“How did that happen?” Braison scratched the back of his head.
Deacon grinned and wagged his eyebrows. “Come, let me teach you the way.” He slapped him on the shoulder, then crossed the hallway and pushed the side door open.
And then I was alone. The bell rang and echoed down the hallway, which meant I was now late for my next class. For the first time in my entire academic career…I didn’t care.
Deacon and Braison definitely weren’t headed to class since they went out the door that led to the student parking lot. They were probably ditching altogether.
I wasn’t quite ready to up and leave school, but that didn’t mean I had to go to class. I turned and walked down the hallway, then out the door no one used.
Chapter Ten
Tegan
Henley flew back and landed on the ground.
The demon, not Henley. I stepped away from the table, ready to attack again. With this demon, we had to be ready for anything. But at the same time, we needed to know what it wanted. There was a reason it possessed a witch, more specifically a Card of The Coven.
The Henley-demon groaned and rolled onto its hands and knees, then pushed up off the ground. I hadn’t meant to blast it. I wasn’t even sure which part of my magic I’d used. The demon took longer to get up than I’d ever seen it move. Is it playing with me?
“What do you want?” I held my hands out, ready to make my move.
It shook its head then turned to face me with wide blue eyes. Wait. BLUE eyes, not red.
“Tegan?”
I gasped. “Henley?” The demon always had red eyes, even when it was controlling her body. But the person looking up at me had big sapphire-blue eyes.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” Henley looked around with a dazed expression.
“Henley, hey, holy hell. Are you all right? What happened?” I moved toward her, but she jumped back like I might burn her.
“Don’t touch me!”
I flinched. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I had to. It was the demon—”
“Its not gone, Tegan!” Henley stepped up closer to me but didn’t touch me. “It’s coming back. Soon. We don’t have much time. If it feels your power, that will bring it sooner. Listen to me. I’m still in here, okay? I can see and hear everything.”
“I knew it! I told them.” I wrapped my arms around my waist so I didn’t accidentally touch her. “What can I do? Tell me how to help you.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t cry. “Tegan, you may not be able to save me. Don’t tell my brother though. Let him have hope even if it’s false. He needs it. You have to accept that you might not be able to save me.”
“I know that. But I’m going to try every damn thing I can, you hear me?”
Henley nodded. She ran her hands through her hair. Her sapphire gaze bounced around. “You found the Book of Shadows. Everything you need is in there. Read all of it. Read every single page, every word, every smudge. You’re more powerful than you even realize.”
“What can I do? What have you learned?”
“There’s a spell inside the Book that will block a demon from being able to possess you, but it will also block it from tampering with your mind. You must find this first. Do the spell on yourself, then do it on the rest of The Coven.”
“Won’t the demons realize what we’ve done?”
She shook her head. “No. You already prevented any more of the shadow demons from coming through. It’s only this one, and it’s way too comfortable with me. So they won’t realize you’ve protected yourself. But it will try and use mind control.”
“Okay. I’ll do that first. What else?”
She licked her lips and started pacing. “Next, you have to permanently close the Gap in Hidden Kingdom. No one on our side knows this, but the original Gap in Salem can’t be closed if the one here is open. It’s literally impossible. I know we’re running out of time before Samhain, but the Book of Shadows has the answer on how to do that.”
My stomach turned. She was right. No one on our side knew that. We would’ve gone all the way to Salem only to fail at the last minute. My pulse quickened. Adrenaline rushed through my body like electricity. “Is there a certain time we have to close the one here by?”
“Yes. The first quarter moon. You’ll only be able to close it on that night, at midnight.” She stopped pacing and looked me straight in the eyes. “The demons are going to use that night and your distraction against you to bring in a Greater Demon. There’s old legends that say the Aether Witch can kill a Greater Demon, but some say only Nephilim can. Don’t take that risk. Even if you can kill it, others will die before you can. Promise me you won’t take that chance.”
I pictured Tennessee. Then my twin, and the rest of my family. I nodded. “I promise I won’t risk it. We will close that Gap before it gets through.”
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. A growl sound rumbled out of her mouth. She cursed and shook her head. “Read that Book front to back every damn day if you have to. I’m sorry that the weight of this world has rested on your shoulders, but you are amazing. You’ve got this. I believe in you. Just read the Book, Tegan. Read it, okay?”
“Okay. I promise. I’ll read it. I won’t let you down.”
“I believe in you, curious kitten.” Her eyes flickered red then back to blue. She cursed and stomped her foot. She hissed then stared at me. “Now hit me again. Now!”
I threw my hands out and shot my black lightning into her chest again, this time bigger and harder than I had before because I meant it. I cried out as my friend’s body slammed into the grass. Oh Goddess, Henley. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Henley jumped back to her feet. Her eyes glowed red like lava. The demon was back. It arched one black eyebrow and smirked. “Your power gets stronger every time I see you, High Priestess.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. For reasons that I would dissect over and over when I was alone, I pulled it out and looked down at the screen. It was a text message from Deacon. I frowned and looked back up at Henley…except she was gone.
“Damn it.” I glanced around, but I knew she was gone.
