Spell of Vanishing

by Anna Abner

  “You can trust Hugh,” Talia assured. “He’s been with me since I was in diapers.”

  “How can you be sure,” Cole asked slowly, carefully, “that he isn’t reporting to the cabal?” When she started to interrupt, he added, “The Dark Caster found your weakness. He could find Hugh’s as well.”

  “Impossible,” she said. “Out of the question. I trust him with my life.”

  He may be stoic and unshakable on the outside, but she’d known him long enough to recognize the depth of emotion he concealed below the surface.

  “This is a dangerous time to be trusting anyone that much.”

  Hugh had been her faithful servant since childhood. He’d never been harsh with her, never abandoned her. He was always there when she called. He’d told her he had once been a footman in a grand English home and had died of a fever. He stayed on earth to be of help to people like her.

  Talia trusted him implicitly.

  “That’s ridiculous.” She huffed a frustrated sigh. “None of us can get by completely on our own.”

  “I trust myself,” he said. “Or, I used to. After the nightmare spell, I’m not even sure I trust my own senses anymore. I could still be asleep and not know it.”

  “You’re awake,” Talia assured. “I promise.”

  As if to prove her wrong, he wavered on his feet, gripping the closet door to stay upright.

  “You’re a wreck,” she said. “You need to lie down.” She checked her watch. Quarter after four in the morning. They could both sleep for a few hours and still have time to put their plan into action.

  “I admit I’m having trouble staying awake.” He glanced at the bedstead. “You take the bed. I’ll bunk on the floor.”

  “Is it the only one?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  She, too, peered at the bare mattress and box spring on an old-fashioned metal frame in the corner. “No offense, but I’d rather not sleep on a serial killer’s childhood bed. Besides, you need it more than I do.”

  “I’m not sure I can fall asleep,” he said. “Or if I even want to, but I’ll accept your offer anyway.”

  He was afraid to go to sleep, obviously, after suffering the nightmare spell. She couldn’t blame him.

  She’d never been in one herself, but she’d cast one, and the dark magic had swelled inside her, making her physically ill.

  “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll clean up and find a place to sleep downstairs.” Not that sleeping in the murder house was the least bit appealing, but she had to admit it might be the safest option at the moment. She was exhausted. So tired she wasn’t tired anymore. Before long, if she weren’t careful, she’d collapse.

  Cole caught her eye. “You’ll stay one day?” The sincerity in his gaze did something to her insides.

  “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she answered. “We’ll contact Michael or Johanna in the morning.” She smiled half-heartedly. “Maybe another answer will come in our dreams.”

  He sobered. “I don’t want to dream.”

  “Do you really think you can kill the White Wraith?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I have to try. I can’t let the atrocities keep piling up without at least trying to stop them.”

  “That makes me really happy to hear.”

  She turned to escape, but his voice gave her pause. “Don’t leave the house,” he warned. “You’re only safe inside these four walls. I can’t protect you outside.”

  No one had been interested in protecting her in a very long time. Maybe never.

  Not her father. He was too absorbed with a long list of hobbies to worry what his daughter did. Besides, she was the good child. She didn’t need attention.

  Not Eric or any of the other men she’d dated. She was too smart and independent to need protecting.

  Not the cabal. She was to be used and discarded, never protected.

  But there was Cole Burkov, undeniably the one person who should hate her the most, wanting to keep her safe.

  A little choked up at the swirl of emotions his words brought up, she hurried down the stairs without another word.

  Though he remained upstairs, Cole didn’t settle down. From the kitchen she heard him cross the floor half a dozen times, open and close doors, and then end up standing on the rickety balcony. The spot where Milton Couser killed his first victim.

  Bad. Very bad. He couldn’t be in a healthy frame of mind to prefer that spot, of all spots, to spend time.

  What was he doing up there? Casting more spells? Curiosity getting the better of her, Talia climbed the stairs one more time.

