Heart Mates

by Mary Hughes

  “What is that?” Mason asked.

  “I’ve rigged a sort of cutoff switch. If you see that I’m losing control, push me out of these.” She pointed at the blue ringing her feet. “My power will automatically cut.”

  Jayden poodle trotted over to sniff the chalk markings. He nodded and his tail wagged.

  “Glad you approve.”

  Mason squatted to touch the tracings around her feet. “How does it work?”

  “It’s advanced element theory,” she said. “A witch’s power comes from within, but visualization of that power is usually attached to an element, either earth, wind, fire or…”

  His eyes glazed over. Poor Mason.

  She took pity. “I’m pulling earth power. Break my ground, and it breaks the line of power.”

  “Oh.” His gaze cleared and he stood. “Got it.”

  “Noah? I’ll need you inside the circles.”

  The terrier yipped doubtfully. Even without words she knew where his concerns lay.

  “Don’t worry about me. The hex will be contained by the star and Mason will break in if your poison tries to take me over. And the pain…” She didn’t like lying to him, but the pack needed him. And if he lost the fight when she could have made the difference, she wouldn’t want to live with herself, anyway. “The pain will pass. C’mon Noah, let me do this for the pack. Or if not the pack, let me do this for us. For our future.”

  That finally did it. His jaw firmed. With a determined step he entered the inner circle, showing a profound level of trust in her, in the power and control of a witch he’d met only a few days before.

  She blinked scratchy eyes.

  Jayden barked. He seemed to be trying to tell her something. He poked her with his nose and barked again. It must be important.

  She knelt, touched the white wolf brooch mentally and pushed her awareness outside her skin, accessing her wolf without shifting. She caught layered, then backlash and rapid and something like tied at the tail. Warning her against the rapid backlash of the poison? “I’ll work as fast as I can. Step back.”

  She stood and closed her eyes, prepared to break her second seal.

  To her surprise a third of her power, the power she’d given to Jayden, formed a lake at her feet, lapping at the shore of herself, waiting for her.

  The lovemaking with Noah had apparently restored her more than she realized.

  “Are you okay?” Mason said. “Your body snapped straight. Should I pull you out?”

  “I’m okay. Starting the reveal.” She mentally reimaged the water into sweet soil beneath her feet. Pictured herself as a tree, her roots extending deep into the life-giving earth. Drawing power smoothly into herself, she flung her spell into the circles’ joined point.

  Like Jayden’s earlier reveal, a column of power shimmered up from the concrete under Noah’s paws to the ceiling of the repair shop, rich brown because she was drawing earth magic. The power began to throb rhythmically. Her body throbbed in time with it.

  But when she opened her witch’s eye, nothing beyond a tiny pulsing point of red, the remains of the poison, showed.

  Where was the hex?

  “What’s going on?” Mason said.

  “Earth magic didn’t reveal it. I’ll have to try a multi-element spell. Don’t worry—I’m still grounded with earth.” She stirred up a little water magic and splashed the hex.

  The power swirling around Noah brightened with blue streaks—but the hex didn’t show.

  She conjured up her wand, sparked red fire and pumped it through the circles’ join. The swirling smoke shimmered brighter.

  “Reveal.” She blew the word into the containment on a puff of air. With the fourth element, the smoke suddenly glittered brilliantly, as if lit from within.

  A tangle of magic was revealed glowing around the dog, a mummy’s windings of vivid purples, yellows, reds and blues.

  She’d anticipated a complex, radically altered bur hex, so it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing.

  “Your eyes are wide,” Mason said. “Should I pull you out?”

  “No. It’s just that…it’s a simple wrapping hex.” Not hard to undo at all. Snip the magic anywhere, it unraveled. She wondered why Jayden hadn’t managed it. He seemed like a competent enough mage.

  Deep in Noah’s flank, the poison flared.

  No time to figure it out. She relaxed her grip on the multi-element reveal spell and pulled magical metal shears from the ground.