That demon inside her liked to play the disappearing act whenever it could. My mind reeled. I felt like I was driving with a blindfold on. Everything had happened so fast. I wanted to call Royce and tell him I’d seen and spoken to Henley—actual real Henley—except I knew I had to get control of my emotions first. She begged me to let her brother have false hope, or potentially false hope. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But this was her little brother. She knew him better than I did, just like I knew Bentley. I would honor her wishes and pray it didn’t break him in the end.
She’d given me so much information to process. Too much. I needed to go sit in my room and think. My phone vibrated again with another text from Deacon. Out of habit and needing something to preoccupy my brain, I opened the Devil’s messages.
I told Braison our plan for the dance. He’s IN.
Meet us by my car in five minutes so we can discuss the details.
Chapter Eleven
Tegan
I was falling apart. It’d been four days, and nothing had progressed. That meant it was Thursday, and the first week of October was almost over. Our time was slipping out of our hands like grains of sand. We hadn’t learned anything about the demon’s plans, despite our twenty-four-hour searching. I kept going through the Book of Shadows for the spell Henley told me to find, but I hadn’t found it yet and I was starting to panic. Henley said the demons would try to tamper and manipulate our minds. I couldn’t fail at this. Everyone’s safety relied on me. But what if I’d already failed? What if someone had already been compromised while I floundered? I still hadn’t told anyone about my conversation with Henley, the real Henley. I wasn’t sure why either. It was a gut feeling. I saw her every day, too. Yet she hadn’t approached me since, and I had no idea what that was about.
To make matters worse, Tennessee was still in the infirma
ry. Every hour he wasn’t healed, my sanity grew thinner and thinner. It was too much. I was going to break.
Go inside. The infirmary doors were unlocked during the day. All I had to do was open them. I knew that. I’d been to see him twice a day, at least. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been pacing the front steps, but it wasn’t going to go unnoticed if I didn’t move soon. It’s just Tennessee. Ask for help. With the Book clutched to my chest, I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
“Oh, High Priestess,” the new young healer said from the bottom of the stairs. She held a stack of empty vials in her arms. “Back again?”
My cheeks warmed. I hugged the Book tighter. “He’s just helping me read these old spells,” I said in a rush. Then I raced past her so she couldn’t question me further.
I ran down the hall then slipped inside his room, locking the door behind me. When I turned, I found him watching me with his eyebrows raised. I sighed and leaned back against the door. Sometimes the sight of him took my breath away. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he was mine. He was so beautiful, stretched out on the bed in gray sweatpants with one leg bent at the knee. The sunlight coming in through the window on the far side of the room made his mismatched eyes twinkle. His skin was back to its normal glowing, luscious tan. With his high cheekbones and sharp jawline, he could’ve been on the cover of magazines, ruining men for normal girls like me around the world…even in a white fuzzy bathrobe.
I must’ve looked as much a mess on the outside as I felt on the inside because he frowned and turned the television off.
“Come here.” His voice was low and gravelly, like he hadn’t spoken much in a while.
My heart fluttered. I nodded and ran over to his bed, then climbed up to sit beside him. “Hi.” My voice was so soft I didn’t recognize it as my own. I was normally stronger than this. But the pressure was too much, and I felt like I was going to buckle under it.
“Hey.” He tapped my chin up with one finger. “Talk to me.”
“I…” I sighed. “I don’t know where to start.”
He cupped my face in one hand and dragged my mouth to his. He brushed his lips against mine, soft and slow until some of the pressure in my chest lifted. His kiss wasn’t passionate and heated, but it let me know he was there. The love and strength in his touch somehow always re-centered me. He put my soul at ease like nothing else could.
He pulled back far too soon, like always. “Now, try thinking out loud for me.”
“I need you out of here,” I blurted. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Mostly healed.” He smiled but it didn’t reassure me enough.
I untied his robe then pulled the fabric apart…and found a whole lot more skin than I’d been mentally prepared for. To my utter horror, I gasped. Normally he had a shirt on under, but it appeared he’d skipped that step today. All I found was more of his flawlessly tanned skin stretched tight over endless muscles. Heat rushed to my cheeks. My pulse quickened. I released my grip on his robe, and it slid halfway down his biceps. Butterflies bounced around in my stomach. My gaze wandered over his bare chest.
Shoulder, Tegan. Look at his injured shoulder.
I glanced up and found him watching me with heat in his eyes. I cleared my throat. “I… Sorry…I just…wanted to see your shoulder.” My cheeks burned.
He gave me one of those sideways smirks I loved so much. “Well, as you can see, it’s almost healed. The infection from the Old Lands is still in my body, so I can’t let my blood pressure elevate yet or it could—”
“Kill you?” I finished for him. When he nodded, I groaned and dropped my face to his chest. “I can’t…I can’t… You can’t…”
“I know, Kitten.” He kissed my forehead and ran his hand through my hair. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere. But I need you to talk to me.”
I groaned and sat up straight. My gaze immediately went down to his exposed chest. The pink, heart-shaped crystal of his glyph shimmered like it was lit from within. Those dark vines were a deep plum, covering his right shoulder and streaking onto his bicep.
