Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (27 page)

“And what are you doing out here all by yourself?” he asked, tilting his head to study me.  “You’re not running away, are you?  That would be disappointing, seeing as you didn’t ask me to go with you.”

“No, I’m not running away,” I snorted, still not looking directly at him.  “I’m proving I’m not a witch by bleeding on some stupid Mountain Ash or whatever.”

Nathan froze.  For a long moment, he just stared at me, then he stared at the little knife I had in my hand.  Then he swallowed.  Hard.  “Uh,” he said, giving me a nervous grin full of pointy teeth, “Are you
sure
you wanna do that?”

“To shut Grams up?  Abso-friggin-lutely!” 

I was going to prove once and for all that I was
not
a bandraoi or a blood witch or any
other
kind of witch.  I didn’t care if that meant I had to run through the entire forest smearing blood on every tree like the damn Blood Fairy, by the time I was done Grams was going to admit she was wrong.  I might end up in a coma from blood loss, but that was a price I was willing to pay to make all the supernatural bullshit go away.  I was turning around to start marching up the hill to do just that when I noticed how pale Nathan had become.

  “What?” I demanded.

“Shea actually said she wanted you to
bleed
on the Ash?” he almost whispered.

“Yeah, she did,” I told him, frowning.  I
really
didn’t like the way he was looking at me.  “Let me guess, all that blood is going to make you go vampy and I’m going to get a repeat performance of how it feels to be a juicebox?”

He gulped.  “Uh, no.  I’ll be fine.  It’s
you
I’m worried about.”

“Well, don’t,” I told him, lifting my chin up a notch.  “Now, stop stalking me and go find something useful to do.  I have a date with a tree.”  I turned to go find said tree, determined to prove Grams wrong even if I had to open up a vein.

“Em, wait!” Nathan called behind me. 

I threw up my hand in a clear ‘I don’t want to hear it’ gesture and just kept walking. 

Half an hour, and a lot of muttering, later, I still hadn’t figured out which tree I was supposed to be bleeding on.  Therefore, when I nearly ran smack into Nathan who was leaning against yet another tree directly in my path, I wasn’t in the best of moods.  When I scowled at him, my eyes narrowing, he pushed himself out of his slump against the tree with a smoky laugh and sauntered over to where I stood. 

Taking my shoulders in his hands, he turned me to the left.  My breath caught in my chest when he pulled me close to his chest and brushed my curls over my shoulder, giving him unobstructed access to the very side of my neck that bore his mark.  When he pulled the scarf I was wearing to hide my brand from Grams away and leaned down to press a gentle kiss to it, though, my heart stopped beating and I forgot how to breathe altogether. 

“The tree you’re looking for is over there, love,” he whispered in my ear, his lips brushing my earlobe and setting off a whole range of toe-curling sensations throughout my poor body.

“There’s fifty trees over there,” I gasped, wanting to pull away but unable to.

“I’d be happy to show you which one it is,” he murmured as his hands slid down my arms.  “For a price, of course.  Maybe a kiss?”

What the hell am I
doing
?
I thought when I found myself starting to turn in his arms.  I had done it again, fallen into his trap.  I stopped and shook myself.  It wasn’t a gentle shake, either, but the kind that causes brain damage in small children.  Angry with him and myself, I jerked away from him and turned around to give him a glare over my shoulder that was hot enough to set the forest around us on fire.  When I saw the smugly triumphant smile on his face, I wanted to set
him
on fire.  Knowing I had no one to blame but my own weak, stupid self, I faced forward again and started stomping in the direction he had pointed me toward.

Nathan:  1  Me:  0

 “It’s the tree with gray bark,” Nathan called after me.  When I turned around to give him another glare, he just smiled.  “I’ll expect that kiss later.”

“Yeah, just hold your breath and wait,” I muttered, facing forward again.

When I finally found the tree Nathan had described, I set the pot with the violet on the ground and pulled the knife out of my back pocket. 

