by H G Lynch
Ember winced. Oh, she hated it when he used that tone, that softness that let her know he was hurt. Well, that had been her intention, hadn’t it? Only, she’d kind of hoped she wouldn’t be in the room when he found out she’d gone behind his back. It was harder to feel good about her payback when he looked at her like she’d twisted a knife in his chest.
Frowning, she refused to look at him. Cris was lingering in the hallway, hopping from foot to foot in agitation and pretending he wasn’t hearing their little tiff. “What did you need a distraction from?” she asked, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. Was he looking for a distraction from her? Is that the real reason why he hadn’t told her about joining the hunt, he was trying to get away from her? Was everything he’d been saying lately just bull to keep her happy? If he was so tired of her, maybe he really was…with Lia…Ember didn’t realize her eyes were wet until a tear slid down her cheek. Angrily, she wiped it away, blinking back the tears. God, she was pathetic. If Reid was fooling around with Lia behind her back, it was his damn loss. None of her fault. Although it did make her an idiot for believing a word he’d ever said.
Suddenly, Reid’s hands were on her shoulders and he was murmuring to her in a quiet voice. “Emz, come on, please don’t cry. Ember, please, I’m sorry. I swear, I didn’t tell you because I thought I was protecting you. I thought you’d want peace and normalcy, just for a while.”
“So,” she sniffled, clinging to him even as she wanted to push him away and accuse him of cheating on her. She couldn’t do that, not without proof. “What did you need a distraction from then?”
For a long moment, there was silence, and then Reid sighed and stared into her face, searching her eyes for…something. Then he blinked and pulled her against his chest, hugging her so tightly she could hardly breathe. “Oh, Emz, no. No. It’s not what you think. I wasn’t avoiding you, Firefly. I…God, how could you think that? I’d spend every waking minute with you if I could, you know that! And I meant what I said before, I want you beside me every night. Promise me that. Promise you’ll stay with me tonight, and then I’ll tell you what I was distracting myself from.” Well, it was hard not to believe him when he sounded so desperate, when he was squeezing her hard enough that she had to squirm to make to him let go before she passed out.
“I promise.”
He let her go and leaned his forehead against hers, his blue eyes bright, locked on hers. There were smudges of purple under his eyes and lines around his mouth that weren’t normally there. Signs of stress and signs he wasn’t sleeping well. But he’d slept fine last night…“Good. You want to know why I needed a distraction? I’ll tell you, but just don’t tear my head off and don’t get upset. Please. I needed a distraction because…I lied. When you asked if I was having nightmares.” He paused, took a deep breath. Ember felt her lips part, her brows drawing down. “I have been having nightmares. Every night since we came back from Scotland. I haven’t been sleeping because of them. I lied because…I’m supposed to protect you. How can I protect you if I’m constantly in fear of sleeping? I didn’t want you to know, didn’t want you to think less of me for it. I was going to tell you the other day, but then the meeting was called and…” he trailed off, frowning.
Ember felt her heart do a dip and then a rise, unsure whether to be more angry that he’d lied to her about that too, or to smother with him with tender kisses because she understood the power of nightmares. They could seriously screw with your head and the less you slept because of them, the more screwed up you got. She couldn’t blame him for not telling her about the nightmares, not really. She’d kept the content of her nightmares from him for as long as possible.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on, listening to his heart beating a little too fast in his chest. “Oh, Reid. It’s okay. I don’t think any less of you, how could I ever think less of you for having nightmares? I get it, I do. I should have noticed. I should have guessed. No wonder you’ve been distracting yourself. Look, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have gone to Brandon to join the case. I was…trying to get back at you because I thought that all the time you were spending away from me, you were with Lia. I thought…but I was being paranoid. I’m sorry.” She was such an idiot. How could she have not seen this? The keeping his distance from her, not wanting to stay the night with her before, going to the cinema and such with Lia and everyone else…Distractions. Him trying to keep her from finding out about the nightmares. She should have known. She’d noticed the circles under his eyes before, but never thought much of it. Stupid girl. Not everything was about her, not everything meant the world was against her.
