Dark Magick

by Cate Tiernan

  "In what way?" I cried.

  Her dark eyes gazed deeply into mine. "I can't tell you," she whispered. "Hunter believes you're not knowingly involved with their plan. He saw that when you two were in tath meanma. But I'm not so sure. Maybe you're so powerful that you can hide your mind from others."

  "You can't believe that," I said.

  "I don't know what to believe. I do know that I don't trust Cal and Selene, and I fear they're capable of more evil than you can imagine." "Okay, you're pissing me off," I said. "You need to face the facts. So we need to figure out the facts first. Hunter thinks Selene has a big plan that you're a key element of. What do you think they'll do to you if you don't want Page

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  to be part of it?"

  "Nothing. Cal loves me."

  "Maybe he does," Sky said. "But he loves living more. And Selene would stop at nothing to have you—not even her own son." I shook my head. "You're crazy."

  "What does your heart tell you?" she asked softly. "What does your mind tell you?"

  "That Cal loves me and accepts me and has made me happy," I said. "That I love him and would never help you hurt him." She nodded thoughtfully. "I wish you could scry," she said. "If you could see them .. ."

  "Scry?" I repeated.

  "Yes. It's a somewhat precarious method of divination," Sky explained. I nodded impatiently. "I know what it is. I scry with fire." Her eyes opened so wide, I could see the whites around her black irises. "You don't." I just looked at her. Disbelieving, she said, "Not with fire." Not answering, I shrugged.

  "Have you scryed to see what's happening in the present?" I shook my head. "I just let the images come. It seems to be mostly the past, and sometimes I see possible futures."

  "You can guide scrying, you know. You focus your energy on what you want to see. With water you'll see whatever your mind wants to see. A stone is the best, most accurate, but it offers less information. Do you think you could control scrying with fire?"

  "I don't know," I said slowly, my mind already leaping with possibilities.

  Ten minutes later I found myself in a situation I never could have dreamed up. Sky and I sat cross-legged, our knees touching, our hands on each other's shoulders. A small fire burned on a flat stone I had unearthed in the snow. It crackled and spat as the snow in the cracks of the burning branches boiled. I'd lit it with my mind, and had felt a stealthy surge of pride at the way Sky's eyes widened in shock.

  Our foreheads touched; our faces were turned to the fire. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let myself drift into meditation. I tuned out the fact that my jeans were get-ting wet and my butt would probably never thaw again. I had never scryed while doing the Vulcan mind meld, but I was into trying it.

  Gradually my breathing deepened and slowed, and sometime later I sensed that Sky and I were breathing in unison. Without opening my eyes I reached out to touch her mind, finding the same suspicious brick wall that I had with Hunter. I pushed against it, and I felt her reluctance and then her slow acceptance. Cautiously she let me into her mind, and I went slowly, ready to pull out if this was a trap, if she tried to attack She was feeling the same fear, and we paused instinctively until we both decided to let down our guards. It wasn't easy. She had always rubbed me the wrong way, and she just about hated me. Surprisingly, it hurt to see the depth of her dislike for me, the rage she felt over what I had done to Hunter, her suspicion of my powers and their possible sources. I didn't realize witches could transfer their powers to another until I saw her worry that Selene had done this to me. We breathed together, locked in a mental embrace, looking deeply into each other. She loved Hunter dearly and was very afraid for his safety. She missed England and her mother and father terribly. In her mind I saw Alwyn, Hunter's younger sister, who looked nothing like him. I saw her memory of Linden, how beautiful he had been, how tragic his death was. Sky was in love with Raven.

  What? I followed that elusive thought, and then it was there, in the forefront, clear and complete. Sky was in love with Raven. Through Sky's eyes I saw Raven's humor, her strength, her gutsiness, her determination to study Wicca. I felt Sky's frustration and jealousy as Raven chased Matt and flirted with others and had no reaction to Sky's tentative overtures. To Sky, slender, blond, restrained English Sky, Raven was almost unbearably lush and sexy. The bold way she spoke, her vivid appearance, her brash attitude all fascinated Sky, and Sky wanted her with a frank desire that took me aback and almost embarrassed me.

