Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (8 page)

With one foot already
outside the lab,
I hesitated. Should I take Sarah’s spell? How much damage could
that aura cause?

A lot, considering it
already partially
controlled White Feather.

Was the aura Sarah? A
powerful ghost
could cling to something such as its own skull, but scattered and
burned bones?

No matter. If the bone was
Sarah, her
spell would only make things worse. It wasn’t possible to fake
a witching fork…then again, why not? Tara had done a pretty
good job of faking results. And if I held the fork, White Feather
wouldn't know whether the fork really pulled to the bone or not.

“It’s an aura. It can’t
think. Right?” But it was an aura tied to a
bone.
Ugh. That was as bad as a blood aura. It had power.

I dashed into the bathroom
and looted
the Navajo basket. My special bracelet that looped to a ring held
several special carvings, including my favorite protection, a
medicine bear.

I sped back outside.

White Feather was wary in a
half asleep
kind of way. “Why did you lock the door?”

At least he had noticed. I
waved my
left hand in front of his face. He was definitely more alert because
his eyes not only tracked my hand, they narrowed suspiciously.

“Bad magic,” I panted. “You
need to put it down.” There was no point in concealing the
facts from the victim. Without warning, I pushed my hand under his
nose, doing my best to get the sage airborne. “Breathe deep!”
Sage tea would have been better, but he probably wouldn’t allow
me that much leeway.

Instinctively, he grabbed
my wrist,
coming in contact with my silver. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t reach for your wind.
I’m not sure what will happen if you do that.” At the
cabin, his wind had only added to the danger. Silver, on the other
hand, had blocked. “Drop the bone, White Feather.”

White Feather frowned and
then lifted
the bag higher as though he hadn't realized he was holding it. Now
that he was in contact with my silver, he reflexively shifted his
grip to hold one end--like anyone might do when exposed to something
obviously dead and disgusting.

“Put it on the ground.”

He tilted his head, but
then clutched
the bag tighter, wrapping his fingers around it again.

He wasn’t free yet. “Just
so I can see if it belonged to Sarah.” My soothing voice
squeaked at the end.

I felt it then. An ill
wind, an
outright attack. The aura didn’t trust me, even if White
Feather did. I panicked. I wasn’t prepared to fight wind. It
pushed at me, threatening to choke off my air supply with sulfur and
stink.

Raised hands, even those
with silver,
were not much protection against fetid air. I gagged in a useless
struggle to find fresh oxygen.

Before I could circle
around or
consider more than a gasp of a warning, White Feather blinked. Wind
was his forte. His mind might be in a fog, but the twisted abuse of
the wind penetrated whatever haze gripped him.

“Adriel, watch out!” He
parried, shoving the wind away from both of us. The bag fell from his
fingers, either because he felt the sickness or because he wanted his
hands freed for a fight.

I dove so fast, a tornado
couldn’t
have stopped me from falling on the bag like it was a bomb.

Three feet above the
ground, the silk
under my shirt rammed into the aura. “Ooof.” White
Feather’s wind pressed against me, blasting the ill wind away,
but unintentionally holding me down. The silk was as firm as a metal
shield, hard against my stomach. I hung in midair, compressed from
both sides, barely able to wave an arm.

Mother Earth wasn't
available to me
from three feet above the dirt, and even if she had been, the closest
path was directly through a dark, evil aura.

“Mnng!” My vision went
dark.

White Feather finally
finessed his
attack, blowing away the aura underneath my body.

The aura dispersed. As
graceful as a
sack of groceries, I flopped onto the bone.

“Ugh.” Somewhere along
about the fourth shake my head cleared.

White Feather spoke, but
the buzzing in
my ears left me deaf. When my fingers finally responded to my
commands, I extracted the silk scarf from under my shirt and wrapped
it carefully around the bagged bone. I admit, I muttered a prayer,
not only for the dead, but also for the living, all in one breath.

“What the hell was that?”
White Feather flexed his fingers, searching for the enemy.

I stayed on the ground,
resting, while
he searched his memory. “Bad magic.”

