“What are you doing?” Her mother, who watched the front of the shop while Sybil painted in back, appeared behind her daughter.
Cyan cussed. “You’re the one who told me not to apparate. How come you’re allowed?”
“Brushing up on old talents. Preparing. What are you looking for?”
“A way to save Liam.”
“In a history book?”
“Maybe it’s happened before.”
“There’s never been a Dorcha before.”
She glared. “Can you just let me do this?”
Rue disappeared again. From the back room, Cyan heard Sybil sneeze. She smelled the scent of oil paints and wondered what the hell her aunt was up to anyway. Cyan had already forbid her from painting Liam again.
She thumbed through the thin pages of the aged history book and stared at pictures of witches who’d gone before. There were tales of Salem and beyond. The deeper she dug, the less photos she found but more paintings, etchings. She even came upon a picture of her own namesake, Hypatia: a woman of brilliance and beauty, murdered for being a witch centuries ago. Cyan ran her hand over the picture of a lovely, pale-skinned woman being dragged to her death down the streets of Alexandria. Her hand gave off a golden sympathy glow… or so she thought.
Her hand suddenly moved without her permission and hovered over the book. Pages turned without being touched as if flipped by a strong ocean breeze. Then, the flipping stopped. The page before her eyes, chosen by her magic hand apparently, depicted a painting lush in color and brutality. Cyan was supposed to see something in this painting. She felt the familiar warmth of the Craft spreading up from her stomach and down her limbs, so her gray eyes scanned quickly over the running peasants, the flames, and the dark green of a nighttime forest with an even darker sea beyond.
She looked down at the caption for some explanation. It read, “Destruction of Aunios by the Witch Zosime.” Cyan hadn’t even noticed the witch, hovering above the townspeople, but there she was, high in the sky. Black clouds surrounded her face, but despite this, Cyan saw the resemblance immediately and shouted a very unladylike, “I’ll be goddamned.”
“Language,” Rue said from the other room, but she apparated at her daughter’s side three seconds later. “What did you find?”
Cyan pointed at the painting.
Rue looked, blinked, and said, “Fucking hell.”
Cyan lowered her eyebrows. “Language?”
Rue spun the huge book on the desk and stared. “That’s Liam’s…”
“It’s Zoe.”
“This portrays an event that happened…” She paused and skimmed the caption. “In the thirteenth century.”
“This whole time we’ve been saying that if Liam was the Dorcha, he’d have someone watching over him.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Rue put her hand to her mouth.
“Well, someone has, probably his whole life,” Cyan said.
“I bet she knew what he was as soon as he was born, just like Grandmother knew about you.”
Cyan put her hands to her forehead, which was now throbbing. “But Liam saw her die in the hospital.”
Rue put her palm over the painted depiction of Zoe. “She came back.”
“That’s not possible. Even dark magic, really dark magic, won’t make someone immortal.”
“Unless she sold her soul.”
Cyan swiped braids out of her face. “When I took Daddy to the hospital to save her, he said Zoe’s soul wasn’t there.”
Rue nodded. “It wasn’t. The Devil has it. This woman is alive, and she is bad news.”
“Will she hurt Liam?”
“Of course not. He’s her god. You saw the way Max was looking at you, like you’re some kind of priceless jewel. That’s how Zoe sees Liam. She’ll do anything to ensure his victory, to protect him.”
Cyan laid her hand on the pendant around her neck. “Good thing I have this.”
“Don’t you ever take that off.”
“I wasn’t plan—”
She was cut off by the sound of a body hitting the ground. Drake and Max were out talking to other light witches in preparation for War, so the only other person in the shop was Sybil, back in her art room. Mother and daughter ran, shoving the door open only to find Sybil on the ground, muttering. When Cyan touched her face, she was shocked to find her aunt’s usually brown eyes white.
“Momma,” Cyan said.
Rue took Sybil’s head in her hands. “She’s just seen something. It’s all right, Cyan.”
