Taming the Hunter
Page 13
Closing her eyes and bowing her head, she began an incantation. Focusing on the elemental energies in the room and finding the shattered glass bits, she warmed them. Using the earth’s vibrations and drawing them up through her system, she invoked the elements.
Glass shards rose from the snow-covered grass, dancing toward one another. She heard Dane’s hiss of astonishment, but didn’t shift her focus. Summoning an earth elemental, she asked for it to come to her as sand.
A tiny creature no larger than an egg popped up from the snow and shook its head. It spotted the moving shards and soared toward them, fixing itself to one shiny piece. The glass segments fitted together, melting and crystallizing as the elemental scampered over the surface, seemingly providing the sandy glue to mend them into one pane of smooth, clear glass, until the entire window was back in shape. It hovered above the ground, turning slowly, glinting in the morning light.
Behind her, Dane swore.
With a lift of her hand, Eryss directed the pane upward until it fit into the steel beams, and because of the lack of caulking, she directed the elemental to fly up and work its magic by melting the glass to the structure. It would hold until she could get a proper repair done in the spring.
With a thanks and blessing to the elemental, she dismissed it back to the earth from which it had come.
Now, for the plants.
Kneeling, she pressed her fingers farther into the grass until they dug into the soil, which had already begun to chill. She summoned the heat from the earth and the snow began to melt. Leaves dripped with moisture and some bent and furled upward as if to meet the sun, while others had been frozen beyond hope and remained lifeless. Infusing the soil with her own vita and spreading it out into the root system, Eryss bled her life into the flora until the scents of jasmine and rosemary freshened and curled about her body.
“I was wrong,” Dane said behind her.
The room came alive. A dragonfly flitted above Eryss’s head. The grass stretched upward and effused a green scent. Vines climbed toward their trellis. The emerald glass chandelier shivered, tinkling softly.
Eryss stood, but the incredible energy she’d just expended dizzied her senses, and she collapsed on the couch.
“Eryss!” Dane rushed to her and pulled the chenille blanket over her. Her work had also dried the couch and blanket, so it was warm and snug and felt like a safe landing place infused with vital energies as he tucked the wrap around her.
She nestled the blanket up around her neck and snuggled in, sighing a few times to release any of the negative energies her body may have sustained while healing the room.
And speaking of negative energies...she could feel Dane’s consternation. His unwillingness to step beyond his rigid beliefs. His downright astonishment. It buffeted her air with a hot and bruising vibration. It took all her energy not to say in a snarky tone, Debunk that, scientist.
“What did you just do?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“That,” she said in an exhausted whisper, “was witchcraft.”
“I know.”
She knew she had just blown his mind. Now, to see how he would handle the truth. Wait. What had he just said? “You know?”
He nodded. “But I don’t know what to say about...this. Let’s go into the kitchen and...”
“I need to rest a bit,” she said. “That took a lot out of me.”
“I, uh...hmm. Yes. I think I should let you rest. Maybe I should...go outside, check the side of the conservatory for more damage. Yes. I’ll, uh...the plants.” He touched a fern leaf curled near the couch arm. “You gave them life. I saw it. I didn’t expect this. I thought you were merely...”
She caressed his cheek. Soft stubble darkened his jaw. Worry danced in his eyes. Or was that fear?
“You need to distance yourself,” she said. “And have a good scientific think. I understand. Go on. I don’t mind. I won’t be going anywhere today. It’ll take that long to get back my energy.”
“Is there something I can do for you? Bring you food?”
“No, I’m good. Please. Leave, if you have to. Do what you need to do. I’m good with that. Promise.”
He nodded. “I’m not trying to run away. I just...” He pressed a few fingers to his brow and winced. “We do need to talk. I just didn’t think... I’ll check outside and then...”
“You need to be okay with what you saw. Go to the brewery and hang out in a corner. Do your internet searches. Argue with the scientist who wants to prove I don’t exist. Concoct rational means to explain what you’ve just witnessed. When you’ve exhausted all possible explanations, then come back to me. And we’ll talk.”
“Yes, I’ll...”
She took his hand and smoothed it. Dane leaned in and kissed her forehead. He stood and ran his fingers back through his hair. Without another word, he left her.
Was he running away from her truth? She would expect nothing less. Though she hoped for so much more. Like understanding. Had he run away from her through the centuries? Was that why she dreamed of a lover she had lost? Because he could never handle her being a witch? Why was she still unable to hold him after all this time?
He’d said he knew. She didn’t understand what that meant, if not that he’d known she was a witch.
What was going on with Dane?
Chapter 12
Eryss watched out the corner of her eye as Dane appeared outside, on the other side of the glass conservatory wall. He studied it, scanning the whole side, around the back and up toward where the ceiling piece had broken out. He rubbed his jaw, then shrugged. His hair was coated with snow, and his shoulders were also snowy.
He should come inside and she’d muster up the energy to make some hot chocolate. But when she thought his gaze met hers and she lifted a hand to wave at him, he merely glanced aside and walked away, toward the garage.
