Spring Rain (14 page)

“You hate it,” she whispered,
distraught.

“No,” he said quickly. “No, I don’t.” He
crossed to her and cupped her cheeks in his hands. The first
contact of their skin always made him shiver. Her magick calmed
his, and the Darkness answered to her in a way it never would to
him. It respected her, because she had bested it, and claimed her
fiercely as his counterbalance as well. He kissed the tip of her
nose and gazed down into her dark eyes. “It’s hard for me to see,
to remember what I almost did to you.”

“That’s not why I painted it. I don’t want
you to feel bad,” she said, frowning. “That was the day the
nightmare ended.”

“I know. The best and worst day of our
lives.”

She nodded.

“It’s beautiful, Summer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“And you’re not upset about art school?”

He hesitated. “I want you to be happy.”

“But you’re afraid to leave here.”

“Hey now, no mind reading.”

“There’s a lot of time between now and
then,” she murmured. “Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

“No. I don’t want that. I want you to be
you. If you want to go to art school, then we go to art school.”
The idea of leaving Priest Lake terrified him. Not because he
couldn’t be anywhere he wanted in a second, but because he had
never quite lost the fear of who – and what – he was. What he could
do. The familiarity of the forest was a sense of solace and peace,
and he needed every calming factor he could surround himself
with.

But he needed Summer more.

“You’re serious,” she studied him.

“Anything for you, Summer.” He smiled.

“If you don’t like it, we can leave.”

“I’ll be fine.” He wasn’t entirely certain
of this, but he wanted to try. “Did you think I wouldn’t go?”

“No. I don’t know. You want me to leave the
Light campus to live with you. I didn’t know if you’d ever want to
leave here.”

“It’s … kinda scary, Summer. I’m afraid of
hurting people.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. I’ll always stand between you
and the Dark, Decker. I’ll never let it have you.”

He smiled and tugged the painting out from
between them. Resting it on his desk, he wrapped his arms around
her and hugged her, breathing in the scent of her as deeply as he
could. His spirit magick sank into her while he held back the
passionate fire magick. He was gradually learning to isolate and
manipulate the three elements he held rather than unleashing all of
them and hoping for the best. Fire and water were of a similar mind
– volatile, physical, powerful – whereas spirit was often so quiet,
he had to silence the two moodier elements to hear the third
whisper.

“Tickles,” she said with a giggle as the
spirit magick slid through her. Her entangled earth-air magick
grounded his less stable elements, left him feeling like he wasn’t
about to spin out of control.

“I’ll go anywhere you go,” he said. “You
know that.” His phone buzzed. He reached for it, adding, “I’ll pose
nude for you, too.”

Summer laughed, her face flaming red.

Decker checked his phone
over her shoulder.
Noah’s in
trouble,
claimed the message from Beck.
“Duty calls, baby.” He hugged her more closely. “Go to bed. I’ll be
back soon, and you can tell me about the school.” He released
her.

Summer’s face was glowing. “I love you. You
know that, right?”

“I knew it before you did.”

“No way.”

“Absolutely way!” he exclaimed.

“Whatever.” But she was smiling happily.

Her happiness soothed his anxiety about
leaving behind the only place he’d ever been comfortable. He had a
little over a year to adjust to the idea, and he suspected he’d
need the time to prepare.

With another glance at the painting, Decker
called his shadows and left his love in his room.

The moment he materialized at the hotel
where Noah had said they’d be staying, he received another text
from a number he didn’t recognize.

Too many issues to explain. I’m at the
Denny’s near the hotel.

He sensed a Dark witchling nearby without
knowing who it was. Uncertain who exactly had texted, Decker
nonetheless trotted down the block towards the Denny’s. The night
air cooled the desire in his body and let him think clearly once
more. By the time he walked into the diner, his elements were as
calm as they could be.

Noah was in a booth alone, pressing his
glass of ice water to a busted lip. The Dark witchling wore a
t-shirt despite the cool night, and his hair was ruffled.

“Where’s Morgan?” Decker asked.

