Awakening (19 page)

“What?” Aunt Eileen sounded worried. “What’s the matter?”

I turned from the fridge, which was full of disgustingly healthy foods. “Don’t you guys have any Diet Coke?”

 

After breakfast with Paula and Aunt Eileen, I helped them rearrange living room furniture; then I drove to church and met my family there. I made the effort because I wanted to make my parents happy—and because I felt badly in need of a nonmagickal, normal day.

After church the whole family opted out of our normal Widow’s Vale Diner lunch so we could go back to Taunton for more unpacking. We got back to our house at three-thirty, and I decided to have a nice, long soak in the bathtub before calling Hunter.

The bath never happened. I’d just turned on the hot water faucet when I felt Hunter and Sky approaching. With a sigh I turned off the bathwater and went downstairs. Now what?

I opened the front door and waited. They both looked grim.

“Yes?” I demanded. “Aren’t we scheduled to meet later?”

“This couldn’t wait,” he said.

“Come in.” I led them into the den. After shutting the door I asked, “Is it Stuart Afton?”

“He’s the same,” Hunter answered. He looked at Sky. “Tell her.”

“Last night,” Sky began, “Bree and Raven and I were out studying the constellations by the old Methodist cemetery. We saw David. He was performing a ritual. A ritual I recognized.”

“So what was it?” I asked.

Sky glanced at Hunter. Then she met my gaze steadily. “He was letting blood as a preliminary ritual to a larger sacrifice that will be performed once the moon moves into a different quarter.”

“Bloodletting?” I said. I looked back and forth between Sky and Hunter.

“It’s a payoff,” Hunter said. “For services rendered. It fits with the ritual markings I found in the field where you had first felt a dark presence. He needs to offer his own blood to call in the
taibhs
, the dark spirit. Remember, that’s how I knew it wasn’t Selene. She has enough power to call a
taibhs
without performing that particular rite.”

I felt sick. “Well, I guess that’s the proof you were looking for, then,” I said to Hunter.

“It’s proof that he’s using dark magick,” Hunter said. “It still doesn’t connect him irrevocably to Stuart Afton. But that’s just a formality now.”

“David may not have bargained on or agreed to Stuart Afton having a stroke,” Sky put in. “That’s the kind of extra tithe that attaches itself when you deal with the blackness.”

“In any case,” Hunter said, “I’ve contacted the council, and they’ve told me to examine David formally.”

There was something terrible in that sentence. “What does that mean?”

“It means that with the power vested in me by the council I am to ask David whether or not he’s called on the dark energies,” Hunter explained, not sounding like himself. “The procedure requires that two blood witches witness my examination of him.”

I looked at him.

“It will be Sky and Alyce,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “We’re going to do it now, right away. There’s no point in wasting any more time.”

“I want to go, too,” I said.

He shook his head, and Sky looked upset. “No. That’s not necessary,” he said. “I only came to tell you because I felt you needed to know.”

“I’m coming,” I said more strongly. “If David is innocent, that will come out in the examination. I want to be there to hear it. And if he’s not . . .” I swallowed. “If he’s not, I need to hear that, too.”

Hunter and Sky looked at each other for a long moment, and I wondered if they were communicating telepathically. Finally Sky raised her eyebrows slightly. Hunter turned to me.

“You won’t say anything, you won’t do anything, you won’t interfere in any way,” he said warningly. I raised my chin but didn’t say a word. “If you do,” he went on, “I’ll put a binding spell on you that will make Cal’s look like wet tissue paper.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

 

We drove to Red Kill in Hunter’s car. My stomach was tight with tension, and I kept swallowing. I felt cold and achy and full of dread. As much as I wanted Hunter to be wrong, all the evidence pointed to David.

When the three of us walked into Practical Magick, Alyce looked up. She looked tired and ill, her face drawn and almost gray. As soon as I saw her, I felt her pain over what was about to happen. She, too, believed David was guilty, I realized.

“We need David,” Hunter said quietly.

David emerged from the back room. “I’m here,” he said, his voice perfectly calm. “And I know why you’re here.”

“Will you come with us, then?” Hunter asked.

David glanced at Alyce and said, “Yes. Just let me get my jacket. Alyce, can you get the keys for the door?”

“Of course,” she said.

David disappeared into the back room to get his jacket. And then didn’t reappear. We waited maybe a minute and a half before Hunter tore behind the counter and into the back room. Sky and I followed. The door that led outside from the back room was ajar.

“Dammit!” Hunter swore, going through the door to a weedy, overgrown lot outside. “I didn’t think he’d bolt. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

I wasn’t sure if he was referring to David or to himself, but I was too freaked out to ask. Sky was scanning the trees at the end of the lot. “He’s in there,” she told Hunter.

The two of them set off at a lope across the snow-patched ground, and I followed, sick at heart. Alyce, wrapped in a lavender shawl, bustled after us.

It was dark and shadowy inside the area of evergreens where David had disappeared. The trees were tall enough to block out most of the fading daylight, and we found ourselves in a murky gray light, peering around shadowy trunks for any sign of David. I cast my senses and felt Sky, Alyce, and Hunter doing the same. It was strange to feel my power joined to theirs in this way.

My senses picked up hibernating animals, a few birds. Was Sky wrong? Had David come in here? Or was he somehow masking himself?

Sky suddenly whirled. “There!” she cried as a ball of witch fire flew straight toward Hunter.

Hunter raised a hand and murmured something, and the witch fire was deflected, bouncing away from an invisible shield and landing in a snowbank with a sizzle.

It seemed the witch fire had come from behind a tall blue spruce. Hunter moved toward it with a predator’s quiet intensity.

