Shadow Witch Rising (Copper Falls Book 1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  His eyes narrowed in irritation. “Fine. I'll get to the point. Tomorrow night is the full moon, and, as I might have mentioned, I have less control during the full moon now that the curse is taking over. And for some stupid reason, my beast seems to really, really be interested in you, Sophie.”

  It was impossible to breathe.

  “So do us both a favor, all right? Either go away for the night or lock yourself in and stay there until sunrise. I'm strong and I will do everything in my power to stay away, but it's…” He broke off, shaking his head. “I don't want to scare you. I definitely don't want to hurt you. Can you go away for the night? Please?”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked in disbelief, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Because this is the safest place right now with that psycho around again.”

  “Did you miss the part where I turn into a bear that's out of its mind because of a curse? And that it's unsatisfied and endlessly hungry and that, oh, right, it's taken more than a bit of an interest in you? What part about that says 'safe'? I can promise you, kitten, that I'm a hell of a lot more of a danger to you than some piece of shit warlock will ever be.”

  She shifted, pressing her thighs together. What the hell was it with this man? Why was it that when he said things like that, things that should terrify her, her body was ready to see if he was up to it? And that “kitten” was something that should have pissed her off completely.

  “First off, I am not a cat, Calder, and you haven't earned the right to call me any pet names at all. Second, if I had to choose between insane bear you and perfectly sane him, I'd take my chances with the bear. I'm not running. I will stay in my house if that'll make it easier on you. All right?”

  “Are you always this stubborn?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Always. Bye now,” she said, closing the door in his face. She heard him grumble something as she re-locked everything, and then his heavy footsteps on the stairs as he lumbered away. She shook herself out of her Calder-induced lust haze and gathered her materials.

  “Calder?” Layla asked as she walked back into the attic.

  “Calder,” Sophie said in irritation.

  “You poor horny thing,” Layla said.

  “Shut up,” she answered with a roll of her eyes.

  “We can take you to Jack's again. Scratch that itch with a hot shifter, you'll be good as new,” Cara said. Sophie shook her head.

  “It's not the itch that's bothering me. It's him,” Sophie said. “Now be quiet so I can do this.”

  “We should actually get going. I have the feeling this might be personal. I know you like your privacy,” Layla said, serious now.

  “Thanks,” Sophie said with a smile. “You two are amazing.”

  “We know,” Cara said. The twins hugged Sophie and left, promising they'd be careful and also that they'd lock the door behind them. Once they were gone, she looked at the chest again.

  She knelt by the trunk, arranged the candles around her, lit them with her matches. She arranged her herbs, stones nearby. They might not be totally necessary, but she'd found that her magic was more focused if she had them nearby. She ran her hands over the lid of the trunk, murmuring a spell of entrance, one she'd only ever read in books, mostly because her focus had always been on keeping people out, not on getting in anywhere.

  She felt her meager power rising, felt her own magic doing what it was supposed to do, tangling, weaving itself into the magic in the wards. It went on for a while, and with each time she repeated the spell, her power became more enmeshed with that of the warding spell, until it felt, to her, like they were one. She used the needle to prick her index finger, barely feeling the pain of it, feeling apart from herself in her connection to the magic. As her blood dripped onto the trunk, the magic peaked, and the wards fell.

  Sophie took a deep breath of relief, in disbelief that she'd actually managed it. She sucked on her finger and looked at the trunk. There was a latch on the front, and, when she touched that, it sprang open easily, as if all it had been waiting for was her touch.

  She leaned forward and lifted the lid of the trunk. There wasn't much in it. A few linens, not in the greatest of shape, but it seemed as though their real purpose had been cushioning the simple pine box in the middle of the trunk. Sophie lifted that out. The lid opened on creaky iron hinges, and, inside, there was a stack of old books. Journals, she figured, based on the glimpses of handwriting she saw as she quickly flipped them open. Three of those, then, on the bottom of the pile, there was another volume, wrapped carefully in layers of linen.

  Sophie gently set the other journals aside. Those, she felt, were meant for her, too. But she had to hope that this one, this book that had been wrapped and protected so carefully, was what she was looking for. She sat cross-legged on the dusty attic floor and started unwrapping the linen, first one layer, then another.

  Once the final layer of linen wrapping was removed, a thin volume with a dark brown leather cover was all that remained. On the cover were markings she didn't recognize, carved into the leather itself.

  She opened it gently, carefully, after wiping her hands as well as she could on her jeans. The first page was blank, and she turned it. It was remarkably well preserved, and she sent a thank you to whichever of her ancestors had so carefully stored it. On the second page of the journal were lines and lines of what she soon realized were words written in French in a neat, exacting hand. The script was small and neat as if the writer had taken just as much care in forming his or her letters as they did in deciding what to say.

  She turned several more pages, finding, to her dismay, that they were all in French or what she guessed was Ojibwa, the words similar to those she'd seen on signs near the reservation. There were spells that would give a witch power to read any language and understand it. Without that, many spells would have been lost after their original casters had died. Most witches, it seemed, kept some kind of journal to pass on what they'd learned.

