by Laken Cane
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“It’s a spell,” she said. “Whoever is following us is powerful.” She closed her eyes, then said what she’d been thinking since her light had been blocked “And I think I know who it is.”
He tilted his head. “How could you possibly know who is following us?” He frowned. “Becky Bates?”
“How do you know about Becky?”
“I saw you put her and her cat into the woods.”
She glared at him. “I called for you. Why didn’t you answer?”
He brushed the question away with an impatient gesture. “Who is following us, Abby? I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
“What we are dealing with,” she said. “I think it’s my father, Henry Cameron, Wizard of Waifwater, traitorous asshole.” She took a deep breath, her voice rising with her anger. “Acadia Desrochers’ bitch.”
For a moment there was nothing. No movement, no sound, nothing. Then, laughter floated out of the darkness, wrapping around her like a familiar but hated blanket.
“Good girl,” Henry whispered, and that whisper floated on dark wings toward her. It danced around her, teased her, immobilized her.
But then, years of suppressed rage burst from her. She lifted her staff and ran toward him—toward his voice—murder in her heart. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to tear him to bloody pieces, burn him, bash in his brains, and stomp on his face until it was bits of bone and gore.
The hunger overpowered her. It devoured her. It was her.
Only it wasn’t.
Oh, some of it was, and quite understandably.
But the bulk of it, the steaming piles of hatred and fury and disgust and bloody need and black grief and such infinite malicious evil that Abby couldn’t fully comprehend it…
That belonged to her sister.
That belonged to Jewel.
And she was going to kill Henry Cameron.
Chapter Fourteen
She heard, vaguely, Trace yell at her to stop, stop, Abby! But she was beyond listening. There was only the swirling chaos inside her.
Jewel held the reins of Abby’s mind.
Jewel, even more than Abby, wanted the satisfaction of killing Henry Cameron—even more than she’d wanted to kill Acadia.
Abby hadn’t known.
She’d left that churning malevolence inside the pocket with her mother. How then, had Basilia escaped the black, endless hole that was Jewel’s soul?
No one could stop her. Not even Abby.
Not even Acadia.
Especially not her father.
It was only then that Abby realized she didn’t want Henry dead. She’d been hurt, miserable, and angry, and her resentment would always be there.
But after all those years, after everything that’d happened, he was there, within reach. He wasn’t dead.
He was her father, and she wanted him to come home.
Basilia would be overcome with joy. Henry could end her years of lonely sadness and endless waiting.
“Father,” Abby screamed. She had to fight Jewel for her voice, and still the word came out harmonized by a raging demon.
Jewel howled inside Abby’s mind, clawing at the walls that held her, and then, like a puff of smoke, the girl was gone.
Just gone.
And Abby understood exactly what that meant. Jewel was coming into the pocket. She was coming for Henry.
Whatever had kept her from accompanying Abby no longer stood in her way. She cared about nothing but killing Henry.
“Father, please,” Abby screamed, again. “Let me see you. Let me help you. Jewel is coming!”
Trace was there, suddenly, as his wolf. He was a shadow that spread across the ground like spilt ink and loomed over her like a black mountain.
For a second, she paused, awed, stunned, and not a little afraid.
That was what his curse had stolen from him.
How horrible that must have been for him.
Then she raced on, determined to find her father before Jewel did. Maybe she could protect him from his youngest daughter.
Maybe.
She caught her foot on something and flew through the air, then hit the ground hard enough, nearly, to break her ribs. The staff didn’t fly from her grip, but clung to her hand when she would have lost it.
The hounds milled around her, uncertain, unable to catch the scent of the intruder. The shadow wolf poured over the ground, edging around them as he searched for a wizard none of them could see.
Then Abby felt his presence a second before he appeared. Her father. He knelt on the ground before her, his hand out.
“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice cracked and old and raw like a mountain of glass had been shoved down his throat. “Abigail.”
He looked different than the faded memories she had of him. Old. So very old. His hair was long and uncombed, hanging listlessly over thin shoulders. His face was as weathered as an ancient barn, ruddy, lined, and peeling. His lips were bloodless and chapped, and a gray beard hung to the strip of leather he used to cinch the too-large waistband of his pants. He held a staff in his hand, one longer than hers but just as beautiful. It was the one shining thing about him.
His eyes were the same vivid blue, but they flinched and darted and held the tiniest spark of madness. He’d been inside Waifwater Woods for years. Of course he’d be slightly mad.
“Jewel is coming for you,” she whispered.
“It is the spell,” he said. “Acadia put it inside her when your sister was a tiny thing. It would activate if she ever saw me again—once she came into her power. You must run, Abby.”
Abby shuddered. “She implanted a kill spell into her own child,” she whispered. “How could you have ever wanted a demon like that, Father. How…” She took a deep breath and pushed away the anger and resentment.
“I’m sorry, child,” he said. “I know you can never forgive me, but if you can believe I have never stopped loving you and your mother, that will be enough.”
He was broken, and he was alone.
He’d lost everything.
“Mother misses you,” she murmured, and reached out to take his hand.
But Henry was, once again, gone.
Jewel took his place.
