Magic Bound

by Theresa Kay

  There’s tightness in my chest that won’t go away, and my stomach really wants to give up its contents all of a sudden. What kind of spell did they hit me with? I shake my head to clear the lingering fogginess, but it’s not going away. Shit.

  I sit on the bench and put my head between my knees. I thought this was over. Why is it coming back? My chest tightens again, this time painfully, and heat races down my limbs.

  Someone jogs up beside me. “Hey, are you okay?” It’s Penny. What’s she doing out here? She rubs a hand over my back. “You’re burning up.”

  “They took Isobel. Something’s wrong. They hit me with a spell, and I don’t know . . .” I raise my head to look at her. “I don’t feel right.”

  Her eyes widen. “Your eyes . . .” She leans away from me, a hint of fear on her face. “They’re different.”

  “What do you mean?” The question is more of a cough as my throat grows tight.

  She studies my face. “For a second there they flashed gold, but it looks like they’re fading now.”

  What the hell?

  Along with whatever weird eye thing, my unease is fading too. Then, as my body begins to feel like my own again, the effects of the spell disappear completely. That was all kinds of weird.

  “I need to find Burke. Someone took Isobel. I think something bad is going to happen to her.”

  “Okay . . . and how would Burke help with that?”

  “I don’t know! He’s an adult. They’re supposed to do adulty things and know how to solve problems.” The emotional reaction held back by the spell comes in full force, and hysteria rises in my chest. None of this makes any sense. None of it.

  “Let’s go then. I think I saw a light still on in his office.”

  His office? At the back of the building? What the hell was she doing there?

  But I don’t have time to allot those questions more than the tiniest of brain spaces, so I brush them away. Later. I can ask her about it later.

  The two of us make our way into the main building. The lights inside are off, but the lock opens for us, and we go inside and head toward the stairs.

  Two thin strips of lights line either side of the stairwell, enough to see by but also making the stairwell that much creepier. Four flights up, that hallway is deserted too. Why is Burke in his office this late? Is he always in his office this late?

  We reach room 419, and Penny was right. There’s a hint of light at the bottom of the door, a clear sign that Burke is in his office . . . or someone is anyway. I knock gently, but there’s no response. I try again, louder this time. A voice calls out for us to come in. I push the door open and enter the office, shocked to find Burke and Tristan sitting across from each other at the small table in front of Burke’s bookshelves with a chessboard between them.

  Tristan is the first on his feet. He rushes toward me and grabs my arms. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  Words won’t come. I’ve been nothing to him for weeks, and this sudden concern, the worry creasing his brow . . . it does not compute. My brain can’t even handle figuring out what the hell he’s doing here.

  I take a step backward—I can’t deal with him right now—and my gaze goes to Burke. “Someone took Isobel.”

  Burke springs to his feet. “Took her? From campus?”

  I nod, and the motion sends a small wave of dizziness over me. Whatever the hell this is, I don’t have time for it. “I was supposed to meet her at the library but after”— my eyes go to Burke—“the wonderful news earlier, I went back to my room and accidentally fell asleep. I was only a little bit late, but they already had her. I chased them, but they threw something at me that I’ve never even heard of much less experienced.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Burke, stepping forward and taking my arm.

  “The first witch threw a simple energy ball, and I dodged it. Then, the second witch threw one, and I dodged that one too, but I ended up directly in the path of some spell from the first one. I didn’t even hear them say anything. Can you cast spells without words? Is that even possible?”

  “It’s possible,” he says as he leads me to a chair. “But rare. There are only a few witches I know with that kind of power. What did the spell do?”

  “It paralyzed me starting at where it hit me and then traveling through the rest of my body. I’m not sure how long it took to wear off, but . . . Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Tristan’s face has gone almost green, and he takes a step back, his eyes firmly fixed on the ground.

  “Tell me more about the spell. What did it affect? Your whole body or just one component, like your muscles?” prompts Burke in a soothing voice.

