Carla was staying in a Mediterranean-style house in Glassbreakers. The family room, large kitchen, and breakfast nook all overlooked the patio at the back of the house. The floors were done in terra-cotta tile, and curved archways gave the rooms character.
Pam rested in one of the bedrooms while Carla and Darcy worked with the Circle Witches on the computers. It was too dangerous for witches to gather in person, so they used the Internet to work together.
Ten minutes after the two of them sent a query about the situation with Pam, and the soul that interfered on the astral plane, responses started pouring in.
Darcy narrowed her eyes and read aloud: “Carla has overstepped the boundaries and endangered a mortal. I recommend that she be banished from the Circle Witches.”
Carla sighed. “Silver. She formed the Circle Witches. She’s losing control of the group and doesn’t like it. Just ignore her.” She read the next email out loud. “We’ve never heard of a soul trapped on the astral plane and unable to get to Summerland. It seems like this soul is trying to reach you. Try talking to the soul and find out.”
Darcy read the next email. “Are you sure it’s a soul? Why would the soul of an earth witch harm a mortal and trap her on the astral plane?”
Carla had considered that, but the soul might not understand the danger to Pam. Or … her attention snapped back to the screen when she saw the pixels break apart, then re-form into a picture of a woman with long dark blond hair pulled back into a low ponytail, her green eyes bracketed by lines of worry.
“Mom.”
“Sweetheart, I just read your query. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just worried that I lost Pam. I’ve never lost anyone on the astral plane.”
Chandra drew her eyebrows together. “You’ve always had a singular ability with the spiritual plane. What do you think happened?”
Her frustration and fatigue bubbled up. “I don’t know.”
“I think you’d better find out who that soul is, but be careful. You’re doing high magic without a familiar. A demon could find you, or you could lose control …” Her mom trailed off, then swallowed and said, “But find out. Then you’ll be able to figure out what to do next.”
That was the most logical step. “Thanks, Mom.”
Chandra looked over her shoulder, then back at the laptop. “Got a batch of cookies in the oven. I have to run. Let me know.” The picture dissolved and re-formed into an eagle.
Startled, Carla blinked and looked again, but the eagle was gone; now it was just her email program. Obviously, losing Pam had really rattled her.
“You know,” Darcy said dryly, “most moms would tell their daughters to stay out of danger.”
That eased her shoulders and she grinned. “Mom’s worried about me or she wouldn’t have popped in. Her bakery is probably packed with the morning prework crowd.”
Darcy broke into a full grin. “The Cookie Witch! I’ve seen your mom on talk shows with cooking segments. She’s really awesome. Does she use magic in her cookies?”
Carla shook her head. “She bakes most of her cookies like any mortal. She came up with the idea to call herself the Cookie Witch, opened the bakery so people can watch her ‘casting spells’ as she bakes, and it just took off. Her natural quirkiness just adds to the charm.”
Darcy picked up her mug of tea. “Your mom is hiding in plain sight.”
“Mom was a fairly powerful witch until the curse. She’d been with her familiar for ten years, and then he disappeared. She was grief-stricken by the loss, which was bad enough, but her top three chakras closed off, too. She was reduced to elemental magic, and she didn’t know how to function. Then the witch kills started and she was terrified. All the witches were. Witch karma prevented them from using their powers to protect themselves from the rogues. The witch hunters they had always relied on to protect them were now killing them.”
“It looks like your mom adjusted, found a way to cope.”
Carla sipped her own tea. “Not without some missteps.” Like her dad for instance. He was a huge misstep. He knew exactly what her mom was, and used her—and later, his twin daughters. “But Mom is right. The best way to figure out what I need to do is to find out who the soul is and what she wants.” She stood up.
Darcy rose, too. “I’m not letting you do this alone. What you saw last time …” She shuddered. “You’re not going to be alone.”