Another ball of witch fire sped toward him, which he brushed off, not even bothering with the charm this time. I realized something in Hunter had changed. It was as if he was drawing power into him, taking in energies far beyond his own considerable powers, linked to the life force all around us. But it was even more than that.

Hearing my silent question, Sky said, “When he acts as Seeker, he can draw on the power of others on the council.”

God, how much else did I not know? “Will the extra power protect him?”

“Yes and no. The act of drawing power itself will wear him out if he tries to use it for too long. But it will help him fight certain kinds of attacks.”

“David Redstone of Clan Burnhide, I summon you to answer to the International Council of Witches. Athar of Kithic and Alyce of Starlocket appear as witnesses,” Hunter stated in a cold, relentless voice. “You will stand forth now.”

I heard David make a strange sound, as if he were in pain, and I wondered about the power of Hunter’s words.

“Stand forth now!” Hunter repeated.

David staggered forward from behind the spruce, his eyes wild, pure animal terror driving him now.

The sapphire in Hunter’s athame glowed with power. I watched as he traced a rectangle of blue light around David’s body. David screamed and doubled over, trapped in the blue light. Hunter moved in quickly, and I saw the deceptively delicate silver chain, the
braigh
, appear in his hand.

Alyce put her hand to her mouth, her eyes full of anguish.

I couldn’t watch but buried my face in Sky’s shoulder as Hunter wrapped the silver chain around David’s wrists. I heard David screaming and remembered Cal writhing in agony as Hunter bound his wrists.

“Let me go!” David was shouting. “I did nothing wrong!”

I opened my eyes. David was on his knees in the snow, his wrists bound by the silver chain. The flesh around the chain was already raised in angry red welts. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Hunter stood over him, stern and unyielding. “Tell us the truth,” he said. “Did you summon a
taibhs
to get Stuart Afton to forgive your aunt’s debt?”

“I did it for the people who lived above the store,” David insisted. “They would have been homeless.”

Hunter pulled on the
braigh
, and David screamed in agony.

“Yes,” David sobbed. “I made offerings to the
taibhs
in exchange for its help.”

“Did you offer it Stuart Afton’s life?”

“No, never!” Hunter pulled on the
braigh
again, but David didn’t change his answer. “I just asked the
taibhs
to make him change his mind,” he said. “I never wanted harm to come to him. I deliberately asked that no harm be done to anyone when I cast the spell.”

“That was foolish.” Hunter’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Don’t you know that’s the one request the blackness will never grant? It feeds on destruction, and all who seek out the darkness are powerless to control it.”

David was sobbing.

Hunter turned to look at us. “Alyce of Starlocket, do you need to hear more?”

“No,” Alyce choked out, weeping silently.

“Athar of Kithic? Are you convinced?”

“Yes,” Sky said in an almost whisper.

Hunter looked at me then, an unspoken question in his eyes. I didn’t answer, but my own tears were answer enough.

Hunter nodded and knelt next to David. I was surprised to see him put a hand on David’s back and help him stand. Hunter seemed sad, tired, and old beyond his years. “Sky and I will take David to our house for safekeeping,” he said quietly. “The council will decide what to do.”

20

Dark and Bright

Seeing David standing there in the snowy woods, tortured and ashamed, seeing the pain in Hunter’s face caused by doing his job, made something snap in me. Without realizing what I was doing, I bolted. As I ran, I stumbled in the snow. Branches caught at my clothes. A birch twig tangled itself in my hair. I ran on, feeling my hair pull, hearing the snap of the twig. The tree flashed a current of pain. Everything that was alive was hurting, and I was part of the web, hurting and in turn causing pain.

I broke out of the woods and found myself behind an office building, its windows dark. Practical Magick was nowhere in sight. I had no idea where I was, and I didn’t care. I kept running, my toes numb in my boots as they hit the tarmac. I was panting, my breath short, my chest aching. Then there were footsteps and a familiar presence behind me. Sky.

“Morgan, please stop!” she shouted.

I wondered if I could outrun her and realized that I was too worn out to try. I slowed to a walk, my heart pounding, and let her catch up with me.

She was panting, too. She waited until her breathing slowed before saying, “A formal questioning by a Seeker is never easy to witness.”

“Easy?” I nearly shrieked. “I would have settled for non-horrific. I can’t believe that Hunter
chooses
to do that.”

Sky’s jaw literally dropped. “Do you think he enjoyed that?”

I was still repulsed and sickened by what I’d seen. “He chose it,” I said. “Hunter became a Seeker, knowing what he would be required to do. He’s
good
at it.”

There was long beat of silence, and then Sky said, “I’d slap you silly if I thought you knew what you were talking about.”

Before I knew what I was doing I had shot out my hand, spinning off a ball of witch fire. Instantly Sky held up a finger, and the fire fizzled out like a Fourth of July sparkler.

“You’re not the only blood witch here,” she told me in a low, angry voice. “And while you may have more innate power than any witch I’ve seen, I’ve had a great deal more practice working it. So don’t turn this into a fight, because you won’t win.”

I hadn’t meant to send the witch fire at her. I was just so angry and sickened and exhausted that her threat was enough to make something inside me lash out. “I’m too tired to fight,” I said.

“Fine, then get over yourself and listen for a minute. What Hunter does is harder on him that it is on anyone else.”

“Then why does he do it?” I choked out the question. “Why?”

Sky thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “In large part because of Linden’s death. He still feels responsible. Being a Seeker is Hunter’s atonement. He feels that if he can protect others from courting the dark, then maybe his brother’s death won’t be in vain. But it eats him alive whenever he has to do something like what he did to David.”