Dark Magick (12 page)

Cal, I need you, I need you, don’t listen to me.

Now I
was
under the kitchen table. “I have to go,” I forced out. “I’ll call you later.” I was shaking, cold, flooded with so much adrenaline that I could hardly think.

“Morgan! Wait!” said Cal. “These people—”

“Love you,” I whispered. “Bye.” My trembling thumb clicked the off button, and the phone disconnected. I waited a second and hit talk, then put the phone on the floor. If anyone tried to call now, they’d get a busy signal.

“Oh my God,” I muttered, huddled under the table. “What’s wrong with me?” I crouched there for a moment, feeling like a freak. Trying to concentrate, I slowly took several deep breaths. For a minute I stayed there, just breathing.

Slowly I began to feel better. I crawled out from under the table, my knees covered with crumbs. Dagda gazed owlishly down at me from his perch on the counter.

“Please do not tell anyone about this,” I said to him, standing up. By now I felt almost back to normal physically, though still panicky. Once more I glanced around, saw nothing different, wondered if Sky was putting a spell on me, if someone was
doing
something.

“Dagda,” I said shakily, stroking his ears, “your mother is losing her mind.” The next thing I knew, I was putting on my coat, grabbing my car keys, and heading outside. I ran.

Outside of Practical Magick, I parked Das Boot and climbed out, not seeing the Closed sign until I was pushing on the door. Closed! Of course—it was the day after Thanksgiving. Lots of stores were closed. Hot tears sprang to my eyes, and I furiously blinked them back. In childish anger I kicked the front door. “Ow!” I gasped as pain shot through my toes.

Dammit. Where could I go? I felt weird; I needed to be around people. For a moment I considered going to Cal’s, but another strange rush of fear and nausea swept over me, and gasping, I leaned my head against Practical Magick’s door.

A muffled sound from within made me peer inside the store. It was dark, but I saw a dim light on in the back, and then the shadow moving toward me metamorphosed into David, jingling his keys. I almost cried with relief.

David opened the front door and let me in. He locked the door behind me, and we stood for a moment, looking at each other in the dimness.

“I feel odd,” I whispered earnestly, as if this would explain my presence.

David regarded me intently, then began to lead me to the small room behind the orange curtain. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “Let me get you a cup of tea.”

Tea sounded fabulous, and I was so, so glad I was there. I felt safe, secure.

David pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the back room. I followed him, saying, “Thanks for let—”

Hunter Niall was sitting there, at the small round table.

I screamed and clapped my hands over my mouth, feeling like my eyes were going to pop out of my head.

He looked startled to see me, too, and we both whirled to stare at David, who was watching us with a glint of amusement in his hooded eyes. “Morgan, you’ve met Hunter, haven’t you? Hunter Niall, this is Morgan Rowlands. Maybe you two should shake hands.”

“You’re not dead,” I gasped unnecessarily, and then my knees felt weak, just like in mystery novels, and I pulled out a battered metal chair and sank onto it. I couldn’t take my eyes off Hunter. He wasn’t dead! He was very much alive, though even paler than usual and still bearing scrapes and bruises on his hands and face. I couldn’t help looking at his neck, and seeing me, he hooked a finger in his wool scarf and pulled it down enough for me to see the ugly, unhealed wound that I had made by throwing the athame at him.

David was pouring me a steaming mug of tea. “I don’t understand,” I moaned.

“You understand parts of it,” David corrected me. He pulled up another chair and sat down, the three of us clustered around a small, rickety table with a round plywood top. “But you haven’t quite got the big picture.”

It was all I could do not to groan. I had been hearing about the big picture since I’d first discovered Wicca. I felt I would never be clued in.

I felt a prickle of fear. I disliked and distrusted Hunter. I’d grown to trust David, but now I thought of how he used to disturb me. Could I trust anyone? Was anyone on my side? I looked from one to the other: David, with his fine, short, silver hair and measuring brown eyes; Hunter, his golden hair so like Sky’s but with green eyes where hers were black.

“You’re wondering what’s going on,” said David. It was a massive understatement.

“I’m afraid,” I said in a shaking voice. “I don’t know what to believe.”

As soon as I started speaking, it was as if a sand bagged levee had finally collapsed. My words poured out in a torrent. “I thought Hunter was dead. And . . . I thought I could trust
you.
Everything is upsetting me. I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing.” Do not cry, I told myself fiercely. Don’t you
dare
cry.

“I’m sorry, Morgan,” said David. “I know this is very hard for you. I wish it could be easier, but this is the path you’re on, and you have to walk it. My path was much easier.”

“Why aren’t you dead?” I asked Hunter.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said. His voice was raspier than before. “Luckily my cousin Sky is an athletic girl. She found me and pulled me out of the river.”

So Sky had gotten my message. I swallowed. “I never meant to—hurt you that badly,” I said. “I just wanted to stop what you were doing.You were killing Cal!”

“I was doing my
job,
” Hunter said, his eyes flaring into heat. “I was fighting in self-defense.There was no way Cal would go to the council without my putting a
braigh
on him.”

“You were killing him!” I said again.

“He was trying to kill me!” Hunter said. “And then
you
tried to kill me!”

“I did not! I was trying to stop you!”

David held up his hands. “Hold it. This is going nowhere. You two are both afraid, and being afraid makes you angry, and being angry makes you lash out.”

“Thank you, Dr. Laura,” I said snippily.

“I’m not afraid of
her,
” Hunter said, like a six-year-old, and I wanted to kick him under the table. Now that I knew he was actually alive, I remembered just how unpleasant he was.

“Yes, you are,” David said, looking at Hunter. “You’re afraid of her potential, of her possible alliances, of her power and the lack of knowledge she has concerning that power. She threw an athame into your neck, and you don’t know if she’d do it again.”