“It yanked on me.”

It had done more than that.
“Your
wind? Or you?”

He didn’t answer right
away. He
crouched down next to me. “What just happened here?”

I sat up, holding the
package. “You
remember the evidence your brother gave you?”

“The bone.”

“It took a liking to you.”

He frowned. “I brought it
over
here to show you. And then...How long have we been out here with that
thing?”

“It had you under the
influence.
I couldn't convince you to put it down.” I spit some of the
dust off my lips.

White Feather helpfully set
me on my
feet.

“I’m not sure it had any
definite plans, but it seemed to want to be a part of you. Aztec
sacrifices, you had me scared.” Truth be told, I was still
scared.

Rather than releasing my
arm, his
fingers gripped harder. “It was a dream. You wanted to take my
treasure. It wasn't a bone.”

“Oh, yes it was.” I put one
hand on his, letting us both benefit from the silver.

He glanced down at the bag
still in my
other hand. “Can you put it down?”

I happily leaned over and
set the
package down. White Feather’s power tingled against my fingers. He drew
me closer to him, away from the package. “Dammit. I
knew I shouldn’t have involved you. That thing is dangerous.”

“I have a way to tell if it
is
Sarah, but I’m not taking it into the lab.”

“Taking it anywhere is a
bad
idea.” His wind stirred, circling like static electricity.

“I’m not sure using wind
around it is a great idea.” Without conscious thought, I
grounded to Mother Earth. The solid earth was very reassuring. She
was a flow, a heartbeat carried through my blood, a rhythm of earth.

As suddenly as White
Feather relaxed,
he tensed again. “What--?” I found myself unexpectedly
sandwiched between him and his car, about to be flattened again.

The danger had to be coming
from the
bag.

I squeezed around White
Feather’s
protective arm, but it was too late. The bag was halfway across my
yard, running hard into the desert. “The cat!” I yelled.

“It’s a cat?”

A brown streak with a
bright red scarf
trailing around the side of its head scampered into the trees.

“Come back here!” As if it
would listen. The cat wouldn't deign to touch the tuna and water, but
one old, disgusting, evil bone, and it was suddenly my best friend,
coming right up to my very feet.

I slumped in defeat. “It’s
gone.”

White Feather split his
attention and
confusion between the now empty desert and me. “What would a
cat want with that bone?”

“That motley feline has
something
to do with Sarah. It was here when she was.”

“She had a cat?”

“I don’t really know. That
cat could be friend or foe.” For all I knew, the cat was more
connected to the aura than Sarah. “At least I don’t have
to worry about bringing the bone into the lab anymore.”

“The bones. The dream. That
damn
wind again!” His fists clenched.

“The same one from Sarah’s
cabin?”

He powered his breeze
around us both,
guarding now as he hadn’t done before. My toes tingled. I
breathed in the heady magic of it. “Take it easy. I think it’s
gone now.”

“It’s almost as if it's
following me. Or someone is using wind to find me. Maybe it’s
really following Sarah?”

“Something was at the
cabin. Do
you think...can wind really track you?”

He let his power settle,
but he was far
from serene. “Wind isn’t alive. Not exactly. And this
wind is hungry. There was that same smell, but at the time, I thought
I was smelling the bones.” He shook his head. “Most
blackened bones don’t smell like gutted kill, blood and offal.”

“Silver,” I said. “It
helped me. Maybe I can help you block this thing, whatever it is.
Let me try something!”

White
Feather wasn’t nearly as excited as I was, but he followed me
inside.

I raided my stash of fresh
silver and
sized a piece around his finger. “Gold would be stronger, but
I'm totally out at the moment. I'll design something more permanent,
but for now, I’ll fashion an alarm.” My experiments with
wind needed to move up on the priority list. It was obviously a
weapon—and White Feather wasn’t the only one wielding it.

White Feather watched as I
braided the
fresh silver and then fashioned a circle, melding it without losing
the design. Most clients wouldn't get even a rub from my
grandmother's silver, but White Feather was special. A single leaf
decoration from my own bracelet, embedded in the fresh silver, would
go a long way toward protecting him.

