Sinful Magic (29 page)

Kieran walked in wearing jeans and no shirt. Dyfyr sat on his chest, holding the lock of her hair. Key carried a steaming mug and crossed to her.

Closing her magic for a second so Gwen wouldn’t hear, she said, “It’s my mother.”

He handed her the mug. “Yeah, I heard. You look a little pale.” He touched her face. “You okay?” He lowered his hand to where the Tear was beneath her shirt. “Any pain? Weakness?”

“No, just slept hard and felt a little dizzy when I stood from being jarred awake.” She took a sip of the tea, and said, “This helps. Thanks.” Taking a breath, she added, “I don’t want my mom to know you’re in here, okay?”

He leaned closer and kissed her, then stepped back and propped a shoulder against the closet. He hooked his thumbs in his jeans and appeared relaxed.

She picked up the computer and set it on the bed. She raised the lid, keeping Kieran behind it. Gwen’s head and shoulders appeared on the screen. Roxy was surprised to see that her hair had more silver streaks, and there were deeper lines around her eyes and mouth. Her mom looked tired and worried. Immediately, her mother said, “You’ve Awakened.”

That caused her to pause. “How do you know?”

“You’re my daughter, of course I know. And I can feel the spike in your power through the computer connection.” For a second, her tiredness vanished. “You’ve done it, Roxy. You’re a soulmirror witch. Did the dragon wake?”

Debating what to tell her mom, she looked up at Kieran, then gasped. His chest! Around the dragon’s mouth, red welts and blisters were forming! The dragon was burning him. Yet all Kieran did was shake his head, as if telling her to ignore it.

Why was the dragon angry? Was it from talking about his being awake? That made her think of the Tear. She looked at her mom and said, “Yes, he’s awake, and he’s angry.”

“Angry? But you’re—”

“I’m what?” Just how much had her mother lied? Frustration steamed through her.

Her mom said, “We’ll do The Lover Ceremony and appease him. Yes, that will work. We’ll show him how we honor his lover, our first fertility witch. You’ll represent her. You’ll need your sixth chakra, your third eye, and maybe you’ll be able to see the dragon. Talk to him. Explain that we need him.”

Roxy watched her mother evade the question, and spin out plans. “I doubt it; he tried to kill me.”

“What?” Her mouth dropped and eyes rounded, making her face look like a comic-book sketch.

Roxy felt her mother’s magic sputter with her surprise. She pushed harder. “He was so furious”—she yanked the neck of her shirt down—“he embedded the Tear in me and then tried to kill me with his claws.”

“That can’t be!” her mom cried, leaning forward until her face filled the screen. “How could this happen? What did you do to him?”

Roxy heard a clang in her head, the door slamming on her tiny hope that her mom hadn’t lied about the Tear and more to her. “You knew. And you lied.” The words hurt her throat.

“No! I’ve only heard rumors! Why would you have the Tear? I don’t—” She narrowed her eyes and said, “It’s the other soulmirror witches turning you against me. They hate me. Carla does dangerous, risky magic; she takes people to the astral plane! She lost a mortal on the astral plane once, yet the Ancestors chose her. She’ll lie about me, say I did things—”

“What things?” Roxy demanded. Last night when she’d told the witches who her mother was, Carla had just asked why she hadn’t told them. It had been Darcy who lashed out about Silver. Roxy didn’t know the soulmirror witches well yet, but her sense of Carla was of a kind and deeply compassionate woman.

“Making you think I know about the Tear!”

Carla hadn’t done that. Heavy fatigue blanketed her. “Stop lying. You had something to do with calling Dyfyr’s soul into Kieran, didn’t you?”

“I knew it!” her mother said, her face going red. “Carla’s telling lies about me, trying to discredit me. But she’s the one who lost that mortal on the astral plane!”

Roxy had a vague recollection of that, and as she remembered, Carla found the mortal and retrieved her. Roxy might not be a psychologist like Carla, but she recognized guilt, and trying to accuse someone else of a crime to cover your own. “We’re not talking about Carla.” She leaned over and set the cooling mug of tea on Key’s dresser and returned her gaze to her mother. “We’re talking about what you did to Kieran. How you risked a baby’s life by calling the soul of an ancient dragon into him when he was in his mother’s womb.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You refused your magic all these years! You wouldn’t do what I told you, you wouldn’t even read the comic books until last year!”