He didn’t come in. She waited another ten minutes before she recognized the sound of his rental car backing out and driving away.
Had she chased him off by casting magic in his presence? Of course she had. But in the moment, it had been the important thing to do. To show herself to him. For good or for ill.
With hope, it would eventually bring some good.
* * *
Dane had not gone to the brewery as Eryss had suggested. There was too much weirdness at that place. And there could be witches.
Real witches.
Not that he was afraid of witches. Yet he did have a wise caution toward the species. He’d been in the presence of only one during his stint with the Agency. She had actually worked for the Agency, and she’d provided historical backup on one of his first assignments—historical meaning she had informed him of the history of witches’ persecution in Salem, a place he’d been sent to look into a claim that a doll was bewitching men into raping women. It hadn’t been a bewitched doll, just a crew of misguided devil worshippers who had used witchcraft as a scapegoat for their own cruel choices.
And now there was Eryss.
He should not have left her alone, looking so tired and depleted. But he’d needed to step back and resituate his brain to take in things from a different perspective before he could have a rational discussion with her.
The witch.
The Agency debunked the paranormal species for the very reason that no human should ever have knowledge that such species existed. It was too dangerous. Thus, they put a scientific spin on the reason they couldn’t possibly exist, and pointed the finger at the ridiculous believers. It was an effective means of diverting attention.
And for some poor souls, it offered them sanity. Freedom from the truth.
Even knowing paranormal creatures existed, every time he encountered another one Dane struggled with that sanity issue. It was so...impossibly bizarre. To know that vampires and faeries walked the same soil he did? That there were shapeshifters and winged creatures that used the shadows for protection. And that witches, and even bloodsucking vampires, lived among the humans, and did
it so well the majority of the population never caught on.
Until something went wrong, like a vampire’s victim left dead in an alleyway, or a magical pendulum calling up demons in the middle of a ladies’ afternoon church party.
So Dane had returned to the hotel and rented another room. Now he paced before the laptop set on the bed. A crumpled McDonald’s bag had missed the trash, and his roasted coffee was cold and stank up the room. He’d accessed files on hoaxes and plants surviving frostbite and even how glass was made. Nothing could explain what he had witnessed when Eryss had knelt and put her fingers into the ground and literally raised the mended glass into the windowpanes and then...
“And then,” he said in an awestruck whisper, “the plants!”
She’d brought them back from their damaged, lifeless state. Right before his eyes. Now, Dane knew that some plants were hardy and even survived harsh winters, and a light snowfall couldn’t take out some flowers and bulbs. But broken stems and leaves had snapped back to health. Leaves turned brown by the icy bite of winter had become green again, and flowers that had shed their petals had resumed their full glory.
Witchcraft?
“Indeed.”
Dane sat on the chair and shook his head. He’d exhausted the possibilities. A person could possess such extraordinary powers if she had been born a witch. So now he had to accept the truth.
He rubbed his brow tensely. How did he feel about it being the truth? Because the idea of witchcraft opened up all sorts of strange and not-so-welcome avenues. Mysticism, the occult and devil worship, for a start. Was Eryss a member of a coven?
Of course, the other women who worked at the brewery must be her coven mates. And they brewed up concoctions and sold them to the unwary public. What kinds of spells did they cast on the beer? He had drunk the beer. Was he under a spell?
He had not come to Minnesota on a witch hunt, but rather—
“The witch must die,” he muttered now, memory jettisoning him back to his eight-year-old self when he’d held the sword before his mother’s horrified eyes.
“No!” He stood and pushed aside the curtains to look over the snow-frosted parking lot below. The rental Ford sat beside a bare-branched maple tree.
Why was he questioning his beliefs?
“Because you know why you came here in the first place.”
Who was Edison Winthur? Was he such a dreamer that Dane’s mother couldn’t handle his whimsy, and she’d divorced him? Why, then, had she married him in the first place? Surely, Edison must have been as absentminded and whimsical when they’d married as the day they’d divorced?
Witches? Was that why his father had owned a witch blade? Or had he not known what the dagger had actually been used for?
What had Edison believed in? Would he scoff at his son’s profession? Perhaps the man would argue against Dane’s role in debunking the paranormal with fantastical reasons such that these things did exist. Why had Dane been denied those arguments? He wanted the man here. In his life. He wanted...simply to have known the one half of who had made him.
The divorce had occurred because Edison and Lillian Winthur were complete opposites. Just like Dane and Eryss. But Dane didn’t need a woman like himself, or one who believed everything he did. He only needed to understand that other person’s beliefs in order to accept and embrace her.
If he was going to allow his brain to accept that Eryss was a witch, then he should not immediately jump to the blaming and finger-pointing that would label her an evil entity or wicked. That was history and fiction and so much scapegoating. Women had suffered through the centuries for the idiotic misgivings of the majority. And the patriarchy. Men were historically the worst abusers and accusers. Some wore entitlement as if it were a family crest.
