by Jami Gray
“Right.” Disbelief dripped from the one word as she looked away.
“It’s not,” he restated firmly, reaching out and covering her hand balled up on her knee. “Leaders are not gods, Tala. We do all we can to keep our people safe, but even we can’t keep them safe from themselves. That’s the curse of choice. They choose to use their abilities to help or harm, and you have to stand by and watch the fallout.”
She knew this, but hearing him say it, strangely, helped. “It sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
His soft agreement allowed her to set her internal debate gently aside and refocus on the immediate situation.
They continued to tether the wolf and minimize what pain they could. His occasional low-throated whines and yips became the only sounds to break the hushed quiet.
She slipped beneath the waves of magic, sinking like a small stone into the world of power and light, determined not to let Hadley’s spite claim the shifter. Focus narrowed to directing the healing, time unfurled around her.
Chay’s “Cheveyo, where are you?” filtered through, bringing the present back with a visceral yank.
“Back room.”
Chay being Chay didn’t make much sound as he appeared in the door, a wild storm of fury on his heels in the form of Toby.
As soon as the alpha caught sight of his wolf, he blanched. “What the holy fuck?”
“Explanations later.” Cheveyo didn’t waste time. “Chay sit on the other side of Tala, Toby to my right.” He waited until the two men dropped into place before continuing, “We’re dealing with a corrupted blood ward.” He ignored Chay’s vicious hiss and Toby’s hair-raising growl. “Chay, I need you to work with Tala on the healing spell. Structured like you did for Warrick’s wolf. Toby, you need to use your tie to your wolf to hold him still.”
“What are you going to do?” The growl in Toby’s question made it difficult to understand.
“I’m going to reconfigure the ward.”
Reconfigure the ward? Tala barely stifled her shock at his answer. That meant he planned on manipulating the magic—and to do that he would need to reach out to Raine. Instead of voicing her worry, she simply said, “Cheveyo.”
He looked at her. “I’ll be fine, awéé, but if we don’t do something fast, we’re going to lose him.”
Fine, but she refused to let him do this on his own. Not that she didn’t trust the other woman, but…well, she didn’t. Sue her. Tala uncurled her hand and laced her fingers with his in silent response. On the psychic plane, she tightened her hold on his magic, refusing to permit anything, or anyone, to separate them.
Her move didn’t go undetected. Cheveyo’s lips twitched, but he simply warned Toby, “According to Warrick, what happens next is going to get very uncomfortable for both of you. You need to keep your wolf—”
“Hollis,” Toby bit out. “His name is Hollis.”
Cheveyo nodded then corrected, “—keep Hollis in check for me. He and his wolf have to hold on until we can defuse the ward.”
Toby’s gaze didn’t shift from Hollis. “That ward did this?”
“No, the ward is keeping his two natures from reconnecting. This botched transformation is the result of Hollis being poisoned. The only good part is, Hollis isn’t feral.” His ‘yet’ remained unsaid.
At that, Toby did look at Cheveyo. Tala gave Cheveyo points for not quailing under the yellow-eyed glare of the enraged predator next to him.
Their staring contest was cut short by Chay’s, “You better hurry, Cheveyo.”
No more conversation ensued as everyone got to work.
Tala worked with Chay and, together, they created a two-layer spell, one to contain the blood ward, and the second to try and bridge the gap between Hollis’s two natures. While that took concerted effort, she could still feel the minute Cheveyo’s magic shifted, becoming something more as he opened his psychic door and let Raine join their group.
Whatever conversation the two exchanged remained private, but when Cheveyo began directing them, they played their parts. Tala began to pray.
By the time they managed to undo the ward, every inch of Tala’s body ached. Thanks to the depth of her magical well, Hollis was still breathing, but she worried how much damage the wolf’s psyche endured.
Tala wasn’t the only one feeling the drain. Both Chay and Cheveyo wore a pale under-cast to their skin, and Toby’s face seemed to have thinned down, bruises appearing under his eyes, but his gaze remained bright and focused.