  One more thing to add to the list of things she needed to learn, like, yesterday. She needed to find that translation spell.

  Sophie scanned the pages, looking, hoping, for some hint that she'd found what she was looking for. Interspersed with the pages full of neat handwriting were several drawings, watercolor paintings. The first one she flipped to, she recognized. Copper Falls. The falls themselves, after which the town was named. She'd spent nearly every summer day as a child there with her friends. She'd kissed Calder there. She'd gone there and cried after her father had told her they were moving away.

  She hadn't yet made time to visit them since she'd been back even though the falls were the thing about the town, besides her friends and land, of course, that she loved most. She looked at it for a while longer, then started flipping through pages again.

  And then, about halfway through the journal, there it was:

  Migisi, And, later, Luc.

  Maybe this was Migisi's herself, or maybe someone who knew her or had studied the curse….

  Or maybe it was just one of those records of ancestry, saying who gave birth to whom.

  But. Luc's name indicated that maybe that wasn't it, because from what Calder had said, Migisi's children had not been from Luc.

  And that would be really weird if they had been, considering how hot she was for Calder. She grimaced and stood up, gently cradling the book against her chest. She set it on top of the other journals, then blew out her candles and collected everything. She carried her spell tools and the books downstairs and fell into bed just as the sky was starting to lighten in the east. She had to work in a few hours, after all, and she'd learned over the years that dealing with Marshall was more difficult when she was tired.

  Too many things to worry about, and not enough power to fix them with. It was the story of her life.

  Sophie pored over the journals as she drank her tea the next morning after she'd finished up with the animals. She had a short shift at the resort l
ater that afternoon, but until then, she'd see if she could make any progress on the curse.

  Of course, there was also the advantage that by working in her house all day, she wouldn't risk coming across Marshall again. She'd been awake most of the previous night, despite her intentions to rest. She'd lain in the small bed in the living room, the one set into a nook surrounded by bookshelves, under a quilt someone had made a long time ago. It should have comforted her. It usually did. Instead, she'd lain awake remembering a dead husband and the warlock who'd murdered him. And when she wasn't remembering that, she was thinking about Calder. About Layla and Cara. About how much she risked all of them just by being in their town, but how she also knew she was the closest thing they had to protection if Marshall decided to try to use them against her.

  She'd been young, and stupid, and careless, or she could have protected David, too.

  Thinking about her young husband raised so many feelings in her, none of them things she actually wanted to be feeling. She was sad, guilty. Mostly guilty. She hadn't been in love with him, not the way he'd been in love with her. She'd cared for him, of course, and they'd been good to one another. There had been a sweetness there that she never would have expected, not for her. But he'd ended up dying because of her, and she wasn't even good or loyal enough to have loved him. She'd been a liar, and he'd paid the price.

  And Calder… Calder had been her everything for years. The situation they were in now didn't change that, didn't change the fact that when he looked at her, when he was near her, all she wanted was him. That was something she'd have to keep to herself, because if Marshall realized, there was no way it would end well.

  Sometimes, she wished she had it in herself to put a bullet in his head and end it all. She envied Migisi's ability to curse someone so completely, and then felt immediately ashamed for the thought.

  This wasn't the time to lose faith or get careless. She was a Lightwitch, she'd had to remind herself over and over again. She'd find a way to handle it that didn't profane everything she believed in.

  So she'd woken, feeling raw, as if even the slightest push, the smallest thing, would make her fall apart. It wasn't a good place to be, and she knew the only way to feel better was to sit with it, to go through it. Doing it in the sanctity of her little cabin, on her land infused with the magic of her ancestors, was like a balm. It soothed. And, the longer she sat with it, the more determined she was to do right by herself, and by Calder. She would fix it. She would be the kind of woman, the kind of witch, she'd always worked toward being. And no filthy, conniving, Shadow-sworn warlock would take that from her.

  One of the books seemed to be a sketchbook, a few small paintings amid the black and white drawings. She barely spared a glance at that, leafing through the written journals instead. That's where her answer would be. After looking through them for a while, hoping to recognize words that would tell her she really was on the right track, Sophie got up and started flipping through some of the old leather-bound volumes about witchcraft she'd collected over the years. Secondhand shops, used book stores, and garage sales had been great for finding them. Of course, to a non-witch, they often just looked like those old Readers Digest Condensed Books every thrift store in the universe seemed to be overstocked with. A witch could tell, though, could see through the wards that disguised it to non-witches. It was handy to be able to hide things in plain sight, sometimes.

  Sophie finally found the translation spell after going through four other books. She sat down on the daybed with the thick book and started reading, slowly and carefully, the section that talked about language spells. When she got to the translation spell itself, she grabbed her notebook and pen off of the nearby table and started jotting the steps down in simple English. Older witchcraft books, especially, tended to be long-winded and full of description. And while that was lovely to read, the way Sophie used her magic, she really just needed a straightforward recipe or instructions to make it work. It was never pretty or flowery, and it often felt like surgery instead of magic, but given enough time and focus, she could usually make most spells work, at least a little bit.

