Spellbinder (21 page)

"Yes," Thea whispered. "I still think we're soul-mates. But . . ."

Would you give up everything?

"I don't want to be the reason he dies. Or the reason a war starts between the Harmans and the rest of the Night World. And if I have to give him up, I'd rather do it myself, make sure he's safe with somebody else who loves him."

"Have you got somebody picked out?"

"Her name is Pilar." Thea looked at her cousin suddenly.
"Blaise?
When Luke asked you what you

wanted
, and you said nothing you could have . . . what did you mean?"

Blaise tilted her head back and examined the ceiling. Then she looked down. "Does anybody ever want anything they can have?
Really?"

"I... don't know."

Blaise clasped her knees and rested her chin on them. "If we can have things, we don't really want them anymore. So there's always something out there that we're wanting and not able to get... and maybe that's good."

It didn't sound good to Thea. It sounded like one of those terrible lessons in Life 101 that were supposed to make you more mature.

"Let's do the spell," she said.

You know, he probably only loved you because of the yemonja," Blaise said.

Thea looked up from her seat in the empty chemistry lab. It was morning break, and this was the most private place they could find at school. "Thanks, Blaise. I needed that."

But maybe it was true. She'd almost forgotten that she'd used a spell to get him in the first place.

That should make a difference, she told herself. If it was all artificial, I shouldn't even miss it.

She still felt as if she were encased in ice.

"Did you get it?"

"Sure." Blaise tossed a ring on the high table. "I asked her if I could look at it, then pretended I dropped it in the bushes. She's still out there searching."

Thea pulled the binding spell out of her backpack.

Two anatomically correct dolls, both made with the blue wax Blaise used for her jewelry. Beautiful little creatures-Blaise was an artist. The male one contained the Kleenex with Eric's blood and a single sandy hair Thea had found clinging to her shoulder.

Thea put Pilar's turquoise ring around the feet of the female doll and tied it with a red thread to keep it on. She held out a hand.

From her backpack, Blaise produced a corked hexagonal bottle. The liquid inside was made up of all sorts of disgusting things, including ground bezoar stone. Thea held her breath as she poured it over the two figures, which immediately began to smoke.

"Now bind them together," Blaise said, coughing and waving a hand to clear a space to breathe.

"I know." Thea took a thin scarlet ribbon seven feet long and patiently began winding it around the two figures. It wrapped them like mummies. She tucked the loose end into a loop.

"And there they are," Blaise said.
"Bound till death.
Congratulations. Let's see, it's ten fifteen now, so he should have forgotten your existence by about . . . say, ten sixteen." She reached up and her hair ran like black water through her hands as she stretched.

Thea tried to smile.

The pain was bad. It was as if some part of Thea's physical body had been cut off. She felt raw and bleeding and not at all able to deal with things like French or trigonometry.

There must be more to life. I'll go somewhere and

do
something for other people; I'll work in third world countries or try to save an endangered species.

But thinking about future good works didn't help the raw ache. Or the feeling that if the ache stopped she would just be numb and never be happy again.

And all this for a human . . .

It didn't work anymore. She couldn't go back to her old way of thinking. Humans might be alien, but they were still people. They were as good as witches.
Just different.

She managed to get through the schoolday without running into Eric-which mainly meant scuttling around corridors after bells rang and being tardy for classes. She was scuttling after the last bell toward Dani's
U.S.
government class when she almost collided with Pilar.

"Thea!"

The voice was surprised. Thea looked up.

Deep amber-brown eyes, framed by spiky black lashes.
Pilar was looking at her very strangely.

Wondering at your good luck? Thea thought. Has Eric proposed to you yet? "What?" she said.

Pilar hesitated, then just shook her head and walked off.

Thea ducked into the history classroom.

Dani said, "Thea!"

Everybody sounds the same.

"Where've you been? Eric's looking all over for you."

Of course, I should have realized. Blaise was wrong-he's not just going to forget about me and

walk
away. He's a gentleman; he's going to tell me he's walking away.

"Can I go home with you?" she asked Dani wretchedly. "I need some space."

"Thea ..." Dani dragged her to a corner and looked her over with anxious eyes. "Eric really wants to find you . . . but what's wrong?" she whispered. "Is it something about Suzanne? The old gym's still closed, isn't it?"

"It's nothing to do with that." She was about to suggest they get moving when a tall figure walked in the door. Eric.

He walked straight to Thea. The kids hanging around the teacher's desk were looking. The teacher was looking. Thea felt like a freak show.

