Magick (Immortals and Magick Book 2) (19 page)

We all convened down in the living room except Anna, who volunteered to sit with Harley.

“You guys don’t need me to strategize. I’ll leave that to the men.” She said as Gareth leaned down to place a kiss on the corner of her mouth. We had brought up a chair and some magazines to make it more comfortable for whoever was sitting, and as we walked out the door, I saw Anna pick up a magazine to read.

“Well, let’s see what the celebrities are up to this week, shall we Harley?” Anna said and then commenced to read out loud about Brangelina.

Damien and Gareth sat across from Noah and I. Noah held my hand, but I gave it a squeeze to let him know I was alright. Oddly enough, I was alright. Despite everything that happened, I was holding it together. I had to, for Harley.

“What exactly did you hear?” Gareth asked, so I filled them in on the little I heard, from when Charles first asked if she was ready to the very end, when Harley pushed me back to my body.

“Okay, well he has to be talking about Gemma, because no other female vampire has come up against us. And she is probably recovered by now from the sun shower that Teagan rained down on her. But why just her?” Noah asked the room in general and we all stopped to think about it. It was a good question. Gemma was way weaker than Padraigan himself. Hell, if Charles wasn’t a pile of ash, he’d probably be stronger than Gemma.

“Maybe as a distraction? Send her in to be disintegrated as he’s sneaking up behind us all with the rest of his minions?” I put forth, but it sounded stale to me, something a teenager would come up with.

“No, it has to be something more. Maybe she has a gift that we don’t know about that he’s going to exploit.” Gareth said, a frown creasing his forehead.

“We’re missing something. Something big. He’s planning something that’s going to demoralize us. Maybe split us up.” Damien spoke up, and what he said made sense. We
were
missing something, but what?

“Look, even if Gemma shows up, she’s not getting near us. The wards are still up here, and they’re up at Written.” Noah pointed out, but Gareth was quick with a reply.

“They are but what about when you’re not at Written or here? Noah, you have a job to get to. Teagan, you have Written to rebuild. Are you both going to become prisoners, never leaving the house?”

“Well, the same goes for you, and Anna, and Damien. While any of us are walking around, or driving around, out shopping for groceries, we’re all vulnerable. I don’t like the idea of looking over my shoulder every time I run out for milk. Damien knows where Padraigan is. Let’s bring this fight to him.” Noah argued and Damien responded with a grunt of assent.

“That would be unwise. Wait, hear me out.” Gareth said when he saw Noah open his mouth, probably to argue the point.

“When we battled Padraigan at his warehouse, we may have won that battle but we were left with a lot of damage. If we go looking for him, on his ground, it could be a lot worse. We don’t want to lose anyone.”

We mulled over that for a moment, each of us giving it serious thought. I knew he had a point, but I wanted vengeance. I wanted to rush over to Padraigan’s lair and rip it apart, make him pay for everything that he had put us through to this point. Which gave credence to Gareth’s argument. We didn’t have an army of vampiric minions to do our dirty work. There was just us against whatever he called forth. And as skilled as we all were, there was no way to take Padraigan on his turf without heavy losses on our side.

“So what do we do? Lure him here” I asked, half-joking.

The men all looked at me, their expressions full of speculation.

“What?”

“That’s actually not bad Teagan.” Noah looked at me, pride making him smile.

“What, I wasn’t serious.” I shot back. It’s one thing to be all clandestine and spy astrally on the dude, but willingly lure him to us? That’s suicidal.

“No it’s perfect. Lure him out, on our terms.
Our
trap,
our
success.” Noah replied, his eyes lighting up, like it was a good idea or something.

“It’s not perfect. We don’t have minions!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up.

“We don’t need minions for this. If he thinks we’re easy pickings, then he won’t send minions. Understand?”

I looked at him like he was crazy. I didn’t even bother looking at Gareth or Damien. They probably felt the same way Noah did. I was all for a fair fight, or unfair if it were to our advantage in this, but nothing with Padraigan was fair. He came away injured once, and us? Anna, Gareth, Damien….Harley. We’d suffered more than he had. I decided to voice that.

“We have more casualties than he does. Always. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.” I addressed all the men, and of course, I got speculative glances that said,
Leave the war strategy to the men.

“That’s not altogether true.” Gareth said, “He lost a lot of men at the warehouse. Killed. Not just injured. That was us. We can do this if planned correctly.”

“Okay, then tell me how.”

                            The big plan was in place. We had sat downstairs for hours, arguing finer points and strategy, and I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept much in the past couple of days and I was barely keeping my eyes open toward the end. Damien had finally stretched and got up to relieve Anna, even though I argued that I should do it. I was a little relieved when he insisted, and I felt bad for feeling that way. Now that all the craziness had died down, guilt was starting to intrude.

              How could I sit with her when I had caused this? I didn’t deserve to be in her presence. I just kept picturing her pushing power at me and sending me home, to leave her trapped…wherever she was trapped. We didn’t even know for sure if Padraigan had her or if she was just out there somewhere, unable to find her way back home. My fault. If not for me, then she’d be here.

Noah came in the room behind me and took my hand before I could go into the bathroom. He enveloped me in his arms, just holding me. He felt so safe, and yet he could be gone too. Any one of us could die in this plan we created and I couldn’t stand to lose someone else. It was one thing to be scrappy and fight for myself, but when my family was involved, it was a different matter.

