by Anna Abner
Turning serious, he said, “I don’t know whether to be happy the store is doing well without me, or depressed that the store is doing well without me.”
“I see what you mean.”
He eased nearer, so near his hip brushed hers and his breath ruffled the hair behind her ear. “That looks cool. Buy that. And those three.” He pointed to several different glossy books.
He smelled like minty aftershave and male, and Talia savored the spicy combination.
“Um,” she said, wetting her lower lip. “You are making this really difficult.”
He froze. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted her face, and her nose bumped his. His breath was hot and sweet against her lips. “All I can think about is kissing you.”
He blinked. “And that’s a problem?”
“It is when I want to push you against this rack and make out with you. And you’re supposed to be incognito.”
Cole hesitated for a moment, and she briefly hoped he would push her up against the shelf. But he stepped away, instead.
“You’re lucky we’re in public.”
And by the tone of his voice, Talia knew he was serious. The flesh between her legs hummed.
“Burkov, you are too much to handle.”
“Hmm.” He nodded at the comics. “Just pay for those. I’ll meet you out front.”
Quickly, she bought the graphic novels, plus the three indie comics Justin recommended at the register, and strolled outside. The moment her shoulders swept through the doorway, Cole yanked her into a darkened corner of the strip mall between The Repository and the store next door. He smashed her against the wall, trapping her.
“You make me so hot,” he hissed, “I can’t think straight.”
Talia smiled. “Likewise.”
For a moment, she expected him to kiss her, and her lips parted in anticipation. But, alas, he fought the signals she was transmitting and released her.
“Later,” he promised, taking her hand and leading her into the parking lot.
* * *
Cole had visited the tattoo parlor once before, toying with the idea of inking a glyph on his bicep. But only in a decorative way. Today wasn’t about adorning himself. It was about survival.
He held open the door for Talia and then followed her into the comfortable shop with leather couches up front and private cubicles in the back. The owner, Ray, met them at the door.
“Good to see you, man.” He wiped his palm on a pair of Bermuda shorts before shaking Cole’s hand. “I’m glad you called. Come on back.”
Once seated in the reclining chair, Cole abandoned his disguise and brought out his book of black magic. “Like I said on the phone, I want six symbols,” he began, flipping pages in the book. “And I’m gonna be kind of a jerk about them being exactly the way I draw them and exactly in the positions I want. I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s your skin.” Ray shrugged. “I’m just the scribe.”
He passed Cole a drawing pad, and Cole sketched six spell marks, four basic marks, and two more powerful glyphs from his book. “They have to create a circle around my torso,” he explained, handing the pad back. “One on each rear shoulder blade, one on each bicep, and one on each pec.”
“No problem. Let me get everything ready. You two relax. Grab a soda from the fridge. I’ll be a few minutes.”
“Are you sure about this?” Talia asked once they were alone. “You can’t wipe them off at the end of the day.”
That’s what he was counting on. “I don’t know how else to fight her,” he said quietly. “We need every advantage.”
“Then I should get tattoos, too.”
The idea secretly excited him. Maybe a tattoo in a place only he was allowed to see.
With effort, he forced his mind back into the present.
He said, “You’re scared.” Because it was fairly obvious.
“Of course I’m scared,” Talia whispered furiously. “The White Wraith is a monster, Cole. She hung a member of her own cabal from your tree like a prize. She knows where we are. And she’s unstoppable. I’m flipping terrified!”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her onto his knee. Off-balance, she landed hard, and he wrapped his arms around her to steady her. “No tattoos. I don’t want you fighting these people. I’ll be out front, and you’ll be casting from afar.”
She snuggled deeper into his chest, exhaling audibly. “Right. You mean, I’ll be eating dirt while you do all the dangerous stuff.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Seconds had separated them from dying the last time they’d fought the wraith. A few more moments of choking or a few more moments of the witch’s magic around his heart and neither would be alive. “I want to protect you as much as I can.”
“Because you think I can’t handle real casting?”
He sighed, recognizing he’d said the wrong thing. “No, because I care about you.”
Her phone buzzed. Another text. She ignored it.
“And you think I don’t care about you?” she returned, struggling out of his embrace. “You think I don’t care if the White Wraith kills you? You’re not expendable, Cole. You’re important.”
Ray strolled in and gloved up. “Here we go, boys and girls.”
Talia stood, and, already missing the comfort of her touch, Cole leaned forward on his knees. “Honey, will you check it?” he asked, uncertain for the first time. If Ray drew the glyphs wrong… If he tattooed them upside down…
Talia hovered behind him for a long moment. At last she assured, “It’s perfect,” and rested her hand on his bare shoulder.
The first cuts stung, but Cole had hurt himself so many times he was anesthetized to the pain. Talia kept her hand on him, a reassuring weight, through the entire first tattoo.
“You’re doing great,” she said, massaging his arm.
Talia’s touch was sunshine upon his skin after days of rain, and he had no idea how it had happened so fast, but she was becoming dangerously important to him. So important he couldn’t think of a future without her in it. Beside him. With him.