No. It wasn’t. Cyan looked up at the painting her aunt had been working on and gasped. It was Liam, of course, but this was not a Liam she had seen before. First of all, he was in color. More importantly, his handsome face was stretched into a horrible grimace, teeth bared. His eyes glowed blue, and his entire face was covered in blood.
Cyan couldn’t even get herself together enough to speak, let alone destroy the painting, when she heard Liam’s voice right behind her.
She screamed and shot gold from her palms. Liam blocked her magic easily with his blue and then stuttered, quickly, “Wait, wait. I couldn’t come in here if I meant to hurt you. Please.”
Cyan put her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath. “Liam.”
“Get him out of this room.” Rue held her little sister in her arms.
Before Liam could see the horrific representation of himself, Cyan shoved him out into the hallway and proceeded to move him backwards with flashes of light from her hands. He continued to protect himself from her onslaught, but he also continued to back up.
“Cyan. Please!”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
He blocked a shot of gold with his wrist and winced. “You’ve been researching.” He gestured quickly to the books all over the nearby desk. “You’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to fix me.”
“Yeah, instead, I find out your missing dead girlfriend is actually a several-thousand-year-old evil witch.”
“Several-thousand-year-old?”
She pushed him into the front of Sea Books. “Yeah, because her age is the weird part.”
“I know she’s a witch, and she’s not missing.”
Cyan put her hands on her hips and waited, staring into the eyes of the man she loved: one familiar green and the other worrisome blue.
“Zoe’s at my house,” Liam whispered.
“Great. Good. I’m sure she’ll help you kill me.”
“What? No. Cyan, I came here for help.”
“You ain’t gonna find help here, boy,” Drake said from the doorway.
Cyan hadn’t even noticed her father and Max standing there, returned from their afternoon of recruiting—but her father looked downright murderous.
“Shit,” Liam said.
“You’re on my turf now.” Drake curled his huge hands into boulder-like fists.
“Daddy…”
“Nothing here to protect you,” Drake continued.
Liam didn’t say a word, but Cyan noticed the tense lift of his shoulders.
“Why don’t we take this outside? Wouldn’t want to break anything of Sybil’s.”
Cyan shook her head, trying to warn her father of Liam’s newfound strength, but nothing could stop Drake from grabbing Liam by the front of his shirt, shuffling backwards, and tossing him onto the sidewalk out front. Before Liam could get up, Drake kicked him in the ribs. Cyan tried to run outside and get between them, but Max grabbed her by the arm.
“Look.” He pointed at Liam, whose palms glowed blue—just like his eyes.
“Oh, my God, Daddy!” She pulled out of Max’s grasp just in time to have Rue grab the back of her leather jacket and stand in front of her, cautious of the doorway’s protected boundary.
“Drake,” she whispered.
Liam seemed unaffected by the kick to the stomach. He stood and brushed off his jeans. “You shouldn’t have taken this fight outside the shop, old man. Nothing out here to protect you.”
He smiled, but the smile was not Liam; the smile was the evil face in Sybil’s newest painting. “Croí pian,” he said. He didn’t even have to raise his hands to cast the spell.
Drake grunted, and his face turned red. He grabbed for his chest and fell to one knee but still found the strength to cast a spell of bright gray light at Liam—which Liam blocked.
“He’s magnificent,” Max murmured, which made Cyan want to gouge his eyes out.
Liam sauntered up to Drake and knelt before him. “You use your own blood in your spells. Makes them stronger, right? Would you like me to cut you open?”
Rue tumbled shoeless onto the sidewalk, arms raised as she shouted in Gaelic, but before she could cast, Liam waved at her. Rue’s hands grabbed at her throat, and she went silent. Cyan dragged her mother back over the protective threshold of Sea Books before she could be strangled to death, and Rue choked on the air she sucked into her lungs. She fell to her knees and grabbed for Cyan. “He’s going to kill your father.”
