Spellbound (16 page)

 

When I woke up on Monday, I felt awful. I had dim memories of Hunter driving me home in Das Boot, with Sky following in her car. He had whispered some quick words in my ear on my front porch, and I was able to walk and talk and look halfway normal for my parents before I stumbled upstairs into bed with all my clothes on. How did I get out of the robe and back into my clothes? Ugh. I’d think about that later.

“Morgan?” Mary K. poked her head around the bathroom door. “You okay? It’s almost ten o’clock.”

“Mpf,” I mumbled. Dagda, my gray kitten, padded in after her and leaped up onto my bedspread. He had grown so much in just a few weeks. Purring, he stomped his way up the comforter toward me, and I reached out to kiss his little triangular head and rub his ears. He collapsed, exhausted, and closed his eyes. I knew how he felt.

In fact, I knew how Mary K. felt as well. I opened my eyes again to see my sister regarding herself in the mirror. I could sense her feelings with more accuracy and immediacy than just sisterly intuition. Mary K. was sad and kind of lost. I frowned, wondering how I could help her. Then she turned around. “I guess I’ll go over to Jaycee’s. Maybe we can get her sister to take us to the mall. I’ve still got to get some Christmas presents.”

“I’d take you,” I said, “but I don’t think I can get out of bed.”

“Are you coming down with something?” she asked.

Not exactly, but . . . “Probably just a cold.” I sniffled experimentally.

“Well, can I get you anything before I leave?”

I thought about food, and my stomach recoiled. “Do we have any ginger ale?”

“Yeah. You want some?”

“Sure.”

 

I was able to keep the ginger ale down. I didn’t feel sick, exactly, just drained and fuzzy. Other aftereffects of the
brach
were apparent as well. It was similar to what I’d felt after my first circle with Cal and Cirrus, but magnified by a factor of ten. My senses seemed even more heightened than they had that time: I could make out distinct threads in the jeans hanging over my desk chair; I saw tiny motes of dust caught in the new paint on my walls. Later in the morning I heard a bizarre crunching sound coming from downstairs, as if a hundred-pound termite was eating the basement. It turned out to be Dagda working on his kibble. I felt my lungs absorbing oxygen from every breath; felt my blood cells flowing through my veins, suspended in plasma; felt how each square inch of my skin interpreted and analyzed air or fabric or whatever touched it.

I felt magick everywhere, flowing around me, flowing out of me, in the air, in anything organic, in the sleeping trees outside, in Dagda, in anything that I touched.

I assumed this hyperawareness would fade gradually. It had better. It was wonderful, but if I were this sensitive all the time, I’d lose my mind.

A golden brownish maple leaf drifted past my window. It came to rest for an instant on the sill, and I gazed meditatively at it, marveling at the complex network of tiny veins that spread across its surface. I almost thought I could make out a face in the intersecting lines—a wide, firm mouth, straight nose, two golden eyes. . . .

Goddess. Cal.

In the next instant the leaf was caught in a gust of wind and danced away.

I lay there in bed, breathing deeply, trying to regain my lost peace. But it was hard, because although after yesterday I no longer feared Cal the way I had, every thought of Cal led to a thought of Selene and to the sure knowledge that she was still searching for me, still plotting to destroy me. Gradually I became aware of something nagging at the edge of my consciousness. My quest. My search for more knowledge about my birth parents, my heritage. I hadn’t done anything about it yet, but now, with the new clarity I had achieved as a result of the
brach
, I saw how much I needed to. Only then would I be whole; only then would my power be fully accessible to me; only then would it be truly mine. And only then would I have a hope against Selene.

Eventually I struggled to my feet and changed into clean clothes, dismissing a shower as unnecessary. I brushed my hair and my teeth and felt I’d done enough grooming for one day. After I flopped back onto my bed, I sensed Hunter coming up my front walk. I groaned, wanting to see him but knowing I could never make it downstairs to open the door.

“Hunter, just come in,” I whispered, sending him a witch message.

Moments later I heard the front door snick open, then Hunter calling, “Morgan?”

“I’m upstairs,” I managed to call. “You can come up.” I wondered if I now had a spell in the recesses of my brain that would keep my mom from unexpectedly coming home from work.

His footsteps were light on the stairs, and then he was peering around my door. “Is it okay for me to be here?” he asked.

I smiled, pleased that he’d asked. “No one’s here but me,” I said.

“Right,” said Hunter, coming in. “If we feel someone coming home, I’ll jump out the window.” He stood, tall and lean and newly familiar, and looked down at me. His hair was messy from his hat, and it stood up in pale gold spikes.

“Okay,” I said. Cautiously I put out my senses and felt his awareness that I’d done so.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Crappy. Weak. But really, really magicky.” I couldn’t help grinning.

He groaned theatrically. “Now I’m frightened. Please, please,” he said. “I’m begging you. Please do not do anything with your new magick just yet. Do not cast spells. Do not run around town throwing witch fire at anyone. Promise me.”

“It’s like you don’t trust my judgment or something,” I said. He came to sit on the end of my bed and put one hand on my comforter-covered leg. I started to feel better.

“Oh,” he said, rolling his eyes. “So you actually think you use judgment sometimes?”

I kicked him, and then we were grinning at each other, and I felt much better.

“That was an amazing
brach
last night,” he said. “Very intense.”

“It was,” I agreed. “How’s Alyce? Have you talked to her?”

He nodded. “Sky is with her, and another witch from Starlocket, too. She feels about like you do. She’s excited, though. She got a lot from you.”

“I got a lot from her,” I said slowly. “I haven’t begun to process it.”