“You sure you want to do all six tonight?” Ray asked as he positioned the second glyph. “Most people like to do big orders in pieces. Gives you a chance to heal.”
“It has to be all at once or not at all,” Cole said. There wasn’t time to heal. The wraith would never let them live free for long. And an incomplete spell circle was useless.
“Whatever you say.” Ray motioned for Talia to check the second symbol and when she gave a nod, he got to work cutting the spell into Cole’s flesh.
Chapter Twenty-One
Talia drove away from the tattoo parlor, still not convinced about the spell mark idea, though the damage had been done. She’d never heard of casters carving glyphs into their skin before. No matter what Holden had done, how did Cole know it would do any good?
“Do you feel different?” she asked, glancing at him in the passenger seat.
He flexed both arms. “No.”
“Maybe you could get pointers from Holden?” she ventured. “I know you want to handle this on your own, but he may have some helpful hints or something.”
“No.”
No? Just like that? “Why are you still hiding?”
Cole fidgeted with the bag of comics on his lap, and then set it aside. “Maybe it sounds stupid to you, but I need to do this by myself.”
Talia’s phone chimed. Again.
“Who’s texting you?” Cole asked, leaping at the opportunity to change the subject.
“One of my students,” she answered, pulling into a gas station. “She must’ve found my number online.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” She scrolled through four text messages, each more impatient than the last. “But I should talk to her.” She couldn’t share McKenzie’s private medical information with Cole, namely that she was unexpectedly pregnant at fifteen, but Talia needed to help. “Before she starts calling my school and making
a fuss.”
With a little further digging into her messages, she discovered Jillian had texted Monday morning. Sorry, but McKenzie won’t talk to me. She wants you. Everything okay?
“Let me fill up the tank.” He hopped out of the car. “Then we’ll go.”
While Cole pumped gas Talia sent McKenzie a new message, Can you meet me at the park across from the school? Right now.”
The girl in question must have been waiting for Talia’s reply because she immediately wrote back, OMW.
Maybe she wouldn’t have worried so much about McKenzie except she reminded Talia of her sister. Adrian had gotten pregnant young, a year younger than McKenzie, and Talia had a soft spot for teen mothers.
As she pulled into the small, dirt parking lot she spotted her student perched on a bench under a tree.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said to Cole and then joined the girl.
“You know, I’m not really supposed to meet you outside of school,” she said, glancing into the shadows of the deserted park. “I care about my job. I don’t want to lose it.” And there was a fine line between fostering a respectful and supportive relationship with her students and becoming too involved in their personal lives. Talia planned on having her job until she was forced into retirement, forty or fifty years down the line.
“But I need to talk to you,” McKenzie said, slouching low. “You told me to tell my mom, but I just can’t.”
“You haven’t told anyone?” Talia guessed. Her first advice to the scared fifteen-year-old had been to reveal the pregnancy to her mother and confess everything. Because, as an employee of the school district, there wasn’t much Talia could do except dispense advice and ice packs. She certainly wasn’t cleared to give prenatal care to a minor.
But she knew firsthand how supportive a mother could be for her troubled daughter.
“I can’t.” McKenzie’s big blue eyes filled with tears. “She’ll flip out. I know it.”
“What are you going to do,” Talia asked gently, “when she notices your pregnant belly sticking out of all your school uniforms?”
“I’m going to hide it,” the girl answered. “I’ve been searching online. Girls hide it all the time, and no one has any idea.”
“That’s a horrible idea.”
McKenzie actually laughed. “Look, can you get me free pregnancy vitamins and one of those ultrasound things? That’s why I texted you.”
“Okay. Tough love time.” Talia tried to stay calm, but she scooted to the edge of the bench and faced the girl. “You have a living human being inside of you who can’t take care of itself. You need to toughen up and tell your mother what’s going on because you can’t do everything by yourself. You’re going to need people to lean on in life.” She glanced at Cole, sitting in the car watching her.
The way she needed Cole. The way he needed his coven.
McKenzie shook her head of thick, ebony curls. “I thought you understood.”
“I do,” Talia assured. “But do you realize how many things can go wrong with your pregnancy if you don’t take care of yourself? Let’s just start with the fact that you’re luckier than a lot of women and got pregnant with no trouble at all. I assume if you’re hiding your baby, it means you won’t be taking the best care of yourself. Is that fair to your baby who has to live with the consequences of your ambivalence?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What kinds of things can go wrong?”
Relieved the girl was finally paying attention, Talia slowly went over the ways McKenzie would have to care for herself. Everything from eating less sushi to consuming more folic acid. “You need your mom on your side,” she concluded. “Because she knows what to do. And whether you decide to keep the baby, or not, you’re going to lean on her.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. Geez.”
“Come on,” Talia said, sending Cole another quick glance. He was a dark, handsome figure in the shadowy front seat. A little cryptic. A lot dangerous. “I’ll take you home. And I’ll buy you some pre-natal vitamins on the way.”
“Thanks.”
