Under a Spell uda-5 Page 20

  I shoved aside the heap of laundry on my chair and dug around for the talisman. “It wasn’t like I was trying to cut you out of anything, Will. It just happened that way. I would have called you.”

  I brushed past him and he reached out, his hand closing around my elbow. He pulled me to face him. His lips were pressed in a thin straight line. “When would you have called me? When you were in grave danger?”

  I took a step back, trying to shake his grip, but he held on for a silent beat, then finally let go. “I know I’m not Alex, but I’m your partner, Sophie. I’m here to help you.”

  There was something about the earnest look in his eyes that stung my heart. There was Alex, his eyes cold and hard, pushing me away, and here was Will, begging to be a part of my life. And there was me, straddling the chasm between them both.

  “I really am sorry, Will.”

  I walked out of my room leaving Will behind me, a lump growing in my throat. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was apologizing for, but I knew it had nothing to do with not calling him tonight.

  I cleared my throat and approached Lorraine and Kale. “I really appreciate you giving me the bag and . . .” I reached into my shirt to show off the talisman, than was immediately sorry I did so. “This thing. Like I said, other than the shower, I haven’t taken it off.” I said the last part while holding my breath. “But I’m not really sure it’s exactly helping—”

  Kale took the bag from me and upturned it on the dining table. Another series of rocks poured out, along with the rolled scrolls and herbs.

  “I think what Sophie means to say is that we’ve got a girl missing, a hole full of bones, a hell of a lot of hoodoo voodoo going on in the schoolhouse, and no idea why you’ve given us a stinky bag full of rocks and wallpaper samples.”

  I was startled that he was defending—or explaining—on my behalf as Lorraine and Kale paused and looked at him. He had his hands on hips, eyebrows raised, obviously expecting an answer.

  I was expecting them to turn him into some kind of amphibian.

  Lorraine ignored him. “Star maps and calendars, Soph. Remember when I taught you about those?” Lorraine was bent over the table while Kale was clearing it. She piled my stained place mats and the coupons I would get around to using someday on the floor while Lorraine threw out the star maps and secured them with a polished rock at each corner.

  “I need a picture of the girl,” she asked without looking up at me.

  Will shrugged and handed me Sampson’s file. I took a guess and laid Alyssa’s grinning mug in her hand.

  “No,” Kale said, taking the photo from Lorraine. “We need the picture of the one who was sacrificed. The one with the carvings.”

  My throat went dry, but I sifted through the stack, pulling out the photo. I wouldn’t let myself believe the ruined flesh could be Cathy’s; that what had happened to this lifeless thing had anything to do with the smiling girl I had seen in her mother’s photograph.

  “You guys should get back,” Kale directed us as she lit the two candles and positioned the photograph on the star map.

  “With pleasure,” Will said, moving onto the couch.

  “I’ll leave you to this,” Nina said, opening her door three inches and shimmying through.

  Lorraine stood in front of the table, which had quickly become a kind of altar. Candles flickered and the stars on the maps seemed to glitter as Lorraine’s palms went over them. Soon the chicken feathers were unbound, their edges burnt. They were scattered and dotted with oil from a tiny jug Lorraine produced from her pocket, and everything was tossed as Lorraine began to mumble. Kale joined her from the other side of the table and both of their voices dropped to the same octave and soon became the same throaty whisper. It got deeper, heavier, and I wasn’t sure if I was hearing it or feeling it as the words reverberated through my chest. My heart started to match the pulse of their speech. My breath rose and fell with theirs. My eyes may have been closed, but I couldn’t tell. Everything I saw was in a deep, red haze and the smell of blood—metallic, thick—was suddenly overwhelming. It was in my nose, I felt it pressing against my eyes, on my lips. I felt the heat dribble in, a tiny drop at a time, until the blood was pouring over my bottom teeth, filling up my mouth. My whole body started to shake and then it was like I was breaking apart—inch by inch.

