by Lucia Ashta
Naomi didn’t complain, but snapped to, a sure sign that whatever was nearly upon us was worse than she was.
“I need complete silence and no interruptions,” she said. “Not even one.” She pinned the fairies with warning looks.
“We got it,” Fianna said. “Not a peep from us.”
Nessa mimed zipping her lips as Fianna had before and went to throw the key over her shoulder, but Naomi cut her with a withering look, so she tucked the imaginary key in the waistband of her skintight battle pants instead. When Naomi turned away, Nessa rolled her eyes theatrically, putting her whole upper body into the gesture, and I bit the inside of my lip so as not to laugh.
Fianna reached over, retrieved the pretend key, and chucked it at the witch’s retreating back. The fairies giggled until Naomi spun on one pointy heel to glare at them. Fury lit her eyes from within, and I gulped as I wondered if she might have blasted the fairies right then and there if not for the magical binding Irving made her complete.
Naomi breathed rage through her nose—an act that seemed at odds with her meticulous outfit and grooming—and Nessa giggled, slapping a hand across her mouth, eyes wide.
The witch didn’t say another word—and she didn’t have to. The fairies behaved after that, though it was possible the whole “imminent attack” thing subdued them as much as the witch’s endless supply of death glares.
Naomi plopped into the armchair she’d chosen earlier, crossed one long, elegant leg over the other, and seethed at the fairies. When they only stood upon the tea table looking as innocent as butterflies, she closed her eyes. In under a minute, her breathing grew deep and a slight green glow spread to surround her body.
When she relaxed her face, she almost looked kind. Though if there were a woman far more sensitive than she let on somewhere inside, I doubted she ever let anyone meet her.
She didn’t chant a spell like Nessa, nor speak her magic aloud as she had with the binding, but I sensed the energy building around her just the same. For several minutes, there was nothing beyond the subtle glow in her energy field. Soon after that, however, the energy pulsed around her, reaching a couple of feet beyond her, encompassing the chair she sat in almost entirely, top to bottom.
The teacups, abandoned on the tea table while the rest of us stared at her, rattled in their delicate saucers. Next, the glass in the sliding back door shook. The teapot on the stovetop began to whistle, though no flame burned beneath it.
Tension built, straining against me. I longed to pull away from it and hide, but there was nowhere to go, really, not if I wasn’t allowed outside. And I especially wasn’t going to defy Irving on that if creatures were hunting me. Besides, I didn’t want to miss a moment of the witch’s unfurled powers. I’d always been curious about magic, probably because I had so little of it myself. And underwater, the magic was different from this. There, power undulated in waves like water currents, or it bubbled and drifted. Sometimes, if it was powerful enough, it whisked outward like a shockwave. There was none of this glow of light, not even from the large sea crystal Mulunu wielded atop her staff.
I swallowed, and the breath lodged in my throat. My chest felt as if something heavy lay upon it. My hands tingled as if I were meant to do something right then, though I couldn’t imagine what.
The prickling sensation raced across all parts of my body, sweeping down my legs and tingling through my toes. I clenched them against the wood floor. What was going on? No one else seemed to be reacting to Naomi’s magic like this. They appeared as mesmerized as I was, but that was the extent of it.
When the tingling expanded to reach my wings, it became painful and I took several hurried steps back from Naomi. I gasped as sudden agony raced through my body, boiling my blood. I retreated, stumbling, until my wings pressed against the glass of the sliding-glass door. The vibration of the glass made me jump as if it were on fire.
I was sure I looked like a cornered fish when Quinn sought me out, the only one to look for me when the real show was seated in the armchair. His eyebrows shot up and he moved toward me, drawing everyone’s attention, save Naomi’s.
The feathers began to rise from their natural position flush against the shell of my wings, and for a few moments I felt as if my tail were back where it belonged. The stinging rush of what?—magic? power? desperation?—created phantom sensations across my legs.
