Spirits and Spells (Warlocks MacGregor Book 5)

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “My ma claims my da was stuck in a tree, half-shifted into a bird because he and my uncle Fergus messed up a spell, and she was forced to rescue him. My da said he transformed into a bird to sing to another woman before he saw my ma, and that she tells her version of the story because she’s jealous. I’m sure the truth is in there somewhere.” Niall hovered his hand near the small of her back and urged her to join him on the staircase. “They’ve been married a long time, and I’ve seen them argue like it, but their love runs deep.”

  “How long have they been married?” she asked.

  “A long time.” As they neared the top of the stairs, Niall gestured toward the room he kept at the mansion. He had never slept in it, but Malina made sure it had a bed and a change of clothes. It was smaller than the other rooms, but had its own bathroom. Clothes were strewn over the floor from where ghosts had thrown things around. He gestured at them. “Take your pick.”

  Charlotte stumbled toward his messy bed, ignoring the clothes. Without a word, she crawled into it and collapsed. Seconds later, he heard the soft sounds of her even breathing. She’d fallen asleep.

  Niall watched her for a long moment before doing something he’d rarely done in his life. He swept his hand over the room, using his magick to straighten up in hopes of impressing a woman. Drawers open and clothes folded themselves before settling into place. The fire lit in the fireplace to give her warmth. His bedding slithered over Charlotte, covering her up. He even mended the cracks in the wall.

  The painting of him someone had hung on the wall over the small fireplace straightened. It was of a different time. Not better or simpler, just different. Well, perhaps it had been better for his kilt, as it had yet to see the tatters of time. The Scottish scene behind him had been embellished by the artist, now long dead, but it sufficiently reminded him of his childhood.

  “So many years,” he whispered, thinking of the centuries that had passed. He rarely stopped long enough to think of them, to feel them weighing on his shoulders. There were so few pleasures left to him, but tonight he’d laughed. Half-naked Charlotte had made him laugh and forget the duties before him. She’d lightened that weight for a few moments.

  The bed was large enough to fit both of them, so he lay down next to her to listen to the sounds of her breathing. He stayed atop of the covers and told himself it was to watch over her, but deep down he knew she’d be safe with his family cleaning up below. Each of her breaths were like a song on the distant wind; he wanted to hear more, but it wasn’t his music to listen to. Charlotte was not his, would never be. She deserved so much more than an ill-tempered warlock who hunted the supernatural in a tattered kilt.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Here we go again,” Charlotte muttered as she opened her eyes to a strange location. A fire caught her attention, and when her tired brain determined it wasn’t a bonfire fueled by possessed townsfolk, she wondered what new memory she was experiencing.

  A fireplace cast an orange light over a dresser. The flames danced and she looked for shadowed creatures on the wall. They did not appear. The light around a curtain was barely discernable along the edges. Her skin tingled and her naked legs moved restlessly under silky sheets. Her foot bumped something hard and she pushed her toes down the length of a shin.

  This memory wasn’t frightening. Why would they take it away from her?

  A familiar scent caused her to turn. Her hand lifted as if following instinct. She didn’t bother to control her actions. Why would she? If this was something that already happened, the best she could do is relive it.

  Blankets kept her skin from the man next to her. She snuggled closer. Her fingers found a stubbled jaw and she had no intention of stopping. She lifted her mouth to kiss Niall.

  Niall?

  Why was she kissing Niall? And why was he kissing her back? How did something like this happen?

  The questions swirling in her mind did not stop her actions. She parted her lips to invite a deeper kiss. He took the invitation and slipped his tongue along the seam of her mouth. A strong hand rested on her hip, kneading her through the blanket.

  Her mouth opened wider and his responded in kind. Her legs become even more restless, moving beneath the covers to be free. She delved her hands into his hair before pulling them down over his cheek and neck. She hated his shirt for stopping her exploration of skin even as she skimmed over it feel lower. Each ridge and valley of his chest became a defined adventure as she worked her way to his waist.