“Emz, don’t be stupid. We’ve been over this. There is nothing going on with me and Lia. We’re just friends. I should have told you about the nightmares. But, as long as you keep your promise, as long as you sleep with me, I won’t have nightmares anymore. I didn’t have nightmares last night. You know why? Because you were next to me.”
And that was about when Cris figured the tiff was over and decided to remind them there was reason the tiff had started. “Uh, guys, I’m glad you’ve got that all cleared up and all, but we really need to go now. Brandon wants us all at the lake. Yes—” he added, seeing Ember opening her mouth to ask, “Sherry and Ricky are there too. He’s filled her in. Brandon thought we’d need her magic, too, for this. I’ll explain on the way. But you two need to get dressed, and fast. By which I mean, save the make-up make-out for later. Let’s go.” With that, Cris flashed one of his bright grins and turned to rush off down the hall, presumably to wait for them outside.
Ember and Reid exchanged a glance, and then Ember took off to her room to get dressed. This was going to be a fun day, she could tell. Already secrets were outed, and now they were all being gathered at Onyx Lake for some purpose that needed magic.
Ember wondered, as she pulled on a shirt and wiggled her feet into boots simultaneously, if she’d get to set something on fire.
*****
Once more, the whole gang was at Onyx Lake, just like the day they’d decided to take a dip in the make-shift Jacuzzi, only now Brandon and Perry were here. Hiro, with his uncanny ability to pop up wherever Ember was without forewarning, was standing on the edge of the crowd, leaning against a tree like he was in no way connected to the strange group of people milling about by the lakeside. His caramel skin was darker in the shadow of the tree, and he tucked a lock of crimson hair behind his ear to stop it blowing into his eyes. He pushed away from the tree to join them when he saw Ember.
“At last. What took you so long?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets as he came to stand next to Ember. Then he spotted Reid right behind her and arched a brow. “Ah. I see.” He snorted, rolled his eyes.
Ember blushed and whacked his arm, to which he responded with a scowl.
“We weren’t doing what you’re thinking. We had an argument. Not that it’s any of your business,” Ember snapped defensively. “If you have to be here, couldn’t you be in fox form? You’re less annoying when you can’t talk.” She flicked his ear and, startled, he yelped. He jerked away from her and gave her a hard look before Changing, turning into a little fluffy fox at her feet. Ember bent to stroke him, but he batted her hand, put up his tail, and stalked away to fold himself in a sulky ball by Cris. Cris looked down at him, surprised, then saw Ember’s expression and grinned. He came over to her, zipping up his hoodie against the cold.
“What’d you say to make him sulk this time? Did you tell him his tail was too short? I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t forgive you for that one,” Cris chuckled, now wearing his usual white cowboy hat, his sandy blond hair peeking out from under it.
Ember nudged him and tried to snatch his hat off, but he caught it and prodded her in the ribs for the attempt. She squealed and Reid stepped in to break up the squabble. “Why don’t you go peel some potatuhs, Paddy?” Reid intoned in his best leprechaun-Irish accent, and Cris slugged him in the shoulder, chuckling.
“That was a piss p
oor attempt at my accent.”
“You’re a piss poor excuse for an Irishman.”
“How the hell would you know? You’ve never seen me drink.”
Reid laughed and opened his mouth, but Ember interrupted.
“Oookay, this has gone on long enough. When you feel like joining the cause, find me over by the grown-ups,” she said and walked away from the guys and their banter to see what Brandon and Ricky were yakking about.
The wind cut sharply through the trees and she shivered, drew her jumper up around her neck. The trees rattled menacingly. Brandon and Ricky were deep in conversation, while Sherry was buried cozily in Ricky’s side with his arm around her. She had a scarf wrapped around her neck and had her hands tucked inside Ricky’s hoodie.
Brandon shot her a polite nod and she raised one brow. “You wanna tell me what everyone’s ditching school for? ‘Cause if this is some payback for not inviting you to the Jacuzzi party—” Ember grinned, but Brandon shook his head and cut her off, clearly not in the mood for jokes – when was he ever?