“Selene,” Quinn whispered, so softly that I wasn’t sure he’d actually spoken. “Are you all right?” He placed a hand against my upper arm and I jumped and recoiled at the way his skin seared my flesh. He yanked his hand back, but it wasn’t him, it was whatever was happening to me. Any touch would have been too much with the amount of energy that coursed through me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice insistent, his eyes sharp as they scanned the entirety of my form searching for the cause of my pain.
I didn’t respond, because I didn’t know what to say, since I didn’t know what was wrong. Forming words would have required more focus than I had anyway. Apparently, my non-response was all the response he needed.
He didn’t even ask before he wrapped strong arms around me, persisting even when I winced, encircling me in his tight embrace. I trembled as his warmth sent a new wave of fire burning through me. Everything about me was on fire as if with the sting of a thousand medusa jellyfish.
But he only drew me in closer.
My breath came too fast, my heart like a frantic drum … until I allowed myself to feel beyond myself and into him.
The moment I sensed his strength, my entire body relaxed and the pain drifted away. I was able to breathe again. The tension fled my body as I listened to his thundering heart. I breathed in his crisp scent, a bit like the woods outside, and thought of nothing else until a burst of green light slammed into us both.
It clawed and tore at me, threatening to rip me apart.
I clutched at Quinn’s ribcage and gritted my teeth, wondering if I was the only one shaking or if Quinn was shaking too. It was impossible to tell.
I clenched my eyes shut and hoped I’d survive.
11
A loud buzzing erupted in my head, disorienting me further. As if Quinn sensed that, he pressed me more tightly against his body, and just in time too. My legs gave out in a drastic wobble that would’ve otherwise sent me crashing to the floor. His hands latched firmly in a loop around my lower back, working around the wings that stretched toward the floor as I slumped.
When the buzzing began to subside, the first thing I heard was an enraged Fianna: “You!” she was saying. “You did something to her. What’d you do? You take it back right now or I’ll have at you!”
“I didn’t do anything to her,” Naomi answered, her voice equally menacing, seething with dangerous tones. “I couldn’t have, or has your addled brain already forgotten the oath you made me swear to? You can have at me all you want, because that will be enough to break the binding, and I can’t wait to have my magic wrap around your delicate little throat and throttle the life out of you!”
I forced my eyes open to view the room through tunnel vision, the edges blurred and dark, but everything looked the same as it had before. The pain was now absent, but I couldn’t yet hold myself up on legs that hadn’t worked well to begin with. I slumped into Quinn, who didn’t protest at propping me up. He stared down at me, and when I met his gaze I found more worry than seemed reasonable for a man who’d only just met me.
Magic crackled in the room. I dragged my gaze to the others with reluctance. Quinn made me feel safe. The fairies and witch … not so much.
Fianna and Nessa’s wings buzzed a league a minute as the fairies drew side by side in the open center of the room. Power flowed between each of their hands, though I hadn’t registered Nessa chanting a spell.
Naomi bolted from the armchair and stalked closer to the fairies, her heels sounding out an ominous click clack across the floor. Green sparked to life between her hands too. “Go ahead, fairies. I can’t wait.”
<
br /> “Enough!” Irving roared, and he sounded like a lion, but hoarser. “You lasses had better get it together, and fast, or I’m booting ya out of my house without a second thought.”
Crimson, sapphire, and green magic continued to crackle, no one backing down. Fianna zipped another foot closer, tawny eyes daring the witch to make a sudden move.
I tried to step toward them but my legs didn’t hold me up. Quinn trailed concern across my face, searching for some answer that I didn’t have, and tightened his hold around me.
“You okay?” he asked, though the question must surely have been rhetorical. Clearly I wasn’t. “Can I carry you to the couch?”
I was used to being the proverbial runt of the litter. The entirety of the Kunu Clan, even my mother and Liana on occasion, had treated me as if I were weaker and in need of constant assistance. But I’d resisted their efforts and had never allowed a single one of them to carry my burdens.