“Get ready to eat crow, Grams,” I muttered.

And I cut myself.  More pissed off than hurt by the stinging pain in my palm, I dropped the knife and curled my hand into a fist, letting a few drops fall onto the violet.  Nothing happened.  Nada.  Not a single damn thing.  So much for Grams’ theory that I was some badass blood witch.  I couldn’t wait to get back and rub her nose in the fact that she’d been wrong.  I was chuckling at the vision of her expression in my mind when I turned toward the tree and slapped my bleeding palm against the trunk.

It exploded.

The force of the blast knocked me off my feet, sending me flying ten feet into a scraggly, thorny bush.  I curled up and covered my head with my arms as bark and twigs—all that was left of what had been a perfectly healthy tree only seconds before—rained down on me.

When I thought it was safe, I peeked out from under my arm and took in the devastation.  The Mountain Ash was gone…and so was Grams’ favorite violet.  The pot it had been in was smashed, and the poor flower that had been flourishing under Grams’ tender care for years was wilted and dead-looking.

Still shell-shocked from the exploding tree, I managed to get to my feet.  Stumbling every other step, I walked over and snatched the dead flower out of the potting soil clinging stubbornly to its roots and closed my bloody fist around the stem.

Nathan was waiting for me on the path back to Grams’.  At the sight of me walking out of the trees, pale-faced and filthy with my hair full of bark and twigs, his eyes flared wide.  When he started laughing, I started plotting his murder again.

“Did you know that was going to happen?” I demanded, planting my hands on my leaf-covered hips and giving him a look that should have fried him right there on the spot.  “Did you, Nathan?”

“I think you need a shower,” he choked out between guffaws of laughter.  “Sorry, love.  I couldn’t resist.”

With all the dignity I had left, I propped my hands on my hips and tried to glare him into silence.  The shower of leaves and bark that rained down when I tossed my hair back only made him laugh harder.

“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled as I stalked past him.

Grams was sitting at the table with a crossword puzzle and a cup of coffee when I walked back in.  She looked up when I slammed the door behind me, then just sat back in her chair, taking a sip of her coffee to hide her smile.

“You knew that would happen, didn’t you?” I asked woodenly, staring out the window over her shoulder.  I was afraid to look directly at her for fear that I might not be able to resist the urge to strangle her.

“Of course I did,” she said, starting to laugh herself.  “Bandraoithe are called
blood witches
for a reason, Ember.  Do you believe me now?”

I walked over to the table and dropped the dead flower on top of her puzzle before turning and leaving the room, the idea of a shower the only thing keeping me from becoming homicidal.  The sound of her laughter followed me all the way up the stairs.

Demon Bashing  101

After the exploding Ash, I didn’t argue with her anymore…well, not
much
, anyway.  When she told me what to do, I did it.  When she told me I wasn’t doing it right, I did it again.  That means I repeated the same thing over and over and over—a lot.

My first witchy-lesson-gone-wrong was levitation.  According to Grams, it was the most basic of lessons for a bandraoi.  And it really
did
seem kind of simple when she explained the mechanics of it.  1. Center yourself.  2. Feel yourself become lighter than air.  3. Float.  Easy, right?

Wrong.

 “You’re not focusing, Ember,” Grams snapped as I glared at her from the floor after I’d tried to levitate about five thousand times. 

“If I focus any harder, I’m going to have an aneurysm,” I snapped right back.  “I’m doing exactly what you told me, Grams!  It’s not working!”

“Um, Em,” Nathan said from the corner of the room, chuckling.

“Don’t start,” I hissed without looking at him, suddenly feeling all buzzy again.  “I mean it, Nathan.  Don’t.  Start.”

“But, Em…”  

“
What
?”  I snapped my head around to look at him and my eyes widened to the size of saucers when I found us on eye level—something that shouldn’t have been possible since I was sitting on the
floor
.

“You’re floating,” he said with a grin at the same time Grams cried, “Keep focusing!”