  A wave of her hand sent the shears into the circle. They opened to snip the hex, like a steel Pac Man. Chomp.

  But instead of cutting through, the shears cracked. Another chomp, they shattered. Bits of metal fell to the concrete, wavered and disappeared.

  She stared, shocked.

  “Sophia!” Mason. “What’s going on?”

  “The wrapping hex broke the shears. But no way a wrapping hex could have that much power…shit.”

  The poison surged toward her like an ocean wave.

  Automatically she threw a wall of water magic up with her left hand. The poison hit with acid splashes, spurting over the water wall and spraying the edge of the containing circle. She lifted more power from the sandbox and poured it into both water wall and circle, until it was almost gone.

  “Sophia, what’s happening?”

  “More power.” She needed to break her penultimate dome.

  She touched the metal inlays on her wand. “I sing silver, I sing gold.” As she chanted she stabbed the wand into the air, accessing the last of her earth magic and simultaneously stabbing a mental diamond drill against the magical seal.

  Across from her, poison leaked, oozing along the chalk tracings. Pain bled into her soles. She pushed it aside to drill into her sealed power.

  The funeral barrier cracked. Her hands began to burn. More pain bled into her feet. The cracks began to open. Her legs throbbed from the leaking poison. Her hands were on fire from the cracking funeral seal.

  She clenched the wand so tight her fingers ached. For Noah. She bashed the diamond tip into the dome.

  The barrier shattered.

  The dome burst in a shower of glass. Power screamed along her veins, blasting into her hands, the second lock of her head-hands-heart spell.

  Mason said, “Damn it, Sophia…”

  Her palms swelled, her fingers puffed until her skin felt like cooked sausage casing about to explode.

  She panted through the pain, tears sheeting down her cheeks. Clumsily fisting the freed magic, she fashioned a knife and flung it against the hex wrappings.

  Feedback sliced her with agony, but the knife flew fast and true. It hit the hex windings.

  The knife shattered into dust.

  “Answer me!”

  C-can’t. She didn’t know if she spoke out loud or not.

  She rapidly chewed her options. Direct power, no good. She waved the blade edgewise across the windings. The knife shooped off like a skate on ice—skittering a half inch above the hex.

  The poison bulged containment like a can of botulism about to burst.

  Poison ran in rivulets along the chalk. The main body fought behind her wall of water, pulsing, pushing, seeking a chink. Pain was eroding her concentration.

  She could either fight the pain or cast one last spell.

  Mason said, “If you don’t answer me, I’m pulling you out.”

  She cast magic.

  Panting, she let the death sacrifice burn her as she swept up a new knife with her wand. One last chance. Couldn’t cut it. Compact it?

  Her hands were too swollen and burnt to work a spell. The pain had dulled to a dark ache, not good news, like warming before freezing to death.

  “Shrink.” With the last of her concentration, she flung the spell at the hex.

  It hit and rebounded straight at
her.

  Mason yanked her back. She stumbled out of her foot tracings, the spell zapping so close to her ear she heard it whine past.

  All magic abruptly cut off. The containment circle dropped. Her wall against the poison dissipated.

  She was exhausted, barely alive. She slid to the floor, only Mason’s strength keeping her from collapsing in a heap. Her muscles throbbed as if she’d been beaten. Her eyes wouldn’t work.

  A small tongue licked her fingers.

  Yippy yippy. From somewhere far away a tiny bark tinkled.

  The tongue worked up her knuckles, drawing the pain from her twisted joints. Calming the swelling.

  Yippy yippity yip. Behind her. Either a third dog or a mosquito. That annoying? She was betting on the mosquito.

  Panting, she twisted her head on the ground.

  The piccolo barks came from the tiny pink mouth of a black toy poodle. Mad as a hornet, albeit a curly-haired, cutie-pie hornet.

  Well, sure. That annoying? Had to be Jayden.