“I asked you all here because I found a spell in one of the grimoires that I thought might be useful. It’s a spell for reversing the wardings on the lake. Hopefully if we can reverse the warding, we can keep the killer –kelpie, selkie, nymph, whatever the hell it is – out of its own lake and it’ll stop killing. At least until we figure out what it really is and work out how to get rid of it.”
Ah, now the need for Sherry and Cris to be here too became clear. The wardings on the lake were strong and it’d take a lot of magic to reverse them permanently, and since it was water they were dealing with, Sherry’s magic would be particularly effective whereas Cris’s and Ember’s would be diluted.
“Do we need any special ingredients, charms, anything like that?” she asked, humor replaced by logic. Spells were a serious deal, and one like this was likely to be draining. The biggest spell she’d ever cast was a refresher spell for the wards on the house in Ellon. Nothing massively complicated really. There were knots and layers of intense magic under the surface of this lake, and it was a wide expanse of magical netting to undo. If any of them made a wrong move, chanted the wrong word, they could get fried or cause some sort of magical disruption either to themselves or to the wardings. Neither was an attractive idea.
“You’ll need dirt, leaves, fire and water from the lake. There’s an incantation, too. You need to put the dirt and the water in a bowl, mix in dried leaves or pine needles, set it all on fire and recite the incantation repeatedly…until the wardings reverse. I can’t tell you it’ll be just as easy as that because I really don’t have a firsthand understanding of magic, so you’ll kind of have to work the magic through the wardings however you can. Play it by instinct, or whatever. Just be careful.” Brandon handed her a wooden bowl, about the size of a cereal bowl. Ember sighed and took it, turned to call Cris over. He said something to Reid and strode over, taking off his cowboy hat.
“Time to start?” he asked, looking questioningly at the bowl in her hands.
“Yeah, almost. Could you gather some dried pine needles for me? I prefer pine needles to leaves. Just smells better when you burn them.”
Cris nodded and sauntered to the edge of the trees. Ember set the bowl on the ground and sat down next to it. Sherry sat with her and held her hand toward the lake. Instantly, the air was filled with a crackling sound, and a patch of white spread out on the surface of the lake to about the size of a hand. The frozen patch of ice floated out of the water and dumped itself in the bowl before melting back into water. Sherry beamed and Ember laughed. “Well, that’s one way to collect water. Have you been practicing?”
Sherry nodded. “A bit. I’ve been trying to make little ice sculptures, but I can’t hold the power for long enough to make anything spectacular.” She pointed one finger to the water in the bowl and the water began to move, rising up in the center like it was a cloth being pulled by an invisible sting. The water morphed itself into a spiral and then froze, a twisted pillar of ice jutting from the bowl. It was really very pretty, but it melted a moment later, crumbling into water again.
Just then, Cris came back over, his hands full of dead pine needles and dirt. He dumped his haul into the bowl where the dirt sucked up some of the water and turned the whole thing into a gloopy mess, like the kind of thing you made as a kid and pretended it was a blueberry pie. Reid, Hiro, Brandon and Perry all gathered round to watch the show, and Brandon laid an old grimoire down in front of Ember, open at the page with the proper incantation. She held it out for Cris and Sherry to see too, and began summoning heat from the air – there wasn’t much of it, but there was enough for their miniature bonfire. Then she sparked a flame off her fingers and lit the muck in the bowl, filling the air with the smell of burning pine needles and singed dirt. Not very pleasant, but this wasn’t about pleasant. They began the incantation, chanting as they let out their magic, twining it with the stuff in the bowl before it spilled out and ran across the lake, making the wardings light up and sizzle unhappily.
“Power of bindings, power of wards, release.
Power of bindings, power of wards, reverse.
Power of one, turn to us, power of another, allow us.
By blood of the gifted, by chant of the prophet, reverse these bindings.”
