Counter-Hex (Covencraft Book 2)

by Margarita Gakis

  There was no jolt. There was nothing. Maybe because she was expecting it or maybe, given the incredulous look Dex was sporting, because it simply didn't work. Jade didn't know what it meant, but it gave her more time to work while Dex stopped - incredulous and enraged. Jade needed more power. Her own was getting weak and noodle-like. It felt soft in places in her mind. Press too hard and she'd fall through the holes. She knew she was bleeding out too much energy, using brute force when she should be funneling controlled bursts to the spell, but she didn't know how.

  Jade felt Paris before she saw him. She felt the brittle, cold fury of his power seconds before he stepped out of the forest. Jade could see the force of Paris' magic - tactile and tangible in front of her as Dex was pushed back, off his feet and knocked into a tree.

  "I need more power," Jade said, her voice clipped and harsh. She was worried that Paris would want her to explain, would ask her why, but instead, he simply stepped up to her, his hand coming through her circle easily. When Paris touched her, Jade felt a surge of his power slip along side hers, like a shot of gasoline to a motor. He pushed his magic into her, vicious and stark. The power spiraled out of her wildly, a kaleidoscope of crazed magic.

  "You have to focus, Jade. I can feel the spell you're doing, but I don't know it. I can't manage it."

  He was shouting at her and until then, she didn't realize that she'd kicked up a wind storm in the forest. Branches, leaves, dirt, pine needles swirled around them fiercely, but Paris and Jade were both protected, her circle growing wide enough to encompass him. Bits of debris burned away as they met her circle, creating grey and black smoke that spun out from the edges, powered by the force of her magic.

  There was too much going on. Paris' power surging through her, Dex getting to his feet and pushing his magic against hers, debris flying around, the sound of charring as bits spun off her circle, Paris yelling at her to focus, Dex screaming, the binding spell dancing just outside of her reach. The spell caught her mind. It was so close, so close, to being perfect, to locking into place, but it felt like she was trying to shore a mud house up in the rain - getting one side ready and stable only to have to let go and grab another side as it slid down and out of reach. An intense pain shot stabbed into her brain, slicing through the soft tissue, spongy and wet. She felt her magic wobble, felt it falter. She couldn't do this much longer. Pressure built behind Jade's sinuses, feeling like her insides were growing larger than her outsides. She pulled more power from Paris and it felt like grinding glass into her grey matter. Something warm and wet poured out of her ear and Paris was still yelling at her, maybe telling her to stop, maybe telling her to do something else, Jade couldn't tell. All she could feel was the spell, starting to become more powerful than she was. It was pulling her in, pulling her down. It was a gravity well sucking her in as it tried to fix itself, pulling her apart with its force.

  Let me help you.

  The voice inside her head draped over her like a thin, filmy tablecloth, covering her senses from the outside, muting the noise, the smells, the sights. Calming, soothing. The pain receded, lessened to a dull, distant ache. Jade saw everything through a long, dark tunnel now, the spell at the end. It was crisp and clear and she could easily see the broken bit. Only the one spot needed fixing - a crux point that needed an extra burst of power. But just there. Just that one spot.

  That's it, there it is. You can do it.

  She wanted to cry. She felt so safe with that voice in her ear and it was so easy in that moment to reach out and snap the spot into place. One last burst of power gushed through her, sucked in by the power of the spell itself and Jade saw it surge toward Dex. Just before it hit him, he shouted something, and a resounding crack of power shot out of him. He blinked out of view - a burst of smoke and light where he should have been.

