Love's a Witch (14 page)

This was what drove me nuts about witchcraft. All of it used at least a little intuition and a belief in a greater design and how things were meant to be. I could really use a big fat arrow pointing me to the right answer now, but instead, I had to find the answers inside myself. I always went with the flow. I’m not one to stand up and take charge, but if I wanted Kari back, if I wanted Craig back, it was time for me to do something.

Five minutes later I was outside at the edge of the driveway. One hand held my sketch pad and the remaining nubs of my colored pencils, while the other held Craig’s rag and Kari’s hairbrush. I wasn’t real sure what I was doing, but if I could connect with the earth, where Kari’s strength was the strongest, maybe I could trance and draw from the earth like she did. I didn’t have any tea with me this time. I was hoping for another sketch to tell me what to do.

The gravel along the edges of the winding path was edged with a waving wall of foxglove. The tall stalks of purple bells that swayed in the morning breeze, looked like weeds. One of the books I read said that foxglove was good for protection. Guess protection didn’t need to be pleasing to the eye. I kicked off the flats I had on my feet and wiggled my toes into the dirt. Foxglove stalks wedged between some of my toes. The earth was surprisingly warm.

Calm swept over me. With my toes in the ground, I palmed the rag and hairbrush for a moment. I don’t know if I was supposed to feel anything magical from them, but on an impulse, I dug a little hole in front of my feet and put them in the earth. I watched the sun rise over the horizon as I held my pencils with dirt under my nails. The ball of fire in the sky helped me focus.

My butt hit the ground a second before I felt it. The trance came over me like a wave, and I was more than a little shocked to see Kari in front of me.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would ever come to see me here. Dreams are unreliable means of communication, as you have seen. I was contemplating knife fingernails and a melted face ala Freddy Kruger next if you didn’t get the message soon.”

“Those movies were horrible.” I hugged her. We weren’t touching in a physical way, but even to my planal body, she felt weaker. “Kari, are you okay?”

Kari floated around in nothingness. We were on the blank screen again, and all I saw was her. “I’m fine. Dream walking isn’t easy work. When the body is weak, the spirit needs to work harder. Now that you’ve helped pull me here, I can—”

“What do you mean I pulled you?” I had to interrupt at that. “Didn’t you help me get here? I felt like something was yanking me over.” The harder I concentrated on Kari the more solid she became. A marching band hundreds deep couldn’t break my focus. I was keeping Kari here.

“Still not confident in your own power? You need to work on that. I wish I could be there when you finally unleash it. At least you’ve been working on your connections.”

I looked behind me, and my light beam was glowing. It had three strands wrapping around each other. There should have been four. The bind of the braid was loose, and I could see where Craig’s light should be. A note from the chord was missing. I plucked at the lights. The music wasn’t as full. Replaying the moments before he left, the anger burned way brighter than my light. Craig was the missing light I needed in my life, but he had some apologizing to do.

The break in my concentration allowed me to realize we were surrounded by trees, and huddled below was a single tent. Craig’s sandy blond hair shifted as he laid his head on his hands. His clothes were different. He’d found something to wear in the woods, and I doubted any hunting he did allowed him to make a cotton shirt. The trees looked similar to the ones around Kari’s house. At least he was in the same general area.

“Is it because I have his blood on the rag that I can find him like this?” I wondered if I should start carrying little vials of everyone’s blood in case of emergency. We needed to work cell phones into the budget, because if the vampires wanted to find me, carrying around blood would not help with the whole don’t expose myself thing.

“You can’t pick and choose who you find here.” Kari gestured to the vast emptiness around us. Craig’s image was gone.

“I am so lost. If I can’t control it, there’s no point in coming here.” I yelled to be heard. There was some kind of static noise building in the air.

Kari’s form was starting to waver. If I was the one controlling this, I needed to keep it going. A new strand of light began to grow from me. A pool of water appeared and the light dove in. I looked at Kari expecting some sort of explanation, but all she did was nod and say, “That will help.”

“Kari, please tell me what to do. I need to save you and bring Craig home. Where are you?” Why couldn’t she just give me a straight answer?

“I’m getting moved tomorrow. You won’t make it in time.” Her voice was calm, but she had to know being moved meant being sold.

“No! I can get Amber and Jake out there. They are unbelievably fast.” I had to believe we could save her. I wouldn’t take another option.

“Mary, I am taking away a lot of the guards by moving.” She gripped my arms. The noise around us was turning to wind. There was no more calm emptiness around us, just a blur that spun faster and faster. “It’s going to allow the other witches to go free. You need to build your strength. They are coming for you next.”

Okay. That sucked. “Why am I only seeing where Craig is? I buried stuff from both of you. Are you blocking me from seeing where you are?”

“I know we’re going to be great friends if we both make it out of this, Mary Fields, but there is something more important than friendship at work here.” Kari’s words were breaking up. The world around us was one horrible cell phone signal in an underground garage.

“What? What’s more important than your life?”

She shook her head. Even with the strength I was drawing from the water and Amber and Jake, our connection was failing. I looped my leg around the beam of light that connected me to my Clan. I pulled on it, and I really drank from it. They were immortal, they could give up a bit of energy and let me hold on a little longer. The winds died down and so did the noise, but I didn’t let go of Kari.

“Don’t you think that the fact you are drawn to him means something? Don’t you believe in fate? In soul mates?” Her form was becoming less dense. She was weak. So why were we talking about Craig again?

“It’s the inter-species soul mating that I am having a hard time with. Just tell me where you are. We can talk it out over some Ben & Jerry’s.”

Her spirit tried to grab hold of me, but her fingers passed through me. The noise began to grow again, and I couldn’t stop it this time.

“Love is important. Mates are important. You becoming what you are supposed to be…that is
vital
.”