Cyan shoved Max back from the doorway—Max, who watched Liam with a sort of awe. “Liam!” she shouted. “Liam, this is not you.”
He looked toward her, but his eyes were pure blue.
“Liam, think about California Cabernet or... Connect Four. Remember when we played Connect Four? You were shit at it. Eggplant... you made eggplant with my mom.”
Liam closed his eyes as Drake actually turned the shade of an eggplant, still clutching his chest.
“I love you, I love you,” she whispered.
Liam rubbed his eyes. He looked to be in pain, and she thought about his headaches. Maybe the headaches were more than just oddities. Maybe the headaches were the good side of him fighting for control.
“Liam,” she begged.
He opened his eyes, and where she stood, she could see the vivid blue glow was gone. “Get him inside,” he said.
Cyan ran to her father and did her best to lift the huge man from the cement. She pulled him through the doors of Sea Books, and he started breathing again, albeit in a heap on the floor. Rue covered his body with hers and kissed his cheeks.
Cyan hurried back to the door and stared out onto Broad Street. The sun was rapidly setting, casting one side of Liam’s face in shadow. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think we’re too late.” He left her in the doorway as he walked down Broad, one hand still clutching his head.
Liam tumbled through oncoming night, his head pounding with every step. Halfway home, he had to rest, his hand holding to the corner of a house on Church Street. The pain dwindled from behind his eyes but moved into his chest as regret set in, claws embedded in his heart.
He’d almost killed Drake Burroughs. He would have if not for Cyan and her love. Kneeling on Broad Street, he’d felt her emotions—seen them practically like colors on a palette. He’d caught flashes of her memories, images of when they’d first met, images of when they’d first kissed. But he had also been the recipient of Drake’s rage like an arrow to the chest, and Liam supposed that emotion was what had done it, put him into a state of defensiveness. Drake had wanted him dead, and Liam had felt it and reacted. He hadn’t wanted to stop, which was why, he concluded, eyes suddenly burning with tears, it was too late for him.
He was a thing to be feared.
Before even opening the front door of his condo, he knew there were people inside. Like he felt Cyan and Drake, he felt them, and the feeling made his stomach turn cold. He opened the door, and Zoe rose from the couch wearing skinny jeans and one of Liam’s shirts—and the engagement ring he’d bought for her, stashed he thought forever in his nightstand.
“Take that off.” He pointed at the ring and paid no heed to the four dark witches sitting in his living room. He could feel their darkness like a chilly ocean breeze. He imagined their evil even ruffled his hair.
Zoe ignored his comment and rushed up to him, pressing a soft kiss against his cheek. “We have guests. They are your soldiers, my Dorcha.”
Liam eyed them each individually. They looked normal enough. They didn’t wear all black. They didn’t have tattoos of skulls that he could see. They weren’t covered in blood... or were they? Just like back at Sea Books, Liam saw things he shouldn’t. He pointed at them each in turn. “Murderer. Rapist. You killed your own mother, and you put a spell on your neighbor’s dog. Out.” He headed straight for the bedroom to change. Behind him, he heard muttered voices and Zoe’s soft apology.
By the time Liam stepped out of the shower and into an old pair of jeans and button-down, the house was quiet. He was giving himself a quick shave when Zoe stepped into the doorframe at his back.
“We need to get that pendant away from her.”
He paused with the straight razor at his throat. “She never takes it off. With good reason. It heals her. Almost immediately. I’ve seen it.”
“Precisely why you need it.”
He ran his razor under the tap and continued along his jaw. “I told you to take off that ring.”
“You intended to give it to me.”
“That was before I knew I was under a love spell.”
“It may have started that way, but it’s not like that anymore. I want to be with you.”
“You want my power.” He tapped the razor on the edge of the sink. “Which is growing, by the way. Should be able to level a city block by tomorrow.”