She and Abby stared at each other, neither one of them moving, until finally Trace materialized beside them.
“What is happening?” he asked.
“Jewel?” Abby said. “Are you in there?”
Because Jewel’s eyes had gone crimson, just slightly darker than the red tinging her skin. Her black hair waved in the breeze that swirled around her. There was only death in her face.
She sniffed the air like an animal as she crouched on the ground, and when she opened her mouth to roar out her rage, her mouth was crowded with fangs.
Abby recoiled and screamed with her sister, not with rage, but with horror. There was nothing left of Jewel but the demon.
And the demon wanted to kill.
Abby wasn’t willing to let the demon have her sister. Most especially, she wasn’t willing to let Acadia have her. The demon witch would not win. She would not take Jewel.
Jewel was The Demon, but Abby was The Witch. And she would fight for her sister.
Sorceressssss…
The word hissed through her mind like a coiling snake, and she grabbed it with both hands and pulled herself to her feet.
The hounds stomped the ground and gnashed their teeth, their eyes as red as Jewel’s. Abby could feel them pulling at her, urging her to attack the demon.
Her hounds of hell were loyal to one person—her. And they were eager to soak up the overflow of power Jewel would throw at Abby. More than eager. They craved it.
Even if it killed them.
With Abby’s increased power came new awareness. When she’d paralyzed her familiars, they’d been forced to lie frozen on the ground with that hunger boiling their insides, unable to do a thing about it. Of course they wanted to protect her, but th
eir love and loyalty and protectiveness was tangled up in their overwhelming need to taste the magic.
No wonder Sadie had been so upset.
“Never again,” Abby whispered.
She and Jewel faced each other—Jewel continued to sniff the air around Abby as though the one she sought was hiding there, but she couldn’t see him.
Perhaps he was.
Henry Cameron had always been powerful, and Waifwater Woods would have magnified that power, just as it had for Abby.
Just as it had for Jewel.
“You’re under Acadia’s spell,” Abby told her, calmly. “I won’t let her hurt our father. I won’t let her force you to hurt him. We deserve our anger. She does not deserve hers.”
Jewel was behind those eyes—Abby could see her struggling to fight the spell. But not even Jewel would be powerful enough to scrub another witch’s spell. Especially not if that witch were Acadia.
Not without help, anyway.
“You’re not alone,” Abby told her. “I will help you.” She grabbed Jewel’s hand and squeezed. “Fight, Jewel. Fight your bitch of a mother.”
That was why Jewel hadn’t wanted to come into the woods with Abby. She’d known about the spell. She’d known what would happen.
Perhaps she’d thought the tether wouldn’t be enough of a connection to trigger the spell should Henry show himself.
She’d been wrong.
Jewel pulled her lips back from her fangs, those hideous fangs, and with a shriek that ended in a long, rolling growl, she wrenched herself away from Abby and fled into the darkness, in pursuit of Henry.
Once she’d killed him, the spell would break, and Jewel would be devastated at what she’d done.
Abby wasn’t going to let that happen.
She flew after her sister, the hounds at her heels, her rage growing as she ran. Rage at Acadia, who’d hurt them all.
Who continued to hurt them.
She caught sight of Jewel in the distance, and sent a ball of power streaking toward the girl. Jewel was too strong for the power to kill her, but if Abby could hit her with it, it would certainly weaken her.
She sent another white, sizzling ball of power, grunting in equal parts sympathy and satisfaction when Jewel stumbled.
The next one hit the demon in the back, hit her so hard she screamed and hung in the air for a few long seconds before she was flung to the ground.
Before she could rise, Abby was upon her. She pinned the demon to the ground with her staff. “Help me, Jewel,” she begged. “Fight with me.”
Jewel roared and struggled, and she fought not the demon witch’s spell, but Abby’s staff. Abby’s power.
And that power was enormous. Enormous. It unraveled inside Abby and clawed its way through her, until every part of her was churning with magic.
But Jewel was even stronger.
The spell was indestructible. The hatred—not hers, but Acadia’s—was insurmountable. Jewel broke free of Abby’s staff and flew to her feet, then sent a boiling red orb of power straight at Abby’s face.
Abby had a moment to think “Please not my face” before she hit the ground, everything black and red and agonizing, but then…
Her hounds were there, lapping up the power with a greedy delight, and the pain began to recede.
Abby flew to her feet, then raced toward her bespelled sister with a new determination. “I don’t want to hurt you, Jewel. Don’t let her make me hurt you!”
Trace shifted to his human form and stood in the shadows, well away from the two of them. “What can I do, Abby?” he shouted.
Jewel had her hands raised to send another zinger at Abby, but the shadow wolf’s voice made her pause. She turned to look at him, and mixed in with the demon’s rage came another look—and that one was pure Jewel.
Lust.
That was the moment Abby knew how Jewel would defeat the spell.
Acadia had forced her rage and hatred and pain into her daughter, because she’d predicted that someday, Jewel would be the one to face the man who’d hurt her so much.
But she’d neglected to understand that there were two other passions just as powerful as hatred.
Jewel loved her sister, and lusted after the sexy man who’d come into her deprived life.
And love and lust?
