From Jennifer Ashley, With Love: Three Paranormal Romances from Bestselling Series

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Yes, I can. It’s fucking dangerous.”

  “One spell—I told you, that’s all I did. I promised myself I’d never touch it again after that.”

  “Sure. That’s how it starts.”

  Jamison balled his strong, sculptor’s hands, dusted with black grime. “Show some faith in me, Janet. I’ve been a practicing shaman since I was in junior high. I know all about talismans and temptation. But you can’t blame me for what I did. If something like this came into your possession, the first thing you’d do would be to make life better for someone you love. You know you would.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “What is the point then? What’s the point of having all this magic if we can’t heal Julie with it? You think I can be handed something with that much power and say, Sorry, Julie, you’ll have to go the rest of your life not being able to hear, because Janet will be pissed off if I help you?”

  He was breathing hard, sweating from the heat outside and the closeness in here. His dark eyes held a wildness I’d never seen in him before, and on top of the wildness, guilt and defiance.

  There was no way Jamison could best me in a magical fight. I could slash him down with Beneath magic if I dared to, take the pot, and walk away.

  Jamison knew that too. His defiance grew, and I saw him think about the fact that with the artifact, maybe he could best me.

  I reached for no magics, because Jamison was talented enough to sense that. “This has nothing to do with Julie,” I said. “Some very bad people are after this vessel. For one, a mage who’s vying to be the most powerful in the world and doesn’t have any scruples about how he gets that power. For another, dragons who will stop being polite when they get impatient, and simply take what they want. For a third, a Nightwalker—not Ansel, but one who’s struck down and killed a slayer, a human being. That’s only the beginning. When the rest of the powerful magical beings of the world figure out you have the pot, they’ll come down here for it, and they won’t care who they have to kill to get at it. You. Naomi. Julie.”

  “What about you?” Jamison asked me, his voice harsh. “You’re one of the powerfully magical. How do I know you haven’t come to take it for yourself?”

  “You don’t. But who has a better chance of surviving a fight over it? You, or me?”

  “If I have the pot, I can survive anything.”

  My friend Jamison had the best heart of anyone I knew. The man I faced had violent insanity in his eyes. He’d touched the power; he’d learned what it was like to have intense magic surging through every part of him, had felt the joy of making something wonderful happen with it.

  “Remember when you first found me?” I asked. “I was sitting on a rock on the edge of Canyon de Chelly, with lightning striking around me. I was so scared, and at the same time, so excited that I had this uncontrollable magic in my body. Remember what you said to me? You said—The magic is not you. You are you, and the magic is part of your whole. So now I’m telling you, Jamison—this magic isn’t you.”

  “I said a lot of dumb-ass things when I was younger. I’m not letting you take the pot away and risk that Julie will go back to being deaf. Do you think I can do that to her?”

  He pulled off his T-shirt as he spoke. When I saw his skin, my eyes widened. Jamison’s flesh was scored with hundreds of little cuts, now scabbed over, crisscrossing his chest, abdomen, sides, and I assumed his back as well.

  “Shit, what happened to you?”

  “When I did the spell, dust from the pot flew up and started cutting me all over. Hurt like hell. But I kept going, and I got through it. And Julie is cured.”

  “Gods, Jamison, you didn’t stop? What if the magic had done something to Julie? You never touch an unfamiliar magical device without knowing exactly what it wants as payback. You should have called me and asked me before you did this.”

  “No, because you would have tried to talk me out of it, like you’re doing now. A thousand shallow cuts won’t kill me. I’m a Changer. I heal quickly. I’m the perfect person to use it.”

  “The pot made you think that—”

  Jamison snarled. “What the hell do you know about it? You didn’t know anything about this vessel until other people started looking for it. I’m protecting it. I deserve a little reward for that, and you can’t tell me that Julie being able to hear isn’t a giant reward.”

  “Jamison, stop it—”

  “Is that your argument? Stop it, because Janet knows about everything?” He struck his chest with his gathered fingers. “You don’t understand about this, or about ordinary people. I was wrong about the magic not being who you are. You glow with magic, and if it left you, you’d die. I’m made of magic. This is what I am.”

