Witch's Brew - Spellspinners 1 (Spellspinners of Melas County)

by Heidi R. Kling

  “Oh, yeah, it’s fine. This is…Logan.”

  Jonah nodded at him. Logan nodded back.

  That was about as friendly as it was going to get.

  “Do you need help here, Lil?” The barista stood between them like some kind of hero. “Here. I thought you might be cold.” He handed her a knitted blanket, clearly wanting to wrap it around her himself. Logan read Lily’s mind. She didn’t want Jonah to make a scene.

  “Thanks,” Lily said appreciatively. She accepted the gesture and hugged the quilt around her shoulders.

  She wasn’t cold down by the water. Logan was keeping her warm.

  Wasn’t he?

  In the moonlight, Lily looked utterly luminous. If only this jackass barista would get out of their way and let them finish their conversation.

  “So,” Jonah said, his mouth pursed.

  Lily’s eyes fluttered from one boy to the other.

  Fire throbbed through Logan’s body. He had to squeeze his hand shut not to pounce this tool. Count backwards from ten. Nine, eight, seven…

  “It’s okay, Jonah. I’m fine,” Lily said finally. “We just need a few more minutes.”

  When he thought Lily wasn’t looking, Jonah glared at Logan. Obviously he had no idea what kind of danger he was putting himself in messing with a warlock. “If you’re sure…”

  Lily touched the human’s wrist. “I’m sure. I’ll be right back.”

  “You know where I am if you need me,” Jonah said, but he held his eyes on Logan’s the whole time.

  Logan resisted the urge to bring him to his knees with a sudden stomach cramp.

  Don’t be like him. Don’t be like Jacob.

  Just because you can hurt him, doesn’t mean you should.

  A voice. His conscience. Where was that coming from?

  As if Lily could sense his inner conflict, she grabbed his wrist again, and pulled him away from the humans.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” she said. With a sharp tug on Logan’s forearm, she headed out toward the inky shore. He ran his fingers down her wrist and tangled his fingers through hers. Immediately he felt the same surge of the energy he had at Black Mountain. Giggling, she untangled her fingers, like he’d shocked her. Which he probably had.

  When they reached the spot where the water wet the sand, Lily sank down onto her knees, pulling him down too.

  He could get used to all this pulling.

  “So what were you saying?”

  “Before we were so rudely interrupted by that walking cone of cotton candy?”

  Lily narrowed her eyes. “Jonah is a nice guy. Don’t make fun of him.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You should be.” She wasn’t kidding when she said that. She leaned back from him, letting go of his hand.

  “I really am sorry. Something happened to me yesterday. I’m not quite myself.”

  Resting his palm on her shoulder, he cut right to the chase. “Tell me about your amulet.”

  “Tell me about yours first.”

  Digging into his pocket, he pulled out Lily’s stone. The jewel flashed through the white handkerchief, which was starting to smoke. Before the orange embers ignited the cloth, Lily blew them out.

  “Tell me its power.”

  Turning slightly, she lifted a blanket of wave-white hair. Inching closer to the soft spot on the back of her neck, Logan ran a finger across her silky flesh. “Give it back first,” she said, an alluring whisper in the night.

  “Better?” he asked, as he clasped the chain, his mouth so close to her face, he could taste the lilies on her breath.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He crouched in front of her in the wet sand. “I need to know more about it, Lily. I’ve given you no reason to trust me, but your necklace has inexplicable power over me. It…takes care of me. And I need its protection.” Logan paused, trying to figure out how to word something so important.

  Lily’s sea eyes glowed in the moonlight as he told her about Jacob’s aging, and how Jacob had poisoned him and Chance. Her look made him brave enough to take both of her hands in his own.

  “Do you trust me?”

  Lily

  “Yes, I do. And I hope you trust me too.”