I had about a split second to enjoy the rush of triumph surging through my body before it all came to a crashing end—literally.  One second I was airborne and the next I was falling.  My butt came into contact with Grams’ hard wood floor with enough force to crack bones.  I laid back with a groan, sure I would never be able to sit down again, and looked up to see Grams smiling down at me while Nathan stayed in his corner—the only smart thing he’d done since the day we met—doubled over laughing.

“Again,” Grams said, causing me to moan.  “This time, let’s try a little more focus and a little
less
anger, shall we?”

I had two words for her:  Nursing.  Home.

My next lesson was a charm to keep other creatures from sensing me if a time came when I needed to hide from Jack and the waking nightmares he was so good at giving me.  Another one of Grams’
Being a Witch for Dummies
lessons that should have been easy as pie and turned out to be hard as hell.  By the time it was over, I was wishing for levitation lessons.  Because, unfortunately, that lesson left me playing hide and seek with my vampire stalker.

And Nathan kept winning.

“I suck at this,” I whined when he found me for the fourth time, hidden in Grams’ pantry.

“Yes, but this is fun.”  He grinned when I glared at him and proceeded to back me into the shelf behind me.  “Locked with you in a pantry…not ideal, but I’ll take it.”

“You know, I’m really starting to miss that guy who wanted to dump me and run,” I muttered as he moved in even closer.  “What happened to that plan?”

“I changed my mind.”

“Why?” I asked, looking around desperately for an escape.  Given there were about four cubic inches of space in the closet I was trapped in, and Nathan was taking up most of it, there weren’t a lot of ways I could run.

“You enchanted me,” he whispered…and for some reason I didn’t think he was teasing me anymore.  “Besides, I couldn’t leave without collecting what I’m owed, could I?  I believe you still owe me a kiss…”

Before I could duck around him and escape, he pulled me close, melding our bodies together from head to toe.  And, God, did he feel good!  I tried to hold myself as stiffly as possible, but it was a futile effort.  I couldn’t do anything but stare up at him as his lips slowly started to descend toward mine.  Just when I was kissing any hope of resisting him goodbye, the pantry door flew open, bathing us in the bright sunlight coming through the kitchen windows.

“You cheated, Nate,” Grams said, hands on her hips. 

“Why would you think that?” Nathan asked, not looking away from my face. 

“Because there wasn’t a trace of her essence to be found,” Grams told him, scowling.  “You found her by her thoughts, didn’t you?”

No, not by my thoughts.  By my mark.  I saw it in his eyes, that little spark of guilt, and suddenly wanted to break his nose.  I had been trying for hours to do the spell Grams had taught me so I could hide from Jack, and he had let me think I was failing over and over again.

“You told me to find her,” Nathan countered, holding me trapped with his eyes alone.  “I found her.  Go away.”

But the moment had passed.  Feeling shaken to my very core, I pushed him away from me and ran past him and Grams both.  The second I was outside, I stopped and took several deep breaths to try to calm my racing heart and the tingles still chasing each other across my skin. 

One more second and I would have been his.  One kiss was all it would have taken.  I accepted the truth right then and there.  I had lost before the game even began, and when he walked away, he would do it with my heart in his hands. 

  Grams and I spent that afternoon in the kitchen, and I noticed she made a point not to mention the episode in the pantry.  I would catch her watching me every now and then, her expression sad, but she kept her opinions to herself.  For that I was grateful.  I didn’t want to talk about how out of control things were starting to get where Nathan was concerned.  I just wanted to get my witchy lessons over with, go home, and cry on my bestie’s shoulder.

I wished almost every minute that I could talk to Kim about Nathan.  He was becoming like that itch you just can’t scratch.  You know, the kind that keeps right on itching until it’s all you can think about?  Yeah, that was Nathan.  Even though I did my best not to look at him or talk to him, his face was all I ever seemed to see, his voice all I wanted to hear.  So, yeah, a little girl talk was
definitely
in order.