Mind Mates (Pull of the Moon Book 2) (16 page)

“Pretend magic that’s real.” Emma nodded. “Hiding in plain sight. That’s smart.”

“Thank you. You’ve chosen a good one, Gabriel.”

A flush of pleased embarrassment rose in Emma’s cheeks as the round little witch fetched a gallon of water from behind the counter. Gabriel had “chosen” her, like a mate…

The idea flashed again in her mind, at the edge of consciousness.

“So, the Enforcer.” Gabriel watched Linda pour water into the pot. “Why was he here?”

Goodwin said, “He wanted to reverse Linda’s muddle spell, and needed frog farts for his potion. He demanded we give some to him. Free.” The familiar rolled his green eyes.

“The nerve.” Linda lit the tea candle. “Most Enforcers are good people, and I’m happy to provide a few freebies for the work they do. But this one is a self-entitled ass.”

“My grandmother thought the same of me,” Gabriel said mildly.

“Your grandmother was a fool. Bless her heart. I told the Enforcer I only carried toad toots. But he’s definitely gunning for you. I do wish you’d reconsider your pocket dimension. You’d be safe there. Undetectable.”

“Yes, except…” Goodwin frowned. “I seem to recall a footnote of some sort.”

“Well, dear, while you’re recalling your footnote, could you scrounge up a pricker? I’ll make sure I have everything else.”

“Of course.” The dapper man reached into his jacket and drew out a small paper packet, which he ripped open.

Gabriel’s aunt touched the pot. “Cauldron, check. Water, fire, check. Blood.” She held out a hand.

Goodwin placed what Emma recognized as a sterile lancet flat in her palm. The little witch waved to Emma. “I need your finger.”

Emma went to her side and offered her pointer.

“This will only hurt a little.” Linda’s hold was firm, her aim practiced and precise. With a quick poke and tiny sting from the lancet, Emma’s blood gathered in a ruby tear, dangling from the pad.

Linda held it over the pot and intoned, “The book is tied to Emma’s heart.”

Her heart?
She tried not to think of Gabriel as the bead of blood fell and dispersed in the water. An excited tingle dispersed through her breastbone with it.

“The book is in Emma’s mind.”

A second drop gathered and fell, hitting the water with a burst and a dazzle. The tingle in Emma’s chest simultaneously burst, singing along her nerves to light up her brain. She clenched down on her muscles to avoid jerking her finger out of Linda’s grasp.

“The book calls to Emma’s soul.” As the third drop fell, the round little witch pressed a thumb against the puncture to stop the bleeding.

Blood filtered into the water. A feeling of calm settled inside Emma as it did, like a comforting blanket, or being in Gabriel’s arms.

Releasing Emma’s hand, Linda reached into a pocket, drew out what looked like a silver knitting needle, and flicked it at the pot like a wand. The flick sent her bracelets clacking.

The flame under the pot danced higher. The witch flicked again and drew the tea candle’s yellow-red flame
onto
the wand. Flick, flick, wrapping fire around the wand like cotton candy on a stick.

“
Find.
”

With the word, she flung an arc of golden fire into the pot. Water and blood lit with a
foomph.
Air and fire began to swirl and coalesce.

A ghostly living room wavered above the pot, with bookshelves and chairs and sofas and counters full of charms and jewelry… Not a living room.

The bookstore.

A red spot glowed near an oval mirror. Linda straightened in surprise. “The journal—it’s right here! How strange.”

“A coincidence?” Goodwin said.

“I don’t like coincidences.” Gabriel was using his nobody-hurts-my-employees voice.

“Let’s see, shall we?” The round little witch swirled her wand in an “off” motion. As the flames died, she trotted toward the back of the store.

Emma sagged, yawning hard. Gabriel’s arms came to support her, and she leaned gratefully against him.

“This is the problem with blood magic,” he growled at no one in particular. “It’s as exhausting as if you’d actually run around town to find the thing.”

