Winter Magic

by T. M. Cromer

  Zane wasn’t aware the horrific sound came from him. Not until Spring’s arms encircled him did he realize he’d become like a wild animal mourning the loss of its mate.

  “Ohmygod!” Rafe whispered in horror.

  Zane’s gaze connected with Preston’s dead-eyed stare.

  Without conscious thought, Zane conjured an automatic weapon and three magazines of bullets. Closing his eyes, calling up Winnie’s beautiful, still face, he fired up his cells. If he couldn’t break through the Blockers, he’d kill himself trying.

  “Stop him!” a male voice yelled.

  They were too late.

  Zane appeared in the oversized bedroom where Winnie’s body had been left, gun in hand and finger on the trigger. Not a single soul remained in the room. With a quick turn of the lock, he ran to Winnie’s prone form.

  “Oh, God, Win! I’m so sorry!” He cradled her deathly pale face between his palms as tears poured from his eyes. “I’m so sorry!”

  He ran a hand along her throat and felt for a pulse. It was faint, but there all the same. Feeling for her breastbone, he shifted a few inches lower and started chest compressions. “Stay with me, babe. Please, please, stay with me.”

  Zane gently shifted her head, pinched her nose, and breathed into her mouth. Her chest hardly moved. Placing his hands around her throat, in the same exact pattern of the bruises, he pulled the magic from deep within. He visualized a healing energy flowing to her, pictured the reduction of swelling and an open airway. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the air flowing into her lungs and out again.

  Against Zane’s hand, Winnie’s pulse quickened. “Come back to me, Win,” he choked out. “Please, come back to me.”

  The slap of soles against the bamboo floor echoed down the hallway, indicating Lin or one of his men was almost to the door.

  Zane shifted positions and propped his weapon on top of the bed to sight down the barrel. With one hand, he reached back and clasped Winnie’s. He pushed more healing energy into her. “I’m going to need you to wake up now, babe.”

  The air crackled around him—a clear indication of multiple teleports arriving at once.

  Knox, Alastair, and Preston materialized without fanfare.

  Preston knelt by his daughter and bowed his head in relief when he felt her pulse. “You foolish boy! I don’t know how to thank you,” he said gruffly to Zane.

  “Go to work on that bracelet, son,” Alastair directed Knox and took up a position next to Zane. “That was foolhardy, boy. Brave as hell, but foolhardy.” Respect shone bright in his gaze as he studied Zane. “You might be the perfect match for her after all.”

  “I hope so because she isn’t getting rid of me.”

  Alastair’s sudden smile radiated that he was pleased as punch, although for the life of him, Zane couldn’t understand why.

  The door flew open, cutting off any further conversation. But the man who’d burst through the door wasn’t Lin. Instead, Ryker arrived in the guise of Jolly Ollie. He tossed a key to Alastair, who in turn tossed it to Knox.

  “I owe you, Jolly,” Alastair told him.

  “I’ll put it on your tab. The Blockers are out of commission, but I don’t know for how long. You need to get your asses moving.”

  “What about you?”

  “Well, I don’t think Lin is going to be too thrilled with me once he sees the security cameras. So, I’ll be heading out with you if that’s okay,” Ryker said with a grin.

  “The WC is going to be so mad at you,” Alastair mocked.

  Zane was speechless at the easy rapport between the two men. He’d understood from Winnie that Ryker was estranged from Alastair’s sister, GiGi. Zane had assumed the two men would be at odds. Yet here they stood, joking as if they were the best of friends.

  “How is she?” Ryker asked, his tone shifting to concerned.

  “Alive, thanks to the hothead here.” Alastair gave a short nod in Zane’s direction.

  Zane cast one last wary glance at the door and moved to kneel at Winnie’s side. As he joined her, her eyes fluttered open and widened in reaction to seeing him there.

  “Zane! You’re alive?” she croaked. Her wild eyes flew around the room, taking in all the occupants. Confusion clouded her face. “H-how?”

