by Tessa Adams
In the middle of my panic and the encroaching flames, my cell phone starts to ring. Of course, it’s across the room—next to the binder and books Salima gave me—and is absolutely no use to me at the moment. I try to will it over to me, but telekinesis is a gift that few witches have and while I’m spouting all kinds of weird magic tonight, moving objects with my mind is obviously not one of the things I can do.
The ringing stops abruptly and I’m left alone with the fire and my fear. Okay, I can do this, I tell myself even as doubt is a huge, empty cavern inside of me. I have to do this. Either a water spell or something to loose these bindings—I don’t actually care which. But I need something now, because the fire has made it to the posts of my bed. I can feel the heat of it on the bottoms of my feet.
The smoke is heavier now and I’m coughing constantly, my lungs spasming with every breath I try to suck into my lungs. Freedom, I think, focusing on my mark one last time. I need to be free. I need to escape. I need these bindings to cease to be.
Except it isn’t only my mark I see in my mind’s eye anymore—Declan’s is there, as well. Seba, the ancient Egyptian star glowing and spinning around my mark until the circlet of Isis is all but swallowed by the star.
At the same time the restraints jerk a little, loosen, and I repeat the spell I’ve just made up even as I yank and pull against the imaginary straps. It’s a silly spell, childish and immature and completely ridiculous, but if it’s working—even a little bit—I’m going to go with it.
My phone starts to ring again and at the same time I hear a loud pounding coming from outside of my room. Someone’s knocking on the front door and calling out. The words are muffled, but whoever it is must know I’m in trouble because the tone is frantic.
I scream then. “Help me! Help me! Fire! Help!”
The phone cuts off again and I mutter the freedom spell one more time as Declan’s mark intertwines with mine until I can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. And in that moment, when the symbol of his power is merged completely with mine, the restraints break. I scramble off the bed, make a mad dash for the front door just as it is ripped off its hinges and crashes inward.
It flies across my living room, slams across the back wall and Declan strides in. I’m as shocked by his sudden appearance as I am by the agitation that all but pours off of him. His eyes are wide and anxious as he grabs me and shoves me the last few steps to the front door even as he dashes through the living room to my bedroom.
Fresh air hits my aching lungs and I collapse, sinking to my knees on the front porch as I suck in the life-giving oxygen. Over the coughs that wrack my entire body, I hear the roar of the flames as they devour my room. I can’t see them or Declan, but the sound of his voice drifts to me on the wind. I don’t know what he’s saying, can’t make out the words, but the moment he stops chanting, the crackling of the flames dies as well.
He’s used magic to put out the fire.
Seconds later he’s on the porch again, crouching next to me and pressing me down so that I’m lying flat on my back on the rough boards. “Xandra?” His voice is low and urgent. “Are you okay?”
I’m coughing too hard to answer him.
He lays a hand on my chest and though he doesn’t speak, I know he’s done something there too because I can breathe again. My lungs still ache, my throat still burns, but it’s bearable now.
“Xandra?”
I push at his hand—now that I know I’m not going to suffocate on my front porch, it’s way too close to my breasts for comfort. “I’m fine.” But when I try to sit up, the night spins around me.
“Yeah, I can tell.” Firm pressure on my chest has me lying back down, and this time, I stay down. At least until I watch Declan turn around and stroll back into my house.
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure the fire’s out. Unless you’d like to explain to the fire marshal how you lost your whole house to an inexplicable wall of flames.”
He’s inside for a few minutes, long enough for me to get my body back under control and start feeling stupid about being draped across my front porch like a Victorian lady on a fainting couch. I sit up, push slowly to my feet so that when Declan finally comes back, I’m standing, ready to face him. Why is it that he always seems to be here for the most awful moments of my life?
It’s maddening.
Still, he did save me. I’m working on the words to thank him when he leans against one of the posts on my front porch and asks, “So, what happened? You didn’t have enough going on with bodies popping up left and right? You felt like you needed more of a challenge?” There’s a sardonic twist to his lips and his eyes are filled with annoyance.
That’s all it takes to get my back up, the words of gratitude flying right out of my head. “What are you doing here anyway? Nobody asked you to come.”
He raises one perfectly sculpted brow. “Well, there’s appreciation for you. Next time I’ll leave you to your…barbecue.”
“I was going to thank you before you opened your mouth and ruined everything. And that’s not an answer.”
“Because the answer is self-explanatory. I came to save your ass.”
I think of his star and the way it had swallowed up my own mark. “You freed me?”
“No.” His face was grim now. “I couldn’t tell what was wrong, only that something was. You saved yourself.”
“I don’t believe you. Not when it’s obvious that I’m a complete and total screwup when it comes to magic.”
He sighs, then walks back inside my living room and opens the front windows. “Screwup seems a little harsh.”
“No. It doesn’t. For twenty-seven years I haven’t been able to do any magic at all and now that I can, I nearly barbecue myself as you so eloquently put it.” I keep my voice low with an effort. The entire neighborhood doesn’t need to know I’m a witch. Or half of one.