  Logan sat in the sand, the warmth of his hands soaked me up, like I was melting from the inside out. I had to force myself to keep up a defense. To remember what Iris warned, “No matter what happens, remember he’s a warlock.” True, Logan had some of the signs of the Roghnaithe, but I hadn’t seen a mark.

  He could be as evil as Jacob for all the proof I had.

  But even for a warlock, this would be too cruel. I’d rather have him triumph over me in the Stones than manipulate me…emotionally like this.

  “Lily, please.” His stare was so deep that I felt him, felt his truth. My whole body sprang to life under his gaze, telling me something my mind couldn’t wrap itself around. “You know I’m not evil.”

  “I guess I do.”

  “How do you know?

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I just feel it.”

  He bit his bottom lip and held my eyes with such intensity I thought I might burst into smoldering flames. “I’m completely untrustworthy. I’m your enemy, yet you believe me.”

  “Yes.”

  His neck slung down when he mumbled, “I’m trying to be better.”

  I knew next to nothing about Logan. About his past, how he ended up at the Academy. I wanted to know everything. Why his eyes were smeared windows with cracks so small you can barely see them, but you knew those dings would spread longer, wider, cragged, and broken until they shattered, slicing everything until they bled.

  Logan wanted to be better than what he was raised to be, who he was raised to be. I knew this. Most importantly, I needed to know whether or not he bore the art of a broken rose moon. Because if he did, maybe we could figure out a way to be together, like the ancients.

  We could fight for that.

  Fight for us as we fought to save our magic.

  Reaching out, I gently moved a lock of hair away from those tortured eyes. “I know you are.” My words came out even more tenderly than I planned. My fingertips, with a mind of their own, brushed over his warm skin.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you before,” he said.

  My eyes opened wide, surprised once again I was the subject of his intensity. So I joked, “I’m a witch. There aren’t many girls like me.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I mean someone so forthcoming. So honest about how they feel. I envy that.”

  Pause. An exchange of shy smiles. Confessions like this, well, they sort of take your breath away.

  “So tell me something about it.”

  His face was so close I could feel warm breath on my cheek. The hair rose again on my arms, shivery dandelion goosebumps. Surveying his shadowed face I admitted, “It’s hard to explain, but…you may have something to do with what I’m…discovering. I have a question I need to ask you.”

  He pulled his hood on, stared out at the sea. “That was a whole lot of vague, Lily. Tell me something real.”

  “I looked up your kind of amulet. It’s like mine only with darker colors and your amulet had all kinds of powers—stuff our coven has never seen.”

  Facing me now, his forehead wrinkled with curiosity. “Really? My charm has never done anything with me. The whole time I’ve had it.”

  “Maybe it was dormant with you for some reason. It’s an amulet that offers protection to its owner. I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but you should know that it could be extremely powerful, Logan. In the right hands.”

  Logan glanced past me. “A witch’s hands.”

  Speaking of hands... “Give me your palm,” I said.

  “You going to study my lifeline?” he said wryly.

  “Something like that.” I lifted his hand, flipped it over, studying his damp palm. There in the center of his palm was a black mark. A burn.

  “Did you transfe
r my burn from the Witch’s Brew onto yourself?”

  He looked away, snatched his hand back. He shoved it into his pocket. “I didn’t want you to be hurt.”

  I gently pulled his hand back to me and held it to my lips like he had mine. Under my kiss the scar faded into new, pink skin.

  I felt his gaze on me but kept staring at his hand. Had to practically sit on my own to keep from tangling my fingers through his.

  “Perhaps our amulets were switched at birth.” Logan half-grinned, but his brow was still furrowed in thought.

  “If we’re related, I’m going to kill someone.” It was the closest I’d come to admitting how much I genuinely liked him.

  He laughed. An honest, true laugh. “So…can I have mine back now?”

  I sat, waiting, while the words stuck to the night sky like stars waiting to be lit. I had a gut feeling that it was too soon to return it but I wasn’t sure why.