Next to her, Cheveyo shifted his position until he could cradle Hollis’s head, his voice calm as he warned. “Okay, Hollis, this is going to feel weird as shit, but you can’t fight me.”
Hollis panted, but it was Toby’s low, warning growl that left Tala tense.
Cheveyo ignored it, closed his eyes and bent over Hollis, his focus intent.
Tala watched Toby watch Cheveyo. She knew Cheveyo was working with Raine to counter the effects of the drug, but they hadn’t had a chance to explain exactly what that entailed to Hollis’s alpha. Toby might not know what exactly was happening, but he could sense enough to know it wasn’t normal healing magic at work.
The tension in the room crept up a notch, yet Cheveyo never wavered from his work.
In preparation for Toby to do something stupid, Tala braced. She carefully unwound her magic from Chay’s, leaving enough to keep Hollis stable. Next to her Chay stiffened as the weight of holding the healing spell shifted to him. She was grateful when he remained silent but watchful, as she layered a protective spell over Cheveyo and Hollis.
“Cheveyo, what are you doing?” Toby’s hands dug into the floor, his nails scraping over wood.
“What I can to get this poison out of his system,” Cheveyo murmured without opening his eyes.
“That’s not what it feels like,” Toby snapped.
“Do you want your wolf back or not, alpha?” Tala cut in.
Toby turned his yellow-eyed glare to her and she recognized the combination of guilt and fury. “What I want is your witch’s heart on a platter.”
“And I’ll deliver that, as soon as we save Hollis.” Since she meant every damn word, there was no missing the weight of her vow.
Toby stared at her, his wolf disturbingly close. “Your word, Magi.”
She didn’t hesitate. “My word, Alpha.”
“Now, Chay,” Cheveyo commanded as Hollis’s body began to convulse.
There was a rush of unseen energy. Suddenly Tala’s magic jerked, then siphoned away to do Chay’s bidding. She couldn’t follow what was happening between the two witches and keep an eye on the rabid alpha, so she left them to it and stayed focused on protecting Cheveyo.
Toby’s head whipped around, his jaw flexing. “Easy, Hollis.” There was a wealth of power in his command, and Hollis’s body slowly calmed.
Tala watched in stunned silence as the twisted mess of human and wolf slowly slid into sleek, dark fur. Finally, a panting wolf lay in Hollis’s place.
Toby broke the silence first, reaching out carefully to run his hands along Hollis’s heaving sides in soothing strokes.
Cheveyo gently set Hollis’s head down and scooted back, making room for the alpha to attend to his wolf. He stopped when he was sitting between Chay and Tala.
She wrapped an arm around his waist, a bit alarmed at his pale coloring. “You okay?” She kept her question low.
“Yeah, it just takes a bit out of you,” he murmured, watching the wolves.
Chay drew his legs up and rested his wrists on his knees. “That was a dangerous stunt to pull.”
“More dangerous not to,” Cheveyo answered with grim acknowledgement.
Guilt pricked at Tala. Cheveyo was cleaning up her messes yet again, but if he hadn’t been here—she shuddered.
Proving how in tune he was to her moods, he bumped her shoulder. When she lifted her gaze, he said, “We were lucky that Hadley did a rush job with the ward. If we had gotten here any later, Hollis would be dead, and
you’d be facing a bloody reprisal from the wolves.”
“And I’d be the one leading the pack,” Toby confirmed in a hard voice. “No matter how much I like you.”
Cursing the sensitive hearing of shifters, Tala tried not to let his recrimination ruffle her feathers, but it was hard. “As much as I would like to lay all the blame on Hadley, I don’t think she’s the mastermind behind this. She’s powerful and manipulative, but a blood ward?” She shook her head slowly.
Toby gathered Hollis in his arms and stood. “My understanding is that a blood ward is part of the demons’ toolbox.”
She rose, Chay and Cheveyo doing the same on either side of her. “That’s a magic Hadley’s never claimed.”