“It will take you a long time,” Hunter predicted. Absently he rubbed my leg, below the knee, and I looked at his eyes, wondering how to say what I needed to.

“I’m so sorry about yesterday,” I said, and his eyes darkened. I swallowed. “It was just—I couldn’t go through that again. The last time—on the cliff—when I thought you were dead, that I had killed you. I just—couldn’t go through that. I couldn’t have you two fighting—trying to kill each other. Never again.”

His face was still, watchful.

“I’m so sorry I put the binding spell on you,” I said. “I know how horrible that feels. I’ve never forgiven Cal for doing it to me. Now I’ve done it to you. But I just didn’t know how else to get out of there and to take you with me. I’m so sorry,” I ended miserably.

“Cal needs to come in,” Hunter said quietly. “He needs to answer to the council. And because of who I am and where I am, it will be me who has to bring him in.”

I nodded, trying to accept that.

Hunter stroked my knee, and I felt a trembly sensation start at his fingertips and move up to the pit of my stomach. He was quiet for a long while, and I reached out and held his hand.

“Yule is tomorrow,” he said finally.

“That’s right. I lost track of the days. I hope I’ll be up to celebrating by then.”

“I think you will,” he said with a smile.

“There’s something else I need to do tomorrow,” I said. “If I can move.”

“What’s that?”

“I need to go to Meshomah Falls.” That was the town where my birth parents had briefly lived—and where they had died. “I want to find the place where the barn burned down.”

“Why?” he asked.

“To learn,” I said. “There’s so much I don’t know. Who set the fire? Why? I need to find out. I feel like I won’t be whole until I do. That’s what I learned from the
brach
.”

Hunter looked at me for a long moment. “It’s dangerous, you know,” he said. “With Cal roaming about and Selene on her way.”

I didn’t say anything.

Then he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at ten, shall I?”

God, I loved him.

 

Hunter drove, because I was still a little shaky on Tuesday. He didn’t bring up the subject of Cal, except to tell me that he still hadn’t been able to locate him. “I wonder if he’s got someone helping him,” Hunter said, rubbing his chin, and I thought of Selene and felt a flash of dread. Was she here now? No. She couldn’t be. I wasn’t ready.

Then Hunter took my hand without speaking, and I felt his strength flowing into me, calming me. I am with you, he was saying without words. And I felt suddenly better, lighter.

I’d been to Meshomah Falls once before, and it felt familiar to me now. I directed Hunter to the outskirts of town. There was an old field there, tan and dry from the winter cold. I got out of the car and walked to the middle of it. I still felt weak, drained, as if I were getting over the flu.

Maeve’s coven tools were in the trunk of the car, but I left them there. I didn’t need them yet. Hunter came to stand next to me.

“Okay. Let’s find the old barn site,” he said.

I stood still, my arms slightly out by my sides, and shut down all thoughts, all feelings, all expectations. Soon I no longer felt the winter sun on my face or the wind in my hair. But I could see where the barn had been, see what it had looked like and what the site looked like now. I followed it in my mind, tracing how to get there from here. When it was clear, I opened my eyes, feeling vaguely nauseated.

“Okay, I got it,” I said, and swallowed. I headed back to the car and the Diet Coke that was waiting there.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Hunter asked as I swigged soda and held the cold can against my forehead.

“I have to do it,” I said. “I just . . . I have to.”

He nodded and started the car. “Yes, I think you’re right. Tonight at the Yule circle we’ll send you some restoring energy.”

“Take the next left,” I said, already feeling better.

We found it almost fifteen minutes later, after getting lost a couple of times. Like Widow’s Vale, this area was hilly and rocky, the narrow roads lined with skeletal trees and bushes. In the springtime it would be beautiful and in the summer unbelievably lush and green. I hoped Maeve had found a small measure of happiness here, at least for a short while.

“There it is,” I said, pointing suddenly. I recognized a twisted spruce as one that I’d seen in my mind’s eye. “In there.”

Hunter pulled the car to the side of the road and peered skeptically past the tree line. We got out, and I quickly jumped the old-fashioned slat fence. Hunter followed. I strode forward through the dead clumps of frozen grass, sending out my senses and looking alertly at everything. There was almost nothing alive around here, no birds, no animals hibernating in nests or trees, no deer or rabbits watching quietly nearby.

“Hmmm,” said Hunter, slowing down and scanning the area. “What do you feel?”

I swallowed. “I feel like we’re close to something really bad.”

I slowed my pace and started looking more closely at the ground. Suddenly I halted, as if an invisible hand had pressed my chest and stopped me cold. I looked closer, focusing sharply on the ground between the clumps of grass. I didn’t even know what to look for, but then I saw it: the rippled, broken backbone of a large brick foundation. The barn had once stood here.

I stepped back, as if it were poison ivy. Hunter came up next to me, looking uncomfortable and edgy.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I get my tools,” I said.

I made Hunter turn around while I wiggled out of my clothes and put on Maeve’s robe. No one but my mother, my sister, and my gynecologist had seen me naked, and I was going to keep it that way. At least for the immediately foreseeable future.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I said, and Hunter turned to look at me.

“How do you want to do this?” he said. “I don’t have my robe or tools with me.”

“I’m thinking meditation,” I answered. “Together, the two of us, with my tools.”

Hunter thought about it and nodded. By picking our way through the years of overgrowth, we found two walls of the former foundation. Gauging our position from the angle of the crumbling bricks, we sat in what had been the center of the barn. I held Maeve’s athame in my left hand, her wand in my right. Between Hunter and me I placed several crystals and two bloodstones. We drew a circle of power around us with a stick and then closed our eyes. I took a deep breath, tried to release tension, and lost myself in nothingness.