  I think about it for a moment. “My muscles maybe? During the worst of it I had trouble breathing, and my heart felt like it was only pumping once a minute. Why?”

  His gaze darts to Tristan. “Because I know of the spell and who designed it.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother,” whispers Tristan. He clears his throat and speaks again, this time louder. “That spell was her second year project.” He lets out a huff of disbelief. “She’s also one of the few who could cast it without words.”

  “Are you saying . . .?”

  “That my parents are likely the ones who took Isobel? Yes. I am.”

  Tristan’s parents? They’re the ones who kidnapped Isobel? But why?

  Everyone in the room stares at me. I’m sure they’re waiting for whatever they’ve already figured out to hit me. And it does.

  “Are you kidding me?” I yell, jumping to my feet and advancing on Tristan. “Your batshit crazy mother kidnapped my roommate so you could be number one?” My rage turns to Burke. “I know the competition is fierce and people do dumb things like spell donuts to make people miss tests, but kidnapping? What the hell kind of school do you run?”

  Burke gives me a tight smile. “I don’t control the parents.”

  “But you control the goddamn wards, you control access, you control . . .” I throw my hands up in frustration. I don’t know what to do with this anymore. I turn back on Tristan. “Are your parents completely whacked? They’re so worried about their precious boy not being the best that they resort to kidnapping? What kind of sense does that even make?”

  “Why are you yelling at me? Do you think I asked them to do this?” He drags his hand through his hair, leaving it to stick up in unruly tufts.

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” I say with a bit of a snarl. “After all, you—”

  “You know what she’s like,” he hisses in a pained voice, and then, quieter, “You know what she thinks of me.”

  What she . . . ? A waste. That’s what she thinks of him.

  “She wouldn’t do it for me,” he continues. “I don’t know what her motives are, but it’s just as likely she hoped to throw you off. She’d do almost anything to be rid of you. Or maybe it’s some twisted warning to me because she knows—”

  “Are you saying this is my fault?” I clench my teeth to hold back the other words anger is begging me to spit at him.

  “No!” He drags a hand through his hair again. “None of this is coming out right.” His eyes find me and hold my gaze. “I’m sorry. For everything. I just . . . I’m fucking sorry.”

  I’m not sure what exactly he’s apologizing for at this point, but there’s true sincerity in his voice and his eyes, and this isn’t the time to hash out all our issues. So, I’m just going to go with it.

  “Will you help me then?” I ask.

  “Help you do what?” Tristan raises his brows.

  “Your parents took my friend, and I’m not letting them get away with it. I’m getting her back. I’m sure it’d be easier with your help, but I’ll do it alone if I have to.”

  “Not alone,” says Penny from beside me. “I’ll go with you.” I send her a questioning look, and she shrugs. “I owe you one—at least—and I’ve been to the St. James estate before, so I know how to get there.”

  “Wait a
second,” starts Burke. “This is a horrible idea. I’m sorry, but I cannot condone this sort of vigilantism. In the morning, I can go through the proper channels and—”

  “The spell the harpy hit me with . . . If I wasn’t who I am, if I didn’t have this weird raw power thing going on, what might have happened to me? Could it have killed me?” I have a good idea what the answer to my question is, but I need Burke to confirm.

  “Yes,” says Burke hoarsely. “Bernadette designed it to take down rogue vampires. It was meant to physically incapacitate them so they could be killed, but on a witch, the spell alone would . . .”

  “It’s settled then. She’s completely lost it.” Not to mention I’ve had it with this idiocy over rankings and kidnapping is like fifty steps too far. It’s time someone put a stop to it, and it’s a bonus that I get to take down Bernadette in the process.

  “I cannot—”

  “Sorry about this,” I say as I send a blast of energy at Burke, knocking him over and sending him sliding a few inches across the floor. I cringe. I didn’t mean to hit him quite that hard. He doesn’t get up, but his chest rises and falls normally, so he should be fine.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Penny. “I’m not leaving my friend with that crazy witch any longer than necessary.”