  With a loud sucking sound, Jade's power died. Like a ruptured sore, it burst with a feeling of pain and relief. She pitched face forward, felt Paris' grip on her arm, strong and sure, and it kept her from landing directly on her face. Paris lowered her to the ground, rolling her on her back. She felt far away, like the dream of Lily, when Lily had been underwater in the lake. This time, Jade was the one underwater - gallons of water between her and the surface - only foggy bits of light filtering through. Paris was talking to her and his voice was muffled and murky. He shook her a bit, or rather, shook her body. It was a separate entity - distinct and apart from her. Jade could see the way he moved, and her vision blurred a bit from the motion of her body, but she didn't feel it. From a distance, she saw her hand reach up and touch Paris' arm, fingering the material of his jacket and she didn't feel that either. She only sensed a casual curiosity at the sensation of touch. It too was far away and distant. Jade felt heavy, weighed down by something pressing in on her. Water pressing in on her. Everything was muddled and indistinct. Her eyelids closed, without any input from her, like curtains coming down on a stage.

  Her ears popped and the world came rushing back: taste, smell, sound, touch and when she finally opened her eyes, sight.

  "Jade? Can you hear me?"

  She blinked at Paris and tried to push herself up a bit. One of his arms came around the back of her shoulders, helping her into a reclined position. There was a cold wet spot on each ear, running down her neck and she reached up to touch one side, seeing blood on her fingers. She looked past Paris' worried face to where Dex had been standing when he disappeared.

  "Where did he go?"

  Paris' fingers tightened on her shoulder. "I don't know. Teleportation spell. They're... nasty. Tricky. I didn't think anyone would be fool enough to try one. He'll be lucky to still be in one piece." He grimaced. "I'm sorry to ask, but I need you to do some magic. Anything."

  Jade looked at him, not understanding the request. "I don't... what?"

  "When Dex disappeared, Coven magic was released from the spell it was under, but it's still out of sorts. Like being out of tune. I need to feel your magic so I can reset the Coven's magic."

  "Oh," she said, still feeling far away and confused. She thought about it and sent a puff of fire out in front of her. The spell was easy and came quick, the heat of it flaring against her skin. She let the fireball roll and twist, staring at the flickering lights, feeling drowsy. Paris' hand tightened on her own and she turned to look at him. His face was pale and a chalky in the firelight. He was moving his lips slightly and she could feel the tension in his body, hear the hum of his magic like a deep bass instrument.

  Something snapped in place around her like a rubber band being plucked. A shiver worked its way through her body and when she took her next breath, she found it felt easy and light - as though she'd been breathing thin air for a long time and finally had enough oxygen.

  "Did it work? Did you do it?" she asked.

  He nodded grimly, his face pinched and tight. Jade had a coworker back in her other life, before the Coven, that got migraines. They would come on suddenly and sometimes her coworker, Francis, had to leave for the rest of the day. He would get the same pinched look on his face that Paris had now - as though his skin could crack at the edges of his eyes and lips. Jade wondered if what he'd just done had been painful. It seemed like it had been tiring. Paris shifted a bit, coming behind her. "Can you stand? We should get you out of here."

  "Yeah. Okay," she said half-heartedly and then made absolutely no effort to move.

  "Jade," prompted Paris, getting his arms under hers and prodding her a bit. "Stand up."

  She looked down, still feeling disconnected from her body. Jade wiggled her feet a bit, taking in the sensation of sending the signal to her feet and having them answer. "Oh, yeah." She pushed her heels into the ground and Paris hefted her up, steadying her when she wobbled.

  "Are you okay to walk?" he asked and she thought it was kind of late to be inquiring about that now since she was on her feet and moving. He gave her an odd look and she realized she'd said it out loud.

  "I think so," Jade added. She still felt fuzzy and dista
nt. "I'd like to go home now."

  Paris nodded slowly and then set off into the forest. Jade reached out and snagged the back of his jacket, feeling odd and disconnected until she had something to hang on to. Paris didn't say anything so she guessed it was okay. She focused on the ground beneath her feet, the snap of twigs and leaves as she walked, the smell of the forest air in her nose.

  She tried not to think at all about the voice she'd heard in her head. The presence she'd felt in her body. It was a presence and voice so familiar and well-known to her that it was unmistakable.

  Lily.

