Halfway Hexed (20 page)

I scooped dirt from his mouth and banged his limp body. She’d put another damn dart back in him, and I yanked it free. I pressed his chest and blew air into his mouth and sobbed.

I don’t know when he started breathing again. Maybe he was breathing the whole time, but too shallow for me to realize. I only know that when he started to retch up dirt, it was the best awful sound I’d ever heard.

I leaned on my right arm, held my side with my left, and asked God for forgiveness. In advance.

“I was just gonna be a pastry chef. You know I was,” I said as I picked Merc up and arranged him over my shoulders like a shawl. “But here I am.” I ground my teeth together as I stood up, spears of pain tearing through my side.

“She buried Mercutio and me alive. If I weren’t half faery, I’m sure I’d be dead.” I panted shallow breaths, trying to steady myself. “I think You understand,” I rasped and then clenched my teeth in pain and fury.

“Some folks—” I wheezed out a breath. “Some folks just need killing.” I felt the tears drip off my jaw as I started forward. “That’s all I’m gonna say about it.”

By the time I got out of the woods, I was slightly less homicidal. I was surprised to find myself at Macon Hill. She’d brought me to the tor and to the woods where I’d almost been killed the week before. What was it with these Conclave jerks? Did they all carry the same playbook?

Merc had woken up. He stumbled along groggily, but I didn’t fill him in on anything. I figured he was still too full of tranquilizers to concentrate.

Bryn lived near the tor, but I was in too much pain to walk all the way there. Instead, I stopped at Magnolia Park and waited for someone to drive by that I could flag down. Ironically, the first person to show up was Edie, but, being a ghost, she doesn’t have her own car.

“What in the world happened to you? You’re covered in dirt.”

“Could you go get Bryn?”

“No, I won’t! You’re not supposed to be seeing him. Why don’t I get Johnny Nguyen? Of course, I’m not sure he’ll want you in his car like that. I’ll tell him to cover the passenger seat with a sheet.”

“Not Johnny. Things are too dangerous for him to be around me right now. Why don’t you get Bryn? Being involved with me is pretty likely to get him killed.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” I said, lying down on the bench.

“All right then. I’ll appear to Johnny and ask him to call that son-of-a-bastard, Lyons. First tell me what you wanted to tell Melanie. I’m not sure how long I’ll last over here with the locket there.”

“I need her to come home. This trouble is pretty big. I need her help.”

There was dead silence. I turned my head to see if Edie was still in the park. She was.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked, frowning at her.

“Well, her powers diminished while she was underhill and . . .”

“And?” I demanded.

“She’s stuck in the UK. There’s some sort of curse trapping her there. If she wants to restore her power, she’ll have to find a way to lift it.”

“A curse. Of course there is.” I put an arm across my forehead. The dirty grit on my arm rubbed across the dirty grit on my face. I grimaced.

“Is my grandmother alive?”

“What?” Edie asked sharply.

“My grandma. Momma and Aunt Mel’s momma? Alive or dead?”

“I’m going to get the candylegger.” With that she was gone.

I sighed.
Alive then. Darn them.

“For the love of St. Patrick,” Bryn sputtered. “What happened?”

“You want the good news or the bad news?” I asked, sitting up with a terrible grimace.

“Bad, first,” he said, grasping my shoulders to steady me.

“Your ex-girlfriend tried to kill me because she thinks I’m in the way of her getting you back.”

“Gwen? Gwen did this?”

I nodded. “Carry me,” I said, putting my arms out.

He picked me up and I groaned when his hands pressed my broken side.

“Stop! Put me down!” I rasped.

“What? Why?”

“You can’t squeeze my left side. Nobody can. I’d rather stay here—live here, if I have to.”

Bryn knelt down in front of me and lifted my shirt. “God damn it.”

I looked down and saw the mass of swollen red and purple bruises covering my lower ribs.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“All right, put your arms around my neck.” I followed his instructions, and, in the end, he cradled me kind of like I was sitting in a chair. We got to his car and I climbed in. Merc sat on Bryn’s lap instead of mine. That’s why Merc and I are best friends.

“What’s the good news?”

“Turns out I’m hard to kill. Shot, choked, and buried alive. Then shot like a cannon ball out of the ground, and, so far as I can tell, not dead. Pretty sure being dead doesn’t hurt this bad.”

Bryn reached over and stroked my hair.

“This is . . . worse than I thought,” he said. “You can leave. I’ll take you to some Underground members. It’ll be dangerous, but—”

“Let’s talk about it after you wash the dirt out of my hair.”

It was the oddest shower ever. Mercutio walked around Bryn and me in circles, hissing whenever the jets of water splashed on him. Motrin and Tylenol weren’t nearly strong enough painkillers, so I drank rum mixed with pineapple juice from a squeeze bottle while Bryn soaped up my skin.

I stood under the warm spray facing Bryn as he massaged my scalp. Yep, there was definitely magic in those fingers. I tipped my head back to rinse the shampoo away, and Bryn kissed my shoulder.