  This one actually didn't look too complicated, and Sophie double-checked the materials she'd need, as well as the spell she'd need to recite.

  She heard a clattering, clanging sound outside, and she got up and went to the front window. When she glanced toward Calder's house, she saw the source of the noise. She could see him, just inside his garage. It seemed like he was looking for something, since every few seconds, something, usually something large, metallic, and therefore noisy when it landed, would get chucked down his driveway.

  Her windows were open to let in the cool air, and she could clearly hear more than a few curse words coming from across the road in a loud, growling voice.

  She glanced at the kitchen, where there was a large apple pie the twins' mother had sent over with them the day before. She hadn't yet had any of it, not really feeling all that much like eating. She stood up, stepped into her shoes, and grabbed the pie.

  Always hungry, she thought to herself. She knew he was likely feeling the effects of the full moon coming on (something she was really trying not to think about too much) and that a piece of pie wasn't likely to help all that much, but it never did hurt, either.

  She crossed the road, watching what looked like the front grille for some old car come flying out of the garage, followed by a bellowed “fuck” as a crashing noise came from inside the garage.

  “Cease fire,” she called as she started walking up his driveway. He came stalking out of the garage. His gaze was on her immediately, his entire body practically bristling in his current state.

  “What are you doing here?” he snarled at her.

  “Good morning to you, too, crab ass,” she said, keeping her voice light.

  He glared at her, and she shoved the pie into his hands, trying not to see the way his muscles bulged under his t-shirt, the way he looked like he was about to devour her, that intense look in his eyes.

  “Pie?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse. He hadn't yet taken his eyes off of her.

  “Yes. It's perfect and it's guaranteed to put you in a better mood. Taste it.”

  “Rather taste something else,” he growled, and she stared at him in disbelief. He clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes widening, seeming equally shocked by what he'd just said. “Shit,” he said behind his hand.

  She couldn't help it. The sight of big angry Calder standing there with his hand clamped over his mouth as if he was a little boy caught cursing by his mother or something was too much. She started laughing, and soon, she was covering her own mouth, trying to stop and finding it impossible.

  “I don't think it's funny. That was mortifying. Can't you make the earth swallow me up or something?”

  She forced herself to stop laughing. Really, it was better than paying attention to what his words had done to her body. Unfortunately, he hadn't missed it. She noticed him scenting the air, and his gaze refocused on her.

  “You can stop that, Calder,” she snapped at him.

  He shook his head. “Really though? Pie?”

  “Yes, pie. Eat something. I know you're hungry, right?”

  “Pie is not gonna do it, Sophie,” he said.

  She crossed her arms and glared at him until he released a low growl, opened the bakery box, and used the fork she'd shoved inside to start shoveling flaky apple pie into his mouth.

  “Want some?” he asked between mouthfuls.

  “I think you'd rip my arm off if I dared reach for any,” she said in a wry voice, watching him eat. It was as if he couldn't get the mouthfuls to his lips quickly enough. It wasn't disgusting, though. Every movement was controlled, and she realized then, watching him, how much effort he put into keeping hold of himself. She knew, from the half-crazed look in his eyes, that he was feeling anything but controlled.

  “Smart woman,” he said. She shook her head. “You should leave though before I finish this. Your scent is
driving me fucking nuts right now.”

  “I don't know whether to be insulted or not,” she said, walking down the driveway, irritated at the way her heart was pounding.

  “This pie smells good. You smell like heaven. Stay on your side of the road,” he said.

  “You're welcome,” she shouted at him from across the road. “Stop beating up on your car parts now.”

  She thought she heard a low chuckle from his direction, and she shook her head, went back inside and started getting ready for work.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sophie was in the laundry room at the resort, pressing and folding white towels to restock the housekeeping carts with. She had her earbuds in, feeling safe enough to do so in the cozy room, facing the door, back to the industrial-size dryers. She was bobbing her head to the White Stripes, trying to keep her mind blank, because she was tired of thinking, and if she let herself think about Calder's warning for that night, the full moon, she'd start panicking.

  When Layla came through the door, Sophie smiled in surprise, plucked the earbuds from her ears. “Hey! What are you doing here?” she asked her friend as they hugged.

  “Wanted to check on you. How are you holding up?”

  Sophie shrugged, grabbed another towel to fold. “I'm all right.”

  “Have you seen Calder yet today?”

  Sophie blushed. That growl, his words.

  “Yeah, I guess you have. Bryce said it's probably not going to be pretty. Are you sure you don't want to stay away from your house tonight? We can go out to eat, and you can spend the night at my place. We'll binge-watch something on Netflix and eat too much. Sounds great, doesn't it?”

  Sophie smiled at Layla. “I love you. You're the best,” she said.

  “But you're not going for it,” Layla said.

  “Even if it is as bad as everyone seems to think—“