  “It’s not important, Win,” he said softly. “I’m taking you home.”

  Zane scooped Winnie up into his embrace, and her arms crept up around his neck. For a long moment, their gazes connected; each relaying what they couldn’t verbalize. Tears gathered in her sweet blue eyes. In an involuntary movement, his arms tightened around her.

  “Hold on tight, my love.”

  With a single thought, he’d teleported the two of them to her bedroom at Thorne Manor. Within minutes, he heard the excited voices of her sisters float down from the attic where the rumble of Preston’s deep voice relayed what Zane assumed was the rescue details to the others.

  “How did you find me?” she asked hoarsely.

  “Don’t try to talk.” He placed a fingertip on her lips. “Alastair and Preston never lost sight of you. They have a whole war room up there, complete with computers, maps, and all. You should know, I find your family scary as hell.”

  She tried to laugh, but instead she winced and clutched her throat with a shaky hand.

  “I’m going to get your aunt. I’m afraid my impromptu healing of your throat was based on pure instinct on my part. I don’t know if I did it right.”

  Winnie’s jaw dropped. “You healed me?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I am good for some things.”

  Their eyes met, and all the things they needed to say were in the tender look they shared.

  “Thanks for saving me,” she whispered.

  “Thanks for not leaving me to try to live without you,” he whispered past the lump in his throat. “I love you, Win. Don’t ever scare me like that again, okay?”

  She blinked back tears. “I’ll try not to.”

  Zane scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands in his own attempt to dispel the gathering moisture there. “I appreciate that. Be right back.”

  After he stepped into the hallway and closed the door, Zane leaned back against the wall and tried to gather himself. The day’s events caught up in a flash, and he didn’t know how to process what had gone down.

  Nausea churned in his gut and burned the back of his throat. He’d barely made it to the bathroom to toss his cookies. He sat for a time, trying to regain his composure. As he rose on shaky legs, he spotted Knox in the doorway. Wordlessly, Zane rinsed his mouth and splashed water on his hot face.

  “You okay, man?” his cousin asked.

  Zane shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have time to wonder. I need to get GiGi to help Winnie.”

  “She’s already seen to her. Why don’t you have a seat for a minute? Collect yourself.”

  While Zane didn’t sit, he did lean back against the vanity and closed his eyes. “I almost lost her,” he rasped out.

  “But you didn’t. You saved her,” Knox reminded him softly.

  Zane rubbed his knuckles between his brows in a vain attempt to ease the headache building there. “I want him dead so bad, I can taste it.” He didn’t need to clarify to whom he referred. “He strangled her right before my eyes, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I couldn’t get to her in time.” Zane took a deep, ragged breath. “All I knew when I teleported was that I wanted to riddle that fucker with bullets. I wanted to see him gasping for his last breath on the floor.”

  Knox remained silent, and Zane met his cousin’s thoughtful gaze. “I’ve never wanted to hurt someone the way I wanted to hurt him, Knox. That’s not me. You know me. I release spiders into the wild. How did I come to love one woman so much that I can’t see reason? How can she do this to me without even trying?” Zane shook his head and stared at the grain pattern on the wood floor. “My business is suffering. I’m a mental and physical wreck. I can’t continue on this way. I wonder if it�
�s all worth it, ya know?”

  A soft gasp brought his head up. Winnie stood behind Knox in the doorway, with her fingertips pressed to her lips. Hurt shone from her eyes, darkening them to gray.

  “Ah, Christ, Win! It’s not like it sounded.” He looked to his cousin for support.

  “I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Knox said.

  After Knox left, Winnie came farther into the room. “Throughout all this—the stolen memories, the accident, the trick you played, my trip to Malta, and the retrieval of the amulet—you haven’t really had time to process. Neither have I. It’s been one drama after another with us, hasn’t it?” She smiled softly: a haunting, bittersweet twist of her lips.

  “I don’t need time, Win. I love you.”

