Soothed by Magic

by Kim McDougall

  Quinn ducked into the bushes. A thick dead branch flew up from the ground and jabbed him in the stomach. He stumbled. Rocks bombarded his chest, knocking him backwards. He tripped and fell flat. Branches pinned his arms and legs. He struggled, pulling against these unnatural bonds. The branches held him down with a force stronger than gravity. A rock landed on his stomach, pushing all the breath from his lungs.

  “Who’s the bully now?” Fain leaned over him, his expression smug.

  Quinn’s chest ached for air. He sucked in a painful breath.

  “What are you planning to do to Bobbi?” The words grated in his throat.

  Fain laughed.

  “You don’t get it. This isn’t the kind of story where the villain wastes his time telling the hero all his plans.” With a flick of his hand, he raised another stone. “I’d rather kill you and get on with it.”

  “You’re wrong. You’ve already given away everything.” Quinn could feel another attack of Mawr coming on with the tell-tale tingling in his fingers.

  “What do you mean?” Fain squinted at him. A fist-sized rock hovered above Quinn’s head.

  Quinn gritted his teeth, hoping it looked like a grin.

  “This isn’t the kind of story where the hero tells his secrets.”

  Fain’s lips twisted in a sneer, then the tree beside his head exploded with a crack of gunfire.

  “Get off my property!” Emmett yelled from the shadows. More gunfire. Quinn twisted as the rock fell. The branches loosened and he turned enough so the rock hit his shoulder. He rolled, clearing the debris, and came up in time to see the distinctive round lights of a vintage Charger through the trees. The car revved and spit gravel as Fain fled.

  Molly and Emmett met him halfway back to the house. She rushed to grab Quinn’s arm as he limped up the drive. Blood dripped from his forehead.

  “Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?” Emmett growled. He’d run outside barefoot, still in his pajamas, but the old med-mage couldn’t look ridiculous, not with the fierce glare in his eye.

  “That was Bobbi’s new boyfriend,” Quinn said. “He didn’t want to stick around for tea.”

  *

  Ten minutes later, with the glass swept up, they sat around the kitchen table. Emmett cleaned the wound on Quinn’s forehead and taped it with butterfly strips. The bruises on his shoulder and stomach dulled to angry aches.

  They’d brought Emmett up to speed. He wasn’t happy they’d kept it from him. Quinn suspected Molly would have some appeasing to do later.

  “So after all these years, Koro is finally making his move,” Emmett said. “I’d begun to hope he’d given up.”

  “Time is meaningless for Koro,” Molly said. “Twenty years or a thousand. It’s all the same to him. He’ll never give up.”

  Emmett grunted. “I guess we’d better set up some wards. With all the comings and goings for Ellen’s animal rescue, I let them expire years ago. It was easier than keying so many strangers to the ward. And Bobbi doesn’t even live here anymore. Seemed pointless.”

  Emmett was beating himself up with self-recriminations. Quinn could relate.

  “I doubt Fain will be back tonight,” he said. “And I’ve got nothing to give to a ward. Let’s just clean up this mess.”

  After checking the house, they’d found the door to the attic stairs open. Fain had been trying to get up there. They also determined that Fain had not blasted the entire electrical circuit in the house. He had telekinetic magic. And damned precise magic at that. Up until now, Quinn had thought Fain some bumbling incompetent. He soothed with the finesse of a sledgehammer. But what if soother magic wasn’t his primary talent, the way Quinn could read an aether signature, but not on the level of Abilene’s sensate abilities?

  That knowledge could help them in the fight to come. Quinn hoped it would be enough. Fain obviously knew they were onto him, had probably followed them from the cemetery.

  Molly poured tea but before Quinn could take his, Emmett dropped a dollop of thick black liquid into it.

  “What’s that? Molasses?” Quinn sniffed it and made a face.

  “A molasses base, but it’s chock full of aether boosting herbs,” Emmett said. “Drink it.”

  Quinn obliged him. The drink was hot and spicy and prickled on the way down.

  “Do you think he’ll switch locations for the rite tomorrow?” Molly asked.

