Casted (Casted series) (32 page)

“How were they able to bind you like that?” I asked.

“They had someone on the inside already, so they didn’t show up on the radar when we started watching the movement,” Jude said in my ear. I’d forgotten he was still linked to us. “Good job, Jade. You’re making one kick ass super hero.”

“That’s me, the Lethal Librarian,” I said, chuckling at his bark of laughter. I couldn’t help the rush of relief that we were all okay.

“Tomorrow we’re going to train on that book. I don’t know what happened, but you had full control. It was amazing to watch you wield the spells you did, and with such control. Very sexy,” Edge whispered in my ear.

“Oh gag…can you two play kissy face when all of us aren’t listening,” Jude blurted.

“Ready to head back?” Dagger said as he carried the body he dug out of the dumpster.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.

“Toss him in the woods, I guess. You stunned him, so the spell will only unbind by blood or the spell caster. I’m assuming you don’t want to unbind him?” Dagger questioned.

I didn’t feel right leaving him bound. He might be a cruel man out to destroy people’s lives for others, but I wasn’t. I let my mind flip to the unbinding spell. “Hold him. I’m going to unbind him and then try and wipe his memory,” I told Dagger.

“Good luck, you’ll probably fry his brain,” Dagger said with a half shrug.

I let the spell go and the Enforcer started struggling to get away from Dagger. Edge grabbed his other arm. With his feet off the ground, he had nowhere to go.

“Try to keep it to just him please,” Dagger said, with a grimace.

The pages flipped to the spell I wanted and I could tell that the spell wouldn’t be the right one. I wanted to erase us from his mind, maybe even the last couple of years, not his entire life. I thought again about a partial memory removal.

A whirlwind of air shoved me to the ground as the Enforcer called the elements forward to stop me from completing the spell. My cheek bounced off the pavement and rattled my brain. Before I pull myself up on shaky legs to try again, the Enforcer’s body hit the ground and didn’t move.

“Put him back in the dumpster,” Edge growled.

Dagger hefted the limp body over his shoulder and tossed him. Fire danced on Edge’s finger tips. When he released it, it exploded inside the dumpster. We turned away as the contents began to smoke, sending a foul stench in the air.

“Let’s go home,” he said, latching a hold of my hand and pulling me away from the grisly scene.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I’d witnessed the death of a man and I wasn’t sure how to process it. I’d tried to keep that from happening by unbinding him so that I could take away a few memories. It would have been so simple had I been able to carry out the spell before he turned on me.

Everyone was going to be taking turns to work with me. I needed to know how to cast spells back to back with no interruption. A smooth transition from one to the next, as Edge had said.

I would be training with Rainy this morning and had made it down to the beach before her, giving me a little solitude before the long day of magic. I stood still, letting the foamy surf run over my feet, the sand sucking me down with each wave.

I’d put my own schedule together for training. Edge tried to talk me out of it but I insisted that I could handle it. I needed to be able to handle it. He reluctantly agreed to let me try – as long as I kept my promise to stop when I reached the limit of my endurance. Edge had been furious that the Enforcer had slammed me to the ground. But really, had I been faster using my magic, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. I argued that point with him which was probably the reason why he didn’t protest harder about my training.

Knowing that the strain of training would be hard on all of us, Edge had Jude send out a message to the Covens. He wanted them to know that they needed to step up their own guard. We weren’t going to be able to intercept all the Triad attacks. We’d help where we could, but we weren’t going to be split again. It was too risky right now.

“Good morning,” Rainy said as she strolled up with a steaming mug and handed it to me. I peered inside it relieved to find coffee instead of some herbal cocktail she’d brewed.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” she said, inhaling the salty air.

“Yeah, it is,” I said, tipping my coffee cup to my lips.

“So what do you want to work on?” she asked.

“I need to be able to do back to back spells. Can you help me focus on that, maybe start with a string of smaller ones and then build the difficulty from there?” I asked.

“Okay, that sounds easy enough.”