"We have to talk," Eric said flatly. She'd never seen him look quite like this before. He was pale, glassy-eyed,
hollow
-cheeked. He somehow managed to look as if he'd missed a week's worth of sleep since that morning.

And he was right. They had to talk to end it. She had to explain that it was okay, or he'd never be able to go. I can do that.

"Somewhere private," Thea said.

They left Dani and walked through the campus, past the old gym with its yellow ribbon of police tape hanging limp and still.
Through the football field.

Thea didn't know where they were going, and suspected Eric didn't either-they just kept moving until they were out of sight of people.

The green of the tended grass gave way to yellow-green, and then brown, and then desert. Thea wrapped her arms around herself, thinking about how cold it had gotten in just a week and a half. The last trace of summer was gone.

And now we're going to talk about it, she thought as Eric stopped. Okay. I don't have to think, just say the right words. She forced herself to look at him.

He turned the haggard, haunted face on her and said, "I want you to stop it."

Funny choice of words.
You mean end it, break it off,
put
it quietly out of its misery.

She couldn't get all that out, so she just said, "What?"

"I don't know what you're doing," he said, "but I want it stopped.
Now."

His green eyes were level. Not apologetic, more like demanding. His voice was flat.

Thea had a sudden sense of shifting realities. All the hairs on her arms were standing up.

Caught without a working brain, she said, "I- what are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about." He was still looking at her steadily.

Thea shook her head no.

He shrugged. It was
a you
-asked-for-it shrug. "Whatever you're doing," he said with terrible distinctness, "to try and make me like Pilar, it has got to stop.
Because it's not fair to her.
She's upset right now because I'm acting crazy. But I don't want to be

with
her. It's you I love. And if you want to get rid of me, then tell me, but don't try and foist me off on somebody else."

Thea listened to the whole speech feeling as if she were floating several feet above the ground. The sky and desert seemed too bright, not warm,
just
very shiny. While her brain ran around frantically like Madame Curie in a new cage, she managed to get out, "What could I possibly have to do-with you liking Pilar?"

Eric looked around, found a rock, and sat on it. He stared down at his hands for a minute or so. Finally he looked up, his expression helpless.

"Give me a break, Thea," he said. "How stupid do you think I am?" Oh.

"Oh." Then she thought, don't just stand there. You bluffed him before. You talked him out of knowing he'd been bitten by a snake. For Earth's sake, you can talk him out of whatever he's thinking now.

"Eric-I guess we've all been under a lot of stress. . . ."

"Oh, please don't give me that." He seemed to be talking to a clump of silver cholla, eyeing the halos of awful spines as if he might jump into them. "Please don't give me that."

He took a deep breath and spoke deliberately. "You charm snakes and read guinea pigs' minds. You cure rattler bites with a touch. You tap into people's brains. You make up magical potpourri bags and your insane cousin is the goddess Aphrodite." He looked at her. "Did I miss anything?"

Thea found another rock and backed up to it blindly. She sat. Of everything in the universe, right then what she was most aware of was her own breathing.

"I have this feeling," Eric said, watching her with his green eyes, "that you guys are in fact the descendants of good old Hecate Witch-Queen. Am I
dose
?"

"You think you win a prize?" Thea still couldn't think, couldn't put a meaningful remark together.
Could only gabble.

He paused and grinned, a wry and painful grin, but the first one she'd seen today. Then the smile faded. "It's true, isn't it?" he said simply.

Thea looked out over the desert, toward the huge, bare cliffs of rock in the distance. She let her eyes unfocus, soaking in the expanse of brown-green. Then she put her ringers to the bridge of her nose.

She was going to do something that all her ancestors would condemn her for, something that nobody she'd grown up with would understand.

"It's true," she whispered.

He breathed out, a lonely human figure in that vastness of the desert.

"How long have you known?" she asked.

"I ... don't know. I mean, I think I always sort of knew. But it wasn't possible-and you didn't want me to know. So I didn't know." A kind of excitement was creeping into his haggardness. "It's really true, then. You can do magic."

Say it, Thea told herself. You've done everything else. Say the words to a human. "I'm a witch."

"A Hearth-Woman, I thought you called it. That's what Roz was telling me."

At that, Thea was horrified out of her daze of horror.
Stricken.
"Eric-you can't talk about this with Roz. You don't understand. They'll kill her."

He didn't look as shocked as she might have expected. "I knew you were scared of something. I thought it was just that people might hurt you-and your grandma."