  “I thought you were going to sleep.” A stray gust of wind caught the door and closed it behind her with a soft click. “Aren’t you tired?”

  There were no spell circles in sight, which meant no more magic. Just a wounded man suffering from insomnia. She shuffled atop the faded wood floor, uneasy in the swelling silence.

  He didn’t react to the sound of her voice, though he must have sensed her arrival.

  “The last time I slept,” he said in a monotone, “I stabbed my sister Caitlyn.” Finally, he glanced over his shoulder. She couldn’t see his eyes, though. Just dark shadows on his unshaven face. “I held her flat and pushed a knife into her body. Over and over until she and I were both covered in blood and gore.”

  “Cole…”

  “And then I did the same thing to my mother. My mother.” He stepped off the balcony, and the wood beneath creaked.

  Talia reached blindly for the door. “It wasn’t real.”

  “It felt real,” he exclaimed. “Every detail felt real. I held her lungs in my hand, Talia.” He dangled his palm, empty and clean, for her to see. “How can I ever fall asleep again?”

  “But there’s no one here to cast a nightmare on you,” she said, tripping over her words. “You’re safe.”

  He made an amused grunting noise. “I’m never safe. Not with this monster along for the ride.” He dropped his hand. “He rose to life inside me in a way he never has before,” Cole admitted. “In the dream he controlled my body. He killed my family. And he enjoyed every second of it.”

  At last, she found the doorknob and twisted it, but then hesitated to abandon him.

  “There’s no one inside you,” she said in an uncertain whisper. “It’s just flesh and blood. But I have to tell you how bad it’ll get for you if you keep missing sleep.” She swallowed, gaining momentum as she spoke about things she was confident in. Health care, nursing, healing people. “It can reduce your ability to think clearly, and it increases your risks for heart attack and stroke. And a whole bunch of other symptoms you don’t need right now. Take my word for it, as a medical professional, the best thing you can do for yourself is sleep.”

  With a resigned sigh, he lowered himself to the lumpy mattress.

  Talia stood over him. “How long has it been since you slept?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Days, most likely. “Well, you need to be at full capacity for whatever you’re planning because, dude, right now you’re about as threatening as a half-drowned kitten.”

  He caught her eye. “Do you really work for the Dark Caster?”

  Boy, wasn’t that a good question. Work for? Not exactly. Blackmailed by? Ding ding ding. “It doesn’t mean I want to see you hurt.”

  “I can’t tell the difference,” he mumbled, “between nightmares and reality.” His eyes drooped closed.

  “I know what to do. I can cast a sleep spell on you and give you good dreams.”

  “I don’t remember what a good dream feels like anymore. But you can’t summon spirits through my barrier spell,” he reminded her.

  “Can Hugh stand on the balcony and channel power from there?”

  Cole considered it for a moment. “That might work.”

  “Hugh?” Talia called. “I need your help.”

  He popped into being on the edge of the second story railing. “Miss, are you well?” he asked, his expres
sion impenetrable. “Has he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured. “But I need a little spark of your power to help him get to sleep.”

  Hugh gave her a look that spoke volumes. “If you wish.”

  There was sufficient dust on the wooden floor to draw a simple spell circle because there was no way in hell she was getting anywhere near Milton Couser’s glyphs. Talia knelt within its boundaries and then smiled reassuringly at Cole.

  It was hard to believe he trusted her enough to let her cast on him at all. It made her feel dirty and guilty. She wasn’t worthy of his trust.

  “Tell me your favorite memory,” she whispered. “The first thing that pops into your head.”

  “Skiing,” he blurted out. “In Aspen when I was kid. I couldn’t actually ski because of my heart, but I built a snowman and drank hot chocolate and stayed up late to stargaze from our patio.”

  He started to drift off, and Talia cast a spell, just a nudge really, to help him sleep and reminisce about snowflakes and cocoa.

  “Sweet dreams,” she breathed.

