Hexed (22 page)

I sigh and snatch it from him.

“Great,” he says. “Now that you’ve learned to harness your magic, flying should be easy.”

I roll my eyes, because he had said harnessing my magic would be easy, but he ignores me and continues.

“Harnessing your magic was about learning to manipulate the energy in your body, which you used to move the desk yesterday. Flying applies the same principle, but to manipulate energy outside your body. Instead of pulling all your heat into your core and out through your fingertips, you push the heat down and out of your body to manipulate the air currents instead of objects, and voilà—that’s flying.”

“Sounds simple.”

“I’m glad you agree.” Bishop points at the broomstick, which I’m holding away from me like a used tissue. “Straddle it.”

I glare at him.

He raises his hands. “What else do you call it?”

I reluctantly do as he says. “You better not be screwing with me about this broom or I’ll be pissed.”

“I’m not screwing with you. It’s much harder to focus on invisible air currents than it is a tangible broomstick.”

“So it could be anything, then? Not just a broomstick?”

“Just focus, Indie.”

Sighing, I close my eyes, and the heat flares to life in my stomach. But pushing it down rather than pulling it up is another beast entirely. I push and shove and slam the heat down, but it’s as if I’m trying to jump through a springy new mattress; I can get a few inches of movement, but mostly it’s impossible. Yep, just as I anticipated, flying isn’t as easy as Bishop makes it out to be, even with the stupid learner’s broomstick.

Time ticks by. The sun moves across the sky, reminding me just how long we’ve been out here alone, and without any witnesses—we might as well be wearing freaking neon targets on our backs for all the opportunity we’re giving the Priory to attack. I’ve already drained the water Bishop packed for the trip, and I can pretty much bet on a wicked sunburn come morning. I don’t want to quit—wouldn’t normally dream of quitting—but there hasn’t been even a glimmer of progress and we still have the long drive home ahead of us.

“Okay, I’m done.” I toss the broomstick into the sand and stalk away from Bishop with my hands laced behind my head. To suck at flying after doing well with moving objects is more than a little disappointing.

“Don’t give up.” Bishop, for once, jogs to catch up to me. “You were getting so close.”

“Close?” I laugh. “No I wasn’t. I’m hot and sweaty and tired, but close? Not even slightly.”

Thank God he doesn’t argue the point, because I’m feeling violent. He chews the inside of his cheek a moment before speaking. “There is something more I can do to help, but you won’t like it.”

“There’s something more, and you haven’t told me?” Yep, definitely feeling violent.

“You won’t like it.”

“Tell me, already. I want to fly. What is it about the hours of practicing in the heat that hasn’t given you that impression? I’m willing to—”

“I drop you from a height,” he interrupts.

I close my mouth and give him a glare.

“Adrenaline can help you harness your magic in the right direction.”

“Yeah, right. Sort of like candles are energy drinks for witches?”

“Fine, don’t believe me.”

“Great, I won’t. You know, you might gain a little more credibility if you stop bullshitting me for fun all the time.”

“You don’t want to do it, just like I thought—I get it. But you should know I wouldn’t let you get hurt. I’d catch you before you hit the ground, if it came to that.”

I shake my head and huff and roll my eyes a bunch, but all the while his words are sinking into my brain. “You won’t let me hit the ground?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Say it out loud. Promise.”

Bishop places his hand over his heart. “I, Bishop, hereby promise not to let one Indigo Blackwood hit the ground.”

I bite my lip, contemplating. “What the hell. Fine. Let’s do—”

Bishop snags his arm around my middle and lifts into the air so suddenly and quickly that I jerk in half like a foldaway bed. My hair sucks around my face and my stomach does a flip, the landscape below becoming smaller and smaller until I’m sure NASA is probably picking up our movement on their satellites. And then the hands around my middle are gone. There’s a split second where I reach out to anchor on to something solid, before I realize there’s nothing to grab.

I plummet. A whole-body fear clutches at me, a tremendous rush of chemicals passing up my body like the worst roller-coaster ride times a million. And then all I can hear, all I can feel is the wind. It pushes against my body and warbles my cheeks, instantly drying my damp top as I pinwheel my arms, belly flopping toward earth.

“Push it down. Push the heat down.” It’s Bishop, plummeting next to me like he’s my parachuting buddy or something. The same wind sucks his hair back and flattens his T-shirt tight against his frame, but, unlike me, he couldn’t look calmer. Until he appeared, all I could think about was how it was going to feel when I splatted to the ground, but now I remember that I’m supposed to harness my magic, push it down and blah blah blah. But I can’t. How can I concentrate with the ground zooming nearer by the second? This was a mistake. I wordlessly reach out for Bishop.