  Tied at the tail… Jayden must have meant he was tied to Noah, a straight magical connection from the first unhexing attempt. Her shrink spell had rebounded into him. Jayden had gone from a miniature to a toy.

  Noah’s tongue started licking her other hand. He worked the swelling and pain out of her fingers. Healing her, as miraculously as he had the first time she’d broken a funeral seal.

  Until his tongue touched burst skin, wet with blood.

  Noah gave a pained bark and fell over.

  She rolled to her side to sit up. The remains of the death magic juddered through her, leaching her strength. Beside her, Noah lay gasping. On one elbow, she parted the fur over his wound. The red angry lines now radiated as big as a DVD.

  Not only had she failed to neutralize the hex, his licking her must’ve put shards of her broken death seal into him—and the poison had grabbed it to spread.

  Her wand, still in her hand, jerked down, pointing at her pocket. She rolled to her back. Her hand dove in…and came out with Jayden’s healing disk. Thank goodness. She wouldn’t have to do serious magic. She was alive but the seal shards still cut her nerves.

  Managing to crawl to Noah’s side, she pressed the disk to his flank and blew gently on it, activating it with the lightest touch of air magic. She felt the thwuck when the thing started sucking the poison to a point. Her gasp of pain from using magic was a duet with Noah’s soft whine.

  She stopped blowing, but the disk didn’t stop sucking. She tried a small flick of magic to remove it. Her hands burned. It still didn’t stop.

  She had no choice but to pull the thing physically off. Noah was silent, but she felt his whole body tense and knew what it cost him. The disk came off with a ripping sound and left a raw, naked circle.

  But it had worked. The angry radiating lines had shrunk to the size of a half dollar.

  She sat on her heels, exhausted and almost numb with pain. Wordlessly, Mason squatted to pick up the panting terrier and carried him out of the garage. She rose and limped behind. The toy poodle trotted in her wake.

  Mason laid Noah carefully on the couch in the exact spot where Noah had held her, where they’d slept together in a more profound sharing of trust than even the sex.

  Noah’s golden eyes were open and calm. He’d stopped panting and seemed better. She sat next to him, resting her elbows on her knees.

  Her magic hadn’t worked.

  She was a hereditary witch princess, a magna cum laude graduate of Nostradamus University. Her magic never failed.

  Yet now, when she needed it most, despite suffering excruciating pain to use it, it had failed.

  She had failed.

  She buried her face in her hands. The skin on her right hand was cracked and bleeding. Blood leaked onto her cheeks, joining the trickle of shame seeping from her eyes.

  Noah gave a soft bark. He tried to lick her ugly fingers.

  She made a small noise of dismay and snatched her hand away from him. “That’s how you got hurt before.”

  He rubbed up against her. Warmth and healing worked into her skin and bones.

  Three little yips and the rest of her death pain drained away.

  “What did you say?” She lifted her head and touched her wolf.

  Beyond them, Mason paced the office anxiously. “That’s it then. We’re done for.” Even Jayden looked beaten.

  Noah nuzzled her. His tail wagged. I have confidence in you.

  Not the three words he’d used before, but he was counting on her. No time to go to pieces.

  She sighed, released the wolf and took several deep breaths. Time to pull out all the stops. Hard to do when she was only one step from the grave, but there was no choice. She was almost certain to fail, but she needed to try.

  But because she was almost certain to fail, she needed a backup plan. She found her phone and tried Aunt Linda’s number. It went immediately to voicemail. She left a terse, “Emergency. Call me.” She turned to the black poodle. “Jayden. Find Aunt Linda. Whether she can undo the hex or not, we need her. Bring her here. Mason. When does the fight take place?”

  “When the sun clears the tall grass. This time of year, about 7:16.”

  She checked her phone for the time. Six thirty. She set one alarm for six forty-five and another for seven. “Jayden, try to make it within the hour, okay?”

  He nodded and trotted off.

  She could have attempted a search spell, but Aunt Linda was backup. She needed to save what magic she had for the main push.

