Halfway Hexed (12 page)

“Enclose!” Bryn shouted as Mrs. Thornton said, “Fall.”

Bryn’s magic closed around me a moment before her energy rocked the barrier. I stumbled, barely keeping my balance. Mrs. Thornton rose to her feet and raised both hands.

With his hand still outstretched, Bryn strode around the table to me, coming to stand just behind me.

His left hand slid through the magical force field and rested on my shoulder. “Lower the gun,” he whispered.

I kept my right arm up, my finger over the trigger. “If they promise not to try to make you put that thing on.” My voice was steady even though my pulse drummed frantically in my head.

I felt Bryn’s magic pulse as he stepped forward. He brought his mouth to my left ear, and his voice was so soft that I knew only I could hear him. “You can help me, but not this way. Lower the gun.”

My instincts screamed a protest, but I let my arm fall so the gun was pointed at the floor.

“We need a moment,” Bryn announced to the room as he closed his left hand around mine.

“Yes, it seems you do,” Barrett said. “Go ahead.”

Bryn tugged my hand, and we backed out of the room. He pulled the door closed and then dropped the shield around us. He grabbed my arm and hurried to the kitchen.

“I need a favor,” he said.

“We have to get out of here!”

“Did you hear what I said? I need a favor.”

“I heard, but—”

“I’m going to cast a spell. Then I want you to leave. Go somewhere and stay out of sight. Don’t talk to anyone under any circumstances.”

I opened my mouth, but he covered it with his hand.

“There isn’t time to discuss it. You either trust me or you don’t.”

My breath was quick and uneven, but I nodded.

“Don’t talk. Just wait.” He closed his eyes and didn’t move. “Night and flame part ways in haste. She in truth, his words false-laced.” Then he kissed me and honey-soaked peppery magic flowed down my throat.

He let me go, and I swallowed hard. He grabbed my tote from next to the kitchen table and shoved the straps onto my left shoulder, then yanked the door open. “Don’t come back here today. Come to the fund-raiser. If I’m not there, leave Duvall.”

“I’m not leaving. Where would I even go?”

He pushed me out the door. “Go to Zach. He’ll protect you.”

I couldn’t believe he’d suggest I go to Zach. They made no secret of disliking and being jealous of each other. For the Conclave to worry Bryn enough to send me away to Zach—such a bad sign.

I felt his spell’s magic coiling around me, squeezing my chest tight.
Now what?

“I don’t think I should leave you alone with them!” I said fiercely, feeling a little breathless.

He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming. “Why not, Tamara?”

“Because they’re obviously maniacs!”

“Why is what happens to me important to you?”

“Because I love you—” I slapped a hand over my mouth. Why had I said that? Was it true? I’d felt compelled to. What the Sam Houston?

He smiled at me. “Go on now. And don’t talk to anyone.” Then he closed the door.

“I love Zach, too. Just because I love you a little bit doesn’t mean we can be together,” I told the door. I slapped a hand against my forehead and turned around, tucking the gun into the back of my jeans under the turtleneck.

“I can’t believe he zapped me with a truth spell,” I muttered. I didn’t see how forcing me to tell the truth was going to make him able to lie through that needle lie detector, but we did have our magical synergy, so maybe he could divide the truth between us unevenly.

Should I really leave him with them? I didn’t want to. There were three of them and only one of him. But he was Bryn. Maybe he did know what he was doing.

If I was getting off Bryn’s property, I should do it before the wizard brigade came looking for me. I looked around quickly. Merc was somewhere on the grounds, and I wanted him.

I jogged along the back lawn, looking up into the trees. When I found him, I called in a hissed whisper. “Mercutio!” Then louder, “Merc!”

He opened his eyes lazily. “It’s after noon, and I have to get out of here. Come on down if you want to come with me.”

He yawned and came headfirst down the trunk in that gravity-defying way of his.

I started talking as we raced across the lawn and didn’t stop until we were halfway down the street in my car. Merc licked his paws thoughtfully. I exhaled hard, then worked to suck in another breath. Turns out truth spells feel kind of like an asthma attack.

‟Where should we go? There might be workmen at my house. There might be kidnappers at Zach’s.” I bit my lip. “I love Georgia Sue, but you can trust her with a secret like you can trust me not to eat a chocolate chip cookie. So if I’m under an I’ve-gotta-tell-the-truth hex, I better not go there. Tom Brick’s? It’s isolated and deserted. But what if the Conclave takes Bryn there for a ‘scene of the crime’ interview?”

Mercutio set a paw on my leg and looked out my window. I glanced over. We were passing Macon Hill, the magical tor.

I swung the wheel. “Good thinking. Hardly anyone uses the chapel on the tor. We can hide the car behind it.”

I looked in the rearview mirror several times as I sped up the road to the top of the tor. I parked my car on the grass. No other cars around.

I rolled down my window to get some fresh air and launched into telling Merc how worried I was about Bryn. I wanted to think of a way to get the police to go to his house and break up the Conclave’s interrogation, but I couldn’t call and make a false report on account of having to tell the truth. And, if I told the truth, they either wouldn’t believe it or that would start another whole mess.

Then I started talking about the state of my life in general. Kind of chaotic and confusing was my assessment. When Merc stopped making any noise, I glanced over and found him asleep. Sometimes having a sidekick who’s nocturnal works out. Sometimes not so much.

Feeling restless, I looked out the window at the grass swaying in the breeze.

I shouldn’t be sitting around wasting time.