“Sorry!” he yells over the wind, shaking his head solemnly.

“What? Help me!” I say, choking on a mouthful of air.

The sand nears, closer and closer by the wasted second. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty-five.

“Push it down!” he yells.

I reach out to claw on to the shirt flapping around his midsection, but he pulls away, just an inch out of reach, grinning that infuriating grin. “Push it down!”

My anger makes it easy to find the heat, and for a second I think that maybe it’s working this time—going down instead of up—but then the heat sucks back in at the sight of the sand, so very close.

Seconds before I splat to the ground, Bishop swoops under me and plucks me up in a smooth reverse swan dive, rising high into the sky again, holding me tight against him so that we’re nearly nose to nose. The crazy noise of the wind falls away, and it becomes deathly quiet.

I want to scream at him. Tell him he’s a jerk for waiting so long to catch me, but then I become hyperaware that we’re face to face, that the length of our bodies are pressed together, and I don’t say any of those things. His chest rises and falls against mine, and I imagine I can feel the drum of his heart between the two thin layers of clothing separating our skin. I risk a glance at his eyes. This close I notice that, though dark as earth wet with rain, they’re flecked with gold, like a fire burns behind them. Like he’s
hungry.
The thought makes my breath turn so hard and ragged it can’t be healthy. His eyes fall to my lips, and he swallows.

He inclines his head so that the tip of his nose nearly grazes mine, so that our lips would touch if a strong wind should arise. I’ve never wanted to be kissed so badly, so of course this would be the time Mom pops into my head—the Mom from the theater with the knife in her temple. The guilt from the car ride comes crashing over me like a tidal wave. How can I be doing this?

I draw away from Bishop, as much as I can with him still holding my arms in his iron grip. “Oh God, please put me down, I don’t want to do this.” I’m hyperventilating now, but for a different reason entirely.

Bishop senses the moment’s over and floats us to the ground. His expression is blank and unreadable, and that somehow makes everything worse.

“I’m sorry,” I say, digging my fingers into my scalp. I turn around and start walking.

I make it only a few steps before Bishop catches my wrist and whirls me around. “You can be happy, you know. It’s okay for you to be happy again.”

Tears well in my eyes.

He sighs and slackens his grip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

I don’t say anything, but it’s not because I’m mad at him. I just don’t know how to tell him how grateful I am that he understood me, that he knew how I was feeling—torn up that I could feel anything but anguish when the memory of Mom dying is still a heavy weight on my heart—all without me having to say a single word. So I show him the only way I know how. I snake my arms around his neck and crush my lips against his. They’re soft, much softer than I expected, and for a moment, they’re motionless against mine. And then he moans into my mouth. His hands sink into my hair and he kisses me back, hard and fast and passionate, like it’s both the first and last kiss of his life. His lips find my jaw, my throat, the spot behind my earlobe, sending a thrilling ache into my belly. I claw at his clothing, tugging his shirt up, and pull him to the sand. He falls on top of me, pressing his full weight onto me. His greedy hands move up my body, and I yank at the sides of his pants, my heart racing in my desperation to get rid of those two layers between us, because I need this, because I need the way it feels to not think of anything else but what I’m doing. Bishop slides his warm hand up my shirt, and my back arches in response.

And then his lips stop moving. He lets out a frustrated groan and becomes as motionless as a statue on top of me.

“What?” I ask, breathless.

He groans again, like he’s in actual physical pain, before rolling off me into the sand, white-knuckled fists braced over his stomach.

“What? What is it? Why’d you stop?” I push up on my elbows, catching my breath and watching Bishop splayed in the sand, squinting into the fading sun.

“I don’t want it to be like this,” he says.

I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

“When you’re sad. It was stupid of me. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Stupid of you?” I exhale and push to sitting. “I kissed you, remember? What happened to all the ‘it’s okay to be happy’ bullcrap?”

“I’m sorry, okay? It’s my fault.”

Fault. Like he did something wrong. Tears sting my eyes. I can’t believe what’s happening. Nowhere along the line did I think he’d humiliate me, that he’d make me feel like a sexual predator. I stand up so suddenly pockets of sand go flying onto Bishop. “Forget it, let’s go back.”