Dane shook his head and squeezed his eyelids shut. He must remain unbiased and unemotional about what he’d witnessed in the conservatory. Staying rational was his job! He could do that.
But how to keep back his emotions when Eryss had done such a good job of luring him into her life? He felt for her. Because he adored her. There was something about Eryss Norling that felt so right to him. And it wasn’t because they had great sex together. He felt comfortable around her. Relaxed. As if he’d known her for a long time.
If reincarnation were possible, could he have known her in a previous life? She had intimated that they had known one another, and then she’d paused to see if he would agree. Yes, he believed in the soul, but it was incarnated into only one body, to live one life on this earth.
Or...maybe not?
“You are thinking like a madman.” He checked his watch. What to do while stuck here? Perhaps he could have another go at convincing Gladiola to open the safe for him?
“Biometrics,” he muttered about the safe.
He had no choice but to wait. Here. In this miserable little hotel room.
Or at Eryss’s big, beautiful home filled with warmth and love and...witchcraft.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, and his fingers curled around something warm. He pulled it out to find a small blue stone. It was striated with gold flashes.
“Covellite. How did this...?”
Eryss had to have put it in his pocket. She of the crystals and foretelling symbols. This stone could be bewitched...
He was about to toss it onto the table by the phone, but then shoved it back in his pocket and sat on the bed instead. He pulled the laptop close and typed in “covellite,” and then “healing stones.” What came up was interesting.
“The doorway to remembering your past?” he read aloud from the web page.
Chapter 13
Eryss tested the dough that had risen on the counter throughout the afternoon. It had tripled in volume. She turned the oven on, then remembered to sprinkle sesame seeds across the top of the dough for abundance.
Then she recited a charm to keep herself from being upset when Dane left the state, because she had been the one to scare him off. She should have waited for him to leave and then repaired the window and the plants. But at the time, she hadn’t had a moment to waste, or she would have risked losing so many more plants.
Finishing the charm, she pulled her fingers down from the crown of her head, envisioning a comforting white light surrounding her all the way to her bare toes. She wiggled them and pressed her palms together, tossing in a “blessed be” for good measure.
With the bread in the oven, she strode about the conservatory and noted that the plants had been decimated; about 10 percent hadn’t made it. She started collecting spent blooms for tinctures, and would repot a few in an attempt to revive the roots, but some were simply dead. She could dry the heather and perhaps even get some use out of the alyssum, but the coltsfoot was a complete loss.
So sad. She should have checked the window last night. It was remarkable that she and Dane had been so loud they hadn’t heard the falling glass. Of course, the glass had landed on a mossy pad that may have muffled the shattering. She checked the bee hut and found them nestled inside, snug as, well, bugs. And the butterfly terrarium held three chrysalises that would open in a few weeks. The temperature of the room had returned to a cozy seventy degrees, thanks to her having expended so much of her vita.
Now grounded and calm, she repeated her wish for love that she’d spoken during the anacampserote.
“Let me recognize it when it comes. And allow me to let him leave when he must.”
She didn’t suspect Dane would fall in love with her so quickly, and certainly she didn’t believe in the whole love-at-first-sight thing. And she wouldn’t perform a spell to put a man under her sensual thrall. Such spellcraft must be handled with utmost reverence for the heart.
Placing a hand over her own heart, she drew up energy from the earth through her bare feet and fixed it into her being. With a heavy exhalation to release doubt and anxiety, she nodded and said, “So mote it be.”
At that moment someone rapped on the back door. Eryss’s heart sped up. “Dane.”
She dared not doubt her intuition regarding their loving through the ages. She would not.
She opened the door to a short, stout man who beamed at her from above his thick, bright red knitted scarf. He held up a clutch of newspapers. She allowed her neighbor, who lived half a mile down the road, to collect the weekly shoppers shoved into her mailbox, but he didn’t have to ask her permission to take them.
“I’m not sure now what I came up to your door for,” he said.
“I have a stack of packing paper from the brewery,” she offered. She saved the brown paper to give him for his projects. “Let me get it for you.”
* * *
“I’m sorry for the way I left this morning,” Dane said as he followed Eryss inside the house and toward the conservatory.
It was already dark outside, even though it wasn’t yet five in the evening. Dane hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the sun setting so early. He required surf and sunshine to feel alive and vital.
Eryss trailed the scents of bread and rosemary before him. She wore a long, flowing skirt with tiny pink flowers on a brown background, and her pink sweater was equally soft and sensual. Her hair, messily pinned on top of her head, spilled tendrils about her ears and neck. He wanted to touch the strands, press them to his nose and forget himself.
But first things first.
“It was rude of me to leave this morning without first talking to you. Hell, making sure you were okay.”
“You were in shock after witnessing witchcraft,” she said over her shoulder. “Something you couldn’t flat-out debunk with a few scientific explanations.” She stepped into the green room lush with floral and woodsy scents. “I figured you needed some time to sort things out. Come to terms with whatever beliefs you have, and decide whether or not they were worth opening wider, perhaps even inviting in new beliefs. And don’t worry. I am okay.”