Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (36 page)

“The sight of you makes me
sick
!” I hissed when he whispered my name again.  “Just go!”

As I glanced up to glare at Nathan’s immobile form in the mirror, I found my eyes drawn to Tyler instead.  There was something about the way he was looking at Nathan that was just so
wrong
.  He almost looked amused!  Did he think the destruction of my life was
funny
or something?  Was telling me about my mark his sick way of getting back at Nathan for kicking his ass?

I decided then and there that all men should be drowned at birth.

As if he could sense me staring at him, he turned to look at me and his lips turned up in the coldest, cruelest smile I had ever seen.  Our eyes met in the glass and a strong whiff of smoke took me by surprise.  I would have chalked it up to someone burning a fire in the fireplace in one of the nearby houses, but there was something different about that smell.  I had smelled it before, but I couldn’t remember where.  It had a bitter scent to it.  It almost smelled like…sulfur.

Just as that smell hit me, I witnessed a phenomenon that chilled me all the way to my bone marrow.  The tube of lipstick my unseen friend had used to write her fist message rose up in front of me and started gliding across the glass so fast I could barely keep up.  Like her last message, she kept it short and sweet.  As I read it, I felt my muscles tense and a knot of terror form in my stomach.

Nathan stay!
it read in the same childlike writing as before. 
Demon!  Demon!  Demon!

And then—because, you know,
that
wasn’t enough to turn my hair white or anything—I whirled around just in time to see a figure appear at the top of the stairs.  A handsome figure with too-long, sun-streaked hair, bronze skin, and warm golden eyes.

“Ember, are you all…right…?” Tyler asked, his voice trailing away to nothing as his eyes fell on his doppelganger.

A doppelganger with pitch black eyes and a leering grin.

“Oops, looks like the cavalry’s arrived.  Guess the party’s over.”  Jack’s voice coming out of Tyler’s mouth was so creepy I actually shivered, hearing it.  “Oh well, my work here was nearly done, anyway.” 

With a darkly cheerful laugh, he started backing toward the door with both Tyler and Nathan headed right for him. Before he stepped over the threshold and out onto the widow’s walk, he paused for a second and grinned. 

“I know a way to get rid of your little souvenir, Ember.  Give me a call.  We’ll talk about making an exchange.  Information for…” I felt physically ill as he raked his eyes over me from head to toe, and his grin got bigger and creepier.  “…a little taste of what
you
have to offer.  Then again, I don’t guess I have to bargain for what I want anymore, do I?  I’ll see you in the morning, my love.” 

The second he stepped through the remains of the French doors, whatever charm he’d been using to masquerade as Tyler melted away and he was once again the Jack I knew—and had come to hate.  With a smartass salute in Nathan’s direction, he turned around and disappeared.  And I don’t mean that figuratively, either.  He literally dissolved into a cloud of foul, inky-black smoke and
disappeared.

I just stood there and stared at the place he had been, my body quivering with chills that wouldn’t seem to ease up.  It had been so easy for him to get to me.  He had simply walked through the front door and made me believe he was someone I thought I could maybe trust.  Who would he show up as next?  Kim?  Blake?  Grams?

Nathan?

Feel the Burn

“Baby, are you all right?” Nathan asked, rushing toward me.

“Don’t.  Touch me,” I gritted out between my chattering teeth.  “Ever, Nathan.  Don’t you
ever
touch me again.”

“Maybe you should go, mate,” Tyler said, his tone way south of friendly.  “It’s pretty obvious you’ve worn out your welcome here.”

“Baby, are you all right?” Nathan asked, rushing toward me.

“Stay out of this,” Nathan snarled without looking away from me.  “Ember, you have to hear me out.  You don’t understand.”

Oh, I understood all right.  I would never be able to trust anything I felt for him.  I would always wonder if it was some vampy mind trip.  So, seriously, what would be the point of hearing him out?  Unless… 

“How do I remove it?” I asked coldly.  “You want me to listen to your latest load of bullshit?  Tell me how to remove it so I can at least know I’m thinking for myself when I kick your sorry ass out that door.”