He groans once more, loudly, without getting up, then chases after me. “Come on, Ind. Don’t be mad. Can’t you understand? It’s not that I don’t want to.”

Oh great, what’s next: it’s not you, it’s me?

“Ind.” He catches my wrist so that I’m forced to face him. I speak before he can delve into any more embarrassing apologies. “Listen. It was stupid—you’re right. I shouldn’t have done that.” My voice cracks a bit when I say it, so I lace some extra anger into my last words. “I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sorry I did, and it’ll
never
happen again.” I shake free of his grip and walk away. “Now take me home. I’m tired.”

I
liked Bishop’s kitchen just fine the other day. In fact, it was my second-favorite room in his zillion-room mansion. It features the same wooden beams across the roof, smooth archways around the doors, and windows covered in cast-iron grilles as the rest of the house, making it look like the feature spread in
Architectural
Digest.
But there are also stone walls, an ornate tile backsplash, fancy tile floors, dark-colored wood cabinets, and a low-hanging candle chandelier suspended over an island full of planters. Together, the look is just so
warm
that I couldn’t help loving the room.

But that was the past. Because today, as I perch on the counter, Jezebel pushing back her cuticles as she leans against the massive stainless steel fridge, Bishop drumming his hands on the island with Lumpkins curled in a ball at his feet, I suddenly don’t like it at all. I’d rather be anywhere but here, in this stupid kitchen, with the worst company I can think of, except for maybe Leo and the Priory.

Which is why we’re here having this little meeting. I finger the edges of the blackened newspaper, the headline
strange men seen lurking around high school cheerleading practice
stamped in heavy Gothic script across the third page of the local newspaper.

“I propose a permanent twenty-four-hour guard,” Bishop says.

I bark a laugh. I know he’s waiting for me to look at him, but I won’t. I haven’t looked him in the eyes since last night when he rebuffed me in the sand dunes. And that’s saying something, considering the long drive home.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jezebel says.

“Why?” Bishop spins around to face her.

Jezebel heaves a sigh and glances up from her nails. “Because that’s a lot of manpower, there’s a war going on, and the rest of the Family would never go for it, to name just a few of the reasons it’s a terrible idea.”

“I’ll do it myself, then,” Bishop says.

My stomach knots up, and I toss the
Los
Angeles
Times
aside in a flurry of paper. I want to yell at him to quit this I’m-so-concerned act, point out that he didn’t seem too worried about me when he ripped my still-beating heart from my chest. But Jezebel’s here, and plus, that would mean admitting I’d felt something for him when I should have been feeling nothing but the loss of my mom.

Jezebel’s face remains as impassive—and flawless and beautiful—as ever. “And what about when you sleep? You need to sleep sometime. There are big holes in your plan, my friend.” She returns to her impromptu nail-care session.

“I won’t sleep, then. I just won’t sleep,” Bishop says.

Jezebel’s jaw hardens almost imperceptibly. “Oh yeah?” She marches over to where Bishop sits, perfect red hair falling in front of her face, and narrows her cat-green eyes at him. “And do you think the Family will approve of this little plan of yours? You’re already in enough trouble as it is, having lost the Bible, without them discovering you’re in a relationship with a student. A student you’ve been assigned to—”

“Jezebel …” Bishop rises an inch from his stool.

Jezebel ignores Bishop’s warning and finishes her statement, eyes flicking to mine as she does. “As punishment.”

All the air is knocked out of my chest, and my heart squeezes so hard it’s as if someone were using it as a stress ball.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Jezebel cocks her head to the side and sticks out her bottom lip. “You didn’t know that, did you?”

I don’t want to cry. Crying would make everything so much worse. But nothing goes my way.

“Aw, look!” Jezebel says.

Bishop’s expression is a blend of horror and remorse, his fingers knotted up into his tangle of hair.

Jezebel faces me again. “Our friend Bishop here was assigned to train you after his little screwup with the Bible. Training newbies like you is so undesirable it’s used as punishment where we come from. Yep, that’s why he came back. Not because he cared about you
sooo
much he just couldn’t stand to be away. He had to, or he’d have been tried for insubordination.”

“That was why at first,” Bishop says quickly. “Not now.”

Jezebel tosses her head back and laughs.

I cover my ears.
I
should
run
away, just leave.
But that wouldn’t solve any of my problems. I need to ignore Jezebel’s tormenting, pretend Bishop’s not here, forget about whatever I thought we had. I shake my head hard, as if to physically remove him from my People I Care About list. “I don’t want a bodyguard.”

