused as the weight of the spell continued to fall. Bane stopped near me, but not too close.

  Commander and soldier. Client and employee. Yin and yang. I wasn’t sure what role fit us anymore, but Bane played his part well. Net cast and now we’d hunt.

  “Don’t let them fill your head with pointless shit.”

  “Too late.” But my joke didn’t seem to ease him. “There’s a lot of pointless shit in there already.”

  “Cari and Ethan, they’ll aim to tell you your place, make you see them as superior somehow. Don’t let them do that. You’re better than them.”

  I stared at him, frowning. “They’re your coven.”

  “You’re better than them to me too, Jani.”

  No way I’d touch that one. Not with that frown making the muscles in his face tight. There was no use in saying goodbye. There was no longer any point for belaboring warnings or clarifications on what I needed to do. He had his job; I had mine. The Elam called me, wanted me. I didn’t need anyone to get in my way, not Hamill, not Cari or Ethan. They’d follow or they’d fall behind.

  “Jani?” Bane said, holding my wrist. “I’ll find you as soon as I can. Keep your guard up, don’t trust them. The spell will work.” I nodded and took two steps before he called after me, bringing my gaze right to his. “There isn’t a thing about you that’s pointless. Don’t you damn well forget that.”

  Thirteen

  When I didn’t think about my surroundings, things became clearer. There were no distractions around me in the night, only the clear sense that ahead I’d find the Elam, that it called and beckoned, like it knew I was close.

  The sense of it, the way it drew me in, was like something I was meant to do. It was very much like a path I had no choice but to take. But there was a hurdle, three in fact, keeping me from that path. I wanted to hex all of them to clear my way.

  “You know,” Ethan began, “for someone who’d been running from this place for ten years, you certainly came back in a hurry.”

  “I didn’t run.”

  “That’s not the way I remember it.” Ethan sounded smug, but in my brief experience with him, that was pretty typical.

  “The way you remember it?” There was no need for me to stop walking, no reason to slow my pace. He’d follow. He’d have to if he wanted to annoy me. “You mean the way you heard it. You were a kid back then, barely thirteen years old. You have no idea…” I quieted when Ethan’s smile went lethal. “Bait all you want, little wizard. I won’t bite.”

  “Oh, you will.” Ethan looked merely bored, not worried, not scared that he was deep into Grant territory with little protection from the elements or whoever it was that had killed Wyatt. Only an idiot like him would walk around the forest like he was on a stroll and not a mission. “All witches take the bait. It’s in your nature.”

  He wanted to play, to lead me straight into a debate that would only annoy me and make my spelling fingers eager to wiggle a hex over his fat mouth. “I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to finish this job and keep the lines from flooding the Cove.”

  Ethan took a quick turn on the edge of the trail and only caught himself from a fall by jumping in front of me. “And saving your father’s business in the process?”

  No, ass, and discovering who’s responsible for my friend’s death. Both of them.

  Still, curiosity is a hell of a thing. It can make you question motivations, tempt you to forget your purpose. Ethan likely knew that, and anyone who’d heard even the vaguest thing about my return knew it had everything to do with my father’s business and the mess Ronan had made. Ethan was a dunderheaded jackass, meddlesome, and catty, but he did likely know more about what had led my father’s business into the ground than I did. “Know something you’d like to share?”

  “Ronan is pathetic.” That he admitted freely, but Ethan wasn’t coy about the sideways look he gave me or the condescending smile that held no humor. “He’s a useless piece of garbage.”

  “And that makes my name dirt now, too?” The trail twisted this way and that, keeping us single file as it narrowed, with Cari, Malak, and Sam at the rear and Hamill ahead in front, but I moved onward, not bothering to see what reaction the annoying wizard offered. “If we are judging each other by names and connections then I’d have a sharper cut to judge Bane by, wouldn’t I? With the two of you soon to be in his family.”

  “Say what you want, Jani.” Ethan sped up, moved just a half a step ahead of me, but kept speaking. “We know the game you’re playing. We know your father would do anything to protect his business.”

  That wasn’t true. My father was ruthless, but only when it came to protecting our secrets from the mortals. This talk of him setting up the burglary of the Elam and interjecting me into the fold to rescue it, was ridiculous. It had been when Caridee mentioned it as well. Lundi Benoit was ruthlessly loyal to the Cove, but that didn’t make him a criminal.

  That was what Ethan needed to hear. It played loose to lifting off my tongue when Ethan’s jab had cut too close to the vest. But then his taunting, as well as my desire to defend my family’s honor dissipated when the brambles snapped about ten yards ahead.

  “I don’t think…”

  What Ethan didn’t think died immediately as my quick hex took his voice. Cari, who had been thumbing nosily through her cell phone, and Hamill, who seemed to pick up on the sounds behind us as well, joined us, followed by Sam and Malak, who mimicked me as I narrowed my eyes through the thicket of trees.

  Ethan tried speaking, grunting and jabbing his finger near his throat, but I waved him off, tugging on his jacket and beckoning the rest to follow me into the dense crop of limbs around the next bend.