They walked out into the family room, then left into a hallway that led to three bedrooms. The master bedroom was on the other side of the house behind the family room, but Carla had chosen the first bedroom on this side. The house belonged to the Wing Slayer Hunters, and when Carla had first come here, Darcy and Axel had stayed with her a few nights to make sure she was safe, and they’d slept in the master bedroom.
In the doorway of the room, she stopped and looked at Darcy. “Rogues using mortals like Pam to kill the Wing Slayer Hunters … that’s just evil.” Anger heated her blood and flushed her skin.
“We won’t let them win. We’re going to save Pam and help her be whole again.”
The burden on her chest eased. “Let’s see what I can find out.” She turned into the bedroom. Pam hadn’t moved from where Axel had placed her on the bed.
Aware that Darcy was standing quietly off to one side, Carla closed her eyes and concentrated, opening her first four chakras swiftly. Next, she focused on the blue chakra at her throat, and soon felt the answering vibration as it opened. She reached out and touched Pam’s shoulder to establish a connection to her. Then she let her spirit rise and stretch past the earth’s physical plane.
The astral plane appeared in the vast blue. To move around the plane, she needed to just focus on what she wanted. She thought about Pam, calling to the woman’s spirit.
Instantly the atmosphere changed into Axel’s nightclub. Carla had never been there, but she recognized it from Pam’s memories. She saw the throbbing colored lights on the dark dance floor. Pam was dancing among a group of women. Then she spotted Sutton by one of the bars.
Through Pam’s eyes, he looked hot in a scary, overwhelming way. He was well over six feet and wore black pants over black hiking boots paired with a muscle shirt that revealed muscular arms. His bald head, vigilant blue eyes, and the gold eagle earring in his left ear elevated him from sexy to almost untouchable.
Yet Carla wanted to touch him. Even though she was viewing Pam’s creation on the astral plane, she longed to reach out and touch Sutton. Even amid a hundred throbbing bodies, he looked alone. It bothered her deeply, made her want to ease him with her touch.
She forced herself to stop focusing on him and look at the whole picture. After a few seconds, she realized that Pam was reliving her experience in the club. The astral plane was tricky, giving the spirit what it longed for, sort of like letting the subconscious work out problems, issues, or feelings by reenacting things. Carla watched carefully to see that the club was closing down, and the pack of women who had been dancing were leaving. But Pam hung back, looking in her purse.
Sutton approached her. He towered over Pam, and his eyes were as flat as his voice when he asked, “Lose something?” She lifted her face, and he saw the sheen of sweat from dancing. Flashing him a smile, she said, “I don’t think I should drive home.”
He answered, “We have several cabs out front.”
She moved up closer to him. “Or you could drive me home.”
Sutton paused, then said, “Maybe another night. But I’ll help you to a cab.”
She shook her head, looking embarrassed. “No thanks. I’m fine. I just got a little overheated from dancing.” She started walking away, putting her hand back into her purse.
She pulled out the gun and her hand began to tremble.
Carla’s chest tightened in sympathy for the woman. “Pam,” she called softly. “It’s time to go back now.”
Pam looked up at her and the gun vanished from her hand. “I can’t change what happened, can I?”
; “No.”
“Are you sure I’m not dead?”
“Very sure. I’m going to take care of you, bring you back to your physical self. Then we’re going to help you get your life back together.”
“Okay, how do I go back?”
“Take my hand.” Carla held out her hand to Pam.
Pam began moving toward Carla.
It was working. Maybe she could return Pam to the physical plane, then come back and talk to the soul. Happiness and relief made everything around her seem brighter and more …
A small starburst of lights ruptured between them.
“That light is back,” Pam said, then her voice tightened with tension. “Dr. Fisk? I can’t see you. Where are you?”
The light was cutting Pam off from her. Carla felt her body on the physical plane react, her heart seizing, then starting to hammer. Her chakras wanted to close off. She struggled to keep her communication chakra open. “Pam, think harder, imagine getting on the other side of the light to me.”