  Then Sky was leading me, asking questions about Cal. Together we saw my love for him, my humiliating relief that someone finally wanted me, my awe at his beauty and respect for his power. She saw my uncertainty about and fascination with Selene and my discomfort about Cal's seomar. As Hunter had, she Page

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  saw that Cal and I hadn't made love yet. She saw that Hunter had almost kissed me, and she nearly broke off contact in surprise. I felt like she was paging through my private diary and began to wish I'd never agreed to this. My mind told Sky I had been shocked to find out I was Woodbane and extra shocked just four days ago to learn Cal was Woodbane also. Now, together, she thought, and I opened my eyes. After looking at each other for a moment, weighing what we had learned, we turned, staying connected, and looked into the fire.

  Fire, element of life, Sky thought, and I heard her. Help us see Cal Blaire and Selene Belltower as they are, not as they show themselves to us. Are you ready to see? I heard the fire whisper back to us seductively. Are you ready, little ones?

  We are ready, I thought, swallowing hard. We are ready, Sky echoed. Then, as it had for me in the past, the fire created images that drew us in. f felt Sky's awe and joy: she had never served with fire before. She strengthened her mind and concentrated on seeing the here and now, seeing Cal and Selene. I followed her example and focused on that also. Cal, I thought. Selene. Where are you?

  An image of Cal's huge stone house formed within the flames. I remembered how I could never project my senses through its walls and wondered if that applied to scrying. It didn't. The next time I blinked, I found myself in Selene's circle room, the huge parlor where she regularly held her coven's circles. It had once been a ballroom and now seemed like a grand hall of magick. Selene was there, in her yellow witch's robe, and I recognized Cal's dark head standing out from a group of people I didn't recognize. "Do we really need her?" a tall, gray-haired woman with almost colorless eyes asked.

  "She's too powerful to let go," said Selene. An icy trickle down my back told me they were speaking of me. “She's from Belwicket,”a slender man pointed out. "Belwicket is gone," Selene said. "She'll be from anywhere we want her to be." Oh, God, I thought.

  "Why haven't you brought her to us?" asked the gray-haired woman. Selene and Cal met eyes, and to me it felt like they fought a silent battle. "She'll come," said Cal in a strong voice, and inside me I felt a piercing pain, as if my heart were being rent. "But you don't understand—" "We understand that it's past time for action," another woman said. "We need this girl on our side now, and we need to move on Harnach before Yule. You had an assignment, Sgath. Are you saying you can't bring her to us?" "It will be done," said Selene in a voice like marble. Again her gaze seared Cal, and his jaw set. He gave an abrupt nod and left the room, graceful in his heavy white linen robe.

  I can't see anymore, I thought, and then I said the words aloud. "I can't see anymore."

  I felt Sky pulling back as I did, and I shut my eyes and deliberately came back to the snowy woods and this moment. Opening my eyes, I looked up to see that the sky was darkening with late afternoon, that my jeans were soaked through and miserably uncomfortable, that the trees that had made a circle of protection around me now seemed black and threatening. Sky's hands slid off my shoulders. "I've never done that," she said in a voice just above a whisper. "I've never been good at scrying. It's—awful." "Yes," I said. I looked into her black eyes, reliving what I had just seen, hearing Selene's words again.
Shakily I uncoiled and stood, my leg muscles cramped, my butt beyond feeling, and an unsettling feeling of nausea in my stomach. As Sky stood, stretching and groaning under her breath, I knelt and scooped up some clean snow, putting it in my mouth. I let it melt and swallowed the cold trickle of water. I did this again, then rubbed snow on my forehead and on the back of my neck under my hair. My breath was shallow, and I felt shaky, flooded with fear.

  "Feel ill?" Sky asked, and I nodded, eating more snow. I stayed on all fours, melting small mouthfuls of snow while my brain worked furiously, trying to process what we had seen. When Bree and I had fought over Cal and I had realized that we were no longer friends after eleven years, it had been shockingly painful. The sense of betrayal, of loss, of vulnerability had been almost unbearable. Compared to what I was feeling now, it had been a walk in the park. Inside, my mind screamed, No, no, no! "Were those images true?" I choked out. Page

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  "I think so," Sky said, sounding troubled. "You heard them mention Harnach? That's the name of a Scottish coven. The council sent Hunter here to investigate evidence that Selene is part of a Woodbane conspiracy that's trying, basically, to destroy non-Woodbane covens.""She's not the dark wave?" I cried. "Did she destroy Belwicket?" Sky shrugged. "They don't see how she could have. But she's been linked to other disasters, other deaths," she said, hammering my soul with each word. "She's been moving around all her life, finding new Woodbanes wherever she goes. She makes new covens and ferrets out blood witches. When the coven is solid, she breaks it up, destroying the non-Woodbane witches and taking the Woodbanes with her."

