by Deanna Chase
The flame flickered once, then vanished, despite the absent wind. The familiar decaying muddy stench of the Mississippi river assaulted my senses as the rain stopped. The temperature shot up, making me sweat in my wool coat.
Moving toward the steps of the porch, I shed the jacket and gawked. The pine trees had cleared, revealing the New Orleans coven’s circle. The one that sat among half a dozen giant oaks, very near the Mississippi river. In the middle stood Lailah, cradled in the arms of a man I’d never met. One I’d bet my life was Philip Pearson.
Chapter 3
Running down the stairs, I headed straight into the clearing. With dark brown hair, a stocky build, and an eerily familiar face, there was no way the man wasn’t related to Dan. My gaze traveled to Lailah, lying limp in his arms, her face slack.
“Philip?” I cried as the man strode away, Lailah clutched to his chest.
I ran to catch up, but as he passed through the oak trees, the scene faded, leaving me standing ankle-deep in mud with rain soaking straight through my jeans and flimsy cotton sweater.
“Jade?” Kat called from the porch. “What are you doing out there?”
I stood frozen, terror seizing my limbs. Lailah was hurt. What had Philip done to her? My body started moving before my brain did. I tried to sprint back to the porch, but the mud trapped my feet in place, causing my upper body to jerk forward. Almost in slow motion, I tumbled and landed face-first in the gooey earth.
Sputtering, I looked up into Kane’s handsome face. “Son of a…argh.”
He offered a hand and pulled me to my feet. “Graceful,” he said, his eyes crinkling with mirth.
“I need my phone.” Frantic, I wrenched myself from his grasp and tried once more to run to the porch. My feet slipped and this time I would have fallen on my butt if Kane hadn’t caught me.
“Whoa. Slow down there. I’ll get you inside.” Despite my protests, he lifted me into his arms and carried me in the exact same way Philip carried Lailah in my vision.
“Lailah’s hurt,” I said. “We need to call Bea or Lucien.”
Once on the porch, Kane stopped next to Kat and set me back on my feet. “What do you mean, she’s hurt?”
“She was in the finding spell vision.”
“What exactly did you see?” Kat asked.
I moved to the door and eyed my phone sitting on the end table. Then I glanced down at my mud-caked body. “Can one of you grab my phone…and a towel perhaps?”
“Here.” Kane handed me his Blackberry.
I shook my head. “No. Bea’s number is programmed into mine.”
“I have it.” He flipped through his contacts and pulled Bea’s number up.
Of course he’d have her number. She’d once helped him save me from a crazy ghost after he’d imprisoned me in another dimension.
I took the phone. “Thanks.”
“I’ll get you a towel,” Kat said and disappeared into the house.
I hit send and cringed. My muddy fingerprint was front and center on Kane’s black phone. “Sorry.”
He shrugged.
Bea’s phone rang three times before it went to voice mail. I hung up and started running through Kane’s contacts, searching the L’s. Lacy, Lailah, Landon, Liam, Lloyd. No Lucien. I scrolled back up to Lailah and hit send. It rang twice and went to voice mail.
“Double damn!” I tapped in a quick text. Call ASAP. Jade saw something. Need to make sure you’re okay.
Kat appeared with a towel and my robe. “Here. You’re gonna want to get out of that mess before going inside.”
I glanced down once more. Yeah. Gwen would kill me if I tracked in a gallon of mud. So right there on the porch I started stripping.
“Jade!” my mother shrieked. “What’s going on out here?”
I dropped my muddy sweater on the porch and faced my mother in only my bra and jeans.
“Oh my gosh.” Mom rushed over, grabbed the towel out of Kat’s hands, and wrapped it around me. “Get inside,” she whispered harshly.
“Mom.” I stepped back out of her reach. The towel fell. “I’m covered in mud. I need to get out of these clothes first.”
Her face turned red and her fists clenched. “Honey, there are other people out here. Surely you can make it to the downstairs bathroom without causing too much of a mess.”