  “How dare you…” Cari started, but closed her mouth tight when I waved my fingers in her direction and the small flickers of white light from the silencing hex I threatened sparked to life. Her glare was sharp, but the witch had to know I was good for the threat I made. She need only to look at her brother to see that plain enough.

  Two hunters, or maybe three, came down the path, sounding like a herd of cows, with little stealth at all. They were untrained, stomping in a way that was certain to leave tracks, making all sorts of noise, but they carried mortal weapons, big guns that would be difficult to disarm if we surprised them.

  “You sure they went this way? This way exactly?”

  “I can smell the damn shifter, can’t I?”

  We kept still and silent as the pursuers neared the small outcrop of limbs that gave us cover. But Ethan, looking terrified as well as highly pissed off to have lost his voice, squatted nervously behind us, making attempts to see through the small opening in the limbs.

  Pointless, all of it. The tracking, the hiding. This put me off my mission and kept the Elam’s signature distant. The time for hiding had passed, and though Ethan was useless for anything other than annoying me, the others might be of some help. Even Cari could sense danger before it came at us.

  Bane’s future brother-in-law gripped one of the limbs, cracking it before I could stop him and the trackers ahead stopped where they stood.

  I reached out then, pushing my senses into the darkness, catching the signatures of what now proved to be two men, one shifter, and one…something else I couldn’t quite name.

  We needed to find their identities, and I was the finder of all lost things. Seeing their shapes—one small, wiry man with bushy black hair, and a stockier, clumsy guy with too much paunch around his middle—it was easy enough for my gift to tap onto
them. But their purpose was clouded behind something that had never interfered with my power before: a seclusion charm. It was a thick, heavy thing that covered the men like a cloak, tacky, and it smelled of sulfur. Simply sensing it had me covering my mouth to prevent my gag reflex from loosening.

  “Enough.” My mutter wouldn’t be heard by the men outside of our hiding spot but it did catch Hamill’s attention and kept Ethan from moving too much.

  I had never been happier that Papa always insisted I wear a guise charm around my neck than I was now. The charm was smooth, a tiny stone cut from the quarry some hundred miles away, in no one’s territory. The leather band I wound it on brushed my hair from the ends as I pulled it from my neck and twined the strap through my fingers as the stone rested in the center of my palm—bright, glowing white and pulsing with ley line energy.

  My father had gifted it to me when I turned thirteen and the rite of passage dictated I venture out of our lands and make treks into the forest around the Cove that would test my mettle. This charm hadn’t left my neck since then, but it damn well would keep us undetected.

  “Díegol.” The charm came in low and slight, and at least the others had respect enough to pretend they didn’t hear me as I cast it. Magic was personal, intimate. It was bad form to eavesdrop on someone else’s spelling.

  A quick flush of light expanded around us, a ripple of movement, like light bending as we watched the arch of shadow and light move around us, setting the spell so that no one could hear or see us.

  “Who are they?” My companions had no answers or if they did, they weren’t talking. “Fine then, you don’t know.”

  Ethan protested when I stepped away from our hiding place, tapping my arm as though I’d forgotten to unbind his voice. I hadn’t and gave great thought to keeping him silent, even went so far as to bypass the trackers who sniffed the air and squinted around us as we passed them undetected. We could shout in their faces, rustle their clothing and they’d be none the wiser. No one could craft like my father, and that guise charm was the strongest of its make I’d ever seen.

  Another jab on my arm and I jerked around, knuckles popping when Ethan got a bit too aggressive with his silent insistence. “Touch me again and I’ll keep you quiet even longer.”

  “Be still and let him loose.” Cari’s voice was clipped, sharper than I’d ever heard it, but the look she gave me—that frustrated, stern manner reminded me of the mission, of the role I was meant to play. There was little time to dole out punishment, no matter how richly it was deserved. Ethan Rivers was an ass, but that wasn’t my concern.

  A snap of my fingers and Ethan coughed, clearing his throat as though he’d swallowed down a thick swig of whiskey.

  “Don’t you ever…”

  “Threaten me,” I told the wizard, smiling because I guessed it would annoy him more than a glare, “and I won’t unbind it next time.”

  “Leave her, Ethan.” Cari kept her palm against Ethan’s chest, pushing him back. “Help Hamill clear the trail ahead.” My brother and Malak came to my side, doing their best, I reckoned, to back me up, though it would do no good. Cari and Ethan didn’t need anyone’s loyalty. Regardless of what happened in this forest, they were higher coven. They’d keep the advantages that status gave them when this mission was complete.

  For his part, the shifter seemed as irritated with our little drama as he had my purported slacking while doing my job. He, at least, didn’t argue as Ethan walked with him down the trail, securing the way for a return to the Elam search.

  But the faint hum of the Elam’s magic had quieted in the distraction caused by the trackers. The signature was growing faint, something that pulsed under my skin in the cool dampness that collected over me as the hint of magic faded.

  “Has it gone?” Malak asked when I kept to the corners of the woods, not moving, not doing anything but trying to recapture the Elam’s power. “Jani?”

  He sat on the ground, fussing a bit with his pack and setting up a makeshift camp. He didn’t bother to ask if this was where I wanted to stay for the night or if I was ready to give up the search.