  Niall moaned into her mouth, uttering some Gaelic phrase that she couldn’t understand. The words wove over her and she wasn’t sure if it was passion or a spell that made her shiver. She pushed a knee over his thigh, but the sheets restricted her movements as she tried to pin him to her.

  Niall dug his hands beneath the blankets, down her back before finally settling over her cotton panties. Heat seemed to pulse from his fingers, causing a small shockwave of desire to tighten her stomach. Being a warlock gave him an unfair advantage, but she wasn’t complaining.

  Charlotte couldn’t stop kissing him, not that she wanted to stop. She remembered the beast of his transformation and that only made the moment all that much hotter. She imagined she felt that wild animal beneath the surface, desperate to be freed. She squirmed, pulling the covers until finally she worked the barrier from between their bodies.

  Her hands moved as if possessed. They found his jeans, pulling and tugging until the button was freed and the zipper down. He didn’t wear underwear, so it was easy for her to cup his ass and squeeze. His skin was so firm, and so warm.

  “Char—” He tried to speak but she cut him off by reaching to feel his arousal. To her pleasure, she found him as ready as she. His eyes began to glow with a golden light.

  She pushed her panties off her hips and hooked her legs over his thigh to turn him on top of her. His jeans slid lower but trapped his knees together. Her sweater bunched around her waist. The material became hot, but there were more pressing matters for her to attend to.

  Charlotte spread her legs and wiggled her hips, finding the perfect angle. Her body teased the tip of his shaft, jerking with the first intimate contact. Niall bit his lip, the look was sensual even as he tried to stop himself. She pushed her hips higher, willing him to move, to plunge, to join her in her primal search for release.

  “Niall, come on,” she whispered. “Are we going to do this or what?”

  Niall answered with a hard thrust. He filled her completely and she cried out in surprise.

  There was no turning back. His heavy breath mingled with hers. His eyes glowed like a wild beast and he moved like a man unable to stop himself.

  There was no room for logic in a moment like this. She wanted to be with him, and she needed the release he offered.

  Their fevered bodies met in frantic thrusts. When climax came, it was a visceral experience. Charlotte tensed, feeling months of frustration flowing out of her limbs to leave her weak and more relaxed than she’d been in a very, very long time.

  “Why did you erase that one?” she whispered, rubbing her cheek. She waited for the moment she’d stop hallucinating the past and come back to reality.

  “I don’t understand.” Niall pushed his pants off his legs and tossed them aside.

  “This memory, why did you…” Charlotte pushed up on the bed and looked at him questioningly. “This feels like it’s really happening.”

  “Lass, ya are not making much sense.” Niall lifted his hand to her forehead as if to check her temperature. He sat up then placed a finger on her forehead and another on her cheekbone as if to hold her eyelids open.

  She leaned back and swatted at his fingers. “Stop that.”

  “Where are we?” he asked, his expression worried.

  Charlotte glanced around as she tried to remember. Her eyes fell on a disturbingly large painting of Niall standing in front of a castle landscape like some Scottish historical romance hero with a sword. “Your bedroom in the MacGregor mansion.”
r />   “What happened today?”

  “We had sex,” she stated.

  “Before that,” he insisted.

  “Seriously? You really need to work on your pillow talk.” Charlotte gave a wry laugh. “Fine. You finally confessed to messing around with my brain. I went to Lydia’s, argued with Gramma Annabelle, quit my job because I was hurt by my best friend lying to me. A wraith kidnapped me to warn me against the MacGregor family, and part of me thinks she might have a point, even if she did start screeching like some hell spawn.”

  He tried to interrupt, but she held up her hand.

  “Let me finish. You turned into a werewolf and fought the wraith. We were attacked by goblins and you got a blue hickey from a fairy. We came up here, and had great sex, and you’re about to make some kind of lame excuse as to why we can’t ever do it again.”

  “Well, uh…” His eyes dipped down.