“Tegan?” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “Think out loud, please.”
“You have pretty abs.”
His eyes widened. “Thanks? Anything else?”
“They’re very distracting.”
“I’m sorry.”
I sighed. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and ran my fingers down those perfectly sculpted abs. “I’m not.”
He shook his head and laughed. But then he sobered and tipped my face up to look him in the eyes. “Love, please talk to me. Every time you come in here, you look more rattled.”
“I can’t find the spell.”
He frowned. “Which spell?”
“The one to prevent the demons from being able to possess us or manipulate our minds.” I pulled the Book of Shadows into my lap and pressed my palm to the brown leather cover. “It’s supposed to be in here, yet I can’t find it. And I have to find it. Before we lose someone else. The Coven needs me to protect them, and I’m already failing. If I can’t find this one spell, how am I going to figure out how to close the Gap in Salem? How am I going to figure out how to save Henley? Everyone is counting on me and—”
He pressed his finger to my lips. “Breathe, love. It’s only been a few days. Putting this much pressure on yourself can be blinding.”
I groaned. “Will you help me look for it? That’s why I came here today.”
He smiled and patted the spot on the bed directly beside him. “I’m always here for you, whatever you need.”
I spun around so I was sitting next to him. “I’m so new to all this. I was hoping your knowledge—and fresh eyes—might do better than I have.” I opened the Book and focused my magic. Please show everything to Tennessee.
He inhaled as words appeared on the page. “Okay, so how do you know there’s a spell for what you said? I’ve never heard of one like that.”
Henley told me. But that wasn’t what came out of my mouth. Instead, I said, “Bentley told me.” I had no idea why I was lying to him. It made no sense to keep that a secret. Yet, there I was doing just that.
“Oh, okay.” He raised his arm and pulled me flush to his body.
The warmth of his skin chipped away at my frazzled nerves. I sighed and rested my face on his chest. My fingers went on a little field trip, tracing over the lines of his stomach muscles while he flipped through the pages. His heart pounded under my ear. It was the most beautiful sound—it meant he was alive.
“Yeah, that’s not distracting at all,” he said with a chuckle.
I froze with my fingers pressed to his skin. “Oops. My bad.” I giggled and wrapped my arm around his hips, just holding him tight.
I had no idea how long we sat like that, with me curled under his arm and my legs tangled between his, but finally he gasped. He tapped his finger on the page and whispered the words.
“Tegan, this is it. This is the spell you need.”
“Really?” I sat up straight and pulled the Book closer. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” He slid off the bed and peeled the robe off, then walked around to the counter. His sweatpants slid lower on his hips, revealing more skin my brain couldn’t handle.
“Are you—” My mouth froze when he turned around to face me. His pants were barely holding on to his body. I cleared my throat and forced myself to look at his face. “Are you supposed to be walking around?”
He shrugged and gave me a wicked grin. If he was intentionally trying to distract me with his perfect body, then it was working. He walked back over to the bed with the Book of Shadows in one hand and a tray of supplies in the other.
I smiled. Him being out of the sling and moving around like a normal person made my heart soar with hope. The thin mattress dipped under his weight as he curled up next to me. He sat the tray down in front of us.
“It’s only for the Aether Witch, but yeah, this is it.” He held the Book out and pointed to the page. “It
says after you perform it on yourself, it’ll show you what you need to make it into a potion to give to The Coven.”
I bit my lip and read the words under his finger. Well, I’ll be damned. He found it. I’d seen it a couple times before, too. There were many spells hidden in the book with a note saying Aether Witch ONLY. So I’d disregarded it, thinking it was something for me to explore after Samhain. I’m such an idiot. I rubbed my palms together, and rainbow mist spilled into the air. My magic was ready, and so was I.
According to the Book, all I had to do was place both palms on the page and visualize each member of The Coven I wanted to protect. That was it. The spell would work through me. As the Aether Witch, I apparently didn’t always need spells. I just had to ask my magic, and it would give it to me. The note also said the spell would show me what I needed to create the potion, but that I was to seek help from my potion master within The Coven. Easy enough.
I sat cross-legged on the bed and placed both my palms on the page with the spell. Tennessee’s warm fingers brushed over my neck as he pulled my hair out of the way. I pictured myself, the way I saw myself in the mirror. Then I imagined my twin, smiling at me from her bed before going to sleep. I pictured my soulmate as I’d seen him a moment ago, looking up at me with pride and love. My heart fluttered. One by one, I went through each Coven-mate, including Henley. Just in case.
When I finished, I pictured blackness and concentrated on breathing.
Pink and white flowers popped out from within the darkness. I didn’t know their names, but I memorized how they looked. Larissa would know. Crystals appeared at the bottom of my vision. Black agate. Hematite. Onyx. Somehow I recognized the differences. Amethyst. Clear quartz and citrine. I focused my thoughts on each stone until I was confident I’d remember them all. Next I saw burning sage and running water. But then I saw my own forearm, Marked with the roman numeral II – the High Priestess. A few drops of blood trickled over the Mark and dropped into a cauldron.
The Broken Witch (The Coven: Elemental Magic Book 4) Page 5