  "Oh my God," I breathed. "She's killed people?" "They believe so," Sky said.

  "Cal?" I said brokenly.

  "He's been helping her since he was initiated." This was all too much for me to take in. I felt frantic. "I have to go," I said, looking around for my tools. It was now almost dark. I grabbed Maeve's box and shook some of the snow off my boots.

  "Morgan—" Sky began.

  "I have to go," I said, more strongly.

  "Morgan?" she called as I took the first step into the woods. I turned back to look at her, standing alone in the clearing. "Be careful," she said. "Call me or Hunter if you need help."

  Nodding, I turned again and made my way back to my car. Inside, my heart began screaming again: No, no, no …

  16. Truth

  I've always wondered if my mother killed my father. After all, he left her, not the other way around. And then he had two more kids right away with Fiona. That really freaked mom out.

  Dad “disappeared” when I was almost nine. Not that I'd seen anything of him before that. I was the forgotten son, the one who didn't matter. When mom got the phone call, she just told me that Dad and Fiona had vanished. She didn't say anything about them being dead. But as the years have Page

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  worn on and on no one's heard from him-that I know about, anyway-it seems safe to assume he's dead. Which is convenient, in a way. It means Giomanach doesn't have Dad's power behind him. But still, I wish I knew what really happened.... -Sgath

  The sun had faded away. My wheels crunched ice on the road as I drove past old farms, fields of winter wheat, silos. Cal and Selene. Selene was evil. It sounded melodramatic, but what else do you call a witch who works on the lark side? Evil. Woodbane. No! I told myself. I'm Woodbane. I'm not evil. Belwicket wasn't evil; my mother wasn't My grandmother wasn't. But somewhere along the line, my ancestors had been. Was that why Selene wanted me? Did she see the potential for evil in me? I remembered the vision I'd had of myself as a gnarled gone, hungry for power. Was that my true future?

  I choked back a sob. Oh, Cal, I screamed silently. You betrayed me. I loved you, and you were just playing a part . I couldn't get over this. It was a physical pain inside me, an anguish so devastating that I couldn't think straight Tears rolled |down my cheeks, leaving hot tracks and tasting of salt when they touched the edges of my lips. A thousand images of Cal bombarded my brain: Cal leaning down to kiss me, Cal with his shirt open, Cal laughing, teasing me, offering to help me with Bakker, making me tea, holding me tight, kissing me hard, harder. I was flying apart inside. I began to pray desperately that scrying had been a lie, that Sky had tricked me, made me things that weren't there, she had lied, had lied....

  I needed to see him. I needed to find out the truth. I'd had my questions answered by Hunter and by Sky, and now only Cal remained to fill me in on the big picture, the dangers I was blundering into, the reasons I needed to be careful, to watch myself, to rein in my power. But first—I had to hide my mother's tools. With all my heart, I hoped that Cal would convince me of his innocence, convince me that Sky was wrong, convince me that our love was true. But the mathematician in me insisted that nothing is one hundred percent certain. I had bound my mother's tools to me, they were mine, and now I had to make sure no one would take them away or make me use them for evil.

  But where to stash them? I couldn't go home. I was already almost late for dinner, and if I went home, I wouldn't be able to turn around and leave. Where?

  Of course. Quickly I made a right turn, heading to Bree's house. Bree and I were enemies: no one would suspect I would hide something precious in her yard.

  Bree's house looked large, immaculately kept, and dark. Good—no one was home. I popped the trunk on my car and took out the box. Whispering, "I am invisible, you see me not, I am but a shadow," I slunk up the side yard, then quickly ducked beneath the huge lilac bush that grew outside the dining-room window. It was mostly bare this time of year, but it still hid the opening to the crawl space beneath Bree's house. I tucked the toolbox out of sight behind a piling, traced some fast runes of secrecy, and stood up. I was opening my car door when Bree and Robbie drove up in Bree's BMW. They pulled up beside me and stopped.