“It’s an old magic,” Cheveyo corrected. “And the one set on Hollis didn’t carry any taint of demon.”
“Just very old, very corrupt magic,” Chay confirmed as he twisted his spine, setting off a series of soft pops as it adjusted with his stretch.
All of which pointed directly to someone old enough to remember such spells. Someone like Leo. She shared a look with Cheveyo. “I want her partner’s name before I hand her heart to Toby.”
“Tala.”
Heeding the warning note in Toby’s voice, she looked at the alpha, and her heart thudded painfully. Death stared back.
“Bring me a name and her heart,” he ordered, “and I’ll back whatever decision you make moving forward.”
Chapter Thirty
Despite Chay’s protests, Cheveyo sent him with Toby and Hollis. Once they were gone, he closed Hadley’s front door with a barely disguised sigh of relief. He pressed his palms to the door and let his head hang down.
Arms wrapped around his waist as Tala stepped in behind him. “You okay?”
He dropped one hand and covered hers as they laced over his stomach. “You think anyone will be upset if Chay arrives back in Portland as a rooster?”
“A rooster?”
“Can’t make him a hen, that’s a bit too much transformation even for me.”
His dry comment got a choked giggle before she said, “Maybe you could convince Natasha to make you a deal.”
He turned in her arms, pulled her close, and rested his chin on the top of her head. “It’s a good thing I like the kid, or your suggestion might prove to be too tempting for my sanity.”
Her head lifted, and he raised his so he could look at her as her hands stroked over his spine. He drank in the softened lines of her expression as her chocolate gaze roamed slowly over his face.
Her lips twitched, probably due to the exasperation he wasn’t bothering to hide. “He takes his job seriously,” she said softly. “That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t make his hovering any less irritating.” He dropped a chaste kiss on her forehead. “Ready to do some snooping?”
Like a fast moving storm, her softness shifted into ruthless anticipation. “More than.”
His hold tightened, then dropped away. “Let’s start with the most obvious then.”
“Her office.” Tala turned and headed toward the hall.
Unwilling to trigger any other unexpected surprises, they scanned the office before stepping inside. Hadley’s protection ward took Cheveyo less than half a minute to disarm. Mainly because he recognized the base pattern from the perimeter wards he undid earlier. Still, the ease of disarming it left him frowning and wondering what he was missing.
Catching his look, Tala asked, “What?”
“Considering how complex her perimeter and alter room wards were, I was expecting a bit more difficulty with her personal warding.”
Tala snorted as she pulled out the delicate looking chair and sat behind the desk. “There’s one thing you can count on with Hadley.”
He moved over to the shelves. “What’s that?” He began pulling out books, thumbing through them, and setting them back. Even going as far as to nudge the knick-knacks out of position, just in case.
“She thinks she’s all that and a bag of chips.” Tala was bent over in the chair, rifling through the bottom drawer.
“And?”
Reaching up onto the top shelves, he moved a hand-carved piece out of position, and dislodged a monstrous dust bunny. He stepped back and shook his head, wiping his face free of dust.
“And, she’s not.”
Puzzled by her answer, he turned to look at Tala. She had a pile of folders in her lap that she was searching through. “What does that have to do with her warding abilities?”
His question pulled Tala from her task. She paused in what she was doing to answer. “You remember that Danny trained her and me, right?”
He nodded and wondered where this was headed.
“Initially, he trained us together, but it wasn’t long before he decided to separate us. Hadley got upset and blamed me, claiming Danny was playing favorites.” A blush rose under her cheeks, and her gaze slid away as she fiddled with the files in her lap. “At the time, I wondered if she was right. Eventually, I asked Danny.”
Having trained enough young Magi to see where this was headed, understanding crept in. “He told you no.”
Even though it wasn’t a question, she shook her head. “He didn’t answer straight out. Instead, he decided to show me.”
Because Danny was a damn good teacher for a reason.