Plus, I needed a distraction from worrying about Bryn. The tor was a place of concentrated magical power, which might help me to see more of the brooch vision.

I didn’t have any candles or matches or bowls of water, but I could always come back with those things if this attempt didn’t work. Also, it seemed to me that those things were mostly used to help the mind drift. If I could get relaxed and let my mind roam, I might be able to achieve the same effect.

I rubbed the top of Mercutio’s head for luck and then got out. I pulled off my boots and set them on the driver’s side floorboard. I tugged off my socks and set them on the seat. The ground was cold under my feet and I shivered.

I retrieved the brooch from the trunk, waiting for a moment to see if the vision would just come, but it didn’t. I closed the trunk and went around to the stone bench in front of the chapel and dug my toes into the dirt there to let the Earth’s magic flow into me.

I held the brooch lightly in my hands and stared at the rippling grass. For a long time, nothing happened.

“Powerful Earth, show her to me.” I whispered the request over and over until I was barely aware that I was saying anything at all.

She rose suddenly, partly transparent at first, then the slope of the hill faded and she came sharply into view. She was running with her back to me, getting farther away. I rushed after her.

The sound of her feet on the cobbles. A narrow street with gas streetlamps. An alleyway. Heart banging. Breath short. Something hit us, and we fell.

A cold lance of pain in my side made me scream. Blood spilling. Dry lips.

How could you?

I held my side and my hand cramped, fingers tingling with pain. She was on her side near me, starting to turn and then she was gone for the blink of an eye before she appeared again, standing over me.

“Help me. Please help me,” she said, voice soft as the wind.

Mercutio leapt over me, yowling in fury. He passed through the apparition, and she vanished. My hand felt like it was dipped in ice water. Gasping in pain, I pried the fingers of my right hand open with my left. I let the brooch fall onto the grass and my mouth hung open, trying to get enough air. Mercutio hissed and knocked the brooch away from me with an angry paw. He clawed the dirt and stamped it down into the earth as if to bury it. The terrible pain in my side faded to a dull ache, and I blinked away the tears that had formed in my eyes.

“Oh, Merc.” I ran a hand over my sweat-dampened forehead and looked at the chapel that I’d left behind when I raced headlong down the grassy embankment after her. I sucked in air and blew it out. “I don’t think I can save that girl.”

I let my head fall back onto the grass, staring up at the clear afternoon sky.

“I think she’s already dead.”

Chapter 13

Mercutio didn’ t want me to take the brooch. He was really vocal on that account, but I picked it up anyway. I used the lower edge of my shirt to keep from touching it with my bare fingers.

“I sure don’t understand, Merc. If she’s a ghost, why didn’t she appear as a ghost and talk to me from the start like Edie would’ve? And if it’s a vision, then why am I so sure that she was talking directly to me when she asked for help?”

I sighed. “Maybe it was a vision and then the girl astral-projected to me?” I put the dirt-covered brooch into its box and closed the trunk. I put my hands on the car and leaned over it, shaking my head. “I don’t know. I felt that pain. It was
really
bad. Somebody stabbed her, I think. I felt it cut something deep inside me and then all the blood was gushing out.” I shuddered.

I turned my head to look at Mercutio, who was eyeing the area suspiciously. “I’m not sure that Aunt Mel sent that thing. Why would she? Where would she even have gotten it if she’s been in Faery?” I rubbed my damp hands on my jeans and straightened up.

“Maybe the Conclave sent it to me as some kind of a test.” I licked my lips. “But I feel like I’m connected to that woman. Like she’s someone in our family line. Maybe my grandma in London sent it to me.” The breeze blew across my skin and I shivered, chilly and exhausted. “I feel terrible. Let’s sit for a minute.”

We got in the car, and I closed and locked the doors. I started it up so I could turn on the heat, then I put my seat back, trying to get my muscles to relax.

“I know I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I think I might have to talk to Bryn about this brooch.” That thought gave my heart a slight pang. “I sure hope he’s okay.”

I woke up when Merc’s paw bumped my arm, and I jumped when I realized someone was standing next to the car. The sun in my eyes had me half blind, but as my vision started to adjust I realized with relief that it was Bryn. I lowered the window.

“Hey there,” I said with a smile.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were at my son’s house?”

I jerked forward, blinking. It wasn’t Bryn. It was his dad, Lennox. “I was there. I pulled a gun on John Barrett, and Bryn kicked me out for my own safety.”

“You managed to pull a gun on the president of the World Association of Magic?” Lennox asked with a smile. “What was his security detail doing? Admiring your pastries?”

“They were distracted. Listen, I don’t know if Bryn’s okay. They were going to use some magical collar on him that was covered in needles!
Needles!
They thought they could make him tell the truth with it. I didn’t want him to go along with them.”

“He agreed to put it on?”

“I think so. He cast a spell on us. I think he thought he could outsmart the device.”

“Then he probably will.”

“You don’t know. Why aren’t you there helping him? You’re his dad.”

“Why isn’t your father here helping you?”

“Because he’s not a wizard. He’s not even human—” I slapped a hand over my mouth, muffling my words.

“No?” he asked, cocking his head.

The pressure in my chest was building. I clutched the steering wheel hard enough to make my knuckles go white. “He doesn’t live here,” I said, forcing out a breath. “Plus, I don’t think he cares about what happens to me.” I winced. The truth was hard. I rubbed the space between my collarbones that ached from trying to keep all of the truth from spilling free. “Can you go away? Bryn told me to be by myself.”