  “I know you do. I love you, too. But maybe a little time apart couldn’t hurt. It would give us a chance to center ourselves and get our heads in the right place.”

  “Babe, I don’t need time apart. I swear it,” he argued, desperate not to lose her.

  “But I do. I thought I was going to die tonight, Zane. I saw it in Lin’s hate-filled eyes.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her throat. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget the feel of his hand crushing my windpipe.”

  He started forward, but she held up a hand.

  “No, let me finish. I thought you were dead, and I was ready to meet you in the Otherworld. It’s why I didn’t fight. I’m ashamed that I gave up so easily.”

  Silent tears poured from Winnie’s eyes, and Zane couldn’t not comfort her.

  “Oh, babe.” He gently drew her into the circle of his arms and rested his cheek on top of her glossy black hair. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. When I thought you were dead…” He swallowed hard. “I practically went on a suicide mission when I teleported to that room. No plan, no backup.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. We are reactive without any thought to our own personal safety. Look at what I did in the desert.

  “Why is it a bad thing to love one another so much?”

  “I want time to find me again, Zane,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear.

  “What does that mean?”

  Winnie extracted herself from his embrace. “Just give me a few weeks to recover, okay? If, after that time, we both want to pursue a relationship, then we can move forward.”

  Denial, hot and fierce, flooded his brain. “No! No, Win. How I feel about you is never going to change. Don’t ask me to walk away. I can’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to walk away. I’m telling you, I’m walking away. For now.”

  “This is fucking stupid!”

  “Why?” she demanded, her anger coming into play. “Why is it stupid? These last weeks have been a whirlwind. And you said it yourself, you’re a wreck. How do you even know it’s me you want?”

  “Is it Rafe? You want to be with him?” Zane didn’t know where the question came from. He only knew he was hurting from her latest rejection.

  Acute disappointment flooded her countenance. Large, sorrowful eyes stared up at him from her pale face. “Go home, Zane. Be with your family, take care of your business, find your new normal, and I’ll do the same. In three weeks, if you find our relationship is ‘worth it’, then we can move forward from there.”

  27

  Winnie drank her supper that evening. She was starting on her second bottle of wine when Alastair entered the tiny kitchen.

  “What did the boy wonder do this time, child?”

  Wine burned her nose as she snorted her bitter laughter. “Oh, shit, that stings.”

  His amused sapphire eyes watched her from where he perched on the table’s edge across from her. Within seconds, a glass of brandy appeared in his hand. “No one should drown their sorrows alone.”

  “Are you here to offer me some type of stupid, sage advice?” she asked.

  “No. I’m here to see if you want me to let him live another day.”

  A half-smile twisted her lips. “I’m the one who sent him away.”

  Surprise lit his face. “Why?”

  “It’s all happened too fast. He doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. And I feel like I’m in too deep and care too much for someone who isn’t sure he wants me.”

  “Ah, well that I can understand,” he murmured and swirled the liquid in his glass.

  “You can?”

  Alastair nodded. “Your mother and I fought the day she was shot. Earlier that morning, she had told me that she wasn’t sure a life with me was what she wanted anymore.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced up and shrugged. “She missed her children. She claimed that you were all of an age where you needed her to guide you. Aurora was bitter that GiGi was your North Star.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. If she hadn’t been with me that day, she’d still be here for you.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” Winnie said.

  His head came up more fully, and he pinned her with a stare. “What do you mean?”

  “Zhu Lin wanted her for himself. He intended to tap into her magic the same way he tapped into mine. I think his intent was to kill you, and maybe eventually my father. Then the path to Mom would’ve been clear for Lin.”

  Alastair’s icy countenance unnerved her. “Another reason, on the long list of reasons, why that bastard needs to die.” A violent sneeze shook Alastair, and his hand fisted.

  Winnie’s eyes flew wide, and she laughed incredulously. “You have the same affliction as Summer and Holly!” she crowed. “What is your—”

  “Drop it, Winter.”