  We make it all the way down to the quad before someone grabs my arm.

  “Are you planning on helping me or trying to stop me?” I ask without turning around. “Because I can tell you the latter would not go so well for you.”

  “I’m going with you,” says Tristan quietly. “I . . . I don’t want to see you hurt, and my mother is less likely to react poorly if I’m there.” A note of teasing smugness enters his voice. “Plus, I believe I’m the only one of the three of us who has a car, and there’s also the matter of the St. James family wards.”

  Forty minutes later, Tristan’s car, headlights dark and engine off, coasts to a stop at the bottom of a meandering driveway in front of a large residence on the Western edge of Albemarle County. The house—if something named Oakwood Manor can be called a “house”—is a monstrosity of beautiful architecture. Every eave, every window, every whatever those things lining the roof are called is put together in a picture of perfect symmetry. It’s as if one of those fancy regency-era manors fell out of the sky and landed in the middle of Virginia, and the Downton Abbey theme song plays in the back of my head as I stare in awe.

  Tristan’s staring up at the house too, an unreadable look on his face as his white-knuckled hands grip the steering wheel like some sort of lifeline. And maybe for him it is. If he doesn’t get out of the car, he doesn’t have to face his parents and what they’ve done by taking things a step—or fifty—too far. He can continue on in his perfect life with his perfect—

  No. That’s not right. Nothing has ever been perfect for him. He’s just pretended it has been.

  But for all his faults, for all his arrogance, he’s here now, and he’s going against his parents. As horrible as they are, that’s still gotta be hard. And confusing. I rest a hand over one of his and wait for him to look at me. When he does, I squeeze his hand and give him a smile. The smile he gives me in return is strained.

  “Let’s go get Isobel,” says Penny as she hops out of the back seat in a strangely upbeat action.

  That’s right. We have a job to do. I slip my hand away from Tristan’s and exit from my own door.

  Tristan walks up beside me a couple seconds later, his eyes still glued to the house with a contemplative look on his face. “They’ll probably be keeping her in the basement,” he says. “It’s warded, but I should be able to get past them.”

  I glance up at the huge house, trying to picture what this basement might look like and where it might be. “What about servants or whatever? Do we need to worry about being seen?”

  “No. They sleep at the opposite end of the manor from where we’re going in.”

  My question was meant as a joke . . . kind of. I don’t know why I thought they wouldn’t have actual servants in a place this big. I can’t picture Bernadette doing any cleaning, especially not scrubbing the miles and miles of baseboards that must be in this place and, based on my observations of Tristan, I’m sure everything in there is squeaky clean.

  Tristan leads us around to the back and points to a low balcony about eight feet above the ground with a sliding door leading into the house. “My room is the best place to enter. My parents sleep in a completely different wing, and I set the wards on that door myself so they aren’t tied to any of the others.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” I say. “What do you think, Penny?”

  She nods. “Shouldn’t be too hard to get up there.” She runs and jumps, grabbing the bottom lip of the balcony and hoisting herself over the edge. It’s the type of skill she shouldn’t be showing off if she doesn’t want people to know her secret. She turns back to us and leans over the edge. “You next, Selene. I can grab your arms and help pull you up.”

  Tristan bends down to make a step with his hands, but I’m already running at the balcony or, rather, the side of the house right next to it. I jump, leading with my left leg and pushing into the wall and then away as I shove off and use the momentum to propel myself upward. My right leg lands in another step further up the wall, and I shift to the side to grab the edge of the balcony and pull myself over.

  Penny and Tristan both stare at me as if I have two heads. I give them a little smile and shrug. “Reid’s into parkour. He taught me a few things.” In a lower voice only Penny can hear, I add, “And I needed to downplay your little feat of athleticism.”

  She gives me a tight nod. “Understood.”

  Tristan is . . . not as graceful as the two of us. He has the upper body strength to pull himself up, but it takes him a couple tries to get enough height on his jump to get a good hold. He makes it up eventually, though, and then we’re in.

