He tried to wriggle his way out, but the powerful snakes kept him still. I jumped up, aiming my swordfinger at his temple. “Hated to do that, you know,” I said, panting a little from exertion. “Would’ve been better if you’d left that voodoo doll of me well enough alone.”
I’m Not Afraid Of You
Logan
He opened his eyes expecting the interior of the tree house, the frightening smell of smoke. Instead, he was met by a fishy odor, like seaweed steaming on a hot beach. When Logan turned to his side, his hipbone jabbed into hard cement. His back was twisted into knots. The thin raggedy blanket he lay on reeked like moist dust and moldy cheese.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and he realized where he was.
The dungeon.
Logan groaned as his mind flooded with memories from earlier in the evening, though the details of how he’d gotten here were as fuzzy as the green moss clinging to the rocks of his punishment.
That woman in his dream. She had to be his mother. He reached for his amulet and found Lily’s. Wear it for always. Never take it off, his mother had said. And he had—until he lent it to Lily.
What happened to her after she floated away? What Jacob had told him—that he’d been abandoned on the steps of the Academy—didn’t match up with the caring mother in his dream.
Then he thought of Lily and the fire. He needed to get out of here. Find her. He’d blacked out after Jacob set the brush aflame. She could easily ward that off, but what if he’d had backup?
This wasn’t like the other punishments.
Now, he had something worth protecting: Lily. And a clue to his past he was determined to follow.
Lily
“What were you talking about just now? What makes you think you could make me stronger?”
“I’ll tell you on one condition,” he said, still restrained by hissing snakes.
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
“No way, you creep.”
He sighed. “Then I’m afraid it’s too late for us, love. You’ve hurt my feelings.”
“I can hurt more than that. Where did you get the doll?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“Sorry, sweetheart, not my prerogative to help out the gentler sex.”
“Gentler sex? Who’s tied up by serpents, and who’s standing?”
A snake arched up, hissing in his face. His energy was powerful enough to keep it at bay, but not enough to free his wrists and ankles.
“You have me there. But if I really wanted them off me, they’d be off.”
“Do it then.”
“Nah. I’m enjoying your little fetish. Grants me insight into your deeper passions.”
I rolled my eyes. This guy was too much. I glanced over at the doll, and saw the flames creeping closer. My arms stung with the beginnings of blisters. “How do I get the doll out of that hexed star?”
“You can’t.”
I stood over him. “Tell me how.”
“Not yet. Not when we still have so much to talk about.”
“We have nothing to talk about, because you won’t answer my questions! How do I get her out of that star? If I show up to the Gleaning tomorrow with third degree burns, you’ll be disqualified. Now let us go.”
He glanced at the doll, before admitting his bluff. “If you call back the snakes, I’ll pull back the flames.”
I eyed him with deep suspicion. Never trust a warlock. But I could always get the snakes back on him if he didn’t make good on his deal. I was their master.
“I’ll loosen them, but I’m not letting you go.”
“Ditto.”
“You first,” we said at the same time. I frowned. He smiled.
“Count of three?” he suggested, his voice light and flirty. Who was this guy?
“On my go.”
I loosened the serpents’ grip with my spell as I watched the flames move back from the doll.
“Ah, much better,” he said, moving his muscles around in the dirt.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, and then I’m going to bring in my elders, who will report you to the Congression. How did you hex that doll, and why were you torturing me with it?”
“As much as I’d love to share”—he gestured sarcastically toward the already-fading scar I left on his temple—“I’m afraid I must plead the fifth.”
“You’re really annoying.”
He half smiled. “I do get that from time to time.”
My glare made his smile stretch wider. His refusal to show any of the pain he must have been feeling might’ve been slightly attractive if he wasn’t so maddening.
“You know, I saw someone who looked just like you earlier. Except she was very blinding.”
“You did? Did you speak to her?”
“She was much too fast.” He seemed sincere.
“Which way did she go?”
“I would point, but…” He eyed the snakes with a little shrug. Was he enjoying this?
He clearly didn’t know who she was, so I changed tactics. “If you felt you had to torture a voodoo doll of me, you must really fear fighting me tomorrow. So what makes me so intimidating?”
He blinked. “You’re the leader, obviously. And you’re special, or so I hear.”
“Maybe I am. But a true Son of Darkness would be glad to face me with my full powers.”
His expression darkened. I’d hit a sore spot.
I pushed further. “Why would I even be paired with a coward like you? A truly great spellspinner would never try to weaken his or her opponent.”
“Oh yeah? Then what have you been doing with Logan this whole time?”
That stopped me. “I haven’t been weakening him.”
“Why should I believe you? You’re a witch; you can’t be trusted.”
“You don’t know anything about the two of us.”
“I know I’m not the only one bending the rules.”
Crap.
I couldn’t afford to waste any more time on this dead-end conversation. I needed to get the hexed doll out of the star ASAP. “Give me the doll, or you’ll seriously regret it.”
“Go ahead, do your worst. I can take it,” he said in a toying voice. He tipped his head back on the dirt and stared up at the stars. I felt him tense, readying for an excruciating onslaught of snakebites.