  She stood and started pacing. “Okay, thinking out loud, here. I tried magically cutting the hex wrappings but it didn’t work—plus it bounced a good half inch above the hex. My shrink spell too.” She stopped. “Something invisible covers the hex.”

  Mason said, “Like what?”

  “Well…” She kicked into pacing again. “A repel or reverse wouldn’t have broken the shears. But a hide, armor, or a shield spell… Stars and moon. I have to go.” She headed for the door.

  “You know how to fix this, my queen?”

  That spun her back. Mason’s face glowed with an unnatural confidence in her, almost to the point of fanaticism.

  When she was a page, she’d worn exactly that expression looking at Rodolphe. It made her feel all kinds of slimy.

  She couldn’t encourage that kind of blind adoration. “Mason, it’s only an idea, and a long shot at that. You need to prepare Noah to fight the challenge as he is.”

  Mason’s face fell so abruptly she had to add, “But it’s an idea. There’s still hope.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Six thirty-five. Sophia had a little more than half an hour before the Challenge Fight. She borrowed Noah’s SUV. As she lumbered out of the drive she wondered if it would’ve been faster to walk.

  She ran a stop sign returning to the bookstore. What the hell. Turning the big vehicle was so slow it was as good as a stop—it felt like she was driving a pirouetting elephant.

  On the way she phoned Gabriel.

  He answered immediately. “What the hell is going on? I felt your magic flare from two states over. Definitely you this time. I left like a zillion voicemails. Only death magic causes that kind of pain—”

  “Chew me out later, Gabriel. I’m alive, but if I’m going to stay that way, I need your help.”

  He huffed. “What?”

  She was fiercely glad this wizard was her brother. When it came down to it, he’d give her what she needed, no questions asked.

  She parked the SUV rather haphazardly across the street from the store and slammed out. “Bur hexes. Are they over or under?”

  A short tapping of keys was followed by, “It depends. Shifters are over; wizards are under.”

  She swore. But it’d only confirmed what she’d begun to suspect. The other thing Jayden had
been trying to tell her. Layered.

  Every spell had a purpose and a strength. But each spell also had a natural layer, overlay or underlay. For a single spell it didn’t mean anything.

  Put two or more spells together and significance got cooking.

  An itch spell was overlay. Hit with it, a person scratched like crazy. Unless the person had an underlay of armor, when the itch spell hovered harmlessly on top.

  Auntie’s hex, hitting a pureblood shifter, should have been on top, easily cut by Sophia’s neutralizations.

  Which meant Noah was at least part wizard. Also duh-huhed why the wizard healing disk had worked on him. She jammed the key into store lock.

  Somewhere in his lineage, a mage had done the dirty deed with a shifter. Noah was a forbidden dual.

  “Sophia?” Gabriel’s voice sounded in her ear. “Talk to me. Why are you asking about layers? Noah’s a wizard?”

  Okay, not no questions asked. Should’ve expected that. Her brother’s sharp mind was constantly working, prying and poking at facts like a sewing machine needle. Eventually he’d stitch things together. She didn’t have time for it now.

  “He’s a shifter.” She threw open the bookstore door and went inside, exquisitely aware that she wasn’t answering the question.

  “Then why are you asking about wizards?”

  Her phone beeped. Six forty-five already? “Duals are taboo.”

  “Taboo doesn’t mean impossible,” Gabriel said reasonably. “Not if you’ve got a girl and a boy.”

  He was right—she and Noah had proved that several times now—but she still fought the idea. “It’s wrong.”

  “I see.” A beat. “But you love him?”

  Damn it. The one fact she couldn’t fight. “Yes.”

  “Then it’s not wrong. What have you tried, unhex-wise?”

  And that was that. Sophia’s heart swelled. Her brother would stand by her and Noah. “It’s complicated by a magical poison.” She told him about the stabbing and her tries at removing the hex. In the background was fast typing. “What are you doing?”