The light suddenly brightened into a flare shaped like a blade, and pulled Carla’s spirit in like a vacuum. Then everything went cold and her doppelgänger body was gone. Her spirit was trapped in something! She tried to force her spirit out of the object, but the press of cool metal surrounded her, along with remnants of magic. Think! The object had to be silver to conduct magic, but a silver what? She let her spirit fill the space until she could feel the outline. It was familiar … long, with a sharp end … oh crap, she was inside a silver knife.
“No!” She struggled to focus her energy into moving outside the knife and back to her doppelgänger body. But she was trapped.
How could that be? On the astral plane she should be in control.
A woman appeared. A woman with dark eyes that had the witch tilt to them, and smooth, flawless olive skin. The witch was outside the knife, while Carla was inside.
And then the knife was moving. Oh God, she was in the knife that was going to kill the witch! She could feel the knife moving, slashing downward.
Blood welled up along the cut on the woman’s thigh as her scream echoed shrilly in the knife.
Then she saw a hand smearing the blood. “Mine,” a voice behind the knife said. “More!” The knife slashed again, slicing the witch’s stomach.
More screams. More pain. More blood. More …
Carla couldn’t bear it anymore. She couldn’t watch the torture of a woman born to bring comfort and aid to earth’s people. To avoid looking, she squeezed her eyes closed and told herself: I’m on the astral plane. The knife isn’t real. But the light that was holding her in the knife was real.
It had to be the soul of one of the witches the knife had killed. That made sense. The soul was manifesting the knife, reenacting something just as Pam had been reenacting the scene where she had shot Sutton. Pam had been trying, futilely, to change the outcome; what was the soul doing? Trying to tell Carla something? What? Dear Ancestors, if ever she wished she could open her sixth chakra—the one that held her third eye—it was now. Her third eye could see what her regular eyes could not. But she couldn’t, so instead she used the vibration of her communication chakra to ask, “Who are you? What do you want? Are you trapped?”
Trapped.
That voice! It vibrated in her head, and recognition stunned her so badly she felt her physical body on the earth’s plane slip to the ground.
Darcy’s scream sounded. “Carla! Get your spirit ass back here, or I’m coming after you.”
Darcy’s strident voice gave her the boost she needed to slide out of the knife. But her spirit hesitated, and in that second, she felt the echo of power that could only belong to one person. She stood on the astral plane, looking at the shifting light that shimmered between her and Pam. “Keri?” Dear Ancestors, it was her sister! They’d shared power often enough that Carla knew her sister’s magic as well her own. She was trapped in a rogue’s knife!
Find the eagle. Free me.
She reached out her hand, desperate to touch her sister, but the astral plane pulled back, shrinking away from her like water swirling down the drain.
Then it was gone. She was on the cold tile floor, her right elbow and the side of her head aching badly enough that she knew she was back in her body.
Darcy was bent over her, her face pale, her brown eyes intense. “What the hell happened?”
Carla shoved herself up to a sitting position as the full impact hit her. No, no! her brain screamed, but she knew it was true. She had to grit her teeth to stop her body from shivering. Finally, she said, “The soul isn’t trapped on the astral plane, it’s trapped in the knife that killed her.”
Darcy dropped onto her butt and crossed her legs so that she faced her. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, but she’s in there. She was forced to watch as the rogue who has it killed witch after witch.” The room was standing still now, but her head pounded and her heart beat frantically.
“Who?”
“Keri. My twin sister.”
* * *
“Find the eagle. Free me.” Carla walked around the wrought-iron table and chairs on the patio that led to a swatch of green grass surrounded by flowers. Bees buzzed around doing their work, while birds chattered in nearby trees, and each breath she took added another crack to her breaking heart.
Her eyes burned. She put her hand over her chest, trying to ease the knot within.
“Carla, why didn’t you tell me that one of the people who was murdered at your clinic two years ago was your twin sister?”
She forced a deep breath, walked back to the table, and sat down. “At first, I didn’t tell you because you didn’t know you were a witch. Frankly, if I had even started talking about Keri to you, I’d have told you everything. I didn’t think you were ready, and maybe I wasn’t ready to talk about her.”