After a pit stop at the pharmacy, Talia dropped McKenzie off at her house and waited to make sure she got in safely.
A middle-aged woman in chic business attire answered the door, peering curiously at Talia and Cole. “Who was she?” she asked.
“Nobody, Mom,” McKenzie said as she pushed around her mother into the house.
Satisfied she’d done her due diligence, and then some, Talia put the car in reverse and drove away.
“I heard some of your conversation,” Cole said. “You really care about kids.”
Especially teen moms like McKenzie.
She’d seen firsthand the chaos a family was thrown into when a girl still in high school got pregnant. If she could do anything, no matter how small, to help ease another family through the experience she would. Because without support, it wouldn’t have been Adrian suffering the most. It would’ve been Sylvester. Thank goodness, their mom was there to help.
Talia said, “I’m going to give you the same advice I gave her. You can’t do this all on your own. It’s too big. You need friends, allies, and family.”
She’d tried dealing with the cabal on her own, and it had gotten her exactly nowhere. Cole had been right when he told her she’d benefit from the support of a coven.
He reached for her hand and clasped it tight. “I don’t need anyone else,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not enough for this, and you know it.”
His fingers squeezed hers. “You’re more than enough for me.”
She got a funny feeling under her ribs. Could they ever hope for a happy and safe life after this? Did she even deserve one after what she’d done?
Talia checked the rearview mirror. A black SUV followed about two car lengths behind. She made a right turn and then accelerated onto Highway 24 toward Richlands.
The black SUV followed, gaining ground. But the closer the vehicle got the more familiar it seemed.
She checked the side mirrors.
“Cole.” She tightened her fist on the wheel. “I don’t want to scare you, but Harvey and the White Wraith are following us.”
He twisted in his seat to glare out the back window.
“It’s the same car,” he whispered.
Then she put it together. The black SUV had been used in his abduction.
She stomped on the gas pedal. “They’re not going to hurt either one of us,” she declared, but her quivering voice betrayed her fear.
“You have to cast,” Cole said, facing her. “Right now. Before they do.” He removed his seatbelt and wedged his torso through the seats to reach her purse.
“What?” She pushed harder on the accelerator, passed a truck, and swerved into the far right lane to pass another one. “No. I don’t…”
The second truck changed lanes without warning and Talia jerked the wheel to avoid rear-ending it. Her Honda careened off the edge of the pavement and skidded across a grassy embankment before whipping back onto the road.
Cole found a yellow highlighter and drew a spell circle on the upholstery above their heads.
“Don’t slow down,” he warned. “Whatever you do, don’t let them catch us. I can’t protect you if I’m unconscious.”
He was serious about her casting, but her confidence was lacking. Witnessing the raw power with which Cole and members of the cabal cast spells had proven she had a lot to learn.
“You do it,” she said. “You’re stronger than I am.”
“It’s your spell circle,” he said, still drawing. “It’s your spirit companion. You have to do it.”
He tossed the marker in the backseat and motioned for her to switch spots.
“Cole, I’m not strong enough.”
“Talia Jackson,” he snapped, startling her with the tone of his voice. “You are a badass born necromancer. Now, get it together and switch spots with me.”
She clung to the idea of
being a badass. A caster other casters feared.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I can do this.”
Cole made a series of nervous nonsensical noises.
Finally, she saw his face and sensed the level of terror he was reliving. The abduction, the torture, the nightmare spell.
“You’re scared,” she blurted out.
He didn’t deny it. “I can’t cast like this. Everything’s a jumble.”
He still hadn’t recovered. Guilt and rage twisted her insides into painful knots. “They’re not getting away with this again,” she assured, crawling over him as he took the wheel. “Hugh?” she called.
Her spirit companion was nowhere to be seen.
She tried again. “Hugh. I need you.”
Nothing.
“We’re running out of road,” Cole warned. His left leg bounced rapidly, occasionally bumping the wheel. “There’s a town coming up. The speed limit will drop. Either I have to blow through it going eighty and risk people’s lives, or slow down and give them a chance to catch up.”
Talia knelt upon the passenger seat, hugging the backrest as she stared at the shadowy figures in the vehicle behind them. “Don’t slow down.”
She cast a quick, call-for-help spell. A request for any friendly, nearby spirits to assist. The longest thirty seconds of her life immediately followed.
Hugh didn’t show up.
No one showed up.
She was about to tell Cole he’d have to change plans when she sensed a quiet presence in the vehicle.
A spirit shimmered in the backseat as if uncertain whether to show itself. Finally, Zachary’s tiny spirit manifested behind her.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she exclaimed. “Can you help me, Zachary?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have power inside you,” she said, giving him the short and sweet version. “If you concentrate you can send it through me.” When he remained hesitant, she added, “The people in the black vehicle want to hurt us, Zachary. Hurt us badly. I need your help.”
“Okay.” He sat a little straighter.
“Say, confuto,” Cole instructed, weaving between a series of cars. “But only after you collect the power,” he reminded her. “Make this blast count.”