“Try pushing a burst of air and add water to it,” Rainy said as she stood beside me. I called for the elements like she had said and the wind burst forward. Then I called for the briny water to follow. “Good, now combine the energy. Make it deliver a blow that the enemy isn’t expecting.”

I merged the elements and a ball of energy formed in my hand. I slung it at the makeshift target Rainy had set up. When the spell hit it exploded and took out the tree it was attached to. Jagged splinters of wood littered the beach.

“Good job!” she cheered behind me. Rainy was the best one to explain the way the elements worked together. No one could come close to her explanations on how to put such complex elemental spells together.

“You’re doing really well, Jade. That wasn’t an easy spell to complete.” She beamed.

“Hey, Rainy, what is the correct term for us?” I asked. I couldn’t help but feel a little ignorant on the subject. I guess technically we’d be considered witches, but didn’t witches usually have spells that rhymed and required herbs and such to complete them?

“We stray from calling ourselves witches,” Rainy said, chuckling. “Sorry, you’re kind of projecting your thoughts.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m just trying to make sense of all this. It’s a little surreal, ya know? So what do we call ourselves?”

“I guess you could call us spell casters. The term witch isn’t really used too much these days. Kind of went out when they began killing off our Coven members in Salem. I forgot you still have so much to learn. Things you should have been shown regardless of the situation. Jessa and I used our magic around you but failed to show you our ways. In doing so, we also failed to keep up with our own way of life. I sure hope the Goddess is forgiving, because we all have a lot of making up to do,” Rainy said.

“Here come Jessa and Dagger. Guess its defensive training now.” I waved in their direction.

Rainy smirked. “You got this. I’ll just keep watch from the safety of the house.”

“Ready for this?” Jessa asked as she strode up to me.

I flashed my teeth at her. “Bring it.”

“The both of you are crazy. You know that…right?” Dagger said, backing up to put some distance between us.

I thought about finding a spell that would protect them from this practice run and the book flipped, revealing a spell that would double up their shield.

“I need to do something before we start.” I walked up to Jessa and placed my hand on her arm as I cast the spell. Her skin took on a shiny coating before the spell was complete.

Dagger watched in curiosity. “What’s that you’re doing?”

“Giving her an added layer of protection and you’re next. I don’t want either one of you hurt when we use the book’s spells,” I explained. I’d thought of it last night. It worried me to use defensive spells against my friends. The book eased my worry by showing me how to better protect them. I just hoped it worked.

“If it makes you feel better, then go ahead,” he replied.

I repeated the spell and Dagger smirked. “It feels like a rubbery coating on my skin, but it doesn’t slow any of my movements down. We may need to use this one when we go against the Triad. I wonder how long it will last.”

“Not sure, let’s try it out and see.” I backed up, putting a good amount of distance between us.

“Shield up, Jade,” Dagger called out.

I pulled my shield around me and added the extra layer of protection. I was ready to learn how to use my defense spells back to back and bring in the elements to help in the in between spells.

Jessa’s ball of fire rushed at me. I called the air first to push it back, and then called the water behind it. The fire hissed and popped as it went out.

Dagger shot out a bolt of lightning. My shield wavered before I could redirect the lightning away from me. The extra shield hissed and popped, but held.

They were relentless, throwing spells at me; both trying to see where my weakness lay, but I’d find a spell in the book and fight back.

When we were done for the afternoon, all three of us were a big sweaty mess of sand and salt.

“Geez, call a freaking rainstorm or something. This damn heat is brutal,” Jessa said on a whine.

The book pages flipped as I sought out the storm she’d requested. The sky darkened. Clouds brewed above us. Wind pushed at our heated skin causing goose bumps to rise along my body. The rain started falling softly washing away the sand and sweat.

I threw out my arms and let the water slide over me. I opened my mouth to capture the cool drops.

Heat lightning raced across the sky like bony fingers. Thunder rumbled in the distance. It was oddly comforting.

“Wow, I feel so much better. Want to keep going?” she asked.