  “No, he’s too arrogant,” Quinn said. “But he’ll know we’re coming now. We can’t take anything for granted.”

  Emmett packed up his med kit. “I agree. Koro brought Molly and her friends to him for a reason. To make children. To have his blood born into our world. Dustin’s blood has been feeding that cemetery for years. It’s Koro’s hallowed ground. If only we had Hannah’s grimoire, we might know what he’s planning.”

  Molly frowned. “I wish I’d read it more carefully. I thought the grimoire was a joke back then.”

  Emmett patted her hand. “It’s no one’s fault. You couldn’t have known.”

  “The grimoire.” Quinn’s thoughts were sluggish. He was tired beyond exhaustion, but an idea nagged at him. “Was it really lost in the fire?”

  “Who knows,” Emmett said. “It wasn’t among Hannah’s things, but much of the house was a charred ruin.”

  “So it’s possible the grimoire still exists,” Quinn said. “Or at least that Fain believes it exists. Maybe that’s what he was snooping for.” He felt a kernel of hope. “Maybe something in the grimoire is important enough for Fain to risk sneaking into an occupied house.”

  Emmett smiled. “Something like a way to defeat Koro.”

  Quinn returned the grin, but his eyes were hard. Yes, Fain’s little blunder had definitely been enlightening.

  14

  Preparation

  CEMETERIES MADE GAVIN UNCOMFORTABLE.

  Not for the usual reasons. He had no problem with the dead. He’d seen necromancy in action, even tried a few dark spells during his reckless youth. The dead usually stayed dead. They mostly poked at the veil separating their world from the living. And ghosts rarely had anything important to say.

  It was grief that bothered him, such a raw emotion. Funerals were the worst. Mourners wept, spilling aether along with tears, saturating the ground with sadness and anger. Walking through the cemetery, he could feel it in every blade of grass and every swaying branch.

  Gavin knelt by a grave and touched the brown grass growing over the stone marker. Dead blades turned vivid green, then writhed and curled backward, revealing the name: Dustin Redner.

  He should feel something. Jane’s baby lay cold and decayed beneath his feet. His brother. Was that why she’d taken him in? He’d never questioned her motives. She was Stacy’s friend. That’s what you did for friends in need. But was Gavin meant to replace the son she’d lost?

  His sister was buried in a grave like this too. He didn’t know where. He’d never asked. Maybe when this was over he’d find out.

  Samhain fell on another warm Sunday. Gavin watched churchgoers stroll the grounds. A few knelt in honest bereavement. Did they know that on this day, their lost loved ones might actually hear their prayers?

  He strolled to the columbarium at the top of the hill, where Quinn waited with Abilene. She carried a backpack of supplies. Gavin had a similar bag for him and Jane. Once the sun went down, Abilene would begin the spell to break Fain’s hold on Bobbi. Jane and Gavin would consecrate the ground around Dustin’s grave, creating a circle of the Lord and Lady’s protection to counteract any dark magic Fain might conjure.

  “We’ve got an audience,” he said.

  Quinn glanced at the mourners then at the sky. The sun already tipped to the west.

  “Not for long,” Quinn said. “We’ll start the setup in the columbarium. Hopefully, no one will bother us there.”

  The columbarium was a reliquary for cremated remains, a stone building no bigger than ten by ten, walls lined in locked compartments filled with urns. With only
one door and no windows, it would shield the candle light as Abilene tried to break Fain’s hold on Bobbi.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” asked Gavin.

  Abilene dumped her pack and shrugged. “I’m going to try. I only hope he’s not a sensate as well as a soother. This place is too close.”

  The columbarium loomed over the cemetery, a stone sentinel on the highest ground. Strategically, it gave them a good view of the target grave. But Fain would also be able to see them. Worse, if he had any sort of sensate magic, he’d be able to feel Abilene’s spell brewing long before it took effect.

  “I don’t like it either,” Quinn said, “but it’s all we’ve got.”

  Abilene shrugged and went inside to begin her preparations.

