Darkness & Discovery (The Bespelled Trilogy #2)

Copyright 2012 by A.L.Larsen. All rights reserved. No
reproduction, copy or transmission in whole or in part of this publication is
permitted without express written consent from the author.

Dedicated
with love and gratitude to

Lori
Warner

Thank
you for your kind words and encouragement!

Chapter
One

It’s kind of an odd thing, getting ready for a first
date with someone you’re already involved with. But that’s exactly what I was doing
the day after Christmas. And I was nervous.

Alastair and I had
already been through so much together. We’d survived kidnapping, imprisonment
and attempted murder. And yet
dating
somehow seemed scary. Go figure.

Obviously, life had
been…
unusual
since I met Alastair. My entire concept of the world and
everything in it had been radically altered since the day I found him in my
living room.

Finding out the guy you
were falling for wasn’t human can do that to you.

Alastair had been part
human, part angel before being turned into a vampire, and now he was one of a
kind. A hybrid, basically. That uniqueness put a big target on his back, as did
the fact that he was a vampire hunter.

Those revelations had
been as shocking to Alastair as they’d been to me. Thanks to his manipulative
maker, all of Alastair’s memories had been blocked by a spell in order to
create a clean slate between the two of them. So he knew nothing about himself
when we met, and had only learned a little since then.

Pretty soon we were
going to track down the warlock that had cast the spell, and we were going to
get Alastair’s memories back. But we’d needed a chance to heal and regroup
first. We were currently at the end of several days of much needed down time, culminating
in this date, as promised in a note Alastair had given me on Christmas.

My mind had been
wandering, and realizing this I quickly pulled the curling iron I was holding out
of my long brown hair. It had been in place too long, and now not only did I
smell slightly singed, I also had one ridiculous banana curl immediately to the
right of my face. I quickly tried to brush it out, but it just sprang back into
shape. Awesome. I clipped it back with a barrette, and decided that was the
best I could do.

I got up from my dressing
table and took a look at myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my
bedroom door. I was wearing a dark red sweater and my only skirt, which was brown
wool and hit right above my knees, along with brown wool tights and boots. Ok,
this outfit, like the rest of my wardrobe, didn’t exactly scream
date night
.
In fact, it looked like I was ready to get dragged off to mass with Teddy’s
family.

The thought of my ex-boyfriend
Ted induced an instant frown line between my eyebrows. He’d gotten caught up in
the danger that had come after Alastair, and had been taken hostage and almost
died – only, he didn’t actually remember any of that. I’d asked my friend Joey,
who was a vampire, to compel Ted and alter his memories. And even though I’d
meant well, part of me still felt really guilty for doing that to him.

I fastened a silver charm
bracelet around my wrist, a graduation gift from my Aunt Claire. And then I
adjusted the beautiful opal pendant that Alastair had given me yesterday for
Christmas, sliding the clasp to the back of my neck before holding my hand over
the pendant for a moment. It was a flat stone about an inch in diameter,
perfectly round and utterly luminous, in a silver setting that looked like
delicate tree branches criss-crossing around a full moon. Alastair didn’t know
its origin – he’d found it among his possessions and wanted me to have it. It
made me smile every time I caught a glimpse of it, because it made me think of him.

After one last look in
the mirror, I took a deep breath. This nervousness was surprising. I’d gotten
comfortable with Alastair in a very short time. We’d even been living under the
same roof since returning to Oregon. So, ok, the whole dating thing was new
territory, but I was still surprised at the butterflies in my stomach. One more
deep breath, and then I grabbed my coat and purse and left the bedroom.

Alastair wasn’t in his
room at the far end of the hall, so I headed down the staircase, where I found
him pacing anxiously in the living room. He paused when he saw me, and I tried
really hard not to trip and fall down the remaining stairs. He was dressed in a
dark blue button-down shirt that brought out his indigo eyes, along with dark
jeans. And he’d tried to tame his thick dark hair, but styling products really
didn’t stand a chance against that much unruliness.

He was so incredibly
beautiful that I couldn’t help but stare. And then I realized he was looking at
me exactly the same way I was looking at him. It was baffling that I could have
the same effect on him that he had on me.

Alastair was the first
to regain the power of speech, and quickly grabbed a bouquet of flowers from an
end table, bringing them to the foot of the stairs. “These are for you. You
look absolutely beautiful, Lu,” he said softly. His British accent was a bit
more pronounced when he was nervous.

I took the bouquet of
bright red tulips from him as I stepped down into the living room, and felt a blush
rising in my cheeks. “Thanks. You look great, too. And thank you for these. I
don’t think I’ve ever seen tulips in December.”

“Oh – is that strange? Maybe
I should have gotten something else, a poinsettia or something. There were lots
of those at the market.” He looked flustered.

“These are way better
than a poinsettia. I’m going to go put them in water,” I said, heading to the
kitchen.

Joey stuck his head out
of his room as I filled up a vase at the sink. He grinned broadly when he saw me
and said, “Well, dang. Almost didn’t recognize you without the yoga pants.”