“No clue. She just disappeared again.” Noah
lowered the glass. “Probably a good thing. Dawn found my keycard
and will probably blow up the hotel.”

Suppressing his irritation, Decker sat down
across from him. “Start talking.”

Noah eyed him. None of the Dark witchlings
trusted him any more than the Light ones did. Rumored to be off his
rocker, Decker’s acts of violence fed the general perception he was
crazy.

“You aren’t on my hit list, Noah,” Decker
said darkly amused.

Noah ran his fingers through his hair. “I
did something stupid.”

“No shit.”

“I confronted Dawn again.”

“And?”

“She’s obsessed with Morgan and Beck and …”
The sorrow on Noah’s face bothered Decker. “That’s not my sister. I
don’t know what happened, but Dawn isn’t like that.”

“She is now. The Dark won’t let her go.”

“She didn’t kill me. I keep telling myself
that has to mean something.”

“It means you got lucky.”

Noah said nothing.

“Look, I know what you’re going through. If
anything happened to Beck … just thinking about it makes me want to
kill someone,” Decker said. “But I also know what’s possessed her.
You’ve heard the stories about Bartholomew.”

Noah nodded, going pale.

“There’s no walking away from him. I barely
did it as the Master of Dark. Do you think a normal witchling has a
chance in hell?”

“No.”

“A part of Dawn may be holding out,
protecting you, but it won’t last. At some point, Bartholomew is
going to swallow her whole, and she’ll kill you.”

“But not yet. She’s still hanging on.”

Decker paused. He didn’t want to give Noah
false hope about the fate of his sister, but he also didn’t want to
crush someone who was struggling for his own redemption. “For now,”
he allowed. “But I think our window with her is pretty much gone
after this.”

“Yeah.” Noah’s voice was hoarse. “I got the
sense this was the last time I’d see her.”

“Did you learn anything about her plans?
Where she’s staying?”

Noah nodded and slid a hotel access key card
for a major casino across the table to Decker. “Suite twenty five
ten. She had maybe five others with her. She’s just … obsessed with
Morgan. Like, obsessed beyond reason.”

“More so than Beck?”

“Maybe this much more, but yeah.” He held
his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart.

Bartholomew needs the soul
stone before he can destroy Beck.
Decker
wasn’t certain if the events had to be in order – soul stone first
then confront Beck – but it was beginning to appear that
way.

“I thought it was the stone,” Noah added.
“But I think it’s her, too.”

Decker met his gaze. “Why do you think
that?”

“I don’t know really. They didn’t say
anything particular. Just a feeling. The way she was talking about
Morgan … Bartholomew was mad because Dawn wouldn’t just kill
Morgan, because Morgan might be able to stop him or some shit.”

“That’s new.”

“Yeah, well, I failed to protect her,
too.”

“Morgan’s a survivor. Beck’s not going to
let anything happen to her.”

“I want to help. Somehow.”

“I think this is beyond you. Go home, Noah.
Wait for us to sort this out,” Decker advised. He reached into his
pocket and pulled out his wallet.

“I don’t need money,” Noah said,
bristling.

“Yeah, well, I happen to know your family’s
funds are frozen. Take it. Go back to Priest Lake. If there’s
anything you can do, we’ll let you know.” The last sentence was
more out of diplomacy than anything else. Decker rose and took the
key card then tossed the money he had to Noah.

Noah took it wordlessly.

Sensing the Dark witchling was done, Decker
left him and emerged from the diner into the parking lot.

His shadows swept him away to the sidewalk
outside the casino where Dawn was staying. Decker entered and made
his way across the loud, bright floor of slot machines to the
elevators. Moments later, he entered the room where Dawn had
been.

The Dark witchling was gone. Closing the
door behind him, he listened, his shadows racing out across the
room to see if anyone else was present.

The large suite was empty. Traces of Dark
magick remained, and he flipped on the lights to search for
anything that might tell him where she went or what she was
planning.

His phone vibrated in his
pocket and he pulled it free.
Find
Noah?
Beck had texted.