As they chanted, the lake began to bubble, a sound like oil poured into a hot pan running over the water. It began to steam, as did the contents of the bowl. Ember almost gasped at the strength of the wardings trying to push her magic out, trying to turn her magic back on her and zap her. Her magic slid over the surface, pulling at knots in the wardings, tenderly tugging lines of power apart, carefully disentangling the netting of magic. It was already giving her a headache, and her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped the grimoire, but she kept chanting, fast and low, forcing power into the strange words. She could feel Cris’s magic alongside hers, brushing against hers as he undid fine threads of the wardings, breaking a hole through to the next layer. Sherry’s magic was rougher, weaker, but she was getting the job done. Her power combining with theirs was the only thing making this anything but impossible. If it weren’t for her connection to water and ice, Ember and Cris would’ve been seriously struggling to keep from getting zapped, let alone undo the tangled vines of magic on the lake. All Sherry had to do was hold her connection and Cris and Ember could do most of the rest. Ember had the strongest magic here, but it was draining her energy quickly. Tingles ran up and down her arms and spine, and there was an insistent throbbing at the base of her skull, warning her that if she kept pushing her magic, it’d snap.
Suddenly, there was jolt of magic from a fourth party and Ember distantly heard Hiro chanting with them, pooling his magic with theirs to untie the hardest knots and pull apart the final layer of wardings. His magic was strong and vibrant. If it had a color, it would have been as red as his hair, but magic didn’t have colors as such, just as minds didn’t. There was just a vague perception of a vibe that trigger certain ideas of smell or color. Cris’s magic was green, Sherry’s was blue and Ember’s was…confused. It kept flashing between gold for the fire she was using to burn the contents of the bowl, and purple for the work she was doing on the wardings.
Then, as they chanted for the third and final time, the lines and vines of magic on the lake slipped and slid and turned, threading out a reversed pattern under the surface of the water. It fought them, tried to shift back, but they chanted louder, poured more magic into it, and at last it gave up. The wardings obeyed and retained their reversed patterning, and they were done. They stopped chanting and Sherry immediately slumped forward. The fire in the bowl went out as Ember lost her grasp on the magic, and she gritted her teeth against the pain shooting through her head. Cris rubbed a hand across his head, pale and sweating from exertion. Ricky darted forward to take care of Sherry, who looked to be moments away from passing out. No wonder. That was a battle Ember never wanted to have again.
Reid dropped to one k
nee next to her, ignoring the dirt he got on his jeans, and she heard his fangs click as they sprang free. She was too dizzy and exhausted to protest so Reid bit into his wrist and held it up to her as fat, red drops rolled down his arm and splattered into the grass. Gratefully, Ember took his wrist gently in her fingers and her own fangs slid out as she put her mouth to the wound and sucked. The warm liquid spilled onto her tongue in a wave, sweet and delicious and intoxicating as it ran down her throat. It sent bolts of electricity through her muscles, restoring her energy, and at the same time, sparks danced along her nerves, sinking into her stomach so she got that same achy feeling that she got whenever Reid took off his shirt. Her heartbeat sped up and her breathing hitched, and she fought not to give in to the sensual sensations. Reid was not so concerned about fighting it and let out a groan so low and quiet Ember was sure she was the only one who heard it. Ember’s fangs throbbed and she forced herself to drop his wrist before the feeling could overwhelm her. She wiped blood off her lips with the back of her hand and glanced at Reid, whose pupils were wide and unfixed. He blinked, his eyes returning to normal, and gave her a wicked smile.
“Damn, I miss doing that,” he said, reaching out and swiping his thumb across the corner of her mouth. It came away tinged with red – she must’ve missed a drop of blood – and promptly stuck his thumb in his mouth. Ember focused on breathing. In and out, Ember. Inhale, exhale. Truthfully, she missed drinking his blood and having him drinking hers, too. They’d stopped exchanging blood during the trip to Scotland because Reid had become addicted to her blood and it was bringing out a level of bloodlust in him that he couldn’t control. Also, he’d been worried it was affecting her health, him taking some of her blood so often. The only time he’d tasted her blood in the last month or so was when the professor collected some of her blood in a glass bottle to use for his own twisted purposes, and she’d given it to Reid so he could recover from the torture he’d endured.