  As he said the last, his body distorted, his hands becoming paws, his face elongating into a mountain lion’s muzzle. His eyes turned dark yellow tinged with red, and the rest of his clothes fell from his body.

  I had an instant to see his ears go back flat and his mouth open in a fang-bearing snarl before he leapt at me, several hundred pounds of enraged wildcat ready to kill.

  I scrambled away from him, but Jamison’s leap caught my side, and we went down to the floor, him on top of me. I fought, but my human strength was nothing to his mountain lion’s.

  His grappling claws bit deep, shredding my shirt and drawing blood. His fangs snapped closed an inch from my skin. I held him off, but I wouldn’t be able to for long. Mountain lions are tough, and Changers are larger than natural wildcats. He was strong, and he was furious.

  As we thrashed around the floor, Jamison’s huge back caught his sculpting stand. The thing teetered, and the chunk of black basalt he’d been working on came down.

  I rolled desperately, managing to separate myself from Jamison. The basalt piece hit the floor between the two of us. The intricate wing Jamison had almost finished broke off, shattering into several pieces.

  I was sure the loss of his artwork would shake Jamison back to himself, but the red eyes that turned to me didn’t give a shit about art. The beast wanted me dead.

  I scrambled to my feet, trying to get to the door, but Jamison was on me again. Claws raked my back as I went down for the second time.

  My Beneath magic wanted to rampage. I could stop Jamison, as I’d stopped the slayer from shooting me and Ansel, but I might kill Jamison. I’d had to use all my willpower to keep the burst of Beneath magic tiny when I’d blown up the crossbow bolt. I hadn’t been angry then, or fighting for my life, just annoyed at a human.

  If I hit Jamison with the magic, I’d kill him. I’d try not to, but I couldn’t guarantee it. I had no storm with which to stabilize myself—the magic would be raw and pure, like Gabrielle’s.

  I closed my eyes, trying to tamp down the white ball that rose inside me into something less than lethal. I needed to knock out Jamison, nothing more.

  But the evil goddess buried within me, the she-witch I battled every day, surged up in fury, wanting to kill. The same wildness in this hogan that was calling to Jamison started calling to me. The Beneath magic rose into incandescence, the power of it searing my hands.

  “Jamison!” Naomi’s voice rang through the slammed-open door, the heat of the desert sweeping in with her.

  I opened my eyes. The sudden sunlight hurt my sensitive retinas, but I saw Naomi in the doorway, sighting down the tranquilizer rifle in her hands. Julie peered around her, her eyes wide with terror.

  “Jamison,” Naomi said again.

  I fought down my Beneath magic, but the stuff glowed and pulsed, building up into a wild ball of lightning in my hands. It wanted me to slam the magic into Jamison, to watch him burn and writhe like Pericles had, except that Jamison wouldn’t be able to shrug it off.

  “Naomi!” I screamed. “Shoot him!”

  The tranquilizer gun popped. The dart hit the mountain lion right between his shoulder blades, missing my hand by an inch.

  Jamison gave one final snarl of rage, then his eyes clouded over, and he
collapsed, unconscious, right on top of me.

  I pushed at him, jiggling on my elbows and hips, trying to squirm out from under several hundred pounds of limp mountain lion. Jamison heaved a little sigh in his sleep. His wildcat receded, and I had Jamison, my best friend, stark naked on top of me, with his wife and stepdaughter standing over us.

  Naomi leaned the tranq rifle against the wall, reached down, and rolled Jamison off me with gentle compassion. I sat up, panting, shoving my hair from my face. My hands came away covered in blood.

  Jamison, one of the most modest men I knew, lay sprawled on his back, his privates out for everyone to see. Julie, the sensible girl, snatched up one of the tarps he used to keep his work covered, and draped it over him.

  Naomi didn’t try to help me up. She let me sit on the floor, breathing hard, as I fought my magic back down again.

  “Janet,” Naomi said, her eyes soft. “Thank you.”

  “For what? Enraging the nicest guy in the world so he’d turn into a mountain lion and attack me?”

  “For not killing him. I know you could have. You might have had no choice.”