  “I get it.” Charlotte had never been clearer than she was in that moment. Her mind felt sharp and focused. “You’re the moody MacGregor, standing in the background, passing silent judgment while being saddled with responsibility. Everyone else gets to goof off and have fun and for some reason, you’re the one they send off to battle evil elves, or exorcise jinn, or chase down rogue killer werewolves in the Carpathian Mountains and—”

  Charlotte’s world instantly flashed with black and she found herself surrounded by rocks and trees. The air in her lungs felt thin as she looked down from the top of a mountain over a rugged landscape. A pink and yellow sunset spread over the distance. It was one of the most beautiful views she had ever seen.

  A loud growl of warning sounded and she turned toward the darkness behind her. Yellow eyes stared from the trees before a wolf ran along the cliff away from her. With a crash, two larger wolf shifters rolled before her. She yelped in surprise. Unlike the first, these were not regular wolves, one was Niall and the other a man just like him, but with gray fur. Wounds, bleeding and raw, covered their bodies, signifying they had been fighting.

  Her legs locked and she couldn’t run or look away. She tried to speak, but knew this was not a memory she belonged in.

  Niall’s claws sliced into flesh. The gray werewolf howled in pain. They fought viciously, slashing at each other with deadly intent. The longer she stared at Niall, the more she felt what he felt. Her body ached and burned. She felt blood trickle were there was only uninjured flesh. Beyond the physical injuries, she felt determination hiding fear. The gray werewolf had been around, hunting this forest since before Vlad the Impaler ruled Wallachia. He was a bloodthirsty adversary who killed people with an indiscriminate hunger. Her heart pumped wildly and she wanted to strike out. The werewolf had to be stopped.

  The gray werewolf rolled on top of Niall, pinning him down. Fangs clamped down on Niall’s neck. Charlotte knew this might be the end. Somehow, though, Niall managed to free a hand and stabbed his claws into the gray werewolf’s neck. By some miracle, Niall wobbled to his feet and the gray wolf lay dead. The shift began to leave his body, fur retracting and claws shortening.

  “Omoara-l,” a hunter yelled, charging from the woods with a rifle drawn. He led two others. Kill it.

  Niall was weak from the fight and didn’t stand a chance against the round of bullets. He stumbled back, mid-shift. She reached to him, but her hand went through him like a ghost visiting his past. Niall fell off the side of the cliff, his arms flailing as he disappeared into the darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Niall held Charlotte’s limp body in his arms. She felt hot to the touch and so he’d pulled the sweater off her. One moment she’d been ranting at him, saying things she could not have known, and the next she was trembling on the bed, having a seizure.

  After the tremors stopped, he held her and waited. That is when the guilt set in. He should not have made love to her. Though she spoke with newfound strength, and accepted the supernatural events she had lived through, she was still fragile. He should have been stronger. When she kissed him, he should have been able to resist.

  Fool that he was, he knew if she were to kiss him again, he’d succumb to her. That said, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe she had actually wanted to be with him. There were many more plausible explanations as to why she’d kissed him. Her body craved his magick to fill in the missing pieces. Or the potion the lidérc gave her had residual effects and made her try to pull life from him. Or…or…

  “Tell me how to fix this for ya, Charlotte.” Niall tried to bury the burden of his feelings. “Tell me how to make it better. I don’t know how ya see the truth, or how those memories have come back, but I am glad they have.”

  Charlotte gasped and flailed in his arms. He held her loosely, letting her move while trying to keep her from injuring herself. She smacked him across the face. Her eyes opened in surprise at what she’d done, blinking rapidly as she looked around for any possible backlash to her unseemly behavior.

  “Niall,” she whispered, pushing up from the bed. Charlotte reached for his shoulder, finding a scar from when he’d been shot. She then pulled back the covers to expose his naked thigh to check a second bullet wound. The delicate way her fingers pressed at his skin caused his body to react and he couldn’t hide his growing arousal. When she moved to his stomach, he realized what she was looking for.

  Niall grabbed her hand. “What are ya doing?”