  I heard someone cough and sputter, then felt heat on my cheeks. I opened my eyes and the candle flames seemed to have amassed into one giant orange roar. Lorraine and Kale’s voices rose to a crescendo and the flame seemed to follow. Will’s face was drawn, the dancing firelight flickering in his eyes. I was mesmerized until I heard the crack—so loud, so unholy that the entire building seemed to tremble under the vibrations and all of my friends—Will, Lorraine, and Kale—were lifted off their feet and thrown backward. In an instant, the fire went out, the apartment was blanketed by a bone-chilling cold, and the only sound was the heartbreaking crush of body against wall. Will shot backward, his head smacking the edge of a framed photograph with a sickening crunch. Glass showered over him as he slumped down the wall and huddled on the ground. Lorraine was launched sideways toward the kitchen, her spine crushing against the countertop and bending so far backward that her skull scraped against the tile while her legs folded uselessly underneath her. And Kale tried to brace herself by digging her nails into the table, but whatever was pushing was too strong. There were bloody grooves where she’d dug her nails in, and now she lay like a crumpled rag doll against the baseboards.

  I heard myself scream. I felt myself yanking handfuls of hair as my legs turned to useless rubber. My mind warbled as I tried to think of who to go to first—Will, bloodied and unmoving; Lorraine, silent, eyes frozen wide with terror; or Kale slumped and whimpering.

  But I wasn’t moving. And I hadn’t moved. The explosion had done nothing to me. I wasn’t singed by the mammoth flame or pierced by the shower of broken glass. I was spared.

  “Oh my God!” Nina shouted as she flung her bedroom door open. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  Vlad raced out beside her and cleared the overturned table in a single leap. He silently landed a hairsbreadth from Kale and fell to her, gingerly brushing her hair aside, his voice low and soothing as he worked to cradle her. I saw her blink, the confusion in her eyes, the tiny splatters of broken blood vessels spider-webbing.

  Nina had her palms pressed against Lorraine’s ruined back and she was looking at me, her mouth moving, color pulsing in her cheeks. She was saying something, she was screaming, but it was all a muffled blur.

  Will. “Will!” I could finally make my lips work. I could finally make my legs work, pushing them, taking steps that seemed achingly slow. I tried to close the distance between us, I tried to reach his silent, crumpled form, but I couldn’t move fast enough. The air in the room seemed to push against me until finally, I was there, dropping to my knees, feeling his warm flesh underneath my palms. I pushed his arms aside and pressed my ear against his chest, praying silently to hear a beat.

  There was silence. Dead silence. And then, a beat, and a second one, and I was crying. I raked my hands through his hair and murmured his name, relishing the steady sound of his heart until his eyelids fluttered and opened.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” I wailed, the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “She’s okay,” Vlad said, and even without looking I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Sore,” Kale croaked.

  I straightened, my hands still cradling Will’s head. “Lorraine? Lorraine?”

  Nina’s coal-black eyes were heavy with emotion. She said nothing. There was no rhythmic rise and fall of Lorraine’s chest. No triumphant gulp of air or even a pitiful moan. There was just . . . nothing.

  I remember the beeping because it was the only thing I could hear outside of the blood pulsing in my ears. People talked to me and jostled me, and I signed something and nodded a lot. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t anymore. My entire body fel
t papery thin and sucked completely dry.

  We were in the hospital and Nina had both of my hands in hers. There were flashes of light and my head was cold and Will was looking down at me. I sprang to my feet and threw my arms around his neck and crushed myself to him, finally feeling his warmth as it seeped through me, made every fiber of my being hot and awake and alive again.

  “Will, Will, Will,” I was mumbling into the crook of his neck, feeling the edges of his hair on my cheeks, inhaling his sweet, cut-grass-and-soap smell. And then the picture skewed and fish eyed. I could hear nothing but a deafening sizzling and hideous crackling, and the overhead lights were popping and smoking. . . .

  I heard someone cough and sputter; then I felt the carpet against my knees, the heat of it as it brushed against my palms.

  “Move her!” someone yelled.