“Believe me, I’d like that, but it’s not my style.”
“Not your style? Then what was all that a second ago?”
“Self-defense.”
“Nah, you went a bit further than that.”
“Not really.”
His digs were starting to get to me.
“So, go ahead. I can take it.”
“No. Just give me the doll, and get off our turf.”
I wasn’t afraid to hurt him, but witches opposed torture as an interrogation method. After generations of being tortured under the hands of puritanical lunatics, witches honored our slain ancestors’ memory by not repeating their captors’ cruel mistakes.
This warlock clearly was not of the same school, however. When he realized I wasn’t going to strike, he lost interest in my snakes and turned his energy toward stoking his star of fire.
I screamed as invisible flames licked my arm. Chanting desperately, I started covering my skin with ice.
But it took too much energy, and the warlock was starting to wrest his limbs from the snakes. Panic threatened to consume me like the fire countering my ice. But suddenly, through a blanket of smoke and ash, a fox-like creature dove through the flames, snatched up the doll in its mouth, and flew off into the forest with it.
Exhausted and dizzy from smoke inhalation, I collapsed on the ground. I was losing consciousness, and it took the very last of my energy to douse the flames.
The warlock stood over me, and I braced for a blow to the head. Instead, he leaned in closer and smoothed back my hair as if I were a child. The look in his eyes was not the look of a nurturer, howeve
r; it was dark and focused. In a strange language, he breathed a few sentences in my ear before taking off into the forest after the doll. Then everything went black.
Logan
Logan drifted in and out of consciousness, hoping for another dream. A memory of what had happened next, after his mother disappeared. Before now, his early memories had been locked away from him. Now something was bringing them back. The amulet?
“Logan, it’s me.” Chance’s voice startled him from his reverie. “I’m here to spring you, man. Your girl’s in serious trouble.”
Lily
I heard whispering and slowly opened my eyes.
Silhouetted by moonlight, two hooded figures were leaning over me, pouring warm liquid down my chest. My swordfinger twitched, registering their male energy. Was that psycho warlock back to hurt me? Then I turned and saw the fox-like animal that had rescued the voodoo doll—rescued me—and my fear turned to joy. He’d brought friends.
“It looks like she’s starting to come to. Lily? Can you hear me?”
“Logan?” Overwhelmed with an immeasurable amount of like for him, I reached up my hands so he could help me to my feet. Just his presence energized me and dimmed my pain. “You’re okay? How did you get away from Jacob?”
“Chance snuck me out to help undo this voodoo curse someone put on you.”
“He was blond with a British accent. Who is he?”
“Jude.” Logan’s eyes flared. He and Chance exchanged a meaningful look.
When Logan turned back to me, his expression softened. “You’re safe now.” His fingers ran down my arms, and I flinched. “Lil, you’re burned!” he said. “Did Jacob do this, or Jude?”
“Jude.”
“I’m going to kill him!”
Logan held his palm over my arm. Cool, healing energy flowed down, and within seconds, my blisters were smooth.
“You healed me. That’s twice.”
“I know.”
“Yet you claim to be a warlock?” I was teasing, but my words packed a punch. There was more to this, more to Logan, than either of us knew.
“Did he hurt you anywhere else, Lily?”
“I inhaled a lot of smoke,” I admitted.
Logan pulled me to him and pressed his palms against my back. “Breathe.”
My next breath felt like pure oxygen. After several more deep breaths, my headache vanished.
“I’m never going to get used to that,” I whispered into the safe crook of his neck.
“I’m never going to get used to this.” He half-smiled, pulling me tighter against his chest.
“Coming to my rescue?” I teased.
“Something like that.”
“Um, sorry to interrupt, but we’re sort of on a time frame. I got to get this guy back into his dungeon cell before Jacob finds out. So. Whenever you two are ready.”
I examined the doll in his hands, wrinkling my nose at the lopsided button eyes, and ugly purple dress. Its hair was yellow yarn.
“This is hideous. It doesn’t look like me at all.”
Chance laughed. “They aren’t meant to be exact replicas.”
Logan wasn’t smiling. “What was Jude doing to it?” he asked me.
“Torturing it with his swordfinger, trying to weaken me before the Gleaning.”
“That bastard!”
“It was kind of weird. At first, he was like…flirting with me. Trying to get me to ‘consider’ him instead of you. He said he could make me stronger.”
“He’s messing with you. And next time I see him, he’s dead.”
“He already has a pretty nasty headache.”
“What did you do?”
I pointed to my temple. “Zapped him. Then I had him trapped with snakes, but he was at an advantage, because of the doll. The fox saved me, though, and Jude took off after him.”
“Good boy, Clay,” Logan said, patting its head.
“Clay?” I rubbed my eyes. Maybe Jude did clock me before he left.
“He shifts.”
“Huh. This night has been full of shifters.” I turned my attention back to the doll. “Not to mention creepy replicas of me. What is this fabric, anyway? It looks familiar. Like the fabric of my Converse.” I remembered taking them off at the beach yesterday. Leaving them by the bonfire with Daisy and Jonah when I walked to the shore with Logan. “Jude must have followed you to the beach. That’s how he knows about us.”