  In the darkness, I can make out very little, only enough to know his room is sterile, no pictures, no decorations, no personality. It’s kind of sad. He rushes us through without comment and leads us out of the room.

  The hall is quiet and dark, the only light the slant of moonlight through the windows lining the wall. The light is just enough to see by, and I can’t help but gawk at the money practically dripping from the walls. Every corner is clean, every tiny side table or whatever they’re called is polished to a perfect shine and clearly antique or at the very least super pricey.

  I feel out of place just walking down the hall, but Tristan . . . he looks like he belongs here. His shoulders are back, his chin tilted high, as if he owns the place. Which I guess he kind of does, or at least his parents do. I don’t think I could ever fit in at a place like this.

  He leads us farther down and takes a left into a slightly narrower hallway, once again lined with perfect molding and tiny, fancy tables interspersed between every third doorway. A gilded frame catches my eye, and I stop. It’s a portrait—a painted one of course—of the St. James family. Bernadette, Allister, a young Tristan, and a teenage girl. I lean closer.

  Tristan can’t be more than six in the picture, and his smile is wide, dimples on display, not a care in the world. The contrast between the boy he was then and the one he is now is almost unsettling. What happened to turn him into someone who’s alone in a crowd and rarely breaks into a real smile? And the girl . . . she looks somewhat familiar, but I can’t place why. Maybe it’s because she resembles Tristan so much, but something in the back of my mind tells me that’s not the case.

  She must be Tristan’s sister, Cecily, the one taken by shifters and, if I had to guess by Tristan’s age, this portrait wasn’t painted that long before she disappeared. She looks sad and empty, much like the older Tristan does now. It could just be because it’s a painting and doesn’t quite catch the emotion of the picture, but it’s a very good painting. Bernadette has a flare of ambition in her eyes and Allister’s have that same blandness his son’s so often do, so I have to believe the emoti
on, or lack thereof, on her face is deliberate. But why?

  “My mother hates that portrait,” says Tristan from beside me, the words brushing against my ear. I jolt in surprise, and he places a hand on my lower back. He uses the other hand to point at the painted version of himself. “She said it was ‘uncouth’ that my teeth are showing.”

  “That’s your sister, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s Cecily,” he says softly.

  Penny moves up on my other side, also studying the portrait. “She looks familiar. Where is she now?”

  “Dead,” says Tristan. “Not long after that was painted.”

  Penny’s brows pull together, and she tilts her head to the side. “I could’ve sworn . . .” She lets the words trail off and shakes her head. “I must be thinking of someone else.”

  The three of us continue to a door at the end of the hallway. The hinges creak as the door opens, revealing the top of a stairwell going down into complete darkness. I’m coming to hate stairwells. What happened to nice one-story ranches? I search for a light switch, but there isn’t one.

  “How are we—”

  I feel Tristan pull at the magic in the air and glance over to find him forming it into a ball in the palm of his hand. As he concentrates, he whispers a couple words, and a gentle glow emits from the ball. A light spell.

  He leads us down the curling staircase, me behind him with Penny bringing up the rear. About halfway down, my foot slips on the edge of a step, and I stumble forward. Tristan spins to grab my elbow and prevent me from plummeting headfirst down the stairs. Instead, I end up chest to chest with him, our faces close. A blush fills his cheeks. The light goes out.

  “Thanks,” I say, a bit breathless, more from adrenaline than him. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself. I almost fell down a flight of stairs for goodness sake. I have every reason in the world to be worked up.

  “No problem,” he says. I can’t see his face in the darkness, so I imagine a smile to go with it. He guides my arm back to the railing and then calls up the light again. If he’s curious why Penny isn’t doing it, he doesn’t ask. Eventually her secret will come out, and I’m not looking forward to Tristan’s reaction to that information. I suppose it’s good that Penny is here with us. Tristan finding out about her might go over smoother if I can use her helping us now as an example of “good” shifter behavior.