A fact born out when Tala continued, “He brought the two of us together for one more training session. This time, he wrote our assignments down, put them in sealed envelopes, and had us work in two separate areas. It was an elemental riddle, and the answer was a spell.”
An elemental riddle had an obvious answer that could be used, but the correct answer was much more individualized, depending on an adept’s instinctual understanding of their own magic. Cheveyo had used the same tool to gauge a young Magi’s magical instinct.
“Instead of having us craft the spell, we had to write down each step of our cast and the reason why we decided to choose as we did. When we were done, he had Hadley go first.”
“Which didn’t go over well.”
Tala’s smile contained more grimace than mirth. “Her reasoning was sound…”
He leaned a shoulder against the bookcase. “But lacked depth.”
“When I think back on it now, I get what Danny was doing, but at that time I was worried I had over thought the whole thing, so when it was my turn I stumbled through it. Hadley was pissed, but she hid it well. Just a couple of snide little comments on me showing off, but nothing out of the ordinary for her.” She fell quiet, tracing a finger in an abstract pattern against the desk’s surface, lines marring her forehead. “Hindsight’s a bitch sometimes.”
Because her story wasn’t an unusual, he picked up the story’s threads. “How long before you realized how much she was mimicking you on spell work?”
She looked at him, no signs of her earlier compassion evident, just simple practicality. “The next session.”
“I’m betting Danny didn’t have to say a word.”
She shook her head. “Once I put it all together, the more furious I became. How she always waited until I began, or how she used what I did, then tried to pass it off as if it was her thought first. When I approached Danny about it, he confirmed my assumptions weren’t arrogant. Finally, even I had to admit that Hadley was great at following another’s lead, not so great on thinking on her own. It made her a good tool, but a piss poor advisor and leader.”
And that clarity of insight, Cheveyo thought, more than anything, testified to why Tala was the Magi leader. “Which means the ward work on the wolf and her alter room was Hadley following someone else’s directions.”
Tala tapped the tip of her nose then sighed. “Now we need to confirm whose directions.”
“I’ll give you three guesses, and your first two don’t count.” There was no hiding the bite of frustration in his voice.
She aimed a narrow eyed look at him. “We need inarguable proof.”
He held her gaze as h
is anger turned pitiless. “We’ll get it.” Even if he had to tear if from Hadley, one bloody piece at a time.
After scouring Hadley’s house and turning up nothing, Cheveyo believed that was their only viable option. There was nothing there. Not a damn journal or half scribbled note. And he wasn’t the only one frustrated.
“Is it too damn much to ask for just one crumb?” Tala grumbled.
He shoved a box back in place in Hadley’s bedroom closet. “Probably.” He turned to see Tala press her fists into the small of her back and stretch. Wisps of hair escaped her braid, and a streak of dust marred her chin just under her mouth. He walked over and used his thumb to wipe it away. Unable to resist the silky slide of her skin, he did it again.
She turned and nipped his thumb.
Heat curled low and hungry, deepening his voice, “What was that for?”
“You’re distracting me.” Her husky answer raised more than an involuntary shiver.
Reluctantly, he let her go and refocused. “Fine. If there’s nothing here, where else would she keep personal stuff?”
Hands on her hips, Tala slowly rotated, as if searching the bedroom for an answer. “Her office in town maybe?”
Maybe, but… “We’re running short on people we can trust to check it out.”
“Wyatt’s still with Teagan, Chay’s with Toby.” She pulled her phone out and thumbed the screen. “And Danny hasn’t called me back.”
He leaned a hip against the dresser and folded his arms. “Try calling him again. See if he’ll sit with Teagan and then we can send Wyatt to poke around Hadley’s office.”
Not only was Danny better equipped to help Teagan, Wyatt would be more in tune with the subtler signs of anything connected to darker spells. Contrary to recent events, wizards tended to play in the dark much more than witches.
Tala put the phone up to her ear. With each ring, the grooves bracketing her mouth deepened. When the voicemail kicked in, her message was abrupt, “Danny, call me.” She disconnected with a soft frustrated growl.