  I wanted to cry out as someone pinched my skin, as they tried to extract me from the ground I had melded to. I felt my head bobbing backward and was vaguely aware of movement, no blood now, then something cool washing over me and finally, softness.

  I woke up sputtering in the darkness.

  “Where am I? What the hell—where am I?”

  I heard ChaCha’s surprised little yelp and felt her paws pitter across my bare skin. I shivered, then was finally able to push against what held me down and sit up. There was a click, and a tiny slice of yellow light. I squinted.

  “Will?”

  “She awakes!”

  I heard a shuffle in the darkness and then the bed depressed. Will was next to me, sitting on my bed, his thumb brushing over my wrist as he counted. I tried to struggle free, but he was strong—and it was nice.

  “Am I in my bed?”

  “You are, and you’re alive.” He let go of my wrist. “Properly so.”

  I leaned back against my pillows and rubbed my palm over my head. “What happened?”

  “I was hoping you would tell me. What do you remember?”

  “Stars. Darkness. Did Lorraine come over?”

  Will nodded.

  “And Kale, she was here, too, right?”

  “Yes, Kale, too.”

  I ran my tongue over my lips—they were dry and cracked. “So Lorraine and Kale—they’re okay.” I smiled, giggled. “They’re okay.”

  The soft smile that played at the edges of Will’s lips was gone. “They will be.”

  “What?”

  “You passed out at the hospital, Sophie. As far as places to pass out, that was a capital choice, but we were there—do you remember any of this?”

  My heart did a little half-beat as I reached out and gingerly threaded my fingers through Will’s hair, stopping just short of the bandage. “The spell.”

  Images of Kale vaulting across the apartment and the shower of glass breaking over Will filled my vision, and I pinched my eyes shut, pressing my palms against them. “Kale—Kale. Is she—?”

  “She’s fine,” Will said calmly, pulling my hands from my eyes. “I can’t say the same for your little otter mate though.”

  I tried to sit up, but Will lulled me back down. “I have an otter?”

  “Little plaster guy in the bookcase out there?” He jutted his chin toward the living room. “Kale used it as a thank-you gift on Vlad’s forehead.”

  I frowned. “Oscar Otter?”

  “I’ll pick you up some epoxy later.”

  I snuggled back into my pillow and then sat bolt upright. “Lorraine!”

  She was suddenly all around me, her body crumpled in an impossible S shape. Her eyes closed so gently, her lips slightly parted. The rivulet of blood at the edge of her lip burned into my vision and I gasped, breaking into a heartbroken sob. “Lorraine. Is she—is she—”

  I couldn’t push the word dead past my lips. I couldn’t attach the two—Lorraine and death—but I couldn’t get the image of her pale face so peaceful, so calm—so marred by that velvety drip of blood out of my mind.

  “She’s going to be fine. She has a broken back, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of internal damage.” Will chuckled. “It was an interesting one to try and explain away, though.”

  I let the tears drip silently. They slid down my cheeks and into my ears, and I couldn’t stop them. “She’ll never forgive me,” I whispered. “And Kale, Kale will never forgive me.”

  Will pressed a thumb across my cheek and picked up a tear. “Neither of them will blame you. They knew—probably better than any of the rest of us—what they were getting into. Lorraine said herself that we were dealing with someone very powerful.”

  I sniffed. “And we still don’t even know who it is. Do we?”

  Will shook his head and brushed another tear from my cheek. “No, love, I’m afraid we don’t. The whole being blown across the room then having our star investigator pass out on us kind of flattened the investigation.”

  I sat up. “Okay. Okay.” I shoved down my blankets and went to swing my legs over the side of the bed before being hit with a solid wall of Will’s well-muscled arms.

  “What are you doing?”

  Will gently took my bare legs, pinned them together, and swung them back under the covers. “I’m taking care of my charge.” He tucked the sheet tightly—cozily, if I had to admit it—around my legs, up around my hips, and then paused at my waist.

  “Will!” I squealed. “We have a case!”

  “And you had a blackout. Lorraine is with Kale; she’s is resting, and Nina and I are working out there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the living room. “Vlad is off licking his wounds somewhere and you are in here, getting some sleep.”