“You can’t,” he said sadly.  When I started to turn away, he reached out for me.  I slapped his hand away.  “Damn it, Em!  Listen to me!  Despite what that demonic piece of shit told you, you can’t remove a vampire’s mark.  Don’t you think I would have gotten rid of mine centuries ago if you could?  If you remove it, you die.  I won’t let that happen, Em.”

So it was die or be Nathan’s pretty puppet for the rest of my life.  Something was seriously out of whack with the universe if those were my only two choices.  I mean, in most cases you had Choice A, which usually sucked, but didn’t suck as much as Choice B.  But not in my life.  Oh, no.  Every time I turned around I was faced with two Choice B’s and no way to choose between them.

“Is that what you were waiting to gain my trust to tell me?” I asked, giving him a look that should have killed him.  When he just looked confused, I laughed bitterly.  “That night, when I saved you from the demon, you were saying you just needed a little longer to gain my trust, then you’d tell me.  Well, you just screwed yourself.  I am
never
going to trust you, Nathan.  Never.”

“How did you know that?” he gasped, looking shocked.  When I just laughed again, he started to reach for me and I backed up a step.  “Tell me, Ember!  How did you know that?”

“Because I saw it, all right?” I yelled, backing up another step.  “Grams handed me my necklace and I felt all funny and then I was there, watching you.  When I snapped out of it, my
brand
felt all funny.”

“Have you seen anything else?” he asked, his eyes round with what looked like terror.  “Have you seen
anyone
else?  Answer me, Ember!”

“No, I only saw you,” I told him, too hurt and betrayed to even care why he was so upset.  “And
you
I would be happy to never see again.  I think you know your way out.”

“Em, please, you have to let me explain,” he whispered, his eyes as full of pain as mine were. 

“I’m tired of hearing your explanations, Nathan,” I told him coldly.  “Just go.”

When he reached for me again, I found myself backed up against a hard, warm chest.  I looked over my shoulder when Tyler’s hands wrapped around my upper arms in a grip so gentle I felt like a china doll only to find him giving Nathan the deadliest look in history.  Still treating me like I was made of porcelain, he moved me behind him and placed himself directly between me and the desperate vampire still trying to reach me.

“You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” Nathan asked Tyler in a voice chilly enough to cause a blizzard right there in the room with us. 

“It won’t be so easy this time around,” Tyler said, his voice every bit as chilly.  “Now, I believe the lady has asked you to leave—
repeatedly. 
Why don’t you save us all a lot of drama and go?”

“What in the world has happened here?” a horrified voice asked from the doorway.  We turned as a group to find Mrs. Amelia standing just inside the door, her gaze taking in the destruction of the room around us.

“Why, hello, Nathan,” she said when her eyes landed on him.  Gesturing around the room, she smiled and asked, “Your work?  Must you always make such a dramatic entrance?”

“This was a demon attack, Amelia,” Nathan growled, his eyes not dimming even a little.  “Since when did you stop putting wards on your house?”

“Don’t take that tone with me in my own home,” she snapped, not seeming quite so frail all of the sudden as her emerald eyes shot sparks at Nathan.  If anything, she sounded more like Grams.  “My house is very well protected, Nathan.  Now, tell me, what are you doing here and why is a demon attacking my home?”

I only half-listened as Nathan and Tyler fought to see who could give the best version of the story.  Having lived it, I didn’t find it particularly fascinating.  I was starting to feel kind of woozy—though from blood loss or lack of sleep and all the energy drinks I’d sucked down like Gatorade I couldn’t tell.  I looked around, hoping there would be something soft for me to land on if I passed out and grimaced when all I saw was debris-littered hardwood floors.  I gauged the distance between where I stood and the bed—walking through an obstacle course of glass and mangled lighting—and decided it just wasn’t worth it.