Kat sent me an ‘uh-oh’ look and retreated to the safety of the shadows. Chicken.
I faced my mother and held a foot out. “Really? There’s mud dripping from my jeans. I can strip right here. It’s safer.”
She shot a sideways glance and pointed toward Kane behind her other hand, as if he couldn’t see what she was doing. How could he not? He was standing right next to me.
I suppressed a sigh. “Mom, I hate to break it to you, but Kane has seen me a lot more naked than this.”
Mom’s eyes started to bug out, but before she could say anything, Kane cleared his throat. “I’ll go in and give you ladies some privacy.”
I put a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to do that.”
He kissed the top of my head. “It’s fine. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Kane disappeared inside the house. I turned to my mother. “Mom, I’m twenty-seven years old. Please stop treating me like—” I stopped mid-sentence. We hadn’t yet talked about her twelve-year-long disappearance to Purgatory. I hugged the towel to my now-shaking body. “Sorry. I know it’s hard.”
Mom stared at me for five very long seconds, then turned on her heel and quietly went back inside.
“Damn it.” I sank into one of the white plastic chairs and buried my face in my now semi-clean hands.
“It’ll be okay. You both just need time to adjust.” Kat reappeared and pulled me to my feet. “Get out of the rest of those clothes. You’re ice-cold.”
The moment she said the words, my teeth started chattering. Up until then, I’d been too distracted to notice the temperature. With trembling fingers, I went to work on my jeans. Once jean-free and wrapped in my robe, I headed for the kitchen.
Kane sat at the table, two steaming cups of chai waiting. Instead of sitting in a chair, I curled up in his lap and kissed him. Thoroughly. Okay, maybe our make-out session was a little too risqué for Gwen’s kitchen, but damn it, I needed a little heat. When I finally broke away, I whispered, “Thanks.”
He smiled and pulled me to him again.
“Ahem,” Kat said from the doorway.
I sent her a guilty smile. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. But you just got a text.” She held up my phone. “It’s from Lucien. He says Lailah just showed up on his doorstep and she can’t remember the last twelve hours.”
***
Sleep eluded me.
I couldn’t stop worrying about Lailah. Lucien was taking care of her so we knew she was safe, but what happened? Why had she been with Philip and how come she couldn’t remember?
After what seemed like hours of tossing and turning, I finally got up. The cold hardwood creaked beneath my wool socks as I made my way down the hall to Gwen’s office. Mom had been using the room to work on enhanced sleeping aids since she’d been home. I wasn’t surprised. Adjusting to a normal life wasn’t coming as easy as any of us hoped.
I turned a corner and spotted a glow underneath Gwen’s office door. Relief flooded through me. Even though we were still adjusting to each other, Mom always had a way of soothing me. I knocked softly and cracked open the door.
“Jade?” Mom dropped a lit candle in a white bowl. Whatever contents she’d been working with went up in a whoosh of flame.
I grimaced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
She doused the mini fire with water and waved her hand to clear the smoke. “Don’t worry. I was experimenting. Why are you up so late?”
“Trouble sleeping. Actually, I was looking for one of your sleep enhancements.”
She opened a small wooden box and pulled out a green pill. All of Mom’s enhancements were green. What else would one expect fr
om an earth witch?
She rose and pressed it into my palm. Not letting go, she squeezed my hand into a fist and clutched it. “I’m going to miss you, shortcake.”
The suddenness of her emotion made my eyes mist. “Come with me?” I hadn’t meant to ask her. It just popped out. How could I be so selfish?
“Oh, Jade.” Mom’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think…”
“Never mind.” I waved both hands in a ‘forget it’ motion. “I understand.” And I did. She’d just gotten a second chance at life. How could I ask her to help me fight a demon?
Her intense gaze bore into mine. “I know you’re going to do whatever you have to, but please, don’t go running off into Hell without a solid escape plan…or two.”
I gaped. This was the first time she hadn’t treated me like an adolescent since we’d arrived in Idaho. “I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” I whispered, having trouble getting the words past the lump in my throat.