“What exactly will this
spell
do?”

“Warn you mostly.” I set
the silver aside to cool. “Silver is a natural blocker. A
determined witch could overcome it, but hopefully, once you're
warned, you'll be able to take steps of your own.”

He reached for the ring.
“Let's
see if this fits.”

I was skilled with jewelry
since I
fashioned so much of my own. It slipped over his finger perfectly. He
yelped, surprising us both.

“Ow! Hot!”

He yanked it off, dropping
it on the
table. “Better wait for it to cool.”

“Moonlight Madness.” I
picked up the ring. It was cool to the touch. Either the stricken
look on my face or the fact that I didn't immediately drop the ring
told him all he needed to know.

“I need to create a
different
spell,” I choked out.

He stared at me without
asking, but I
told him anyway. “The heat is the warning. Except that in this
room, you should be shielded. There's no wind. There's nothing in
here which means--” I didn’t finish. I couldn’t.

“I'm contaminated.” His
face drained of color.

My own face felt pasty.
“There's
some type of spell on you. Probably from whatever that thing was in
the bones.” And had I not used my grandmother's bracelet with
the old, experienced silver, we might never have known. Freshly spun
silver was untainted. It would pick up new spells
as they
occurred,
but
it wouldn’t
trigger for an established spell.
Thankfully, old magic,
like
that in my bracelet, was stronger and smarter than new silver.

“You're,” I swallowed bile,
“going to need some purification.”

“I'm leaving. My being here
is
putting you in danger.” White Feather made for the doorway.

I ignored his suggestion.
“We can
cover the basic purification and warding.” The spell could have
come at him through dreams, food...I nearly refused to contemplate
voodoo and blood spells because whatever had been in the bones wasn't
even alive, but this was not the time to be stupid. “It would
help if we knew the witch. Sarah didn’t seem that strong.”

White Feather had to stop
or walk out
with me still talking. He stopped. “Maybe she gained power
through her own death.”

I gathered sage, corn
pollen and other
necessary ingredients. “Can ghosts still cast spells? That
shouldn’t be possible.”

“It is, at least with some
magics. Ghosts have an affinity to air currents because that’s
what they can control best when they cross over. A wind witch in
particular might be able to impart some sort of spell.”

“Really?” The possibility
would have been a lot more intriguing had we not been talking about a
malicious ghost. “I need to beef up on my research.”

White Feather didn't come
back into the
lab, but he didn't leave either. “Grandfather wasn’t
quite ready to cross over when he went. Let’s just say he’s
been heard from now and again.”

I almost dropped a beaker
of holy
water. “You have a ghost in the family?”

He sighed. “Two actually.
It’s
a long story. And you keep insisting that Sarah wasn’t a strong
wind witch. I don’t know what to think, but it’s better
if I track this down myself.”

With
him under some
sort of influence, that was a particularly dangerous idea. My heart
didn’t like it, nor did my head. “You can fight it with
wind if you want, but it won't hurt to use every skill we have. Many
things counter wind and wind spells. Water. Fire. Earth.” I
forced my voice to remain calm as I added holy water to the
protection and twisted the elements together with a leather braid.

In
addition to the
silver, I needed an arrowhead. It might interfere with his magic, but
desperate times called for desperate measures. Thankfully I hadn't
put away the arrowhead from the other night. It was still on my
kitchen counter.

Unfortunately, White
Feather followed
me to the living room. He wasn’t inclined to wait for me to
finish the blocking spell.

His hand was on the
doorknob when I
said, “Try this, White Feather. Hold this in one hand and put
the ring back on.” I braided quickly. “The arrowhead may
interfere with your own magic, but give it a shot.”

I felt his wind before he
moved. The
anger in it brushed along my arms, threatening. Something in the
kitchen fell over, probably the roll of paper towels by the sink.

“None of this is safe!” The
green in his eyes darkened to the black of the sea.

“You can’t fight this
alone.”