  “I passed out, Will. It’s not a big deal. I’ve been tired and I—”

  Will pressed a single hand against my shoulder and looked at me, his eyes like liquid amber, swirling, churning, and pulling me in. “You didn’t just pass out, love. We couldn’t revive you. The doctors couldn’t revive you for seven minutes. They couldn’t even tell us what happened.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “It was terrifying.”

  I blinked, feeling the weight of his eyes.

  “I am not kidding around with you, Sophie Lawson.” His fingers went around tucking my blankets tighter. “You’re staying in this bed.” There was a flicker at the edge of his mouth as he hid a smile. “Get out, and I’ll be dragging you into mine—if only to keep an eye on you.”

  “Will!” I started to sit up again, but there was something in his eyes that let me know that he really wasn’t joking. I closed my mouth silently and let him gather me to him as he carefully laid me down and pulled the blankets up to my chin. Will had always been the goofy, cheeky one so his tenderness was a surprise—and I was surprised how much I was enjoying his arms around me.

  “Come on, now,” he whispered. He curled himself behind me and I could smell his cologne—the cut-grass scent faint, but clean smelling—on his chest as he pressed against me. He made me feel small and, if only for a few moments, safe.

  I wasn’t sure exactly when I drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I could still hear his breath when I woke up. It was fast and hot, and had just the slightest scent of . . . Alpo.

  “ChaCha?”

  She jumped up happily on her Popsicle-stick legs and pranced over my shoulder, nuzzling the spot between my neck and chest and giving me an enormous, salutary lick from chin to eyebrows.

  “Thank you, baby,” I grumbled, scratching my pooch behind the ears. “Did I imagine you were a big, strong man last night? Did I dream that you were Uncle Will?”

  “Uncle Will, huh?”

  He was in my doorway in a towel slung so low around his waist it should have been a sin, with a bare chest and a decadent smile. I was face forward on the carpet, feeling the draft from my nightshirt shoved up around my waist when I fell out of bed. I scrambled over, yanking my Giants nightshirt down toward my ankles.

  “Why did you shower here? You live right across the hall.”

  Will tousled his da
mp hair. “But my shampoo doesn’t smell like mangoes.”

  I rolled my eyes as he gestured to my hands holding fistfuls of black and orange fabric. “You know I’ve seen all that before, right?”

  I blushed right up to my eyebrows.

  “You may have, but that was a long time ago.”

  Will grinned, and the heat kept up. He tapped an index finger against the side of his head. “Good thing I’ve got a hell of a memory, huh?”

  I yanked my comforter from my bed and rolled myself up in it, standing. “Shouldn’t we get to work? We still have a case to solve, don’t we?”

  Will raised his eyebrows. “We were all just sitting around waiting for the queen to grace us with her consciousness.”

  He walked in and I walked out, even though everything from my nipples downward screamed at me to stay in my room and to suddenly get very interested in collecting errant towels.

  The Indiana Jones–looking spread on the dining table brought back a vague recollection of the night before.

  “Hey,” I said to Vlad, who was stretched out on the couch watching something on mute.

  Vlad blinked up at me, and I could see the enormous dent—and the angry-looking bruise surrounding it—on the side of his head.

  “How did that happen? And how is it still like that?”

  Vlad’s upper lip curled and he sunk into the couch a small bit farther. “Kale hit me with an otter.”

  “Ooh,” I muttered. “Oscar. But how’s it still all—” I did my best intimation of an obnoxious, blood spurting bruise.

  Vlad touched two fingers to the wound and winced. “I had just eaten—a lot.” He patted his belly. “I’m still pretty full. Once the blood wears down it’ll go away. Damn that woman. I can’t go out looking like this.”

  “Why? All the other vamps on the playground going to make fun of you?”

  I thought I heard a low growl from the direction of the couch.

  “I don’t remember everything,” I said, curling myself into my robe. “But I do remember the way you went to her after the crash.”

  He avoided my gaze, grabbing the remote instead and turning the volume up high.