“Are you all right, Em?” Nathan asked, putting his arm around my waist as I began to sway unsteadily. 

“Do I
look
all right to you?”  I pushed weakly at his arm in an effort to remove it, but it was like trying to move a steel beam out of the way with my pinkie finger.  “And didn’t I tell you not to touch me?”

“Bring her to me, Nathan.”   Mrs. Amelia’s eyes met mine and I couldn’t help but notice the amused twinkle in their emerald depths.  It became even more pronounced when she turned her gaze back to Nathan.  “I’ll have her fixed up in a jiffy, dear.  It would be a true waste to mar such a lovely leg with a scar.  Don’t you agree, Nathan?”

He shot her a look, but kept his opinion about the beauty of my leg, or lack thereof, to himself.  If my leg—which really isn’t a bad looking leg, actually, if you don’t mind short and stubby—wasn’t worth defending, I didn’t even want to think about what he thought about the rest of me.

I’d be happy to tell you, in vivid detail, what I think about each and every inch of you,
Nathan whispered in my mind, reminding me he could hear every single thought I had. 
But, it’ll have to wait until I can have you all to myself again.

I really couldn’t care less what you think of me,
I told him, ignoring the way my body started tingling all over at the look he was giving me.  For all I knew it was him literally
making
me feel that way.  I couldn’t trust anything about him, including his effect on me.

And knowing that was worse than anything Jack could have ever done to me.

Nathan helped me over to where Mrs. Amelia sat and knelt down, pulling me down on his knee and lifting my leg into the old woman’s lap in a move so fluid that I couldn’t help but be a tiny bit impressed.  Tyler stayed right behind us, and I got the feeling that all I had to do was say the word and he would take another beating to get me out of Nathan’s messed up clutches.  And, for some reason, that made me feel better, like I wasn’t so alone. 

Mrs. Amelia examined the wound for a moment, then gave me an appraising look before saying, “On second thought, Ember, why don’t I show you how to do this?  The wound isn’t terribly deep.  It should be a fairly easy one to start with.”  

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” I told her, remembering my disastrous lessons with Grams with an internal wince.  “I’m not very good at this stuff, Mrs. Amelia.”

“Oh, of course you are!  Such a powerful gift you have, dear.  You only have to learn to channel all of that wonderful power,” Mrs. Amelia told me, taking my hand and holding it over the still bleeding cut on my leg.  “Healing is all about focus.”

And so was levitation and shielding and demon banishing and…and all those other things I’d sucked at.  Still, because I thought it would be impolite to argue with her, I tried to do what she said.  I focused with all my might, but nothing happened.  Frustrated, I tried again.  And again.  And again. 

“Sometimes it helps if you close your eyes, dear,” Mrs. Amelia said calmly, apparently unsurprised that I hadn’t done it on the first try.  “It’s easier to heal a wound if you don’t have to watch it bleed.  That is especially true when the blood in question is your own.”

Closing my eyes, I took a couple of deep, steadying breaths and tried again.  I pictured the wound and saw the healing process as if it were a film playing behind my closed lids.  First the bleeding would slow and stop.  Then, it would scab over—it was an icky part of the healing process, but one that I had never managed to skip over.  Then the wound would knit itself together, tissues would reform to replace that which had been damaged.  Then it would heal, leaving behind nothing but smooth skin.  I hoped.

As I pictured each step in my mind, I began to feel an intense heat radiating from my hand and the same tingling sensation I had felt the day Grams healed my burn.  It was then that I lost my focus for a second.  What if I didn’t do it right?  What if my leg sprouted feelers or—horror of horrors—simply disappeared?

“Oh, my word,” Mrs. Amelia breathed as the heat from my hand began to lessen as my fear and doubt interrupted my concentration.  When it completely faded, she actually moaned aloud.  Beside me, Nathan made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort of laughter.  And then, as if
that
wasn’t already mashing my internal panic button, I heard Tyler groan softly behind me.