Roxy went so still she heard her own heartbeat. She looked up at Kieran and saw that he’d caught it, too. The dragon’s ruby eyes were blazing with fury, and Key’s eyes were a flat gray menace. She returned her gaze to her mom. “You sent me those comic books?” People sent her books, graphic novels, comic books

all sorts of material all the time. Oh God, it was hitting her just how deep this went. “I felt your magic in Dyfyr. You were part of that spell, you kept track of Kieran

” She looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Who’s there? Roxy, who are you talking to?”

Key strode to her, slammed the laptop closed, and shoved it to the floor. He stood above her, his chest rippled, veins standing out on his arms, his hands fisted. “That bitch.” He looked down at her. “She’s been manipulating you, got you interested in my comics so you’d seek me out, and now that goddamned Tear is locked inside you!” He ground his jaw, the cords on his neck swelling.

She could feel the heat of his anger, like a band tightening around her head. But she was finished being naďve and weak. She stood up. “I’m going to tell the other witches. They need to know that we’ve confirmed she did the spell.”

Key stepped back and held his hands out in front of him, opening and closing his fists. “My fingers burn like the claws want to come out.” He looked up at her. “I can’t touch you. I better leave to be safe.”

Roxy dropped her gaze to Dyfyr. The dragon was so angry, his two curved horns looked sharper and his claws were out in the tattoo. The burn marks from earlier were healing, though. She couldn’t begin to understand what her mother had been thinking, putting a powerful, ancient dragon in a child. “Where are you going?”

Key turned, went to his dresser, and pulled out a shirt. “Phoenix and I are going to make a show of moving the Dragon Tear. We had Linc plant the rumor about it last night in a poker game, and Ram informed the recruits this morning to be on the lookout. Word will get around.” He strapped on his holster for his knife, then put a backup blade in his boot.

“But

I have the Tear, how can you move it?”

“Sutton and Carla bought a diamond teardrop pendant this morning. The witches will infuse the stone with enough magic to give it the illusion of being as powerful a prism as the real Tear.”

Worry gnawed at her. “You’re trying to draw out Liam.” A shudder of fear and revulsion rippled down her spine. The memory of her own blood and screams made her queasy. He should have been dead, but the demon and Young regrew his heart with the blood of fertility witches. How many died so that abomination could live?

Key’s eyes blazed with hatred. “I’m going make sure he’s dead this time.”

“It’s too dangerous, he’s—”

Key strode to her, looking down. “He’s a threat to you. He dies.”

She blinked and felt the impact of his simple words. “Be careful, please.”

“I’m still running hot. Can’t touch you or kiss you, but know this, Roxy—I’ll be back.”

Running hot; he meant the dragon’s anger. “Stay still.” She rose up on her toes and brushed her mouth over his. Just a soft kiss and then she moved back.

Blue warmth flickered in his eyes. “Stay here, Roxy, where you’re safe. I’ll call you later.”

After he left, Roxy bent over to pick up the laptop and felt another wave of dizziness. Was it the Tear? Sickening her? Maybe working faster than the witches thought? She dropped the computer on the dresser and went into the bathroom.

For a second she smiled. Leave it to Kieran to have red walls accenting white fixtures and black towels. She turned on the shower, stripped out of her clothes, and got under the spray. Curious, she looked at her schema. The mark was full of color, a mix of blue and green. If her life was draining so quickly, would the color in the schema fade?

Yet the goddess looked almost fat with color. That must be a sign that Kieran was feeding her magic. With her confidence rising, she was determined that she’d attain enough power to communicate with Dyfyr and find a way to remove the Tear. She had to—Roxy had more reason than ever to live now.

Kieran.

And she was going to fight with everything she had to stay with him.

Roxy finished explaining what she had learned for sure that morning about her mom to Darcy, Carla, and Ailish. The blind witch was on the computer, Carla sat next to Roxy on the couch, and Darcy paced furiously around them.

Darcy whirled around and said, “She accused Carla of doing dangerous magic. Tried to get the Circle Witches to turn their backs on Carla when she needed help!”

Roxy had no defense for her mother. “I’ve been thinking about it; I’m pretty sure she thought that the Ancestors would tell Carla, the Moon Witch Advisor, what my mom did. That’s why she wanted that position so badly. But she had to realize, on some level, she wasn’t going to get it. Aside from doing something so dangerous and wrong with her magic, she hadn’t found her soul mirror. She just wasn’t powerful enough.” That took her thoughts in another direction. “In fact, that’s probably what scared her about each of you becoming soulmirror witches; you might have enough power to find out what she did.”