  I shuddered, swallowing bile as I forced the white magic buzzing in my body to go away. It trickled off slowly, angrily. “Yeah, well, it came close.”

  Naomi smoothed Jamison’s hair back from his face, her love for him plain to see.

  Julie picked up the sculpting stand and the basalt, grunting a little as she lifted the stone back into place. She picked up the pieces of the broken bird’s wing and gazed at them mournfully. “He was making this for me.”

  “Julie, I’m so sorry.” I scrubbed my face, finding more blood. “Tell me what happened,” I said to Naomi. “Were you here when Laura brought the pot?”

  “She showed up in the middle of the night,” Naomi said. “Jamison went down to meet her, but I followed him. I didn’t know who she was—Jamison hadn’t met her face-to-face before—but she was terrified. She gave him this thing, wrapped up in a leather bag, telling him to keep it secret. Then she was gone.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t ask any questions?”

  “She didn’t give us a chance. She said she couldn’t think of anyone else she trusted besides Jamison, and that we were to tell no one, including you. She said it was dangerous for anyone to know about it—especially you. Jamison promised, and I promised too. I’m sorry.”

  Explained why Naomi had shown up at the séance. She’d wanted to know whether Laura was truly dead, or at least why her sister thought so. Julie had seemed oblivious to everything at the séance, which meant she hadn’t known about Laura and the pot until Jamison performed the spell the next day. Naomi should have said something about Laura to me then, but if she’d thought she was helping Jamison, I understood—reluctantly—why she’d kept silent. I didn’t agree with her, but I knew that with Naomi, Jamison and Julie always came first.

  “After she’d gone, Jamison took the pot out of the bag,” Naomi said. “It looked like typical pottery to me. Antique and valuable, yes, but not dangerous. Jamison carried it out here and locked it up. I couldn’t figure out why Laura was so worried about it. The pot had sat up in that museum in Flagstaff for years—why wasn’t it dangerous then?”

  “Hidden in plain sight,” I said, speculating. “No one working for the museum or visiting the museum was magical, I guess. Or magical enough. No one knew about it until Pericles hired Young to start poking around looking for it.”

  “Jamison didn’t talk about it. I got busy with the nursery—it’s one of our busiest seasons—and I didn’t notice that Jamison was spending so much time out here. I figured he was doing a new sculpture. I know how he gets when he’s excited about a new piece of art, and I leave him alone.

  “Then yesterday morning, Jamison called us to the hogan and told us he’d found a spell he wanted to try. He didn’t say what the spell was for, but he said that Julie alone could be there for it. I was supposed to wait outside. But I didn’t like how Jamison looked—his face was almost gray, and his eyes kept going yellow, like his mountain lion’s. I didn’t know what was wrong. So I refused to leave.”

  “Wise,” I said.

  Julie broke in. “Jamison got mad at Mom. And Jamison never gets mad. But she wouldn’t go. So finally Jamison did the spell with us all in here.”

  “At first, it didn’t look any different than any other shaman spells I’ve seen him do,” Naomi said. “I like when Jamison lets me watch him do magic. It’s soothing, peaceful. But this spell scared me. Jamison went into a trance—when he meditates or lets his magic take him, he usually is very calm and relaxed. This time, I could tell he was in pain. The designs on the pot started moving, and then little tiny shards rose up out of the pot and swarmed him. I tried to push him out of the way and maybe break the pot, but he opened his eyes and yelled at me to get back, that I’d be hurt if I did that.”

  “I was scared,” Julie said. She sat down cross-legged between Naomi and Jamison, resting a comforting hand on Jamison’s inert shoulder. “It was so powerful. But I didn’t run. I didn’t want to leave Mom and Jamison alone with that magic.” She rested her other hand on her mother’s knee.

  “Jamison finished the spell,” Naomi said. “And the shards cutting him flowed back down into the pot. He was exhausted, but all right. And then Julie started screaming. I thought she’d been hurt, that maybe the shards had attacked her somehow.”

  Julie smiled sheepishly. “I was scared. All the sudden, sound started pouring into my ears, like it was beating at me. I never realized the world was so loud.” The smile became one of pure happiness.