  Quinn huffed out a breath and leaned against the marble wall. He looked like crap, eyes sunken and ringed in shadows, skin an unhealthy grey. Tape covered a cut on his forehead and his chin and right cheek flaunted more bruises.

  “Did Molly put too much Irish Cream in your tea last night?” Gavin asked. “You look like you’ve been in a bar brawl.”

  “Had a little visit from Fain. Seems he has some kinetic magic too.”

  “And you couldn’t fend him off?” That was unusual. Quinn was one of the strongest witches he knew, and a decent fighter. He studied the wan face beneath the bruises.

  “You had another attack, didn’t you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t. Gavin had been with Quinn in Port-au-Prince when the voodoo priest cursed him. He’d nursed him through his first attacks of Mawr. Then they scoured the city looking for the priest and found him dead in an alley, a bullet through his brain and rats already eating his soft parts. They never discovered who paid the priest to curse him.

  “You should tell Jane. She’s going to know,” Gavin said.

  “She’ll be focused on Fain. It’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe for tonight. But she will find out eventually and when she does, she’ll be pissed that you hid it from her.”

  Quinn gave him a look. “Do you think I care? Right now, when Bobbi is locked in some soother spell, about to be sacrificed to a demon, do you think I care about hurting Jane’s feelings?”

  Gavin shrugged. There was no reasoning with him. Not now, not yesterday and not tomorrow.

  They watched in silence as the sun retreated into the trees. The mourners left them alone with the dead. At sunset, a strong, hot wind blew in, sending dead leaves billowing up the gravel paths.

  Jane arrived and Gavin hurried to help her lug a large box. He hefted it onto his shoulder with a groan.

  “What are you carrying? Rocks?”

  “Black salt,” Jane said grimly. “It was ridiculously expensive and I drove half way to Philadelphia to get it.”

  They decided on the layout of the circle, about a twenty foot diameter, and hoped Fain would set up his rite inside it. Then, when he least expected it, they’d spring their trap.

  “Spread the salt sparingly. It’s all I could get,” Jane said.

  As Gavin sprinkled it around the perimeter, Jane’s black salt made sense. It sank into the grass unseen. White salt would have shone in the waning moon and given away the trap.

  Even so, they didn’t know Fain’s full capabilities. If he had sensate magic, he’d feel the aura of the circle. Gavin’s flora magic didn’t have many practical applications, but masking a sacred circle was one of them. He finished spreading the salt, then walked the perimeter, pulling at the aether of the grass beneath his feet. He didn’t make the grass grow, but expanded its magic like a shadow to cover the power of the circle. It wasn’t foolproof, but it would have to do.

  Jane set four candles at the cardinal points. She lit each one, calling the spirits of the four winds. At each point, she dipped her athame through the flame, then stabbed the blade in the ground, driving her aether deep into the earth to anchor the circle’s protection.

  Gavin watched her work. She was focused, her mind turned inward. To anyone else, she would have seemed cold, as if she didn’t care that the grave beneath their feet held the bones of her child. Or that they were trying to stop the demon who’d tortured her.

  Molly believed Jane had killed Dustin to stop Koro. Gavin knew better. He saw past her unforgiving exterior to the kind heart beneath, the one who’d given a home to a neglected boy.

  “I know you didn’t kill him,” Gavin said. Jane looked up and he pointed to the small grave marker. “Dustin.”

  “Thank you.”

  “After all, if you believed that his death would stop Koro, you’d have killed me too, right?” He’d been only three years old when Jane took him in, a helpless toddler. “And Bobbi.”

  Jane put down the candles.

  “It has nothing to do with what I believe. I didn’t kill Dustin. Molly blames me for her miscarriage. She thinks I poisoned her. But she’s had three more miscarriages since. In her heart, she knows the truth, but it’s easier to blame me than accept the fact that she is incapable of bearing a child.”

  Gavin searched her face. Her eyes were hard. They were always hard. But could he blame her for that? The things she’d endured in her life—rape and torture, death of her son and husband, the loss of her three best friends, one from death, one from madness and the other from imagined betrayal. It was a wonder Jane could feel any emotions. And he knew she did.

