Then she turned and walked into the hallway.
Max leaned against the wall, holding a cold bottle of water. He handed the water to Carla. “You might as well drink it. She's not going to wake for hours now.”
Carla took the bottle.
“Have I told you lately how amazing you are?”
Many times. “Josie wouldn't have the chance to recover and live a full life if you hadn't found her and got her out.”
He studied her, raising an eyebrow. “Same shirt and skirt you wore today. You haven't gone home. Let me get dressed and I'll take you home.”
“I'm fine. I have a change of clothes in my office.”
“You slept on the couch again.”
She drank down a gulp of the cool water, avoiding his gaze. “I worked late, and—” she had nothing to go home to. The loneliness was a constant ache. Insomnia was bad enough, but when she slept, the nightmares caught up with her. The memory of the knives, the pain, the helpless terror …
And then the witch hunter who saved her.
Her dream always shifted then, the horror giving way to being touched and stroked and filled until she felt whole. When she woke, she was left aching for something that wasn't real. Carla had spent her life trying to find a way to meld together the two parts of her psyche; the logical scientist and the emotional witch. Always pulled in two directions.
Max reached out, laying his palm on her bare arm.
The warm touch hurt her all the more because she didn't feel the connection he wanted. She cared about him, but he didn't stir her passion.
And if he ever found out she was a witch, he'd want to use her like her father had. That thought surprised her, caught her off guard, making her stiffen beneath Max's hand. She tried to smile and said, “Go back to bed, Max.”
He dropped his arm. “Try to get some sleep,” he said and walked away.
Carla took her bottle of water downstairs, ignored her office and turned left, passed through a dining room and went to the small, walled courtyard with the fountain. She keyed off the alarm system for the slider door, then opened it and slipped out in the cool night.
She sat in the chair, propping her feet on the edge of the stone waterfall. There were large pots of geraniums dotting the patio. Soft colored lights in the center illuminated the bubbling stone waterfall cascading down into comforting splashes. The tiny sliver of moonlight barely touched her skin, but it was enough.
It fed her chakras, eased her exhaustion.
Two years since her sister's murder, and the grief, guilt, and regret still took up too much space inside her. She had to let Keri go, had to accept that her sister's soul had gone on to her next life. The scar across her lower back, the one she'd gotten trying to save Keri, ached slightly. It was time to let it all go. She breathed deeply, drawing the cool damp night air into her lungs.
She was just releasing the air out when her cell phone vibrated. Reaching into her skirt pocket, she pulled the phone out and opened it.
The image of her best friend, Darcy, stared back at her. “Carla, where are you?”
Darcy was using magic to project her image through the phone. She spoke to the picture. “Transitional Clinic. What's wrong?” It was after two in the morning, she wasn't calling for a chat. “Is a witch missing?”
Darcy shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Darcy and Axel had broken the thirty year old curse on the witches and witch hunters, making Darcy the most powerful witch they knew of. She was struggling to find her place among the witches, while her mate, Axel, led the Wing Slayer Witch Hunters in their fight against rogues. Like the rogues who had killed Keri. So if Darcy wasn't calling about a missing witch … “Then what is it?” Her worrying pulled tighter in her stomach.
Her face was troubled. “A woman shot Sutton tonight.”
Carla dropped her feet from the edge of the fountain, sitting up. Her skin tingled from her neck to her thighs—all the places that Sutton West's T-shirt had touched her when he had rescued her from the rogues. The dreams of him were making her restless and needing something she could have. “Is he alive?”
Darcy's brown eyes glinted with silver lights. “Yes. He's fine, she missed his heart.”
Her own heart skipped a beat and caused her to struggle for her breath. Finally, she said, “Why did the woman shoot him? Was it, uh, personal?” And why did that make her chest burn?
Darcy shook her head. “A rogue has been in her head, Axel is sure of that much. But he's never seen this kind of thing before. He can't tell if it's brain damage from some witch hunter repeatedly shifting her memories or …”
“You think the rogues are trying to kill the Wing Slayer Hunters using a mortal woman?” Carla processed that. “Like some kind of mind control? Do witch-hunters have that kind of power?”
“We've never seen it, but I'm worried. We have the woman but she's in shock. I can't get much out of her. The rogues have been fairly quiet since Axel and the men took a stand against them. But this …”
She remembered that night too well.
“What if the rouges are reorganizing and using some kind of brainwashing on mortals?” Darcy continued. “How many others are out there? What's going on?”
“Bring her to me.”
“Too dangerous. The rogue would be able to track her and we don't want them to find the clinic or the house you're staying in.”
Carla couldn't endanger their residents, Max, or any of them. She made a quick decision. “Where are you? I'll come there.”
“I was hoping you'd say that.”
Prickles of unease skittered up her spine. “What do you mean?”
A large shadow passed overhead. Carla jerked her head up in time to see a huge creature with wings fill up the night sky. He swooped in, his gold and brown wings catching the moonlight as he shifted on the air current so that he landed on his feet a yard away from Carla. His wings spread across most of the courtyard. Then he lifted his wings up and folded them until they disappeared into the tattoo on his back.
Carla turned to Darcy. “No way, I am not flying!” She still couldn't get used to the idea of a man with wings who could fly.
“You'll be safer with Axel. Please, Carla. Let him bring you here.”
Carla turned to look at the man in question. He stood well over six feet, and without a shirt, his muscles gleamed in the moonlight. His wings ripped holes in his shirts, so he usually flew bare-chested. Lifting her gaze, she looked into his green eyes. “We could drive my car.”
He smiled. “We could try, but Darcy will magically disable it.”
Her curiosity outweighed her fear. She looked at Darcy. “You so owe me for this.”
Blood Magic is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Apodaca
Excerpt of Soul Magic copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Apodaca
All rights reserved.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51272-7
Cover design and illustration by Jae Song, based on a photograph © Werner Bokelberg
www.ballantinebooks.com
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