“You’re doing fine, Xandra.” At first it looks like he’s going to say more, but then he just shakes his head. Walks through to the kitchen. I follow him, watch as he slides the window open in there as well. “You should go back to the porch. You need fresh air.”
“What I need is to know what the hell is going on. I feel like I’ve been dropped into an episode of The Twilight Zone where everyone knows the answers but me.”
“Not everyone.”
“Damn it, Declan, you owe me.”
“Really? And here I thought it was the other way around?”
“Why?” I scoff. “Because you put out the fire? I am capable of calling 911, you know.”
He stalks toward me and I have to force myself not to take a step back in retreat. But there’s this look in his eye, like there’s a whole world between us that I can’t even begin to grasp and it alarms me even as it intrigues me.
“You’re messing with things you don’t understand.” He reaches a hand out, tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear.
His fingers don’t brush my skin and yet it’s enough to send shivers down my spine. Suddenly that long ago night is right here. It’s been years, but that doesn’t seem to matter as electricity arcs between us.
His eyes darken and I know he remembers too. It’s enough, more than enough, to have my body reacting to him in a way I swore would never happen again. Even worse, it’s obvious he feels my response. It’s in the way his own body stiffens, in the way his jaw flexes and his hands clench.
I do retreat then, one slow step at a time. He matches me move for move, until my back is against the wall and his body is a scant few inches from my own. His lips are curled in a sardonic smile I don’t remember from that night so long ago, and he looks like he’s waiting for something. Me to call mercy, probably, but that’s not going to happen.
“You said dead bodies. There’s only been one.” There’s no reason for him to know about Amy. Except the look he gives me is almost pitying. Almost.
“You really think lying to me is a good idea?” he asks, his arms coming to res
t on the wall on either side of me so that I feel caged. Not frightened, not threatened…yet. Just restrained. But after the way I’ve spent the last half hour of my life, it’s not a feeling I care for.
“Who says I’m lying?” I shove at him but he doesn’t move.
“I do. Lina wasn’t the first.” There’s an echo of something in his voice—pain, maybe?
I forgot he’d been involved with her. I shouldn’t care, but for some reason the recollection makes me feel strange. A little off. Even so, I say, “I’m sorry. Nate told me you two were…together.”
“I told you last night. It wasn’t like that between us for a while.” He glances down at my wrists. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
He places a finger gently on my wrist, traces the jagged edges of the wounds I inflicted on myself in my desperation to escape. I wince at the first movement of his hand, expecting there to be pain. Just the touch of the air against the rawness has had me in agony since it happened.
But there is no pain. There’s nothing but a subtle warmth that resonates through me—which is somehow worse. I don’t want to feel anything for Declan, don’t want to remember those hours by the lake where I poured out my heart to him and thought he’d done the same for me. I don’t want there to be any electricity or warmth, don’t want there to be any connection at all. And yet there is. I felt it at the police station last night and I feel it now as his fingers circle my wounds.
When he pulls his hand away, there is no blood, no jagged tears. Oh, the rawness is still there but the open wounds are gone and so is a good deal of the pain.
“I didn’t know you were a healer.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not normally.”
I hold up my hand, incontrovertible proof to the contrary.
He just shrugs. “There’s a lot of excess power bouncing around inside of me right now. I just focused it on your wrists.”
“Like you’re coming down from an adrenaline rush.”
“Something like that. I was afraid you were going to die before I could get here.” He shudders as he guides me to a kitchen chair, presses gently on my shoulders until I sit.
“You knew about the fire.”
“No. But I felt—” He breaks off, his face darkening at the reminder. “I had no idea you’d managed to practically set yourself on fire.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” I confess before I think better of it. “I’ve never been able to do it before.”
“I have a feeling that’s going to be happening a lot more in the next few weeks,” he comments cryptically. But before I can demand an explanation, he asks, “Do you have a bowl around here somewhere?”
I’m not willing to let him off the hook so easily. “What does that mean?”
“It means I need a bowl.”
I glare at him. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” I start to get up, but a gentle hand on my shoulder presses me back into the seat. “What do you need a bowl for anyway?”
“To clean you up.” He points to my hands, where blood has leaked down my fingers. “And a first aid kit wouldn’t hurt either.”
Again I start to get up and again he stops me with a hand. “Just point me in the right direction and I’ll get it all together.”
I direct him to the proper cabinets, even as I wonder what I’m doing. I take care of myself and have for years. I don’t need anyone to do it for me, let alone Declan, whom I’m smart enough not to trust this time around. And yet here he is, in my kitchen. With me. Alone.
He finds the bowl, fills it with water and then grabs a clean dish towel from the hook at the end of the cabinets. He also snags the first aid kit before kneeling down beside my chair.
Shock ricochets through me as he lifts my right leg and places it on his thigh before rolling up my jeans to midcalf. I realize for the first time that my ankle is bloody—I guess in my last frantic attempt to get away from the fire, I managed to tear it to pieces too.