  “You can make camp if you want. I’m not done searching. I can manage on my own.”

  Malak let me go ahead by a few steps, keeping to himself as his stare weighed against my back before he cleared his throat. “Not on your own. Bane wouldn’t like it.” He didn’t bother to look up at me when I diverted my attention away from the woods and back to his half-smile and newborn fire.

  “That’s not your choice or his to make.”

  “I think you’ll find it is, Miss Benoit,” Cari chimed in, fussing with the fire Ethan had started before she threw a piece of kindling onto the growing flame. “He’s your client. And it’s him who gave us our instructions.”

  “Which I’m sure you’re all too eager to follow.”

  Ethan considered me for a moment, his eyes casting shadows that I hadn’t ever seen from him before. “Think what you will of me and my ilk, Jani, but Bane is set to be our leader. I may not like his,” he moved his gaze down my body, then back up, ignoring the glare his sister gave him and the way she rummaged through her pack, “proclivities, but he’ll lead us one day. Even if I don’t respect the wizard, I’ll still honor the title he’ll soon hold.”

  “And the investment that title will make in the Cove,” Cari said, slumping down next to Ethan. The pair exchanged a look that was both amused and somehow disrespectful. Hamill, it seemed, had caught it as well. He made some odd sound in the back of his throat, working that constant disapproval from his throat with a hard glare at both the wizards.

  Cari, though, shook her head at her brother’s laughter, and when Ethan could garner no rise from me or Cari, he abandoned his stake in the game and walked further from the fire.

  “He has a job to do too, you know.”

  Giving up the fight of continuing to search for the Elam, my curiosity led me to the flames, across the fire from the smug witch who seemed too eager to tell me my place. I kept my gaze on the fire, letting its warmth and comfort bring me out of the irritation my companions kept stoking in me.

  “Ethan, I mean,” Cari continued, moving closer, ducking her head to watch for Ethan’s attention. “He’s the last son of the Rivers coven. I’m his only sister. It’s his place to set me into a family that will be a boon for strengthening the lines. You know that the oldest families have the strongest magic.”

  “That’s a theory that hasn’t been tested in centuries.”

  “Maybe, but it’s never failed.” From her jacket pocket she pulled a flask of something that smelled sharp and bitter when she opened it, but she didn’t bother to offer me any. “Rivers, Grants, even some of the lesser covens with the oldest lines are typically the strongest. The hardest to contest.”

  Cari’s throat worked as she swallowed, and my gaze caught on the movement of her slender neck and the large diamond on her left hand as she held the flask. Her smirk was smug, condescending, and if I was petty, I might be offended. I was not. But did she really think I was so basic? Did she really believe I knew nothing at all?

  “What’s with the history lesson? You think I don’t know any of this? You think I’ve forgotten everything we were taught as kids?”

  “I think something keeps you present in my fiancé’s head.” She pointed at me with that flask, still not bothering to offer me a drink. “Hera knows why. There’s nothing remarkable about you, and I don’t much care why he can’t seem to get you out of his head.” Some stupid, hopeful expression must have pulled and twisted my features because Cari’s frown deepened, hardened so that there was no humor on her face. “Don’t get hopeful.”

  “You think I am?”

  Cari wrapped her arms around her knees, letting the flask dangle from her fingers as she stared into the fire, ignoring my question. “Bane has honor. He knows what’s at stake.” She looked at me squarely, her features set, unmoving. “He’ll never forget what he must become and with whom.”

 
“Life is not an Austen novel, Cari.” The higher covens tended to forget that not everyone was obsessed with strengthening their bloodlines. “Marriages don’t get arranged. Not in this century.”

  “You’re a fool if you think that. You’re a fool if you don’t think that blood and power and allies aren’t essential in securing our world. In protecting it.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The Cove had existed unhindered, undiscovered for centuries. That only happens when caution is taken, when tradition is upheld.

  Right then, in that moment, with the fire’s heat moving over my skin, settling me and the heavy stare of that smug damn witch across from me, there came a sense of loss. It was something I’d cradled over the years like an old wound that would never heal. Most nights, the pain of it, the ache it gave me could be pushed aside, stuffed down beneath all the emotion, all the tender sting that my life in the Cove had been.

  Most days, I could forget it existed at all.

  This was not one of those days.

  Nothing Cari said was wrong. It wasn’t like I hadn’t heard it before. You live in the Cove long enough, on the wrong side of it anyway, and a few certainties become abundantly clear. The higher covens never married the lower ones. Mortals had little clue that magic thrived and lived and breathed around them every day, and on the off chance that one caught wind of the truth, they were glamoured, their memories altered until what they thought was the truth could be passed off as some fantastic daydream.

  “You’re a cunning witch, Jani Benoit.” Cari’s confession surprised me. So did her next compliment. “You’re not unattractive. I’ll give you that much.” I could be flawless. My hair and skin and body could be something out of the lushest, most erotic fantasy in the world, and still no higher coven witch would admit it. Not out loud anyway. What I looked like didn’t matter. Where I came from did. Still, that didn’t stop Cari from leaning forward, from looking me over as though she needed to confirm her compliment. “It’s no wonder why you’ve kept his eye.”