The Spell (11 page)

Lucas straightened and spun around as the din of a horrible five-car pile-up emanated from the street in front of the house.

“Go!” Danny insisted hurriedly. “I’ll get my medicine!”

Lucas didn’t wait to reply. He was hurtling through the door of her bedroom and down the stairs in a near blur. As soon as he was out of sight, Danny closed her eyes. She let her dormant shield drop. Then she let her own personal magic shield drop. She only left the house’s shield up – it wouldn’t matter in a moment anyway.

With renewed strength, Danny pushed herself off of the bed to stand beside it.

“I’m coming, Ima,” she whispered. And with that, she called forth the transportation spell that would take her to her best friend, raising her arms and welcoming the vortex. In the next moment, the world shifted around her, blurring color, sound and time.

When it stopped again, she was standing in a forest clearing.

“Danny! Oh, thank the gods!”

Danny spun around to see Imani kneeling beside the prone form of a child. The little girl must not have been much older than eight or nine – maybe ten, if she was small for her age. She had straight brown hair and very pale skin.

Danny was instantly running to the child’s side, barely noting that other members of her coven were there in the clearing as well.

As she dropped to her knees beside the child and placed her hand to the girl’s chest, she speared Imani with a hard look. “What happened?” she wanted to know. She could feel the child’s life force slipping beneath her touch. Her heartbeat was erratic, slow and barely noticeable. Another minute and she would have been gone.

“She and her brother were playing on the cliffs,” Imani told her quickly. “The festival is just over that rise,” she turned and pointed and then faced Danny again. “The cliff face crumbled. Her brother is unconscious as well, but more stable.”

Danny nodded and closed her eyes, needing all of her concentration now. She’d been able to locate the main injury in the girl’s small body and there was internal bleeding. With a stark and sure purpose, she began the words of an incantation, soft and sweet; a lullaby of healing. In a few seconds, the girl’s eyes were fluttering open. They were a clear, bright hazel beneath long, dark lashes.

“Hello Alice,” Danny broke off from the spell and spoke to the girl. She’d gleaned the child’s name as she’d worked. “You and your brother are going to be just fine,” she said softly. “I want you to stay here with Imani,” she nodded toward her best friend, “and don’t move too much.”

Alice slowly sat up and nodded.

“Where’s the boy?” Danny asked. Imani hurriedly pointed her in another direction and Danny left them to run toward a group of her coven members near the opposite end of the clearing.

Sasha was kneeling beside the boy’s unconscious form. He looked up as she approached and she nodded to him. He nodded back, a look of frank relief crossing his features. Danny placed her hand to the boy’s chest. Again, she spoke her words of healing, and again the child beneath her gentle touch stirred and awoke. His eyes fluttered open; hazel like his sister’s. Dannai smiled down at him. “Hello Max.”

*****

Lucas came to a sudden stop in the doorway of Danny’s house as a surge of power washed over and through him. It was lightning-fast, there one millisecond and gone in the next. But it was real and it was strong and it smelled… like magic.

He straightened in the hallway and slowly turned toward the stairs he had just rocketed down. There was no further sound coming from outside on the street. The night was silent.

Caige’s fangs erupted in his mouth; his body slid into fight mode. Something wasn’t right. Without calling out to Danny, Lucas began to climb the stairs back up to the second floor. He moved with predatory stealth, not making a single sound.

He reached the landing and approached Danny’s door. It was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with a slow, cautious hand. It was quiet inside. Lucas concentrated and listened. There was no breathing, no heartbeat. Nothing.

He pushed the door the rest of the way open and his wolfen vision took in the room’s empty interior. Danny was gone.

But that wasn’t all. Lucas’s dark eyes widened and flashed red. There was the faintest hint of it, soft and lingering like no more than the promise of snow. Magic had an indescribable scent, and it was so weak here, he should not have been able to pick it up. But he did.

And then his world dropped out from under him when a second scent piggy-backed the first. It was even fainter than the magic – but he would have recognized it at half the strength. It smelled like heaven.
Salvation
.

It was the scent of a dormant.