Bishop sighs. “Indie—”

“It’s Indigo,” I snap.

He winces as if I’ve slapped him. “Just listen to me—”

“No,” I interrupt. “I think I’m tired of listening to both of you, and of the two of you talking about me like I’m not right here. It’s my turn to speak.” I slide off the counter. “I don’t want a bodyguard. I’m not going to live my life like this, waiting for another attack to happen. If we’re going to get the Bible back, kill Leo, and wipe out the Priory for good, we’re going to have to get creative.” I pause, waiting for the laughter to start.

“Go ahead.” Jezebel crosses her arms. “Elaborate, O Wise and Experienced One. What do you propose?”

I jut my chin up. “We use me as bait.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Jezebel says, nodding emphatically.

Bishop stands up so quickly he knocks his stool over. “What are you talking about, Indie?”

“I’m talking about using what the Priory thinks they know about us against them. They think that witches and the Family regard secrecy very highly—”

“Which is true,” Jezebel interrupts, pointing a long nail at me.

“Yes, I know. So what I’m talking about is luring the Priory out into a public place, where they think no witch or warlock would ever attack, and then hitting them with force. They’d never see it coming, so long as you two stay far back until the right moment.”

“No. Absolutely not. Never happening.” Bishop crosses his arms and shakes his head, as if I’ve just proposed the most inane idea possible. Meanwhile, Jezebel chews the inside of her cheek like she’s actually considering my plan.

“It could work,” she says.

“No, we’re not doing it!” Bishop slams his palm down on the island, rattling a potted plant. “You’re talking about putting yourself in deliberate danger. You could be killed.”

“I’m talking about saving the Bible,” I say, not looking at him. “Saving the lives of every witch and warlock on the planet.”

“Yes, do try and think of others for once,” Jezebel says, glancing over at Bishop. “You know, Indigo, we don’t need him on board with this plan. We can do it without him. I’ve got influence with the Family, more influence than Bishop and his stupid uncle—”

“Don’t listen to her,” Bishop says. “Of course she’d love for you to die. Less competition for me.”

“Now, that is just unkind,” Jezebel says, but she’s smiling.

Bishop pushes around Jezebel and grabs me by the forearms. I bristle at his touch.

“Look at me.” His voice is pleading, and my heart nearly rips from my chest because I want to so badly. But I don’t. I focus on the backsplash, counting the individual tiles so that I can breathe, so that I don’t think about his wood-and-mint taste and how it felt when I kissed him. “Indie, I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to embarrass you and I—”

“Just don’t!” I yell, a rapid pulse beating in my forehead. The last thing I want right now is to relive the memory in front of an audience.

“Oooh,
this
sounds interesting.” Jezebel’s boot heels echo as she paces behind us. “Just
what
happened, Bishop?”

Bishop ignores her. “You’re trying to punish me, and it’s stupid. You’ll just kill yourself.”

“No.” I shake free of his grip. “That is
not
what I’m doing. This is the best plan we have and you know it. Guarding me twenty-four-seven on zero sleep and waiting for an attack that could happen anytime, anywhere, with any number of sorcerers is just plain stupid.”

“The girl is right, Bish.”

Ugh.

“We do it at homecoming,” I say. “Hundreds of people attend, so the Priory wouldn’t suspect the Family would attack, and they wouldn’t wonder why I’m there, because”—I shrug—“well, because it’s homecoming. And it’s almost a week away, so that leaves just enough time to talk to the Family and get their support, plus do a bit more training.”

“Oh, fun!” Jezebel says, possibly the nearest thing to a genuine smile she’s capable of brightening her face. “Kill them in style.”

Bishop blows out a slow breath. “Okay, so let’s pretend I’m taking this plan seriously. Don’t you think it’ll look suspicious when you go to homecoming alone? You don’t think they’ll know something’s up?”

I finally look at him so he can see my big, innocent doe eyes. “Oh, I’m not going alone.”

He gives me a suspicious glare.

“I’ll be going with Devon. You remember Devon, right?”

He laughs, but behind the indifference is an unmistakable flash of jealousy. “The same Devon that screwed your best friend? You can’t be serious.”

“Make fun of me all you like, Bishop. I’m going, and we’re doing this plan, whether you like it or not.”

“Amen!” Jezebel holds a hand up and, even though I hate her nearly as much as I hate Bishop, I high-five it over Bishop’s shoulder as I give him a hard stare. Lumpkins sits up and barks, and I’m inclined to believe he likes the plan too.