  “Naomi,” I said, trying to finger-comb my hair. “Where did Jamison look up this spell? I know he doesn’t have spell books lying around.” Jamison was a shaman, and his knowledge of magic came from oral tradition. “But he couldn’t have known how to do this without some research. Please tell me he didn’t look up spells on the Internet.”

  “Yep,” Julie said. “He asked me to show him how to use the search engines. He borrowed my laptop and was at it for days.”

  I groaned. “Oh, Jamison, my stupid old friend.”

  “He was trying to help me,” Julie said, defending him.

  I climbed painfully to my feet. “Do either of you know where the pot is? You need to give it to me.”

  Both Naomi and Julie nodded without asking me to explain why. Julie picked up a key ring from Jamison’s now-ripped shorts, went to his supply cabinet, unlocked it, and pulled out a leather-wrapped bundle.

  Julie said as she brought it to me, “You’re worried that if he searched the Internet for such a powerful spell, any astute mage would find out, right? They’d know Jamison wasn’t a powerful mage himself and wonder why he was searching for these spells. They’d guess he’d found some way to enhance his power. And this mage you yelled at him about would be looking for people who’d found some way to enhance their powers. Right?”

  I took the bundle. The strength of the pot inside jolted a shock through me as hard as any lightning strike. What I’d felt come out of the hole where Laura had started to bury it was nothing compared to this.

  “You’re smart, Julie,” I said, my throat tight.

  “You okay?” Naomi asked, worried.

  “No. This is . . . bad. Which is why I’m taking it away.”

  I headed for the door. Naomi got in front of me. “Janet, if you hide the pot or find some way to destroy it, what will happen to Julie? Will the spell die without the pot?”

  My chest hurt as I struggled to breathe. Julie watched me quietly. She’d been handed a piece of the world she’d been denied all her life, and now I had to tell her she might have to let it go again.

  “I don’t know,” I had to say. “I’m sorry. The spell might fade as Jamison’s power does. Or it might be permanent. I just don’t know.”

  Naomi nodded once, her throat moving. She’d watched her daughter lose her hearing once, long ago. Now she might have to do it again.

  “Take it, Janet
,” Julie said. “I don’t want this if we lose Jamison for it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Will Jamison be all right?” Naomi asked, still in front of me.

  I looked down at him slumbering so peacefully on the floor. “I hope he wakes up the Jamison we all know and love, but I don’t have any idea what this thing does, or what residue it leaves. Watch him. Call me, or call Mick, if he doesn’t come out of it.”

  Naomi nodded. Her eyes held a bleakness that I hated.

  I clenched my teeth against the rising magic of the pot, pushed past Naomi, stepped into the hot afternoon, and got the hell out of there.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As soon as I walked out and stashed the artifact in my saddlebag, I felt the eyes of the supernatural world upon me.

  The driveway behind Naomi’s house was empty, the workers in the nursery moving with the slow ease of men doing physical labor in the heat. None of them looked my way.

  I started up my bike and slowly rode down the drive back toward the road. One of the workers raised his hand in farewell. I made myself wave back, everything normal.

  Sweat trickled from under my helmet as I rode along the highway through town. Magellan looked no different than usual—the lunch crowd at the diner was thinning out, people going back to work, tourists fanning out to hike to the vortexes or along the old railroad bed. RVs rocked ponderously past me, summer vacationers on their way to view the next natural attraction.

  All the while, the pot screamed to me. Its aura rose around me like a bubble shot with red and blue flame, muting the rest of the world, broadcasting its whereabouts to everything magical.

  It couldn’t be broadcasting, though. Jamison had kept it hidden in a cabinet in his studio all week, and the magical hadn’t swooped down upon him to grab it. I hadn’t felt a thing, and I’d been looking for it. No one had found it in Flagstaff either, where it had sat for years.

  Then again, the pot hadn’t yet been in the hands of anyone as magical as me. Normal humans ran the museum; Laura wasn’t a mage; and Ansel, though he was magical by nature, couldn’t actually work magic. Jamison had power, but nowhere near the kind of power I could draw.