  Not the most demonstrative mother, Jane had shown her love in other ways. She’d taken him in, the dirty, battered kid of an addict. He hadn’t even been potty trained. Nor could he speak. She spent hours every day, teaching him, coaxing him out of his shell. She spent money on doctors and therapists. She gave him the confidence to overcome his abnormal beginnings.

  And now he knew the truth. He was the son of a demon who’d raped and tortured her, and his blood could help that demon manifest in their world. She had given him the most difficult gift of all: his life.

  If she was hard as granite, it was because she needed to be—for all of them.

  “If he succeeds,” Gavin said, “if Fain manages to bring Koro through the veil, can we stop him?”

  Jane frowned. “I don’t know. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Gavin turned away, but Jane caught his arm. That was odd enough to make his heart pound. Everyone knew he disliked being touched, and Jane respected his quirk.

  “If things go badly, we may have to end this anyway we can.” Her blue eyes willed him to understand, and he did. If they couldn’t stop Fain, if they couldn’t break his hold on Bobbi, they would have to kill her. Keeping Koro out of their world was too important.

  “I need to know you’ll back me,” Jane said.

  Gavin nodded once, then squeezed her shoulders to show he meant it.

  15

  Anticipation

  QUINN WATCHED GAVIN HUG JANE.

  The rare moment of affection was over quickly and they went back to work consecrating the ground.

  Quinn thought he should be jealous of Gavin’s relationship with her, but he wasn’t. Jane was a hard woman to love. Gavin saw through her cold facade, but Quinn had long ago given up that struggle. He wasn’t sure anything under the facade was worth it.

  He wasn’t the problem. He wasn’t unloved or unable to love. Abilene had held his heart in her hands since the day she was born. And he’d loved his father with the pride and admiration only a son can have.

  And now he’d found Bobbi. He hadn’t wanted to love her. She was brash and uncouth. She blundered into things she didn’t understand. She was stubborn. And she didn’t let him get away with any crap.

  In the last month, they’d spent time together in magic training and a few afternoons in pure fun. She didn’t let him sit at home endlessly reviewing training manifests. She made him go out into the world and discover new places. They’d gone to an apple festival, of all things. They’d eaten fritters and drank hot cider while listening to Celtic drummers. And he’d loved it.

  She brought him to Emmet
t’s farm and showed him how to brush the horses. Quinn had never been on a horse in his life until she bullied him into the saddle on an old nag. His backside ached for days after, but the sight of Bobbi on horseback with the wind pulling her hair had been payment enough for all the discomfort.

  Those dates were only a few weeks ago but they seemed a lifetime away. And Bobbi was a world away. She had one foot in Koro’s dimension, and the demon would use that foothold to manifest here. But what if Koro’s intention was to yank Bobbi into his world just as he had with her mother? Neither scenario was acceptable. He had to stop Fain before he began whatever dark rite he had planned.

  Hours later, Quinn still waited in front of the columbarium, keeping an eye on the road.

  Where were they? It was nearly midnight. If Fain was going to show, it would be soon. Had he chosen a different site after all? Had their run-in last night spooked him? Ashlet had only one other cemetery, and it didn’t hold the bones of Koro’s offspring. No, they had to be coming here. But where were they?

  He paced.

  Wind howled. The spirits were restless on Samhain. Quinn could feel their presence, like the weight of a brewing storm. Once or twice, he saw wispy forms flitting between the headstones.

  Molly and Emmett hid among the trees, their first line of defense. If Fain brought backup, they were ready to take them out.

  Inside the small building, Jane and Gavin tried to stay out of Abilene’s way as she fussed with the preparations for her spell. She’d melted a taper to the bottom of a silver bowl. Silver conducted aether better than other metals. Water filled the bowl until only the tip of the unlit candle showed above it. When the candle burned down to the water, the spell would take effect. Fain’s hold on Bobbi would be broken.

  Abilene poked her head out the door for the fourth time. “I think I should start now.”

  “It’s too soon. We have to be sure he’s coming,” Quinn said.