But when I met Quinn’s eyes I didn’t find judgment, no thoughts that I was weak or less than.
I swallowed my pride, but realized that with this shifter I didn’t need to. Finally, I nodded my assent, and even that effort left my head swimming.
Things were going splendidly. Since I’d crossed the threshold into Irving’s home, I’d almost died at least once, and it sure felt like it’d been twice. And that was before the vampires, shifters, ghouls, ghosts, undead, and whatever other ghastly creature they’d managed to recruit to their cause of world domination caught up with me.
“You…” Fianna growled at Naomi.
“I didn’t do this,” the witch said. “Think it through, dummy. There’s no reason for me to try to kill Selene. I couldn’t even do it if I wanted to thanks to the binding you supervised.”
“Don’t you call me dummy, dummy.”
“Don’t be one, and I won’t.”
“Lasses, I mean it,” Irving said, and from the tone of his voice it was clear that he did. “I’ll expel you from here in the next five seconds if ya don’t pipe down and holster your magic.”
Quinn crouched, and in one sweep I was in his arms, pressed against his chest, my wings hanging from behind his arm.
“Take it easy,” Irving said to his nephew. “Really slow.”
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t made of porcelain, but the truth was I felt as if I’d shatter if Naomi did a single bit more of … well, whatever it was she’d done.
The fairies glared at Naomi instead of watching Quinn’s progress with me. Fianna bit out, “Drop your magic and we will.” But she said it more softly, as if she realized Irving was really about to kick them all out.
Naomi didn’t respond for long enough that Irving turned toward her. When he did, she let the green between her hands fizzle out to nothing, but the look on her face made it abundantly clear she was ready to munch on tiny fairies and pick her teeth with their bones after.
“Watch yourself,” Irving said, and I suspected there was much more to that warning than I realized. It was enough for Naomi to wipe the menacing snarl from her face and stash it away—for later use, no doubt.
Fianna and Nessa allowed the light that coursed between their hands to fade out before Irving could give them the stink-eye, though Fianna didn’t stop glaring at the witch for a second.
Quinn went to lay me down on the couch so that I could stretch out across it lengthwise, belatedly remembered I had unwieldy wings attached to my back, and helped me sit instead.
I yelped as my wings pulled in the wrong direction when he draped them across the back of the couch.
He stilled immediately, hovering over me. “I’m so sorry. How do I fix it?”
“No, it’s fine. I just … hurt all over.”
Quinn nodded and fully released my weight to the couch. When he stood, Irving gave him a look that said, We need to talk. Before I properly anticipated what I was going to say, I said it: “Please stay with me.” I directed my words to both of them, but I really meant Quinn.
He didn’t wait for his uncle’s permission, but sat down next to me on the couch without a word. Tension I hadn’t even noticed I was still carrying left my body as I felt his warmth. I sank into the couch.
I hoped he didn’t think it was strange that we’d only just met and already I was becoming reliant on him. Once I figured things out a little, I wouldn’t allow myself to depend on him or anyone else like this.
I avoided his searching gaze when I felt it land on me. I looked instead to Irving. I needed answers, lots of them.
“What happened to me?” I croaked, and hurried to clear my throat so I wouldn’t sound so weak. “Was it the wards again?” What I really wanted to ask was if Naomi had tried to kill me somehow. Had she found some loophole in the binding? I didn’t dare upset the witch.
Irving looked to Naomi, who shook her head, actually appearing sincere for once. “It wasn’t anything I did. And it wasn’t the wards, I’m sure of it. I was connected to them. I would have sensed some kind of deviation from the rules I set for them. The wards are working exactly as they’re supposed to.”
“It has to have been the wards,” Irving said. “Nothing else makes sense.”
“Maybe it was my power that activated whatever happened, but it wasn’t anything I did on purpose.”
When no one offered their agreement right away, she added, “You can be sure of what I’m saying because of the binding. I can’t have set out to hurt our newest hybrid, now could I?”
“Fianna?” Irving asked.