“And when you fight Meri—” her face turned sympathetic, “—keep in mind it isn’t her fault she behaves the way she does.”
I stepped back, shocked. “What does that mean?” Of course it was her fault. She’d stolen my mother and Dan and tried to hurt a bunch of other people I loved.
“She’s a victim of circumstance. Try to remember she was a person once.”
My eyes narrowed. Why was she defending her captor?
“Just listen to your heart. You’ll understand.” She folded me into her arms. “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”
I buried my head in her shoulder, still confused and a little angry, but comforted by her touch all the same. “I won’t.”
When we broke apart, she tried to shuffle me back off to bed, but I paused. “Hold on. I have something for you.” A minute later, I returned with a glass bead I’d turned into a pendant. I’d been meaning to give it to her before we left. With the vision of Lailah, I’d forgotten all about it. “I made this for you.”
Mom turned it over in her palms. “It’s full of your energy. Your love.”
“You can feel it?”
She nodded, a look of wonder on her face.
Perfect. I’d never made a bead infused with magic before. This had been an experiment. “It’s for protection. You wear it over your heart, and when you need an extra boost of strength, you can call on its power.”
Immediately Mom removed the silver chain she always wore, added the pendant, and clasped the necklace around her neck. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
She gave me one last hug before sending me off to bed. As she shut the door behind me, I swore I saw tears streaming down her face. Happy tears, full of pride and love.
With the help of the little green pill, I drifted off within minutes. Normally Kane, being a dreamwalker, was waiting for me in my dreams. Almost every night, whether we were physically together or not, he appeared.
But tonight was different.
Someone was with me, but it wasn’t Kane.
I lifted my heavy head off a cold cement floor and wanted to recoil, but my body wouldn’t respond.
My head fell back to the cement, and I stared at Dan with bone-weary exhaustion.
He didn’t look much better than I felt. He sat as far away from me as possible, his button-down shirt rumpled and stained with more than a few layers of grime. His usually clean-shaven face now had at least a week’s worth of growth.
“Water?” I asked, my throat barely working from the dryness.
“It’s behind you.” Dan pointed.
“Oh.” It seemed too much trouble to move.
A few beats went by. Dan sighed and retrieved the water bottle. He kneeled and carefully lifted my head. A black lock of hair fell over my eyes.
Hmm, odd. I have strawberry-blond hair.
Weird stuff happened in dreams.
Dan brushed it back and carefully poured the sweet liquid over my chapped lips.
“Thank you,” I rasped when he released me.
He shook his head. “You’d better not be lying to me, or I’ll take you to the devil myself.”
A faint commotion intruded on my dream, and a moment later I opened my eyes to find both Kat and Kane staring down at me.
“Wake up, sunshine,” Kat said, pulling the quilt off me. “We let you sleep as long as possible, but we have a ridiculously early flight to catch.”
I glanced at the window. Still pitch black. “Does this mean we’re on the six a.m. flight?” After finding out about Lailah’s amnesia, I’d asked Kane to book the earliest flight he could find.
Kane handed me a steaming cup of java. “Yeah. Unfortunately.” He checked his watch. “That means you’ve got thirty minutes.”
I groaned and brought the mug to my lips. The aroma settled in my nose as I breathed in the dark roast. At least my boyfriend knew how to start me off on the right foot.
***
The flight was full and our last-minute tickets meant the three of us were separated. Lucky me. My ticket landed me in a middle seat with a young mom and a fussy newborn next to the window and an obnoxious, over-excited male who never stopped talking next to the aisle.
Not what I needed at the butt-crack of dawn.
“New Orleans is a beautiful city, but they really should do something about Bourbon Street,” the man rambled on. “That place breeds sin. It’s outrageous the city would condone people making money off corruption. I tell you, Bourbon Street and Las Vegas are the Devil’s playgrounds.”
I made a noncommittal sound, plugging my ears with the ear buds of my iPhone.