Chapter Seven:
“Disappearing Act”

“So what are you gonna tell Mr. Tall, Dark and Pissed-Off when you just happen to flash back into your bedroom after he ran outside and there were no cars in the street?”

Danny rolled her eyes and ran her hand over her face. Imani had a point and Danny was well aware of it. “Okay, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. But you wouldn’t shut up and the situation was dire. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“Not that!” Imani huffed, shaking her head. “Good goddess, girl, you had to know that this was going to take longer than that!”

“I had no idea there were two children who needed healing, Ima! I thought I would just pop in, heal someone, and pop back out!”

“And when you drained yourself so bad you wouldn’t be able to keep up three shields?” Imani asked next, “What were you planning on doing then?”

“I don’t know!” Danny yelled, not able to take it any longer. “Jesus, cut me a break! Like I said, I didn’t know what else to do!” She dropped her head into her hands and tried to squeeze the pain out of her temples.

Ima held up her hands and sighed deeply. “All right, I’ll give you that much. You were in a hurry. But now we have a problem, girlfriend. That alpha wolf you left alone in our house is now officially on to you. So… what’s our plan?” she hedged.

They were sitting on a large stone in the clearing where Danny had healed the children. The kids had been walked back to the festival long ago and led to their parents with no one the wiser as to their accident – or the fact that Danny had healed them. The other members of the coven who had been in the clearing had returned along with the children, leaving Imani and Danny alone.

“Well…” Danny began slowly, leaving her face hidden behind her hands. “I was sort of thinking of leaving town.”

Imani clucked her tongue and shook her head. “I know you’re joking, girl. Because if you were serious, I’d be obligated as your friend to warn you that once an alpha werewolf catches the scent of a dormant, that kind of shit don’t fly.”

“Who says he knows about my dormancy, Ima?” Danny raised her head and squared her friend with a hard look. “I had that shield up to the very last. Worst case scenario, he knows there’s something magical going on.” Danny figured that the very fact that she had disappeared from her room and had yet to return would tip Caige off to
that
much. Either he would think she did it herself and was therefore a witch – or he would think that some magical beast appeared out of nowhere and absconded with her.

That thought almost made her laugh.
Almost.

This was just too serious. If she hadn’t been dreaming about him, it wouldn’t be so bad. And it wasn’t just the dreams. The truth was, she was so attracted to him, it felt almost like some kind of iniquitous sex virus had invaded her system. To her, Lucas Caige was that piece of seven-chocolate mousse cake with whipped cream that you got after a lifetime of dieting. He was tempting and that was putting it lightly.

“You’re underestimating the wolf in him, Danny,” Ima warned softly. “Don’t put anything past him. We’ve worked with his kind for a long time. Would you put anything past Charlie?”

Danny thought about that. Charlie, or Claire, as most others knew her, was a very powerful werewolf. And when Imani put it that way, then
no
. She wouldn’t put it past Charlie to figure things out eventually. Luckily for Danny, Charlie was already well aware of Danny’s dormancy and had promised long ago to keep it a secret.

“No,” she replied softly. “But I really was careful about that one. Still, the magic will be bad enough.” She felt suddenly sad. There was a pain yawning to life inside of her and she didn’t like it one bit. “I suppose he’ll hit the road now.”

To that, Imani said nothing. But if she had been planning on speaking eventually, she was saved the trouble. Boots crunched the cold grass and rocks behind them and both girls turned to see one of Jason Alberich’s apprentices standing behind them. He was a tall man dressed in black, as was customary.

“Dannai, the herald wishes to see you.”

“I’ll just bet he does,” mumbled Imani in such a quiet voice that only Danny could hear her. Danny shot her a glance half wary and half weary and then stood to follow the apprentice off of the cliff-top field. She didn’t look to see whether Imani followed as well; she had so much on her mind in that moment, she almost didn’t care.

When they reached the festival grounds, it was to find the celebration winding down for the night. The bonfire was down to the dregs of its once mighty flames and cars were pulling out of the lot in a long line. Their headlights cast a lonely light through the foggy night.