“Just tell me where you are! Are you in the forest? It’s not just Craig I need. I need you too, Kari.” My voice cracked with the force I was screaming with.

Kari smiled. “I don’t think we’re compatible that way.”

“To bring you home, you goofball!” She was as bad as Amber joking at a time like this.

“I have enough strength to leave. None of the others are strong enough to reach this plane. There are so many captured, Mary. They can’t make the journey like I can. It has to be me.”

It didn’t matter how much I was pulling from the Clan right then. I was losing my grip on Kari. She was fading away, and I couldn’t hang on.

“You know this place in your heart now. You will always find it when you need it. Find Craig.” Her voice was breaking up. “Mary, listen. I’ve finally broken the compulsion of the witch who had been masking the wolves. She was dazzled. Luckily…wild sage…wonderful herb. Good for clarity…where…should be…can’t wait…Clan…survive…survive…hear me…survive.”

Kari let go of me, both of my spirit and of the plane. I found myself back in the driveway with dirt under my toenails. I knew Kari was a strong person, but I also had a feeling death didn’t scare her. Darn Wiccan logic and all the “death is a part of life” stuff. Death terrified me. So did the death of people I cared about. I cared about Kari. There was something that connected us beyond an appreciation for chocolate, but I’d be damned if I had a clue what it was.

My hands had been drawing while I was out being my astral self. This time I hadn’t seen the picture evolve. I was kind of glad. The same clearing from my fire drawing was there, but this time, from this angle, I could see the slope of a roof through the trees. Kari’s house. That meant Craig was close, or at least he would be.

Unfortunately this scene was nowhere near as romantic. Shelly Meyers, of the Meyers vampire Family was there. Jake’s sister wasn’t acting the petite flower either. She held a wolf’s head in her hands. Just the head. Blood droplets clung to strings of tissue at what was left at the neck. When I focused on the world around me again, Jake and Amber were sitting on the front porch. They waited until I started to shake to rescue me from my rattling teeth. The paper shook in my fingers as I lifted it to Amber.

“Well, it definitely looks like Shelly. Blood and her are buddies, so that part makes sense. Didn’t know she was into animals though.” Amber had not been very fond of her vamp-in-law ever since Shelly tried to dazzle her the first time they met. Then Shelly screwed up her bitchy image and helped ensure Amber’s survival. I don’t care how hard Amber tried to be, she respected that tiny blonde vampire now. Either saving Shelly’s life in return or fighting by her side, Amber would be there.

Certain traits from Amber’s father shone bright in her, and honor was one of them. Alpha Paulson was an honorable man. And he was strong like Amber too. Any guy who has the strength to take charge and lead after losing half his family…well let’s just say I admired him even more now that I knew the real story. I hoped we both made him proud with whatever we were supposed to do.

“Amber, this is a werewolf, not a regular animal. Look on the floor of the forest.” Jake pointed at the sketch of a headless body near Shelly’s feet.

“Why would the body change before the head?” Amber asked. She pulled the picture closer to her face and squinted.

They both settled on the gravel in front of me. The air was warming with the sun now high in the sky. I’d been under for a couple of hours or more.

“You mean it’s the same person…er…werewolf?” I pulled it back to look for myself, and it was still just as gross.

“Well…sometimes a head and a body don’t love each other anymore…” Amber made a slicing motion across her neck and a lovely gagging sound to go with it.

“Thank you for that, Amber,” Jake gave that scolding dad look again before he started explaining yet another thing I didn’t know about this supernatural world. “Mary, when a werewolf is killed in wolf form, their bodies revert to a human appearance. Kind of fortunate for their kind, or everyone would be killing them as wolves. No need to hide the body.” He shrugged. “It’s a preservation mechanism. And this lets us know that we will have visitors soon, but the drawing does little to help us find Craig or Kari.”

Gross. But useful information I guess. If I ended up killing Craig for leaving us in a lurch, I would have to hide the body. And now I needed to come clean about the fact that this wasn’t the first time I had seen this clearing.

“This is the second time I’ve drawn this. Well, not this event, but this place.” My voice was quiet, but they would have heard a whisper.

“Yeah, I bet you liked that drawing a lot better than this one. Less blood, more sexy.” Amber waggled her brows and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to smack her or bury myself in a hole and die of embarrassment.

“Amber told me about your other sketch. She was with Craig when he found it.” Jake didn’t make suggestive facial expressions, but the guy’s lips were pursed like he was holding in a smile.

The hole and death things were sounding better and better. Craig saw my paper porno. Great. Maybe that was why he left. I probably looked like a creepy stalker.

The best way to avoid dealing with this would be to not go into the woods. I definitely didn’t want to stumble across that clearing and accidentally have sex with Craig. Nope. That would be awful. And sweaty. And hot.

“Maybe we should wait and see if Craig is coming back.” Stalling sounded good. “This looks really close to the house. Maybe he’s just camping there for the night because he had a long trip.”

“So he would let a hundred yards keep him from a soft bed, running water and central air? Not likely.” Jake said.

“Hey, Mary, why don’t you do some kind of trance, or take a nap and try and dream to see when he’s coming home?” Amber looked at me like I should be able to be witchy on command. If only it worked like that.

I hated having something I could actually do with my power and have it be so useless for what we really needed. “I can’t see intent like that. I sometimes get flashes of aura up the light beams but the colors are more of an attitude alert.”

“So we have mood ring beams shooting out of us?” Amber stood up and did a circle. Talk about a dog-like move. She was chasing her invisible tail. “That is so cool. What does mine look like?”

“I am sure it is vibrant and sparkling just like you.” Jake stood as well and pulled her into him and kissed the top of her head. The red aura seeped from them. I sat and watched it. I couldn’t find any differences between theirs and the one I had drawn around Craig. Dammit.