  She didn’t dare defy his furious command, and yet… “I won’t tell anyone. Just a hint.”

  He opened his mouth, and she expected him to blast her with his anger. She wasn’t prepared for his honesty.

  “Locust.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth to hold back her giggles.

  A wry smile graced his lips. “Go ahead and laugh, but if you tell the others, I’ll find some dire punishment for you.”

  “This stays between us, Uncle. Pinky promise.”

  She held out the pinky of her right hand. For a moment, he stared at her in bemusement before he grinned and hooked his pinky with hers.

  He finished off his drink and placed the crystal glass on the table. “Don’t be too hard on your young man, dear girl. A love as deep and true as the one you both share can make a man crazy in the best of circumstances. Jealousy and insecurity, two of the things that Zane is experiencing, are added to the mix.”

  “He questioned if our love was worth it.”

  “And you haven’t? Isn’t that what you are doing right now with your two bottles of wine?”

  “Maybe.”

  Alastair rose but not before he conjured a jar of elixir. “GiGi’s hangover remedy. Chances are, you are going to need that tomorrow. There’s a double batch. I believe the Carlyle boy is going to need something to take the edge off the headache he’ll have tomorrow, too.”

  “He’s getting drunk?” she demanded.

  Alastair laughed. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I’m home! I’m not in some bar where some skank might prey—”

  He held up a hand for silence. “You might want to check the front porch. He never went home.”

  Her anger dissipated. “Zane’s getting drunk on our front porch?”

  “Go easy on him, child. The Carlyle men are a thick-headed lot.” He came around the table and kissed her forehead. “Good night, dear girl. I thank the Goddess that Zane got to you in time.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Alastair,” she managed past the emotion clogging her throat. “I love you.”

  Alastair’s irises morphed into a brighter blue as he stared down at her. “I love you, too. But don’t tell anyone I said so. They’ll think I’m getting soft.”

  “Mum’s the word.”

  His chuckle could be heard even after he teleported.

  Winnie topped off her glass and meandered to t
he front window. Sure enough, Zane sat on the steps, a bottle of hard liquor in hand. As Winnie watched, Zane sipped from the glass container. Seemed he had settled in and had no intention of leaving.

  “You should talk to him,” Spring said from behind her.

  “I probably should.”

  “But you won’t?”

  “How would it look if I gave in, sister?”

  Spring joined her at the window to peer out. “Like maybe you love him and care about his well-being.”

  Winnie gave Spring a rundown of what was said earlier.

  “How can I trust that he loves me?” she asked.

  “You didn’t see him when you were taken by Lin, Winnie. He went out of his mind and started yelling at Dad and Uncle Alastair. Who does that if they aren’t in love? It’s a recipe for disaster.” Spring hugged her and kissed her cheek. “Anyone can have misgivings. You, yourself, had some. Give him a chance. He’s already proved it in everything he’s done. What more do you want from him?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m scared,” she confessed.

  “Go to him, sister. Ease his mind.”

  Winnie’s eyes drifted to the lone figure on the steps. “It’s all too intense, Spring.”

  “Think how he feels. You’ve known you’ve loved him for years and years. He was hit over the head with it when your spell was broken.”

  “How is it we never noticed you were the grown-up one of the family?” Winnie asked dryly.

  “I keep a low profile.”

  Winnie sighed and took a sip of wine. “Fine. I’ll talk to him.”

  * * *

  Zane had taken another long chug from his whisky bottle, just as the massive mahogany door swung open. He glanced up, not expecting to see Winnie standing there.

  Politeness and ingrained manners said he should rise to greet her, but instead, he twisted to rest his back against the railing and gestured with the bottle to the open space across from him.

  Wordlessly, she mirrored his pose.

  They sat in silence for a short while, each sipping their drinks, staring across the expanse of the steps at one another.

  “Why are you still here, Zane?” Winnie finally asked.