“With our third eye,” Darcy said.

“And knowledge chakras,” Ailish added.

“We would have needed to know what to look for,” Carla said. “And we don’t seem to have the connection to dragon magic that would have allowed us to see it anyway.”

“I do,” Roxy said. “But I’m not powerful enough yet.” Nor was she sure she wanted to actually see what her mom had done. “I haven’t opened my sixth chakra yet.” She went on, needing to get this clear. “You’re suspicious of me because I’m her daughter, I understand. But the Tear is in me, and we need Dyfyr to figure out how to get it out and destroy it. I need to know how to open my sixth chakra.”

They were silent.

“If we don’t find out why the dragon is so angry and I die, Kieran is trapped. I know the curse is broken for him, but what happens to the dragon if I die?”

Darcy sank down in the chair to Roxy’s right. “The hunters only get their wings for their witch. Without her, the familiar dies off. Key will be free.”

“Darcy,” Carla rebuked her.

Roxy looked at Darcy. “But Dyfyr is immortal.”

The other witch drew her eyebrows together. “Crap.”

That made Roxy laugh, she couldn’t help it. Darcy was loyal to her friends, and that was something Roxy respected and valued. “Yeah, crap.” Then she sobered. “Look, maybe Dyfyr can’t or won’t save me.” That hurt, but she had to focus on Kieran and the Tear. “But if I find out why he’s so angry and fix that, then he and Kieran can exist together. And maybe he can tell us what to do about the Tear. Because once I’m dead, isn’t someone going to have to take out the Tear to keep rogues from getting it?” Wasn’t her day just brimming with pleasant thoughts?

“How do we know you’re not manipulating us?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, give it a rest!” Ailish snapped. “Roxy is the victim here, she’s the one who’s doing to die.”

Darcy sighed and looked at Roxy. “Ailish is right. I know you’re not like Silver, Roxy. All three of us know it. I’m angry, not just because I don’t like Silver, but I’m furious for Key, and I was taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

Roxy sat back in surprise. “You

what just happened?”

“Hell froze over and Darcy apologized,” Ailish said with a grin.

“Hell seems to freeze over a lot,” Carla said.

“I’m not that bad,” Darcy said.

Carla smiled. “Not bad; passionate and opinionated and we love you for it. Axel does, too.”

The witch flashed a huge smile. “He really does.” Then she turned to Roxy. “Any more dark family secrets?”

“N

wait. One. I don’t think it has anything to do with this, though.” Roxy’s stomach tightened. It had been drilled into her head to never tell anyone. Shayla was her best friend, also the friend refusing to return her phone calls. “About a cousin. She’s a year younger than me and wasn’t even born when my mom would have done the spell to summon Dyfyr’s soul into Key. I can’t see how she’d be involved.”

Carla said, “Is she a demon witch?”

“No! She wants her chakras to die off the same as I did. She just wants to be a screenwriter and be left alone. That’s all.”

“Is that her secret?” Ailish asked.

“No.” Roxy really didn’t know what to do. Why wasn’t Shayla returning her calls or emails now that she had a phone and her laptop? “Her name is Shayla Banfield, and I swear I can’t see how her situation would have anything to do with the dragon or the Tear. We had a pact not to awaken our magic, and now she’s not even returning my calls.”

Carla put her hand on Roxy’s arm. “Let’s talk about how you open your third eye in your sixth chakra. If you think of something about Shayla’s situation we need to know, then tell us.”

Surprised and pleased, she said, “You trust me to make that decision after I kept the identity of my mother from you?”

Carla nodded. “You have more to lose here than any of us.”

True. “Okay, so how do I open my third eye?”

“Sex with your soul mirror,” Carla began.

She was more than willing to do that. They just had to get Dyfyr to cooperate and then hope he’d be willing to talk to her.

“How many do you see?” Key said into his Bluetooth as he drove through the town. It was dark; they’d waited until the streets were mostly clear of people to reduce the chances of collateral damage. Then Key had left Phoenix’s house, one phone clipped on his hip, the other clutched in his hand. The magic-laced diamond inside the phone pulsed lights strong enough to show through the cracks in the casing. Any rogues with their enhanced vision would see it and believe Key was carrying the Dragon Tear. Key was really counting on drawing Liam out.