“I can feel you being guilty. Don’t be. She did it of her own accord, and was sneaky about it too. I was about to go, but she distracted me.” He whispered into my hair. I wrapped my arms a little tighter around him, anchoring myself to him.

“I don’t know that I could’ve dealt with that. Hell, I don’t know how I’m dealing so calmly with this.”

He pulled away a little bit and looked down into my eyes, his storm-blue ones dark with exhaustion and concern.

“It’s going to hit. And you’ll let it. Don’t hold it in.”

“I won’t. Just have the tissues ready. It’s going to be messy.” I gave a watery laugh and shook my head. The tears were already filling my eyes.

Noah silently led me to the bed and laid down on it, pulling me with him. He held me while the dam broke. I sobbed into his chest, using his shirt instead of tissues. I cried for all of us, but mostly for Harley. The thoughts crowded my head. Was she lost? Scared? Hurt? Did she even know what was going on? Her body was safe here, and would be guarded fiercely, but her mind was out there somewhere. How do we get it back?

Astral travel was a great unknown. Those trained in it knew the basics. No one knows what happens when you’re blocked from coming back. Who knew how many people were in a coma in a hospital somewhere, for no obvious medical reason, that are possible astral travelers who got blocked somehow from making it back? Harley’s body would only last so long in the room upstairs before something had to be done. Noah talked about a stasis spell, but it was an old powerful spell. He wasn’t sure he had the juice for it. Another thing he was going to research at his family house before I dragged him back here.

“Noah, tell me about the Sleeping Beauty spell you mentioned earlier.” My voice was thick with tears, and the words came out barely above a whisper, but he heard me in the quiet of the room.

“Sleeping Beauty? I guess that’s accurate. It’s an old spell. No one I know has ever used it. It’s a whisper on the wind. Legend passed down in the families. I don’t even know where to find it. I’ll try my damndest though.”

“Will it help protect her body though? Does it need to be reversed? Does true love’s kiss remove it?”

“At least you got your humor back.” He shifted up in bed, propping himself against the headboard. I shifted too, sitting up next to him so I could face him. It still filled me with wonder that after all the indecision on my part that I found myself here, in his bed, as at home and comfortable as if it were my home. In a way, it had become my home. His face was so precious to me now, and I found it hard to imagine that at one point, I hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.

“From what I’ve heard, you’re not far off in calling it Sleeping Beauty. It puts the body in stasis-freezing it in the moment the spell is complete. She won’t age. Her body won’t start shutting down. If it works, it’ll give us time to figure out how to get her back.”

“How will we know it worked?” I asked, envisioning a sparkle of lights settling around Harley as the spell took hold. Very Disney of me, but this was heavier magick than I had ever come across. I hadn’t even known something like this was an option. Why wasn’t everyone in the magickal community doing it?

“My guess would be that we would know it worked if she doesn’t go in to seizures as her body shuts down. I really don’t know Teagan. I wish I could give you assurances, but like I said, no one that I’ve ever heard of has done this spell in decades, if not centuries. We’re facing a lot of unknowns.” His voice was matter-of-fact as he answered me, but his eyes were soft, comforting. I knew he was feeling’s Harley’s loss as hard as I was. He also felt as though he let her down, but he was stronger than me magickally and had more confidence in what he was doing. I could control the weather. I could put up protective wards. I could communicate telepathically. I could do a lot of stuff, but Noah was better at what I could do and knew more about stuff I had no idea existed. I took extreme comfort in that knowledge.

“Are you headed back to your mother’s in the morning?” I asked and he nodded as he took my hand.

“I’d like it if you came with me. I want you to meet the family before we do this thing.”

I froze. Meet the family? Whoa. That usually only meant one thing. Did he mean that one thing? Was he going to ask me that one thing? What would I say? Did I want that one thing?

“Jesus Teagan, your panic is written all over your face. And you ask way too many questions and overthink things…but, yeah, you’re right.” Noah laughed, taking a deep breath as he read my mind.

“Noah, what are you doing?” I asked as he dug into his front pocket. He flashed a smile at me as he held out an antique ring box.

“What does it look like?”

I stared down at the box, a rich brown leather with gilt striping around the edges. All I could think was that the box was a thing of beauty. My coherent thoughts had fled. I watched as his finger pressed on the latch and the lid came up, revealing a very old, very gorgeous ring.

I looked up at him, speechless. Then I looked down at the ring again. The band was solid silver, with Celtic knot work engraved on it. Emeralds oriented in diamond shapes were spaced evenly around the band.

“I’m not one for flowery words, and neither are you, but I love you Teagan. I’ve loved you since the moment I set eyes on you, from the first moment you annoyed the hell out of me. I want to spend the rest of our lives together, annoying one another, getting on each other’s nerves, and then making up every night. Will you be my wife?”

I dragged my eyes away from the ring to look at his face, into his eyes. Then it dawned on me in a moment of crystal clarity, as clear as the emeralds in the ring. This was my future,
he
was my future. I had never had any desire whatsoever to be married to anyone, but this man…he changed my whole life around. In a fraction of a second, I saw the future and it was glorious. And it was filled with him.

I think I nodded, because he broke into a huge grin.

“Yeah?” He asked, searching my face.

“Yeah. Yeah, Noah Jacobs, you annoying sorcerer, I will marry you.” I smiled as I said it and he snatched me up in a hug so fierce it made me breathless, as did the kiss that followed.