The crimson fairy sighed heavily. “It wasn’t on purpose. Whatever happened to Selene was because of the witch’s powers, but not because she was trying to hurt her.” Fianna grimaced as if that were bad news instead of good.
“You have to check with the fairy before you trust me?” Naomi asked, narrowing her eyes at the gruff shifter.
“Yes,” Irving said. “But I don’t fully trust either of you, if that makes ya happy.”
I didn’t think Naomi knew how to be happy, not in the real sense. Victorious, yes. Happy, no way.
“You should trust me,” Naomi said.
“I’d be happy to. But trust is earned. Are the wards in place now?”
Naomi nodded. “Perfectly. They’ll no longer hurt Selene, but they’ll fry anyone who attempts to enter this house without permission.”
“I assume you made a back entrance for you to come and go as you please.”
Naomi blinked, the only sign of her surprise. “Well done, old man.”
I expected another one of Irving’s threats not to call him old, but he didn’t mention it. “We’ll deal with that later. Now that we’re protected, we need to get to business. Not a second to waste. Are creatures still coming for her?”
“Undoubtedly.” Naomi’s response was too quick for my liking. “I sense shifters and vamps clearly now. Their energy signatures are so distinct for me. They’re close, and they aren’t alone.”
Great. The day just kept getting better.
“What else is with them?” Irving asked.
“Hmm, I still can’t tell. It’s … muddled.”
“Like they might have a witch working to conceal their approach?” Nessa asked.
“Yes, that might be it.” Naomi dragged the words out.
“If they’re working with witches, that’s really bad,” Quinn said. “We need to protect Selene.”
“We absolutely do,” Irving said, “but first we need to figure out what happened just now. We can’t have her reacting to magic like that. We could accidentally kill her.”
I nodded fervently, making myself a bit dizzy. I was all for not getting killed on my first day on land.
“Does anyone have any ideas?” Irving asked, pacing across the open length of the room all the way to the sliding glass door. The thick, corded muscles of his forearms rippled with tension. “Because I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Nor have I,” Naomi said. “No one’s ever reacted to my magic like that. Then again, I’v
e never worked magic that accounted for a siren angel.”
“A sirangel,” Nessa said, most unhelpfully.
“Do ya think it’s that her powers are different and new?” Irving asked. “Could that have been it? Reacting to magic on land that she’s never been exposed to before?”
“Possible, but unlikely. No, I think it has to have been more than that. Something we aren’t taking into account.” Naomi’s eyes widened and she sank back into the armchair, ramrod straight in the seat. She pinned all her attention on Quinn and me over on the couch. I wanted to squirm to escape it, but I suddenly sensed that it was important not to reveal any more of my weaknesses to this woman.
I met her gaze without flinching, even though my insides were going all wonky from the effort, and I was already light-headed to begin with.
I’d have to work at it.
“Nessa the Sapphire?” Irving asked. “Do you have any thoughts on this?”
“Nessa always has thoughts on the matter,” Fianna said.
Nessa tilted her head and looked at Quinn and me. With her attention, everyone else followed. I struggled to keep from showing the effort it took not to hide from their gazes. I wanted to burrow my face into Quinn’s chest and let the worries of the world fall away—if only that were possible.
“There’s definitely more to it than Selene’s magic encountering Naomi’s for the first time,” Nessa said. “Though that might be part of it. Naomi has strong magic, but since it wasn’t targeted at Selene, it has to have been something more.”
Nessa buzzed her wings into a blur behind her and flew over to Quinn and me, where she hovered right between our faces, and I had to resist the automatic urge to shoo an annoying, buzzing pest from my face.
She got so close that I struggled not to blink as she stared into my eyes, then flew over to Quinn’s and stared into his. “Hmm,” she said, and flew back to peer into my eyes again. “Ah-ha, yes, I suspected it must be something like this.”
“Something like what?” Quinn asked.
But Nessa addressed Irving. “You never told us about Quinn.”