  With a sigh, he closed his eyes.

  Rising, Talia tiptoed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her. Movement at the end of the hall caught her eye, but she couldn’t tell if it was a monster or a mouse.

  Being in Cole’s murder house gave her a sick, unsettling itch under her skin. Thinking of sleeping in it sent her into a near panic.

  “It’s just a house,” she whispered to herself as she explored the downstairs. “Like any other house. Made of wood, nails, and plaster.”

  She decided the least creepy space to rest was the foyer. It was too small to seem cavernous, well lit through the front windows, and close enough to the door to make a quick escape if she needed to. Talia curled onto the wooden floor, making a pillow out of her bent arm.

  For a long time she fidgeted in her inadequate sleeping attire, too wired to rest. The dread was tough to subdue, even knowing Cole’s abduction of her was a ruse. Even assured he was a decent person, not a maniac.

  So, she stared at the opposite wall and listened to the foreign noises surrounding her. A scritch-scratch in the kitchen. Cicadas chirping in the bushes outside. A loose shutter tapping somewhere along the back of the house.

  Not for the first time, she sacrificed sleep wondering where Sylvester was bedding down. Or was he? Had they given him a comfortable place to rest? The same thing she’d thought to herself a hundred times in the dead of night when hope seemed impossible.

  The agony was not knowing.

  It was worse for her mother and sister who had even less information than Talia did. For them, Sylvester was—poof—gone. Though, she wasn’t sure knowing he was being held by sociopathic casters helped ease her fears any.

  And then she heard something she couldn’t immediately identify. A scraping, then a muffled oomph, and a panicked cry.

  Crap. She was such a weakling, her sleep spells didn’t put people to sleep.

  “Cole?” She bounded up the stairs, not even trying to be quiet.

  With his eyes screwed closed, he scraped his bare heel against the misshapen mattress. “No,” he growled. “I won’t.”

  Talia was afraid to touch him, nervous he would lash out. “Cole,” she snapped, hoping to yank him from the dream with nothing but the sound of her voice. “Wake up.”

  It worked. He seized up, stiff as old wood, and then sat, his eyes searching the dimly lit bedroom.

  Enough moonlight shone through the windows to illuminate the scars up and down both his arms.

  “It’s okay,” she soothed. “It was just a dream.” She stood uncertainly at the edge of the room. Maybe she shouldn’t have come. He would’ve woken without her help. Maybe it was better to let him work through his nightmares in his own way.

  Maybe she was making things worse.

  She was about to slip out when he clutched his knees to his chest and tried valiantly to stifle a sob. But it broke through anyway, a strangled, desperate sound.

  She’d never considered how deep the scars of a nightmare spell went, and her heart twisted painfully.

  “Am I awake?” he choked out. “Is this real?”

  “You’re definitely awake,” Talia said. Without meaning to, she squeezed his bicep, over-warm through his shirt. “I promise.”

  “I killed them,” he muttered. “I killed all of them.”

  “No, remember?” She removed her hand. “Dani was at my house. She’s fine. They’re all fine.”

  “It feels so real.” He sniffed hard and then curled onto his side, facing her.

  “It wasn’t real,” she said softly. “I promise.”

  His green eyes met hers. “I’ll end up killing you, too.”

  * * *

  Rebecca tiptoed, still moist from the shower, out of the master bathroom and across the floor to the walk-in closet. As she finished pulling on a short, summery dress the bed jostled.

  A moment later, Holden appeared in the doorway, sexy, tousled, and hard to resist. “You’re up early,” he greeted.

  “I was trying to let you sleep in.” Becca buckled her platform sandals, and then her cellphone beeped three times. New e-mail.

  “Ignore it,” he said, twisting long tendrils of her blonde hair around his fingers. “Just for a little while.”

  It was tempting. Very, very tempting.

  But she hadn’t been named Realtor of the Year by ignoring messages.