  “I saw them shoot you.” Her gaze again strayed toward his scars. “How did you survive falling off the cliff? What about that gray werewolf you were fighting? I remember standing there thinking he was older than you, and this is going to sound insane, but that he was around since before Vlad the Impaler became ruler of that place… I can’t remember what it was called now.”

  “Wallachia,” he supplied. The comment about Vlad the Impaler was exactly what a local had told him when he was asking about the gray wolf legend in the area. How could she know that?

  “That’s it.” Charlotte sighed with relief. “It was weird. For some reason, it was like we were in Eastern Europe, but I’ve never been to Eastern Europe, have I?”

  “Not with me.” Niall didn’t understand what was happening. Charlotte remembering her own past was one thing, but to remember an event that only he and a few Romanian hunters knew about?

  “And the hunter said something, and I understood him,” she continued. “Omora? Omoah?”

  “Omoara-l,” Niall said.

  “Right.” She nodded. “It means…I knew what it meant.”

  “Kill it.” Niall pulled the covers over his lap to hide the evidence of his desire for her.

  “So how did I learn to speak…?”

  “Romanian.” He sighed, not liking that she knew all this about that night.

  “I speak Romanian?” She moved her mouth as if trying to get the foreign language to come back to her.

  “No. I do.” Niall saw her shiver, and he lifted his hand to stoke the fireplace without bothering to get out of bed. The fire burned brighter. “Ya were looking at a memory from my past.”

  “So, was that gray wolf really like a thousand years old?” she asked.

  “More like six hundred,” he corrected. “I didn’t stop to ask him about his birthday.”

  “Wow. I guess I never thought that…” Her eyes widened and she looked at him. “How old are you?”

  “Old,” he mumbled.

  “No, really. When were you born?”

  “1655.”

  “Wow.” Charlotte’s mouth dropped open a little before she started laughing. “Never mind, you really are old. And the rest of your family?”

  “I’m the youngest sibling,” he said.

  “Wow.”

  “Ya keep saying that,” he muttered, suddenly feeling those hundreds of years.

  “It’s just that I would have assumed you were the oldest by the way you act all protective. Aren’t the youngest children supposed to be the carefree, wild ones?” Her smile was infectious.

  “Ya don’t think I’m carefree?”
The very idea of such a word being applied to him was comical in its absurdity.

  “I think you’re,” she paused and her smile fell into something more thoughtful, “burdened.”

  “I’m not burdened,” he lied.

  “I disagree. When we were in Romania—”

  “Ya somehow peeked in at one of my memories. I’m not sure how. I was in the Carpathian Mountains. Alone.” Niall glanced at his mansion bedroom, reminded of where they were. She touched his chest and he tensed. He held his breath, feeling her touch like an electrical shock through his system.

  “I should be mad at you,” she said softly.

  “Ya have every right. I should not have taken advantage of ya,” Niall agreed.

  “The sex?” Charlotte laughed. “I’m pretty sure I took advantage of you. But let me give you a heads-up. That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I’ll probably try to retake advantage sometime soon.”

  Pleasure filled him at her words, and he did his best not to appear too eager. It was difficult enough not staring at her in her bra, knowing that beneath the covers she still had not bothered to put on her panties.

  “What I meant was, I should be mad at you for taking my memories, and lying to me, and being an asshole, and for being a slumlord…but I’m not. I find I can’t be, and I can’t explain it.” She studied him and arched a brow. “Actually, that’s a lie. I am mad about the slumlord part.”

  “I’m not a slumlord,” he defended. “I have workers going through fixing everything they can find. I even ordered ya a new bed to replace the damaged one in your apartment.”

  “You did?”

  “Aye. Dar hit the family with bad luck when I was away on a hunt and that spilled over onto our properties in town. Lydia’s house was hit by gremains. This house was hit with ghosts, goblins, demons, amongst other things. Our apartment building was plagued with broken pipes and bad wiring, and…oh, crap.”