  #

  Paris led the way through the forest, working back toward where he'd left the lizard creature. He sincerely hoped the strange animal was doing better than when Paris had left him - he didn't think he had it in him to carry it back. As soon as Dex disappeared, Paris felt the Coven's magic released from whatever spell it had been under, but instead of rebounding back to how it should be, it continued to wobble out of sync. Paris knew he had a short window of opportunity to reset it while it was still freshly freed, before it found a bad frequency or a tainted ley line and became twisted. He hadn't wanted to push Jade to use magic, but she was there and he knew her magic was good. He hadn't had any other reference point, and given the other spell that Dex had cast, the one on their memories, Paris hadn't quite trusted his own memory on how Coven Magic should feel. Once Jade had cast her small fire spell, he'd brought the Coven magic in line with her - effectively tuning them all to Jade. He didn't look forward to explaining that at the next Department Head meeting.

  The control and precision it took left him with a piercing migraine - it throbbed in time with his pulse, making his eyes water and squint against the light poking through the trees.

  Jade was wobbly on her feet behind Paris - her hand fisted in his coat - trudging along behind him with heavy footsteps. Paris felt like Orpheus leading Eurydice out from the Underworld. He had to keep resisting the urge to turn around and ask if Jade was all right. She was keeping up, so he assumed she was. She would tell him if she needed to stop.

  Paris also wasn't sure, if he turned around, if he could keep from asking her about what had happened back at the clearing.

  He recalled, as he'd followed the air of magic to where she and Dex were, hearing Dex casting a spell. He'd arrived just as Dex was proclaiming that he'd read Jade's file and he knew her real name was Lily.

  Jade had answered back that Lily had never been her name.

  Paris distinctly remembered asking Jade about it once. He'd seen a picture of a young girl; a girl who looked like Jade and he'd asked why the name on the back of the photo said Lily. Jade told Paris she'd changed her name, and Paris had seen documentation to that effect. A name change had been filed when Jade was twenty-one, changing her official first name from Lily to Jade. But in the clearing, he remembered her exact words when Dex had confronted her.

  It was never my name.

  Then, there had been the moment, right after Dex had disappeared, when Jade had fallen. A surge of magic burned in the air and she pitched forward. Paris managed to keep her from landing on her face and breaking her nose. She'd been disoriented, looking around as though she didn't know where she was. He'd shaken her a bit, trying to snap her out of whatever reverie she'd become stuck in. When she looked at Paris, he'd gotten the sudden, stark feeling she didn't know who he was. She'd looked at him as though he was a complete stranger - her eyebrows frowning, her lips slightly pursed, her eyes crinkled at the corners. When he looked at her, he didn't see the usual cold grey of her irises.

  Her eyes had been green. A bright, vibrant green he'd never seen before.

  She'd reached up and touched his coat as though testing the material to see if it were real. Then her eyes had closed and she jolted like she'd been shot; her fingers clamping around his arm like a claw. When she opened her eyes, they'd gone back to grey.

  Paris wondered if what he saw was real. If it was the left over magic coursing through the area. Or if it were something else.

  "Bruce!"

  The sound of Jade's voice broke him out of his thoughts as she pushed past him. The lizard creature he'd left on the ground was waddling toward them awkwardly, its loping gait off-kilter and bizarre.

  Jade hunkered down in front of it and it leapt forward an inch, its pink tongue darting out and kissing Jade on the nose.

  "What are you doing here?" Jade asked it, rubbing her hand over its head and then scratching underneath the flap that was its Elizabethan collar.

  "I was at your house looking for you when Veronica called."

  "So she did call you," Jade said quietly, settling her knees on the ground. The lizard put one clawed foot up on Jade's thigh, claiming her.

  Paris nodded grimly. "She did and explained some... things. When I left to come here, it followed me. It was sleeping on one of your t-shirts in your living room."

  Jade glanced down, pursing her lips, looking like a kid who'd been caught stealing cookies. "Yeah, he came by after he escaped and... well..."

  "You didn't say anything."

  "I felt bad for him!" she said, looking up at him with wide eyes. Paris looked from her to the lizard and then back again - the two of them giving him large, sympathy-inducing cow eyes. He couldn't help but check that Jade's were still firmly grey. Not a trace of green in sight.