“And since then?” Darcy asked gently.
Carla looked into her eyes. “I would have told you, at some point when it was just the two of us talking. I knew you’d listen, I knew you’d be there. Maybe I was saving it for the day I really needed you.” She dropped into the chair and rubbed at the pain in the center of her chest.
Darcy said softly, “God, Carla. For you to have been there, to see your sister murdered by a rogue, I don’t know how you stood it.”
She dropped her hand and said, “That’s the thing, Darcy. She saved me. I was late to work that day, late for an appointment with my client. I got to the Holistic Healing Clinic and I went in the front way through the waiting room. I walked in on a rogue attacking Keri.” She kept her eyes wide and focused on Darcy, because if she closed them, she’d see the scene behind her eyelids. “I didn’t know it at the time, but my client was already dead in my office, and the other two witches, an herbalist and a midwife, were being drained by a rogue in the office kitchen.” The guilt and horror dried out her mouth. “But all I heard were Keri’s screams. I attacked the rogue to get him off Keri. There was a clinical part of my mind that knew Keri was already dying, but I had to try to save her or die with her. I had to make him stop cutting her. Somehow I got between her and the rogue, and that’s when he cut me.”
“The scar on your lower back?” Darcy asked.
“Yes.” The scar tingled as she tried to explain. “It all happened so fast. The shock of pain, then suddenly, Keri used her powers to lift me off her and throw me across the room to the door.” At Darcy’s skeptical look, she said, “What?”
“That doesn’t sound right,” she said with a frown of concentration. “The first thing the rogue would have done was cut Keri enough to close off her chakras so she couldn’t do magic. That’s why he started cutting you, too. Rogues usually use three cuts on different parts of our bodies to shut down our magic. Carla, your sister didn’t have her powers to save you.”
“Keri’s powers were closed off. But we were identical twins, we could share power. She managed to connect her mind to my chakras and use that power to hurl me across the room.�
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“You were very close, weren’t you? Keri must have loved you very much.”
“Keri loved everyone. Where I’m half scientist, half witch, Keri was all witch. Her greatest joy was helping other people. She was the one who wanted to open the Holistic Healing Clinic. I hadn’t planned on joining.”
“So why did you? You told me you were a witch activist, lobbying for witches to come out of hiding and do the right thing—helping humans.”
Carla took a deep breath. “It all comes back to my dad. I told you my dad was a geneticist, but he’s not just any scientist, he’s Dr. Jerome Wagner.”
Darcy’s eyebrows shot up as she placed the name. “Your dad is the famous mad scientist who insists that humans can do magic?” She sucked in her lips with a groan and said, “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. And obviously he’s not crazy, magic does exist.”
“He prefers the term psi-geneticist,” Carla said dryly. “And yeah, that’s him. He’s spent his life working to discover the genetic breakthrough that will validate his beliefs that humans can become superhuman. He met my mother on a talk show. She was there to make cookies, and he realized there was something special about her.”
“Amazing. Your dad’s a mortal though, right?”
Carla realized that her feelings about her dad had mellowed enough that a little amusement slipped through. “Oh yeah. Much to his frustration. And once he met my mother, he was even more convinced he could isolate the gene that transformed mortals into witches. The fact that witches evolved from mortals just fed his certainty. He is determined to prove that he isn’t a crackpot, but a legitimate scientist. He plans to change the world.”
Darcy’s face tightened. “You and Keri were his research subjects?”
“Pretty convenient, huh? Anyway, Keri stopped cooperating with him in her late teens. She became much more interested in yoga, holistic healing, and her eagles. Her passion was to help witches stop hiding. She hated that. Keri was passionate and …” How could she explain it? “In many ways, she and my dad were alike. Both were stubborn and believed one hundred percent, no holds barred, in their causes. And Jerome made it worse.”
Soul Magic Page 4