Logan nodded.
“Hey, Chance?”
“Yeah?”
“Before I passed out from the smoke, Jude was whispering in my ear. Something in a language I didn’t recognize.”
His eyebrows lowered. “Do you remember any of the words?”
“No.”
“I bet it’s something to do with the hex that connects you to this doll. But I’m pretty sure I can remove the hex, so if the doll ends up in the wrong hands again, you’ll be protected.”
“And if we just destroy it?” Logan asked.
Chance paused for a beat. “Then you risk destroying her.”
“Even if you’ve removed the hex?” That didn’t sound right.
Chance caught our suspicious looks and shook his head. “Look, Cheese, what you don’t know about Voudon is a whole lot. Just trust me here. I can temporarily remove the hex, but I can’t entirely protect her. Apparently, Jude knows his way around the dark side of voodoo magic. But I’ll do my best.” He turned to me. “This will only hurt for a sec. May I?”
I nodded as he entered my personal space. His energy was different from Logan’s: older, darker. I sucked in a breath as his large hand swept behind my ear, and he plucked a hair from my head. “Sorry.”
“After what I just went through? Believe me, that was nothing.”
He laughed. “So now I’ll just need a droplet of your spit, and a piece of a fingernail.” He held out his palm expectantly.
I didn’t exactly want to spit in Chance’s hand, especially in front of Logan. But there they were, waiting. And since lives were at stake, specifically ours, spit in his hand I did. He rubbed his palms together and then cupped them in front of me, waiting for the piece of fingernail.
I peeled the tip of my pinkie nail off. It glittered in his palm on top of the spit.
“Good. Okay. Now comes the complicated part.”
Chance reached into his pocket and pulled out a cloth drawstring pouch. He poured some grains of what looked like salt and pepper and some other seasoning in his palm. Then, he poured it back into the pouch along with my hair and fingernail. “You’re going to need to ritually bathe yourself. Or, I should rephrase. Someone is going to have to ritually bathe you.”
Someone.
Ritually bathe?
Sounded…kinky.
You Can Learn A Lot Of Things From The Flowers
Lily
“No time to get all self-conscious on me,” he said, reading my reaction. “Consider it a…religious experience.”
I glanced over at Logan, who shrugged, like Just trust him, and let’s get on with it. “Where do we get the water?” he asked Chance, who looked at me.
I couldn’t spin a whole bath full of water out of nothing, so I led them to where I knew a natural brook ran. “Is this good enough?”
Chance’s eyes were steady and focused. “Should be. We need eight and half quarts.”
“Can you heat it up?” Logan asked me.
“I don’t normally heat things up. I’m more of a cool down kinda witch.”
“I got this,” Logan said, with a cute glance that made my knees weak.
He knelt beside the brook, set his palms over the water, closed his eyes and concentrated on supplicating his energy. I couldn’t tear my eyes off his back as the muscles tensed and relaxed with the rhythm of the heating spell. His thin white tank top barely concealed the thick, weaving patterns of his ink, which conjured the image of an ancient language scrawled on a cave’s wall. Steam rose around him as the stream bubbled like a geyser.
“That oug
ht to do it, buddy,” Chance said, grinning.
“You said heat it up.” With a shrug, he stood and walked back over to me. I sucked in a breath.
“I think I’ll leave you two alone for this part.”
I flushed.
“What do we do?” Logan asked Chance, without taking his eyes off me.
“You pour the water over her nine times, at an angle. Then toss the mixture over her opposite shoulder.” Chance handed him the pouch.
I couldn’t even meet Logan’s eyes as Chance disappeared around the corner. “You got about five minutes,” he said, a playful seriousness in his warning. Logan must’ve been making a face, because Chance added, “I mean it, bro.” Then he retreated into the woods, laughing.
Once we were alone, I dipped my toes in and yelped, “Too hot.”
“Sorry! Might have gone a little overboard.” He frowned at the boiling water.
“A little?”
His eyes looked up to my lips.
Opening my mouth, I blew cool air onto the pool until the bubbles calmed into a light sizzle, like the jets of a hot tub. I tested the temperature with my fingers.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.”
“Let’s get to it, then.”
Logan
“I know it’s already thrashed, but I don’t want to get my dress wet.”
“Um, okay,” Logan said, imagining an alternative he was quite okay with. Her dress was still wet from the water they’d woken her with. But if she insisted on taking it off, who was he to stop her?
“Turn around,” she said with a little twirl of her fingers. “Logan? I mean it.”
Smiling, he turned his back to her and waited.
Lily
As I pulled my dress over my head, I watched his back nervously. Though he could See everything if he wanted, I could tell he wasn’t peeking.
I tossed my rag of a dress in a little heap to the side of the pool, and waded to the center of what was now an ideal-temperature hot tub. He waited, like a perfect gentleman, for me to tell him it was okay to turn around.
The Gleaning, Spellspinners Series #2 (The Spellspinners of Melas County) Page 5