They reached the herald’s tent and the apprentice held out his hand, gesturing for Danny to enter. Danny watched a few children being pulled by weary parents toward the emptying lot and then she ducked under the flap of Alberich’s tent and went inside.

Jason Alberich had always had good taste in décor. The herald’s tent was far from an ordinary living structure. It acted as a portal, more or less, to the rooms of Alberich’s mansion. During the height of festivities, the tent could be found resembling the herald’s work room, which Danny had only ever caught glimpses of since she was normally too busy to bother the wizard while he was working.

Other times, it was the dining hall and Alberich would invite the coven for a meal. It was a meeting room, a library, a bedroom. That last one, Danny had never seen.

At the moment, the interior of his tent was warm and inviting, and because Danny was a witch, she saw it as it truly was – far grander on the inside than the allotted space on the outside should have allowed. Any human mistakenly entering the tent would have seen nothing but white material, a dirt floor, and a few chairs.

What was really there, however, was what looked like the Gryffindor common room from Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. The floor was a limestone and marble composite, the stone hearth crackled merrily, the round table was set with food and drink, and a black mastiff rested on a thick white rug beside a set of plush love seats.

Alberich sat in one of the seats, his tall strong form draped in the customary black of his station, his blonde hair stark in contrast. He glanced up at the entrance to the tent as Danny came in and his green eyes glittered with an unsettling mixture of keen intelligence and observation.

“You wanted to see me?” she said.

He nodded, lifted a goblet of some kind of drink to his lips and gestured for Danny to sit in the chair across from him. “Please have a seat, Danny.”

The mastiff raised its head, sniffed in her direction, grunted satisfactorily, and then lowered its head and closed its eyes once more. As soon as Danny took her seat, a goblet matching Jason’s materialized on the coffee table in front of her.

She glanced at it, wondering what it was. Her stomach was in knots, however, and she wasn’t sure she wanted anything at all.

“Danny, I saw you earlier with the werewolf, Lucas Caige,” Jason told her. Danny’s head snapped up and her eyes cut to him once more. His green gaze was ever steady and unnerving. “Quite frankly, it concerns me.”

“Why?” she asked, feeling a little sick.

“You know very well how Caige feels about us,” Jason said softly, leaning forward to set the goblet down on the table. He rested his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers together, and sighed. “It’s clear that you’re keeping your true nature from him, or he would not have accompanied you to the festival tonight. What concerns me most is that you would hide who you are in order to satisfy the closed-minded whims of a werewolf.” He speared her with a hard look for a second. “Would you care to explain your actions?”

Danny pulled her gaze away from his and felt her cheeks heat up. Jason’s words swam around in her head. He was right. Caige’s hatred of magic was notorious enough. “Not really,” she replied.

“I see,” Jason said. He sighed again and came to his feet. Then he paced slowly to the fire place, braced his arms against the marble mantle, and gazed into the flames. “I can understand your interest in such a man,” he said softly. “Lucas Caige must seem the ultimate game to one such as yourself. If you can make him fall for you, you can make anyone fall for you. Is that it?”

“What? No!” Danny shook her head. “That’s not it at all!”

Alberich glanced at her over his shoulder. “No?” he asked, never raising his voice. “Are you certain? Because I can’t imagine what kind of future you could possibly think you’d have with a man who loathes our kind as much as he does.” He pushed off of the hearth and turned to face her. “Caige can never love a witch, Danny, and you can’t hide from him forever. There will come a day –
soon
– when he knows you for who and what you truly are.” He looked at the floor and shook his head, closing his eyes. “I would spare you the ensuing pain.”

Danny’s head was spinning. Everything Jason was telling her was true. She knew it in her heart. And that heart was breaking already. She turned her face slightly away from him when she felt tears gather in her eyes. She couldn’t believe this was hurting her as much as it was. And she didn’t want Alberich to see that.

“Danny, what you just did with those children on that cliff was a gift more precious than any other witch has ever been given,” he continued, his voice still soft, his tone gently beseeching. “To that end, I honestly know of no other witch in existence who has demonstrated the level of power you have over all. You are a boon to us, Danny. Your people need you. You realize this, don’t you?” he asked, as if just to make sure.