  She opened her phone and her frown grew more pronounced the longer she read. “Crap,” she exclaimed. “It’s from our contractor. He says our building permits were rejected. We can’t move forward.”

  He read over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”

  “Without approval to build,” she explained as she fired off a quick reply, “we are simply the owners of an empty lot on the north side of town.”

  He gave up reading and gently wrapped his arms around her waist. “How about we take the day off and practice casting? You might need the diversion with everything that’s going on.”

  It was the very last thing she wanted to do. “I couldn’t possibly,” she stalled. “With this nonsense happening I’ll have to meet with the builders. We have to find out what the issue is.”

  “David works at city hall,” he reminded her.

  That’s right. Dani’s new boyfriend was the city manager. “I may pay him a visit if I can’t get a quick answer. First, though, I want to see the rejected applications.”

  Holden invaded her personal space, his scent, his warmth, and his touch overpowering her will.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” he breathed against her mouth, “I’d think you were avoiding a conversation about magic.”

  Becca broke away before surrendering all her self-control. If he kept looking at her like that she’d agree to anything he asked. “Sorry, but I gotta go.” She hurried downstairs, grabbed her keys off the counter, and snatched her bag from the hook in the foyer.

  There were a million things to distract her, the building permits being number one.

  “Rebecca,” Holden called at the top of the stairs. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I know. Later.” And she rushed out, forgetting to say I love you.

  “You’re an idiot.” Her tagalong spirit, the snarky Jolie, joined her in the yard.

  “Go away,” Becca muttered as she got behind the wheel of her Lexus. She was not in the mood for third party critiques. She’d just failed to say I love you to the person she loved most in the world. The first time, that she could remember, doing so.

  She nearly reversed direction and ran back into the house to correct the mistake, which felt bigger and bigger the further from Holden she got.

  The spirit didn’t take the hint, but sat in the passenger seat like she owned it. “He’s sexy and sweet and totally in love with you, and you left him standing there.”

  “I know what I did.” She pulled onto the street and steered toward downtown where she could take care of
the permit problem. If she stayed focused on the mundane tasks set before her, she wouldn’t sense the creeping dread. She’d hurt his feelings. She’d left him without even saying a proper goodbye.

  “Why can’t you just tell him you’re scared?”

  “Because,” Rebecca blurted out, “he’s so happy I’m a necromancer like him. How am I supposed to…” Tell him I don’t want to cast?

  * * *

  Cole woke scant hours later, his heart thumping. Blood. Please, don’t let there be blood. He couldn’t handle any more of the stuff on his hands.

  But the only blood on his arms was dried and brown, and he’d caused that himself.

  The mattress jangled against the wall as he stood, and he left footprints in the dust on his way into the upstairs bathroom. He washed his face, which helped, and then scrubbed his arms with soap, which really helped. He considered taking a full shower, God knew he needed a long one, but there was no shower curtain in the stall. He’d never installed one, had never anticipated a scenario where he’d need to shower in the Couser house. It was a place for quiet, isolated contemplation, not overnight visits.

  With strange women.

  It was difficult to determine yet whether Talia Jackson was a puzzling and incredible young woman that had breezed into his life at the exact right time. Or a cruel, manipulative devotee of the Dark Caster merely toying with his mind before breaking it.

  Either way, she’d experienced Cole at his lowest point, hopefully, ever. He was nearly as low as the weeks leading up to his transplant when he’d been so sick his doctors worried he wasn’t strong enough to survive the surgery.

  In the ten years since, he’d done everything possible to erase the weakness that had plagued him for the first twenty years of his life with diet and exercise and meds and check-ups and organic food.

  Cole felt weak again. And Talia had seen everything. The humiliation was a physical ache.

  He air-dried his face and hands because there were no towels, either. “Crap.” Worse, there were no drawers of clean clothes in the house. So, he dressed in the only clothing he currently possessed—the filthy, secondhand pants and smiley face tee, now dotted with blood.