  I stared down at his hand in my lap. Then felt his fingers on my cheek, tipping my face to look into his eyes. “If we’re related, the universe has a seriously twisted sense of humor.”

  I froze under his mesmerizing look. His lips were so full. His eyelashes were so dark and spider-leg long. His chin was peppered with new growth. I longed to trace the outline of his black sand jaw. Focus. “It’s in my bag at the bonfire.”

  “Are you going to go back to him then?” he asked.

  I glanced back at the fire and saw Jonah, waiting. “I don’t know. I should, but I don’t want to just yet.”

  Logan sighed. For a second, I was afraid he was going to get up and leave. Instead, he leaned back into the sand, his sinewy arms splayed out like bent wings behind his head. “See that star?” he asked, after quiet moments passed.

  “Which star?”

  “You could see better if you lay back. I won’t try anything I swear.” When I raised my eyebrows he covered his could-be-misconstrued-as-romance tracks, “See? No weapons.”

  Heart pounding, I leaned back into his outstretched arm.

  “Lily, that was quite a treasonous move,” he said softly, as our eyes locked and I felt our breath begin to fall into rhythm.

  “You’re the one who initiated this whole lay-down-for-a-better-view thing. You committed the first act of treason.”

  “Duly noted. Since the crime has already been committed…” he wrapped his strong hand around my shoulder, turning my body against his and pulling me in close.

  I smiled into his sweatshirt. He smelled like euca leaves and magic. Wet sand and safety. How could my archnemesis smell like safety? How could I be snuggling up with a warlock on the beach in public and care not at all about the dire consequences?

  Which reminded me. Lifting myself on an elbow in the sand, and a hand on his chest, I lifted my head so we were face to face. “I should mention if you’re playing me, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. Congression will award me a medal of honor and I will be worshipped for the next seven centuries as Warlock Slayer Supreme…”

  “I thought you said I might be the Roghnaithe. What good would I be to your coven dead?”

  He cupped my face in his hot hands, and pulled my face toward his, kissing a line from my forehead down to the tip of my nose, while I quivered all over. Whether he was or wasn’t our chosen Spellspinner, the way he kissed me and I kissed him back told me he was certainly something.

  We were certainly something together.

  “Lily?”

  “Hmm.”

  The muscle in Logan’s cheek contracted. He inched back. “I didn’t say anything.”

  The energy in the air shifted. We weren’t alone. I sat up straight, shielding my eyes from a bright light.

  “You didn’t come back and I thought you might be in trouble.”

  “Jonah—oh I’m sorry! I’m fine.” Guiltily, I jumped up, wiping sand off my yoga pants. “We were just…”

  Making out?

  Totally embarrassing. Not to mention hurtful. I came to the bonfire with Jonah—I shouldn’t be down here in the sand with Logan.

  I glanced down at him. Logan. Propped up on his elbows in the sand, a slow stretch of a smirk playing on his lips. You aren’t helping.

  Sorry.

  I could so tell he wasn’t and I flipped him a look to let him know.

  “But obviously you’re perfectly fine.” Jonah looked like his cat just got run over by a semi-truck.

  “Jonah, hey. I’m sorry. Really.” Normally I might try and get myself out of this with some white lie: I was on my way back. I was just leaving. I fell onto Logan’s lips? Yeah, right. I owed him more than that. So I simply, honestly apologized as Jonah glared at Logan like he drove the fourteen-wheeler with matted fur on its tires.

  “It would have been nice if you had told me you were going to be gone all night. Or your sister. She was freezing, so I dropped her off at home with your stuff promising I’d come right back to look for you. But clearly you were fine so I didn’t really need to be scrambling all over the beach with a flashlight like an idiot.”

  “You’re not an idiot, Jonah. You’re a great friend.”

  He made a noise like pft. I thought he was acting sort of petulant. I mean, I was only gone a half hour at most. “I’m surprised Daisy wanted to go home. It’s still so early…”

  “Lil, it’s one a.m.”