I rolled my eyes and put
the flowers in the vase, then carried them back into the living room, where I set
them carefully in the center of the coffee table. Joey trailed behind me and
murmured, “And Alastair’s right, you look beautiful.” Of course with his
vampire hearing, he’d heard everything we’d said to each other.

“Thanks.” I looked
closely at my best friend. He stuck a bright smile on his face when he noticed me
studying him, but I’d seen the momentary look of sadness that clouded his pale
green eyes. “Do you want to come along, Joey?”

“If I come along, then
it stops being a date. And a date is what Alastair promised you. Besides, there’s
a Bruce Lee marathon on tonight, so I’m set. Have I told you that satellite TV
rocks?”

“Yeah, you might have
mentioned it,” I said with a grin. “About a million times in the last week.” I
watched him for another moment. He still had a cheerful expression on his face,
but I knew he felt left out. “You’re sure you don’t want to come with us?”

“Positive.”

“Ok.” I squeezed his
arm and said, “In that case, we’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Take your time. Me and
Bruce Lee, we got a lot of catching up to do.”

I turned to Alastair.
“You ready to go?”

He’d put on a black
leather jacket and was fidgeting nervously. But he nodded and said,
“Absolutely.”

My little fabric purse,
which I grabbed from the couch, felt heavier than it should. I glanced inside
and muttered, “You again.”

“Are you talking to
your purse?” Joey asked with a smile.

“No, it’s even crazier
than that. I’m talking to a knife.” I pulled an ornate silver dagger out of the
bag. Its handle looked like two intertwined snakes, their tails wrapped around
a royal blue stone. It had been given to me recently by Bryn, a friend and
warlock, and apparently it was bespelled.

“You’re right, that
is
crazy,” Joey said cheerfully, as I set the knife on the fireplace mantel.

“It keeps following me
around. Every time I open a drawer, there it is.”

“Well, since it saved
our bacon when we were rescuing Alastair, I’m gonna guess it’s not a bad thing that
it follows you around,” Joey said. “It probably bonded with you.”

“Which is
super
weird,
since it’s an inanimate object,” I pointed out.

“Object: yes.
Inanimate: apparently not so much.”

“Can you imagine how
much trouble I’d be in,” I said, “if it suddenly appeared in my bag when I was
trying to go through airport security, or something like that?”

Joey said, “I think
it’s kinda cool that it likes you. I wish I had a weapon like that.”

“Well, you and Knifey
hang out and watch Bruce Lee together. Then maybe it’ll bond with you instead,”
I said, slinging the thin strap of my purse over my shoulder. Before I even
made it to the front door, my purse thumped against my hip and got
significantly heavier. I sighed and kept going.

Christmas was still in full swing in downtown
Ashland, Oregon, lights festooning everything. I’d found it annoying a few
weeks ago, when I’d been trying to ignore the holiday season. But my life had
been at rock bottom then, and now that it was on the upswing I could actually
appreciate how festive my town was this time of year.

Alastair took my hand
hesitantly as we window-shopped on the plaza, and I glanced up at him. “Is this
ok?” he asked.

I squeezed his hand
reassuringly. “It’s way better than ok.”

“I don’t have a clue
what I’m doing, you know,” he told me. “I doubt I ever dated much. So please
tell me if I do anything wrong, stupid, or embarrassing. Especially tell me if
I do all three at once.”

“You can’t really mess
this up, Allie,” I said gently. “You and I already care about each other. I
know the dating thing feels unfamiliar, and I’m nervous, too. But really, we
should both just relax.”

“I think I know what
would help me relax,” he said with a little grin.

“What’s that?”

He stopped walking and
tugged my hand gently, pulling me into his arms. And then he brushed his lips
to mine.

My heart felt like it
was going to beat its way out of my chest, that’s how affected I was by his
kiss. Everything about Alastair made me want to hyperventilate. I wondered if
I’d ever get used to it, to
him
. He was literally one of a kind, a mix
of things I could barely comprehend, brought together into one extraordinary,
gorgeous person.

I tried to laugh off my
butterflies, and said, “That’s the opposite of relaxing.”

He put his arm around
my shoulders and smiled. “Thought it was worth a shot.”

We strolled into Lithia
Park and lingered on the little bridge over the creek, leaning on the railing
and against each other and relaxing bit by bit. “Tell me something, Lu. Something
I don’t already know about you,” he said.

“Like what?”

Alastair turned toward
me and pulled me close, resting his forehead against mine. “Tell me anything at
all. I love hearing the sound of your voice.”

“Um…ok.” I blurted the
first random thing that came to mind. “When I was six, I was convinced I could
turn invisible just by shutting my eyes. I figured if I couldn’t see anyone,
they couldn’t see me either.”

His face lit up with a
big smile. “Sound logic.”

I was smiling too as I
said, “The dumbest part is, I kept testing it out. I ran into a lot of walls
that summer, because I kept walking around with my eyes shut.”

“Why’d you want to be
invisible?”