He does the same thing there that he did to my wrist, spreading a healing warmth through the wounds as he traces them with his fingers. It feels different, though, to have him touching my ankles, my calves. More intimate. It’s a dangerous feeling, one that has me shaking a little even before he lingers at the nasty bruises I have on my shins. He caresses them, soothes them, and I feel the ache slowly dissolve under his careful ministrations.
When the pain and the bruises are both nearly gone, he dips the dish towel in the bowl and begins to clean my feet.
His hands are tender, his long, elegant fingers both efficient and gentle as he slowly, carefully, rinses the blood from me. He takes his time, doesn’t miss a spot as the towel glides over my lower calves, my heels, the bottoms of my feet, my toes and finally back around to the tops of my feet. I’m trembling full out now, and I know he notices even though he doesn’t say anything.
I comfort myself with the explanation that it’s just another adrenaline crash—nearly being burned to death would shake up even the most stalwart of people. But even as I’m thinking it, I’m not sure it’s the truth. After all, I didn’t start quaking until he touched me.
When I’m clean, not even a drop of blood left to remind me of my ordeal, he smooths Neosporin over my still raw ankles and wraps them in gauze. Then he repeats the process on my hands, cleaning the blood before bandaging the wounds.
I don’t know what to say to him, don’t know what I want to say. He takes the problem out of my hands by standing up and carrying the bowl to the sink, where he rinses it out. Now that he’s no longer touching me—or looking at me—my brain synapses start firing again. It’s time to push for an answer to the question he dodged earlier.
“What did you mean, about my powers? What do you know that I don’t?”
He turns slowly, drying his hands on another dish towel. “Nothing. You’re the one who said your magic was behaving strangely.”
“I don’t have any magic. That was established once and for all eight and a half years ago.”
“Yet you managed to set your room on fire and get yourself free from a madman’s shackles. You must have something going for you.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. Something weird is going on and I don’t understand it. But I think it’s tied to you and I think you know what it is.”
“That’s a lot of assumptions on your part.” His lips twist in that smirk I once found so charming but now only annoys me.
“No more than on yours. How do you know it was a madman who had me restrained on that bed?”
“Did it feel like the mark of a sane person to you? You know, while you were trapped and about to die a fiery death?”
He has a point, but I’m not about to go there. Not yet. I narrow my eyes at him. “What’s your angle?”
“Excuse me?” The smirk is gone now, replaced by a dark scowl. I know he means it to scare me, but all it does is piss me off. I’m not nineteen anymore and I don’t frighten that easily.
“I don’t get it. I haven’t seen you in eight and a half years and now suddenly you’re with me two nights in a row—and neither one of them has been exactly pleasant. It doesn’t make sense—unless there’s something you’re not telling me about how you’ll benefit from all this.”
“Solving Lina’s murder isn’t enough motivation?”
For a second, I feel petty, pushing him like this when he’s lost a woman he obviously cares for. But then I realize that’s what he wants me to feel—he’s manipulating me in an effort to make me back off. That knowledge only makes me angrier and I steel myself for a showdown I’m in no shape for and can’t win. But I don’t care. I’m not backing down. Not here. Not over this.
“Of course it is, but that still doesn’t explain what it has to do with me. Again, unless you know something you’re not telling me.”
“The fact that you found her isn’t enough?”
“No. While I feel bad and hope her murderer gets caught, this isn’t my fight. I’ll help the police any way I can
, but there’s nothing else I can do. It’s just a case of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I don’t believe that for a second, but I want to see what he says about it.
“Was it the same way with Amy back in Ipswitch?” he asks, his voice harsh against the silent backdrop of my kitchen. I swear even the refrigerator has stopped humming. “You were just in the wrong place?”
“Half the town was there.”
“Yet you found her first. You really think that was a coincidence?”
“I didn’t find her first. A young girl did. And how do you even know about Amy? Nate doesn’t.”
“That cop doesn’t know much.”
“He knows enough to be suspicious of you. He came to Beanz to talk to me earlier, and to warn me to be careful around you. You need to watch your step here, Declan.”
“You worried about me, Xandra?”
“More like worried about me. You’ve got an agenda and I don’t know what it is.”
“I already told you. I want to find Lina’s killer.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You think it’s a coincidence that you just happen to find bodies? It’s a gift.”
More like a curse. “I’ve only found two in my entire life.”
The sardonic twist of his lips is back, but his eyes are deadly serious—and concerned—when he looks at me. “I have a feeling that’s about to change.”
Fear slithers down my spine, different from what I felt when I was tied up in the bedroom, but no less debilitating. But before I can say anything, his cell phone pings. He pulls it out of his pocket, glances at the text. “I need to go.”
I move to block his way. “You still haven’t told me anything.”
“What exactly do you want me to tell you?” he demands. “Do you think if I knew who was killing witches—witches that look a hell of a lot like you, by the way—that I wouldn’t be saying something to you or that damn cop? I’m flying blind here.”
He sounds earnest, frustrated, but I don’t believe him. He knows more than he’s letting on. If not about the murders, then about me and the weird power surges I’ve been having. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