Yeah. Safe.
Decker moved through the trashed suite as he
typed an answer. He pushed open the bedroom. The Dark was strongest
here, and he guessed this was where Dawn had been.

A hotel-branded notepad lay overturned on
the ground near the bed. He leaned over and swept it up.

Equinox. Morgan.
The words were repeated over fifty times,
obsessively written by Dawn in pen.

Decker wasn’t certain how else they were
supposed to prepare for something bad going down on the equinox.
Unless Beck suddenly learned some tricks, he was going to have to
start regular patrols around the school to find any other hidden
pockets of Dark magick Dawn was stashing for an attack on the
Light.

“What threat does Morgan really pose? Aside
from having the soul stone?” he whispered aloud. Almost instantly,
the souls in his head went silent. If there was historical
knowledge about the family of fire witchlings charged with
protecting the soul stone, none of his predecessors knew it. Part
of him suspected the exclusion of information was purposeful. Until
him, Bartholomew had been in his mind, along with all the other
souls of the Dark Masters and Dark Mistresses preceding him. Upon
becoming Master of Dark at the age of eighteen, Decker had
inherited the souls. Any Master of Dark worth his title would know
to prevent the dangerous soul from uncovering a way to escape back
to the human world and unleash hell.

Whatever the reasoning, Morgan was as
important as the stone.

With another look around, Decker left the
hotel and returned to his cozy, warm room, where the woman he loved
was sleeping soundly in his bed. He observed her for a long moment,
recalling what he had felt when he thought he lost her.

He wasn’t going to let Beck go through that
again, but he was at a loss as to what Bartholomew wanted or
planned with Dawn’s help.

“Come on, Beck. Figure this shit out,” he
willed his brother.

“Decker?” Summer murmured sleepily.

“I’m here, baby.”

Tired and needing some peace from his magick
and the Dark souls in his head, Decker stripped down to a boxer and
t-shirt and slid into bed with Summer, gathering her warm, soft
body into his arms and sighing deeply before he fell asleep next to
her.

From the shadows of an enclave down the hall
from her former room, Dawn held her breath and waited. Decker was
gone, but she wasn’t about to leave her safe spot and risk him
suddenly returning. After all, Bartholomew could hide her from his
Dark magic, not make her invisible.

The discomfort of her pregnancy was worse
today; there was actual pain stemming from somewhere inside her.
She had half a mind to go to the hospital, but doing so put her –
and their plan – at risk.

You failed again,
Dawn,
Bartholomew said.

“I didn’t fail,” she muttered.

You didn’t catch or kill Morgan, and your
brother turned you in to Decker. Tell me how that’s not
failing.

She didn’t have a response. Her head was
throbbing, and she felt less well than usual.

I can make this right.

She pressed her forehead to the cool wall
beside her, exhausted and upset. “So I misjudged a few things.
Kinda hard to think when you’re about to pop.”

All the more reason why I need to be in
charge.

At the moment, it sounded like a good idea.
She’d have to manipulate someone else so she had a place to sleep
this night, and she didn’t even feel up to that. Her attempt to
grab Morgan had been foiled by Noah, and she was left with pretty
much one option.

“We need to go back to Miner’s Drop. Build
up more Dark magic,” she murmured. “We can make them come to
us.”

We can. What we can’t do is let Morgan
live.

“Again with this,” Dawn said with a sigh. “I
hate her, too, but come on! You can face Decker. What’s one stupid
witchling? I want her and Beck both to suffer before they die.”

It’s possible that Morgan can stop us.

“Wait, what?” she asked, straightening. “Is
this another stupid lie?”

No. If she’s powerful enough to be the first
Light witchling in such a long dry spell of Light fire witchlings,
it’s possible she can stop us.

“How?”

By burning me out of existence, the way my
son did many years ago.

Dawn listened, intrigued by the story. For
the first time, Bartholomew was revealing something almost personal
or at least, something more personal than he normally did. “If
you’d told me that, I’d have made sure she died in the fire!”