“I’m fine.” She yawned again. “Well, except for not much sleep last night.” She paused. “Gabriel, I felt…tingly during the spell. Is that because I was the center of it, or should I be worried?”

He frowned down at her. “Tingly? That sounds like you sensed the magic. But that’s—”

“Impossible.” Goodwin shrugged. “Only witches can recognize power traces.”

Another yawn welled in Emma’s pit, but she suppressed it. “Oh, then it probably wasn’t the spell. Probably I was just excited about finding my father’s journal.”

“Here it is,” Linda sang out.

“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “Let’s go see what Auntie discovered.”

Gabriel and Emma walked hand in hand—how had that happened again?—to the back of the store, followed by Goodwin. Pan’s end of a heated conversation floated to her ears from the front.

Linda had set a cardboard banker’s box atop a showcase of wands that included a child’s sparkly pink fairy staff. She dug into the box and came out with a small, leather-bound book.

Emma’s heart beat faster. It was her father’s journal.

“I remember now how I got it.” Linda handed the book to Emma. “Your mother sold me a box of things at her rummage sale, but the journal seemed to…I don’t know…to miss its owner. So I kept it.”

“Thank you.” Emma hugged the book to herself.
And now that I have the journal, I have to leave.
Unspeakable sadness settled over her.

“The book was your father’s?” Gabriel peered over her shoulder. “It looks older.”

“This is actually the journal of an iota ancestor. He was a great builder—that was his power.” Another good iota power. Why did she have to be a nasty berserker? “But my father added to it. There’s a genealogy at the end, and he…” She smoothed fingertips along the worked leather cover, “…he painted a tree to join the names.”

“Show me?” he said.

Touched that he’d want to see, reluctant to leave, and smothering another yawn, she unwound the string closure to open the small book. She turned to the last page which held the earliest Singer names. “This is the tree.”

“Gorgeous.” Gabriel brushed a finger over the sweeping branches of the hand-painted tree, not quite touching the page. “Your father was a genius.”

“Thanks.” Her cheeks heated with pleasure at his appreciation. “I thought so too, but I’m biased.”

“For being centuries old, the paper or vellum is in good shape.” He pointed at the trunk. “Is this Fezz fellow at the bottom your builder ancestor?”

“Fezz Singer?” Goodwin echoed sharply.

“He’s the author of the journal,” Emma said. “His writing is in the front of the book, the first twenty pages or so.” And then, because it had always bothered her, she added, “But the middle pages are blank. My father told me never to write on them.”

The familiar stared at her, expression grave, green irises tightening, collapsing his round pupil into vertical slits. “Can we see?”

The hair on her nape rose. “Well…I really need to go. My brother, Edge…somehow he got out of prison. He wants to ship me back to Bruiser.”

“Elroy Sharpclaw?” The way Gabriel spat her brother’s name said the wizard prince not only knew that Edge had been in the Council’s prison, he knew exactly what her brother had done to land there. “No way he’s putting one finger on you. But how the hell did he get out of…frosted fuckflakes. Edge
Singer
Sharpclaw. He must be the one who informed on Noah and Sophia.”

“What? No. He wouldn’t.” Before her subconscious could argue that Edge would do almost anything for the right amount of cash, she added, “He
couldn’t.
He was in jail. He wouldn’t have known.”

“You knew,” Linda pointed out.

“From my mother. But Edge was locked up. Incommunicado…” Except for the letters her mother wrote her brother.

“The journal,” Goodwin repeated. “Please? I think it may be important.”

“Not if Emma is danger.” Gabriel slapped the book shut and picked it up with one hand. “We need to get her out of town now.” He took her elbow with the other hand and urged her into motion toward a doorway curtained with beads.

“Gabriel, wait.” The distinguished man’s voice was almost agonized. “That book may be a time bomb.”

“What?” Stopping abruptly, Gabriel’s hand on her elbow tightened, echoing her own tension. “What do you mean?”