“You two can. I told Jude I’d be back by now.” Dagger swept Jessa up in his arms and planted a swift kiss on her lips. She smiled as he winked at her before walking away.

It was cute seeing Jessa flustered by someone like Dagger. She deserved to be happy and Dagger put a silly smile on her face that I’d never seen before.

“Goddess, I love that man.” Her voice was breathy.

She shook her head and turned back to me. “Sorry. Okay, I’m ready. How about we see how far we can go with these shields? You and I both know the guys won’t let us do it while they’re here.”

She was right. There was no way Edge or Dagger would ever let us do that with them around. “Safe word?” I asked.

“Pepperoni,” she called out as she put space between us.

I screwed my face up. “Really?”

“What? I’m freakin’ hungry. This takes a lot outta ya,” she said before lobbing a ball of fire at me again.

I laughed as I pushed it away with a thin sheet of water. Back and forth we went. Every so often some of the energy would slip by and hit the shield. I could feel it slowly weakening as it wavered but never failed completely. It was amazing and I knew that before anyone else set foot out of this house again on an emergency call I would be adding this to their own shield.

“Come on, you’re not even putting forth any real effort now!” Jessa shouted. “I know you have better spells than that,” she shouted over the wind.

I was getting tired. My energy level was dwindling. “I’m done for now.”

“Really? Okay, me too. I just didn’t want to be the first one to give up,” she laughed as she tossed her arm over my shoulder.

“You have some really cool spells to work with, Jade. I like that you can pull the ground from under my feet. This extra shield is bad-ass, by the way. I know you’re taking it easy though. A spell book that powerful should have some really dangerous spells.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to get into those. As long as I can defend myself, I have no use with the spells that will kill someone. Besides, they come with a price.”

I could tell now which spells were the darkest when the pages flipped. It was like a dark film over the spell. Some of the spells requiring blood weren’t always bad; they were just extremely complex because you had to use a part of yourself to break them. I don’t mind using them so long as they were meant to help and not harm.

“So do you have any more cool tricks up your sleeve before we head in?” Jessa asked.

I thought about it for a second as the book flipped back and forth showing me a couple different options.

“Watch,” I said, pointing to the sky stretching out over the ocean.

The spell hummed in the air as I released a lightning storm over the water. Lighting popped like fireworks. The hair on my arms lifted as lightning struck the sand yards from us.

Jessa chuckled. “Time to turn it off, Jade.”

Lightning raged around us, each strike getting closer to us as I thought about turning off the storm, yet the book stayed silent.

“Jade, the writing on your arms…it’s disappearing,” Jessa said, grabbing my arm and shoving it into my face.

“I can’t get the storm to stop. I don’t understand, the book, it’s not responding.”

“Oh shit, Jade, RUN!” Jessa screamed as she pulled me to run beside her.

Edge was running towards us, his arm stretched out pointing at something behind us.

Jessa and I pushed against the sand harder, but the wind was sucking us backwards. Her grip slipped from my arm and she tumbled to the ground, unable to get up.

Edge slammed into me and locked his arms around me as we tried to fight our way back to safety.

Dagger bolted from the house and let the wind pull him faster to Jessa. He fell beside her and tucked her against him.

The wind pulled harder, dragging Edge and I back towards the ocean. I turned my head to see how close we were to the water and screamed.

The wave that was rushing at us was hundreds of feet in the air and curling down. I called for the book again and was met with silence. Why was it failing me now? I needed to stop this wave, or protect Edge and myself from being crushed by the millions of gallons of water that was sure to drown us.

“Hold on! Whatever happens, don’t let go of me!” he shouted in my ear.

He called forth a gust of air and kept it circling around us as the wave curled over the top of us and broke. The wave smashed down on us. The water was like invisible fingers pulling at us, dragging us into the depths only to be rushed forward at the beach again.

My lungs screamed for oxygen as the air he’d kept running around us was gone. There was nothing we could do as we were slammed against the sand over and over. As we tumbled in the water, I locked my legs around Edge. I wasn’t going to let him go, I didn’t care how many broken bones we endured in the process.