“I’m too hurt,” I said as his hand slid down my spine to the curve of my back. He drew me to him, so our bodies touched, cool and slick from the water.

“I’ll ease the pain,” he whispered against my mouth. His black lashes were spiked together, framing those intense blue eyes.

“Nobody tells prettier lies than you,” I whispered back.

His mouth caught mine, and his kiss was gentle, just a caress really, as the tip of his tongue touched mine questioningly.

He mumbled against my mouth in Gaelic, and I felt the magic, rich and complex spinning out of him.

“Speak English,” I said, and he did.

She comes down from the mountain
Through mists of dawn;
I look and the star of morning
from the sky is gone.
The misty mountain is burning
In the sun’s red fire,
And the heart in my breast is burning
And lost in desire.
I follow you into the valley
But no word can I say;
To the East or the West will I follow
Till the dusk of my day.

“That’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“From a Celtic poem by Thomas Boyd.”

I slipped my fingers into his hair and drew his mouth to mine. The kiss was more than a caress.

Maybe it was the liquor buzzing in my head. Maybe it was the magic. Or his sexy voice whispering pretty poetry, but the pain dampened.

“I’m not sure about this. I want . . . but you’d have to be so careful with me. So careful it might not be good. Probably wouldn’t, but I couldn’t take—”

He brushed his lips over mine. “I’ll be more than careful. I’ll be what you need.”

Arms around his neck, legs around his hips, our tongues tangled together, he carried me to the bed and sat on the edge with me on his lap facing him. He had his hands on my hips, holding me just away from the part of him that wanted me most.

He glanced to the cut-glass skylight then back to my eyes. “Give me your body, and I’ll give you mine.”

“Isn’t that what we were doing?”

He smiled and kissed me, but briefly. Too briefly.

Blood of my blood. Bone of my bone.
Two bodies, one. Never alone.

“Blood of my—” I started to repeat what he’d said, but he stopped me, touching a finger to my lips.

He stared into my eyes, and I could see the universe there, just behind his half-lowered lids.

“That spell is a circle that would bind us together. If you say the words too, you’ll close the circle,” he said.

I was so tempted, but stayed silent.

“Blood of my blood,” he said against my mouth, and the words wound together like our bodies. He pulled me onto him, connecting us with the last word. The magic swallowed us both.

It wasn’t that the pain was gone. It was only that I didn’t care about it. The rhythm was slow, agonizingly so. The corded muscles in his arms were taut, his control absolute. Only when I dug my nails into his shoulders and moved back and forth faster did he match me.

Then the kaleidoscope of sensation started, and he sucked my magic into him, dragging my hand to his side while he touched mine. The sharp pain dulled, and I felt him stiffen and bite my lip. I gasped into his mouth and dissolved into pulsing tingling flesh. When the blood stopped rushing in my ears, I opened my eyes and looked at his face. Agony and ecstasy in one.

Finally, he closed his eyes and fell back onto the bed, breathing hard. He fisted his right hand. I studied him, realizing what he’d done. There, a mirror image to mine, the side of his chest was scuffed and bruised a reddish purple.

I shook my head. “Is there anything men won’t do for sex?” I mumbled, tracing a finger around the edge of his warm, wounded flesh.

“That’s the wrong question, Tamara.”

“What’s the right question, Bryn?” I whispered.

“I’ll tell you when you’re ready to hear it.”

His cell phone was sitting on the nightstand, and when it rang, it startled us both. I climbed off him gingerly, but he caught my arm.

“Leave it,” he said.

“I’ll just see who it is. Maybe someone you care about needs you,” I said, thinking of Mr. Jenson tucked away out of town and his friend Andre on the run. I tugged my wrist free of his grip and went to the phone. I looked at the display and froze.

Gwendolyn Vaughn.

You have got to be kidding me!

I clutched the phone and sat down on the bed. “Say hello.”

Bryn, who was already half asleep, mumbled, “What?”

“Say hello,” I said sharply, not wanting the call to go to voicemail.

“Hello,” he murmured when I picked up. Then I put the phone to my ear and listened to her lie. She was world-class. The tears. The way her voice caught as she claimed that I’d attacked her. I almost believed her myself, and I’d been there.

“It was self-defense,” she sobbed. “But I—I’m not sure if she’s even still alive. I need you to come to me right now. Please.”

I wished I knew as many languages as Bryn so I could curse at Gwen in all of them. Instead, I hung up on her.

The phone began ringing again immediately.

“What?” Bryn said, opening his eyes and reaching for the phone.

I slid it away from him. “It’s the spy who shoved me. She wants to tell you that she was only defending herself when she killed me.”

Bryn struggled to alertness. “Give it here.”

“If you agree to meet her
ever again
, I might lose my mind and stab you through the heart or something.”

The corner of Bryn’s mouth curved up.

“But you know,” I said with a mock casual shrug. “Do whatever you want.” I slapped the phone into his hand and walked to his dresser.

“Hello,” Bryn said.

I dug through Bryn’s T-shirts until I found a well-worn one in his Yale Law School colors. Printed on it in bold letters were the words:
You have the right to remain silent. Please use it.