  Ignoring them, I started to swing into the driver's seat of my car. The passenger window scrolled down smoothly. Crap, I thought. "Morgan?" said Robbie. "We've been looking for you. We were talking to Sky. You've got to—"

  "Gotta go," I said, climbing in and slamming the door shut before he could say anything else. I had already talked to Sky, and I knew what she'd said.

  Robbie opened his door and started toward me. I peeled off, watching him get smaller in the rearview mirror. I'm sorry, Robbie, I thought. I'll talk to you later.

  On the way toward the river, thoughts of exactly what I would say to Cal raced through my mind. I was in the middle of my ninth hysterical scenario when— Morgan.

  My head whipped around. Cal's voice was there, right beside me, and I almost screamed.

  Morgan?

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  Where are you? my mind answered frantically. I need to see you. Please, right away. I'm at the old cemetery, where we had our circle on Samhain. Please come. What to do? What to think? Had everything he'd told me been a lie? Or could he explain it all?

  Morgan? Please. I need you. I need your help. Just like that night with Hunter, I thought. Was he in trouble? Hurt? Blinking, I wiped away some stray tears with the back of my sleeve and peered through the windshield. At next the intersection I turned right instead of left, and then I was on the road leading north, out of town. Oh, Cal, I thought, a new wave of anguish sweeping over me. Cal, we to have it out Five minutes later I turned down a side road and parked front of the small Methodist church that had once shepherded the people who now lay in its graveyard.

  Shuddering with leftover sobs, I sat in my car. Then I felt Cal, coming closer. He tapped gently on my window. I opened the door and got out. "You got my message?" he said. I nodded. He examined my face more closely. Then he caught my chin in his hands and said, "What's wrong? Why were you crying? Where were you? I tried going by your house." What should I say?

  "Cal, is Selene trying to hurt me?" I asked, my words like shards of ice in the night air.

  Everything in him became still, centered, and focused. "Why would you
say that?"

  I felt his senses reaching out to me, and quickly I shut myself down, refusing him entrance.

  "Is Selene part of an all-Woodbane coven that wants to erase non-Woodbanes?" I asked, pushing my hair out of my face. Please tell me it's a lie. Please convince me. Tell me anything. Cal gripped my hair in his hand, making me look at him. "Who have you been talking to?" he demanded. "Dammit,

  has that bastard Hunter been—I

  "I scryed," I said. "I saw you with Selene and other people. I heard them talking about your 'assignment.' Was I your assignment?" He was silent for a long time. "Morgan, I can't believe this," he said at last. "You know you can't believe stuff you see in scrying—it's all nebulous, uncertain. Scrying shows you only possibilities. See, this is why I always want you to wait until I guide you. Things can be misunderstood—" "Scrying showed me the possibility of where my mother's tools were" I said, my voice stronger. "It's not always lies—otherwise no one would use it." "Morgan, what's this all about?" he asked in a loving voice. He gently pulled me to him so that my cheek rested against his chest, and it felt wonderful and I wanted to sink into him. He kissed my forehead. "Why are you having doubts? You know we're muirn beatha dans. We belong together; we're one. Tell me what's wrong," he said soothingly. With those words the pain in my chest intensified, and I took deep breaths so I wouldn't cry again. "We're not," I whispered, as the truth broke over me like a terrible dawn.

  "We're not."

  "Not what?"

  I tilted back my head to look into his gold eyes, his eyes full of love and longing and fear. I couldn't bring myself to say it outright. "I know you slept with Bree," I lied instead. "I know it." Cal looked at me. Before Bree and I had broken our friendship, she had been chasing Cal hard, and I knew from past experience that she always got whatever guy she wanted. One day she had been happy, saying she and Cal had finally gone to bed, so now they were going out. But they hadn't started going out, and he had come after me. I'd asked him about it before, and he had denied sleeping with her, with my best friend. Now I needed to know the truth of it, once and for all, even as I was being hit with other painful truths from every direction.