  Paris sighed. "Did you know you'd made him a familiar?"

  Jade frowned. "I don't even know what that is."

  Paris' head hurt way too much to continue having this discussion in the middle of the forest. "Right. Well. We can discuss it later."

  They continued their trek through the forest, Paris leading again, Jade behind him and behind Jade, the lizard. Who was apparently named Bruce, if Paris heard correctly. Paris wondered why Jade had called it - him- that. He wondered why she felt the need to keep it a secret.

  He wondered why her eyes had turned green. He wondered why she had told Dex that Lily was never her name. He wondered why she hadn't yet gone back and gotten her things from her other apartment. He wondered a lot of things about her. He'd realized previously that after he brought her to the Coven, he hadn't investigated anything about her or her past at all and he'd neglected it since. To be honest, he hadn't even thought of it. Paris knew the history of most witches in his Coven, or rather, he knew they had grown up in the Coven and he was sure if he had any questions, with only a slight bit of work, he could get any answers he wanted.

  With Jade it was an entirely different story. If he wanted answers, he was going to have to dig.

  They made it to his car without further incident, Jade opening up the back door and gesturing for Bruce to hop in, which he did, surprisingly agile for his size.

  "We should go to the Covenstead and have you examined by Dr. Gellar," Paris said lowly, turning the engine over.

  "Yeah," Jade replied, absently rubbing at the dried blood under one of her ear canals, staring out the window at the forest. "I feel okay though."

  He gave her a pointed look and she turned to face him, sensing his gaze on her.

  "What? I mean I'm not going to go run a marathon and I'm pretty sure Gellar will say I just pushed too hard and used too much magic. I've got a headache. I'll likely get told to take two aspirin and call her in the morning. Unless..." Jade trailed off looking closer at him. "Unless you need to go? You look a little rough around the edges."

  Paris sighed. He was squinting against the light, his migraine getting more sensitive. Resetting Coven magic hadn't been something he'd ever thought he'd have to do. He also felt the push-pull of his own magic as it struggled to find a new norm, tuned to Jade's magic instead of what it had been used to for his entire life. It was like breaking in a new brand of running shoes after mile-ing out an old favorite - he felt confined and chafed in some places, but was marveling at the better fit in others. It didn't mean it was entirely comfortable.

  "Uh, do you need me to drive?" Jade asked. Paris realized he'd been silent for a coupl
e minutes and hadn't answered her question. He looked out at the dirt road and his eyes narrowed even more when he looked up at the bright sky.

  "Yep," Jade said quickly, unbuckling her seat belt. "Let's swap."

  He managed to get out and trudge to the other side of the car, sliding into the passenger seat gratefully as Jade got behind the wheel. Paris rested his head against the seat watching her as she cracked her neck a bit and adjusted the seat and mirrors. He could see she the trail of blood coming from her ear on this side well. It was smaller than it was on the other ear and he had a surge of guilt for making her drive. She didn't feel well either.

  Jade turned to him and while her eyes were still solidly grey, they did seem somewhat brighter than usual, framed by tiny red veins in their whites. "You can sleep if you want. I know the way back to the Covenstead."

  Paris thought he may have managed a slight nod, but couldn't be sure. He felt a nudge against his elbow and looked down to see the yellow-green muzzle of Bruce, Jade's familiar, prodding against his arm. Bruce looked up at Paris and his eyes flickered reflectively for a moment. Paris patted him twice on the head and Bruce let out a low 'pffft' sound. Paris lasted long enough to feel the rough road beneath them transition to pavement as they exited the preserve parking area and made it back on the main drag before he drifted to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "I see an empty glass!" Henri called, pointing at Jade as she finished off her red wine.

  Callie came out of her kitchen waving an open bottle of red. "I'm here! Crisis averted!"

  Jade smiled as she held her glass out for Callie to slosh wine into it. Jade's eyes went wide as Callie kept pouring well past the point where the glass was comfortably full.