She stepped further into the bathroom, fingers toying with the engagement ring on her left hand. “And we are all here to help you.”
“You’ve known me my entire life?”
“Yes.”
He toweled off his face and turned to her. “Did you know my parents?”
“No.”
“But you killed them.”
Zoe didn’t even blink. “How—”
“You’d be surpsied what I can see now. You made them sick.”
“They didn’t know what to do with you. They were white witches, Liam, with a prophecized dark witch son. I’m surprised they let you live as long as they did. I saved you.”
He nodded and tapped his fingers on the counter, the tips of which burned bright blue. “There was something else you destroyed. I can’t see it, but I can feel it. What was it, Zoe?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She reached out her hand to touch him, but he reached his fingers out and zapped her. She shrieked and pulled her arm away, cradling her hand.
Liam backed her into a corner. “It matters.”
Her eyes darted over his face, and for the first time in their relationship, she actually looked scared. “It was nothing. Just a painting.”
He thought of Sybil. “A painting.”
“Your mother, she was a seer. When you were born, she painted a...”
“Tell me.”
“She painted your one true love.”
Liam’s jaw clenched. “Cyan.”
“I destroyed that painting for us.”
“But I remember it now.” He did—remembered seeing it on an easel in a sunlit library in a mansion he barely knew, his family’s home. The memory had been hidden, buried deep, but now he understood why he felt like he’d known Cyan the moment he saw her. “You destroyed that painting for you, because you knew I would meet her eventually. Fate demanded it. But maybe if I had enough of your love potion pumping through my veins...” He shook his head. “Get out, and take that fucking ring with you.”
“What?”
“Get out!” he roared.
“Liam, you can’t do this without me.”
“I almost just killed Drake Burroughs. I can do anything I want. Do I need to make you leave?” He could feel it, his eyes gone fully blue, and based on Zoe’s expression, she saw it, too, and backed away.
“I will serve you until the end, my Dorcha,” she said and closed the front door behind her.
With her gone, Liam poured himself a much deserved glass of wine and sat in the silence of his empty condo. Even the city outside seemed hushed. He laughed a little, thought about the razor in the bathroom, and drank
more wine. He didn’t hear anyone creeping on his porch, so he jumped when a quiet knock broke his bloody reveries.
He tried to read whoever was out there but couldn’t. He approached and asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
He leaned his forehead against the closed front door. “You shouldn’t be here, Cyan.”
“Let me in.”
He opened the door, and there she stood, blonde braids piled high on her head. The gaslamp on his porch made her skin glow gold as shadows danced over her full lips.
“Are you even able to come in?” he asked, remembering Sybil’s powerful spell.
Cyan stepped forward, and he stepped back as she crossed the threshold into his home. The yearning to touch her almost overwhelmed him, so he put his hands in his pockets.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about today,” he said.
She moved close enough for him to smell the scent of her leather jacket and tilted his chin down with the tip of her finger. “She healed your vision?”
He nodded. “She said I didn’t need to hide anymore.”
“Is she here?”
He shook his head. “And she’s not coming back.”
“But you love her.”
“I love you.”
Cyan’s gaze moved away from him, toward the floor, and she took off her coat, stepping away to lay it over the back of a chair. “White witches are quickly arriving to help me. Daddy says he’s spotted some dark witches, too.”
Liam thought about the strangers in his condo earlier.
“We don’t have much time.”
“For what?” he asked.
She stood in front of him again and reached out her hands. She unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, then the second before he stopped her.
“Cyan.”
“I want to feel you before...” A distressed wrinkle appeared between her eyes. “Please, Liam.”
“This will only make it worse when you have to kill me.”
She pulled her hands free from Liam’s grip and continued unbuttoning his shirt. He pressed a kiss to her forehead when her fingers pushed the material apart.
She leaned her nose against the center of his chest. “I’ll miss the way you smell.”
Magic Flame (Enchanted Book 3) Page 19