They were powerful.
And they were unpredictable.
“You lose, Acadia,” Abby whispered, and went to do everything she could to yank Jewel out of the blackness of the demon witch’s spell.
Chapter Fifteen
Demons were lust.
Need. Desire. Hunger. That was coded into them along with avarice, malice, and brutality. They’d been created with lust. Born with it.
Their beginnings were grounded in everything bad. Everything hurtful.
And though lust wasn’t normally a bad thing, a demon’s lust was not a human’s lust. It was…more.
It consumed them, that lust. It was tangled up with all the other things that made a demon a demon—like wickedness, depravity, rage, and narcissism—and that was what made a demon’s lust such a terrible thing.
A huge thing.
Jewel had come into her power in the pocket—and she’d become an adult. She’d possessed lust when she’d looked at Trace through Abby’s eyes, but it’d been the controllable lust of a half-demon with a filter between her and the object of her desire.
But that filter had been removed the second she’d stepped foot into Waifwater Woods. And she was no longer just the half-demon girl who lived in the pocket.
She was a woman fully grown.
And she wanted Trace.
She’d have to fight Acadia’s curse for him, though, because that curse, that spell, it wanted her to find Henry Cameron. It wanted her to kill.
Trace, his eyes a little too wide, stepped back, his hands up. “Uh, Abby? A little help?”
Jewel shuddered at his voice. She looked over her shoulder, torn between sexual lust and bloodlust, into the darkness of the woods where her father had gone.
And then she started to run after Henry.
Abby leapt at her and grabbed her arm. “Jewel,” she begged. “You can break free of her. Here, in these woods, you can do anything. Kill the curse, sweetheart. Kill it, and…” She shot Trace an apologetic look. “And have the beautiful man.”
Jewel hesitated. She tried to fight it. She tried. Her entire body stiffened and she grimaced, crying out. Then without warning, she grabbed Abby by the throat with one hand and her staff with the other. The staff shot sparks of power as it was choked, trying to hit its attacker, but Abby panicked. She clawed at the demon’s hand, unable to breathe, unable to think, and she began to die.
In Waifwater Woods, she could die.
She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she knew it.
As the world darkened and black spots and flashes of silver danced before her eyes, she called her magic. Her sister wasn’t the only one with darkness inside her.
The hounds attacked Jewel at once, teeth ripping strips of red flesh from the demons arms, legs, and back, but Jewel never wavered.
Abby dropped her hands and hung in Jewel’s grip, her stare fastened to her sister’s. “I love you,” she whispered. “Jewel. Don’t.”
And she called off her hounds.
Trace started toward them, and though the world was a cacophony of noise and pain, Abby heard only the roaring in her ears.
Help us, Father.
They were his daughters. He’d stayed in the pocket to keep them safe. Hadn’t he hidden himself away so Acadia couldn’t find them, so Jewel’s curse wouldn’t activate and cause the tragedy that was happening at that moment to become reality?
Hadn’t he?
“Daddy,” she croaked, though in her mind, she screamed.
Bloody tears leaked from Jewel’s eyes—Jewel’s, not the demon’s—leaving puffs of smoke as they burned a path down her cheeks.
Sadie and Elmer howled and bellowed and snarled, doing wha
t they could for her, but it wasn’t enough.
If Abby used her power, it would kill her sister. But it was either kill or be killed.
So she closed her eyes, and she started to build the power that would likely destroy the sister she loved.
Jewel threw back her head, opened her mouth, and screamed, and even as her fingers tightened on Abby’s throat, she fought.
She fought hard.
And finally, the very second Abby would have blasted Jewel with all the power she had inside her, Trace flung himself against Jewel’s back and wrapped his arms around her.
He bit her on the back of her neck and Jewel’s eyes widened. Almost imperceptibly her grip loosened on Abby’s throat and also on the staff. It flung itself from her grip, and Abby grabbed the opportunity with both hands.
She wrapped her fingers around Jewel’s wrist, whispered a spell, and began to help her sister struggle against the demon witch’s kill spell.
Trace’s eyes were steady and bright in the dark perfection of his face. He put his lips to Jewel’s ear and murmured words Abby could not hear.
And he captured the little demon’s interest.
The darkness must have sensed it was losing its grip. Angry power flared so brightly in Jewel’s eyes that Abby was blinded for a few seconds—and when she could see again she saw that Jewel was once again aware inside her own head.
She wasn’t in the clear, and she was still struggling, but she was stronger.
Still, she was tangled up in Acadia’s spell, and it was going to take a little more work to extricate her.
Abby caught a glimpse of her father’s face as he swept out from behind a tree and crept closer.
If Henry had tried to help them, the progress they’d made would have been lost. Jewel’s demon would have likely killed them all.
He’d known, even when Abby hadn’t considered that possibility. Being clutched in the cold, bony arms of death could muddle a witch’s thinking.
“Camilla,” Abby commanded, hoarsely. “To me!”
She held out her hand, and the staff flew to her, hitting her hand with such force that her entire arm went numb. “You’re stronger than anyone I know,” she told Jewel, her voice scraping over her raw throat. “You can kick her ass.”