That didn’t stop him.
He raised his voice and drawled on in his deep southern accent. “Young people like yourself have no hope of becoming productive members of society when you buy into all the immorality. Oh sure, I know you think it’s all just in fun, but mark my words, someday you’ll find yourself in Hell if you don’t see the light.”
Young people like myself? I eyed him. He couldn’t be older than thirty. Attractive, too. Tall, medium build, brown eyes that would have been pleasant if he hadn’t just insulted me.
I pulled the buds out of my ears. “Did you just call me immoral?”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I didn’t say that…exactly.” His tone implied that was exactly what he meant.
“Excuse me.” I shifted, trying to get further away from him, accidentally bumping the mom next to me. The baby started wailing again. I ignored her and turned my wrath on Mr. Judgmental. “You don’t know me. I didn’t ask for your sermon. If I were you, I’d stuff a sock in it before someone puts a pox on a body part. Preferably on one all you ignorant bastards have trouble keeping to yourselves.”
So the lack of sleep, the baby crying for most of the last hour, and my anxiety over Lailah had zapped my brain. And my patience.
Anger rose from the depths of the man next to me, crawling over my skin. I cringed and shrunk into myself. His face twisted into a scowl and turned almost purple. Whoever he was, he clearly wasn’t used to women fighting back. He reached up and hit the call for assistance button.
I turned away from him and focused on the baby. The mother had given up trying to do anything for the hysterical child. I closed my eyes, praying for calm, and took a deep, steadying breath. It wasn’t going to work. I’d lost my last nerve.
A perky flight attendant with an easy smile materialized. “What can I help you with, sir?”
“I cannot sit next to this…person any longer. You’ll have to find me a new seat.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” She frowned helplessly. “Our flight is full. There aren’t any other seats available.”
“There must be someone willing to switch,” the man drawled, laying his southern charm on thick. “Tell them it’s for Reverend Goodwin.”
I held back a snort. Just my luck. I’d been seated next to a right-winged blowhard who currently topped the Nielsen ratings every Sunday morning on the cable station owned by
his grandfather, the mega-media conglomerate powerhouse Fredrick Goodwin. What the heck was he doing in economy class?
The flight attendant’s kind eyes narrowed and irritation radiated from her. “Sir, again, the flight is full. There’s nothing I can do.”
Goodwin raised his voice, clearly going for intimidating, but instead he sounded petulant. “First you overbook and I end up back here, in these sardine can chairs instead of in first class. Then you put me next to this disrespectful, foul-mouthed, unchristian—”
“Sir, there is no need for name-calling.” She waved to someone at the back of the plane.
Goodwin wiped his brow and gestured toward the window seat, continuing his diatribe. “Not to mention she’s upsetting that poor child. I have a lecture to give twenty minutes after we land. I can’t focus here.”
“Hey,” I interjected. “I was just sitting here.”
An official with a TSA badge on his arm joined the flight attendant. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” Goodwin said, relief in his voice. “I need to be moved. This woman is causing a disturbance.” He jerked his head in my direction.
“It seems to me you’re the one disturbing the other passengers.” He glanced at the flight attendant. She gave him a curt nod. Mr. TSA turned his attention back to Goodwin. “You’ll need to come with me.”
“Thank you.” The reverend rose gracefully from his seat. “If you can arrange anything in first class, I’ll be sure to put a word in with the man upstairs.”
The officer sent him a steely glare. “Sir, you are now in the custody of the TSA until we say otherwise. Please step to the back of the plane.”
“What?” Goodwin tried to back up, but with the flight attendant in his path, he didn’t have anywhere to go.
“If you resist, you will be arrested. I suggest you step to the back of the plane.”
I snickered, and Goodwin sent me a death glare. “Now, now, Reverend, that isn’t very Christian of you.”
The TSA agent gave him a nudge, and the pair disappeared to the back of the plane. My shoulders relaxed, and relief bubbled from the young mother beside me. “Sorry about that,” I said.