“The name Fezz… I seem to recall it in connection with the founding of the Witches’ Council. Coming on top of the prophecy activating, those blank pages in Fezz’s journal are disturbing.”

“Worse than Emma’s brother wanting to sell her?” Gabriel’s jaw worked as if he was chewing on their alternatives and found them all gristle.

She touched his arm. “Mr. Goodwin may have a point. The blank pages aren’t simply blank—they
can’t
be written on.” She blushed. “I tried, even though Dad told me not to. Pen, pencil, paint, nothing works.”

Gabriel snarled at no one and everyone. “The moment we figure if the journal is safe or not, you’re getting out of town.” He stalked her back to the display case and plunked the book down. “Show us.”

Emma flipped a few pages toward the middle of a bristling sheaf of thick pristine pages. She flattened a pair at random.

Closing his eyes, Gabriel traced a large finger along one blank page.

A corresponding hum buzzed along her skin. It scared her. “What are you doing?”

His eyes opened, a touch out of focus, giving him a vulnerable look. “Nothing alarming. Witch’s Sight. We also call it ‘going up on the etheric’ or ‘opening the third eye’ or simply the Sight.”

“Magic?”

“Strictly speaking, no. I can’t explain it in a way you’d understand…wait.” He shook his head, and a small half-smile lifted the corner of his mouth as his gaze focused on her. “Actually you, of all people, might.”

Some of her tension, her tired aching, lifted at that. “Try me.”

“Remember those magic eye pictures? They look like a blobby mass of ink, until you focus your eyes slightly above the page. Then the picture jumps out. Witch’s Sight is a way to see the reality coded in the blobby mass of space-time.”

Emma nodded. “And what reality did you see when you focused your third eye above the blobby mass of blank pages?”

He cupped her face. “My Emma. You understood.”

Those sea-blue eyes were so warm and sparkling, she longed for a midnight skinny dip in them—

“They’re not blank.”

“
What?
” Emma’s shock snapped her out of her daydream.

He dropped his hands from her face to touch the book. “The reason you can’t write on these pages is
there’s already something on them.
But it’s hidden.”

Emma’s breath quickened with a seed of new alarm, exhaustion falling away. Why would her journal have hidden writing?

“Pan?” Gabriel raised his voice. “I need you here for this, buddy.”

“I’m busy,” the man growled.

“Too busy for invisible writing?”

A beat. “A mystery? Give me a second to wrap up this call.” Moments later, Pan glided to where the four of them surrounded the journal.

Goodwin asked, “What did Noah have to say?”

“Noah was incoherent with rage. I was talking mostly with his beta, Mason. He has a few ideas. He’d rather not leave Noah alone in the garage and wants us to meet there. But first, let’s see about this delightful secret message.”

Leaning over the countertop, Pan peered at the blank page. A frown the twin to Gabriel’s appeared on his face. “There’s something on these pages, all right. But it doesn’t feel transparent so much as…” He sniffed the page. “Damn. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Auntie, could you try a reveal?” Gabriel said.

“If it’s all right with the owner?” She raised questioning brows at Emma.

The agitation in Emma’s stomach increased. The old leather-covered journal was physically fragile. What could happen to it, hit by magic?

“I won’t hurt it,” Linda said as if answering her thoughts. “Only reveal the writing already in it. Emma dear, it’ll be fine.”

“I know, but…” It wasn’t until Gabriel’s hand found hers and tightened that she felt brave enough to say, “All right.”

The knitting-needle wand reappeared in Linda’s fist. “One for the money. Two for the show.” She tapped the blank page with each verse. “Three to get ready. And four to—reveal!”

Emma leaned closer, goosed equally by fear and fascination.

The page was still blank.

Gabriel blinked. “What kind of hide spell won’t yield to a reveal?”

“Not a hide.” Pan’s frown was dark. “Magically locked. No beginner’s craft—this is royal magic.”

“B-but that journal belonged to my father’s ancestor.” A flood of acid opened in Emma’s stomach. Why would a wolf’s journal be locked with royal witch magic?