  “What? We were talking for…Really?”

  I didn’t wear a watch. I told the time by watching the sun and moon’s positions in the sky. I glanced up. He was right.

  Select a choice: Logan Flees/Fights Jonah

  That’s when I heard a splash and saw a lanky figure dive under the waves.

  Logan sprung to his feet, glaring at Jonah.

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  Breathe

  We heard a splash. The spot where Logan had been sitting was now an indentation in the wet sand.

  “Guy really knows how to make a splash at the end of a romantic evening. Nothing says, ‘Hey, let’s do this again’ like an unannounced retreat into the ocean,” Jonah said.

  He had a point. But still the pinch in my heart made me defend Logan. “He doesn’t like goodbyes.”

  When Jonah snorted, I felt like he’d tossed my humanity right into my face. A witch shouldn’t be upset if a boy ditches her on the beach. I should be above all that. I could hear Camellia on the subject: “Rejection, inferiority—those are dark feelings created to weaken us. Don’t let them crawl under your skin. Reflect them back into the universe.”

  I tried, imagining invisible flecks of Logan’s rejection lifting off my skin, letting each bad feeling float into the darkness like a thin, smoldering ash.

  I waited to feel better. When that didn’t work, I kicked at the indentation where his elbows had pressed me into the sand.

  Why would he just take off into the sea? Was he trying to tell me something?

  As I was asking myself the question, the answer swam into my head.

  He dove into the water and disappeared to tell me he could Breathe.

  Logan

  He had to get wet. He didn’t want to attack the barista, and he knew if he hung around watching him pine over Lily, he wouldn’t be able to resist.

  Besides, he wanted Lily to know that she was right about him. That he could do things other warlocks couldn’t.

  Leaving Lily on the sand, he sprinted down the shore and into the waves.

  Diving under a mammoth wave, he swam, with swift strides; so far out he could barely see the shore. He watched her the whole time, of course, never taking his eyes off her. She stared out at him too, her eyes shining like stars before she turned back to the barista and talked to him.

  Logan swam ou
t farther and farther until he couldn’t see her anymore, then flipped under the water. In a jealous fit, he swam fervently to the bottom, kicked off the cold sea floor, and jetted back to the surface.

  He was never going to get this right.

  But he had to.

  Had to figure out a way for them to be together without risk.

  Impossible.

  He had to figure out the impossible.

  Dark, churning water tugged on his body, daring him to go out farther. The feeling of her consumed him. The fragrance of lilies perfumed the sea. Logan’s eyes darted to the left and the right. Nothing. Only ripples.

  Then suddenly, he felt a tug on his ankle, and was yanked under the sea like a victim of a shark attack. He flailed, fighting the grip, expecting some malicious sea serpent and seeing a girl, a siren with hair floating around her face like strands of gold.

  Her eyes shone like sapphires. Don’t ever ditch me like that again.

  Lily! Where did you come from? I just saw you on the shore with that guy and now you’re…

  You think you’re the only one who needed to cool down? She smiled, drops of water kissing her face.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into her.

  You aren’t mad?

  You wanted to tell me you had another sign of the Roghnaithe; you wanted to run so you wouldn’t beat up Jonah? No, I’m not mad.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist, and felt her body press into his.

  “Don’t tell me you can fly, too?” she said, her mouth on his ear.

  “Not that I know of. But that doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  Lily

  Not Even Us.

  Not even a witch could breathe underwater.

  I told Logan the story of my first breath at sea as we weaved effortlessly together through seaweed gardens, schools of tangerine fish, our legs kicking in unison.

  Fingers entwined, I followed him into the shadows behind a pink castle of coral. Under the water, his eyes shone like sapphires. Pulling me close, I wrapped my legs around his waist. Felt a fire burn. He pulled me deeper, his lips grazing my cheek as if he was whispering a secret in my ear.