David turned to me. “And you’re afraid that Hunter knows something you don’t, that he might hurt you or someone you love, that he might be telling the truth.”

He was right. I gulped my tea, my face burning with anger and shame.

“Well, you’re both right,” said David, drinking from his mug. “You both have valid reasons to fear each other. But you need to get past it. I believe things are going to be very tough around here very soon, and you two need to be united to face them.”

“What are you
talking
about?” I asked.

“What would it take for you to trust Hunter?” David asked. “To trust me?”

My mouth opened, then shut again. I thought about it. Then I said, “Everything I know—almost everything—seems to be secondhand knowledge. People
tell
me things. I ask questions, and people answer or don’t answer. I’ve read different books that tell me different things about Wicca, about Woodbanes, about magick.”

David looked thoughtful. “What do you trust?”

In a conversation I’d had once with Alyce, she’d said that in the end, I really had to trust myself. My inner knowledge. Things that just
were.

“I trust
me.
Most of the time,” I added, not wanting to sound arrogant.

“Okay.” David sat back, putting his fingertips together. “So you need firsthand information. Well, how do you suggest getting it?”

On my birthday Cal and I had meditated together, joining our minds. Standing, I walked around the table, next to Hunter. I saw the tightening of his muscles, his wariness, his readiness for battle if that was what I offered.

Setting my jaw, focusing my thoughts, I slowly reached out my hand toward Hunter’s face. He looked at it guardedly. When I was almost touching him, pale blue sparks leaped from my fingers to his cheek. We all jumped, but I didn’t break the contact, and finally I felt his flesh beneath my curled fingertips.

In the street a couple of weeks ago I had brushed past him, and it had been overwhelming: a huge release of emotions so powerful that I had felt ill. It was something like that now, but not as gut-wrenching. I closed my eyes and focused my energy on connecting with Hunter. My senses reached out to touch his, and at first his mind recoiled from me. I waited, barely breathing, and gradually I felt his defenses weaken. His mind opened slightly to let me in.

If he chose to turn on me, I was cooked. Connected like this, I could sense how vulnerable we were to each other. But still I pressed on, feeling Hunter’s suspicion, his resistance, and then very slowly his surprise, his acquiescence, his decision to let me in further.

Our thoughts were joined. He saw me and what I knew of my past, and I saw him.

Gìomanach. His name was Gìomanach. I heard it in Gaelic and English at the same time. His name meant Hunter. He really was a member of the High Council. He was a Seeker, and he’d been charged to investigate Cal and Selene for possible misuse of magick.

I almost pulled back in pain, but I stayed with Hunter, feeling him searching my mind, examining my motives, weighing my innocence, my connection to Cal. I felt him wonder if Cal and I had been lovers and was embarrassed when he was relieved that we hadn’t.

Our breathing was slight and shallow, noiseless in the deep silence of the little room. This connection was deeper still than the one I had forged with Cal. This was bone deep, soul deep, and we seemed to sift through layer upon layer of connection, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a sunny, grassy field, sitting cross-legged on the ground, with Hunter by my side.

This was nice, and I smiled, felt the sun heat warm my face and hair. Insects buzzed around us, and there was the fresh, sweet smell of clover.

I looked at Hunter, and he at me, and we needed no words. I saw his childhood, saw him with his cousin Athar, who I knew as Sky, felt the agony of his parents’ leaving. The depth of his anguish over his brother’s death was almost unbearable, though I saw that he had been tried and found not guilty. This was something about which Cal didn’t know the truth.

Hunter saw my normal life, the shock of finding out I was a blood witch, the growing sweetness of my love for Cal, the disturbing feelings I’d had about his secret room. I couldn’t hide my concern about Mary K. and Bakker, my love for my family, my sorrow over the sadness of my birth mother’s life and her unsolved death.

Gradually I realized it was time to go, and I stood up in the field, feeling the grass brush against my bare legs. Hunter and I didn’t smile as we said good-bye. We had achieved a new level of trust. He knew I hadn’t meant to kill him and that I wasn’t part of any larger, darker plan. In Hunter, I had seen pain, anger, even vengefulness, all surrounded by a layer of caution and mistrust—but still, I hadn’t seen what I had looked for. I hadn’t seen evil.

When I came out of it, I felt light-headed, and David’s hand guided me back to my chair. Shyly I glanced up to meet Hunter’s eyes.

He looked back at me, seeming as shaken as I was.

“That was interesting,” said David, breaking the silence. “Morgan, I didn’t know you knew how to join with Hunter’s mind, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. What did you learn?”

I cleared my throat. “I saw that Hunter wasn’t—bad or anything.”

Hunter was looking at David. “She ought not to be able to do that,” he said in a low voice. “Only witches with years of training—she got right inside my mind—”

David patted his hand. “I know,” he said ruefully.

I leaned across the table toward Hunter. “Well, if you’re not evil,” I said briskly, “why have you and Sky been stalking me? I saw you two in my yard a week ago. You left sigils all over the place.What were they for?”

Hunter twitched in surprise. “They’re protection spells,” he said.

Just then the back door, a door I had barely noticed, opened. Its short curtain swung in, and a blast of cold air swirled into the room.

“You!” Sky snapped, staring at me from the doorway. She looked quickly at Hunter, as if to make sure I hadn’t been trying to kill him in the last twenty minutes. “What is she doing here?” she demanded of David.

“Just visiting,” David said with a smile.

Her black eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t be here,” she snarled. “You almost killed him!”

“You made me think I
had
killed him!” I snapped back. “You knew what had happened, you knew he was alive, yet you let me think he was dead. I’ve been sick about it!”