Magic to the Bone (8 page)

I watched Harper’s red fox shape disappear into the gloom, and despaired. I was so damn glad she was alive, and so damn dreading having to tell her that I couldn’t kill the man responsible for murdering her brother.

All I could hope for was that somehow she would understand.

I had a feeling asking Harper understand we had to let Samir live would be a lot like asking the sun to rise in the west.

Levi peeled off to go collect Junebug. I followed Alek to their camp. It was cold, slow going through the woods, and the sight of the camp was a welcome thing indeed.

Iollan, the druid, must have made the camp. It was a tangle of branches and vines that didn’t look native to the area grown into a domed structure that was covered in snow. The snow proved insulating, for the inside of the dome
was far warmer than the outside. There were sleeping bags on rough pallets made of branches and a small camp stove, along with some electric lanterns. It was rough, but cozy.

The best part of arriving at camp was seeing Rose. Harper’s mother came out of the dome and wrapped her wiry arms around me. I let myself indulge in her hug, wrapping my arms around her and holding on for a long time. It
was nice to feel missed, to feel a little mothered as well.

“It’s good to see you,” Rose said. Her face had more lines in it than I remembered. Her eyes were shadowed with grief and determination. She was alive and vibrant and strong, and I was glad to see that.

Turning back time had been worth it, I knew then, in a deeper way than I had realized. Having Harper alive, sinking down onto a sleeping
bag next to Alek as everyone gathered around, I looked at my friends and felt a strange satisfaction, a warm sense of belonging. If only I’d been able to save Max and Steve.

I shoved that thought away. I was here. Everyone was whole and alive. I looked around.

“Wait, where’s Iollan?” I asked, not seeing the huge druid.

“He was in here, contacting Ciaran and Brie,” Rosie said. “Then he came
out to where I was keeping watch, said he had to check on something, and walked into a tree before I could get a word out.”

“Typical,” Ezee muttered.

I glanced at my friend, wondering if there was trouble in paradise. I knew his relationship with the druid was complicated. As Ezee had told me, they came from different worlds. A cosmopolitanish coyote shifter who loved his fine wines, modern-day
comforts, and being professorial versus the big druid who loved the wilds and looked like he hadn’t seen a tailor or a razor in three hundred years.

“He can handle himself,” I said. I dreaded my next question, but it had to be asked. “How long have I been gone?”

“You don’t know?” Harper asked.

I shook my head.

“Little over three weeks.” Levi was crouched in front of the camp stove’s dubious
warmth, heating a pot of water for what I hoped would be tea.

Three weeks? Shit. That was longer than I thought.

“So what’s been happening?” I asked.

“Where were you?” Harper said at the same time.

There was an awkward silence as we stared at each other.

“You first?” I said lamely. I needed a little more time to figure out what to say and how to say it. There was so much. For them it had
been three weeks. For me, it had been months. I felt so much had changed. I
was
changed.

“Samir captured me after you left,” Harper said with a shrug that looked far too casual. “I escaped, but I figured out his plan first. Oh, and I rescued a unicorn.”

Of course she did. I smiled and shook my head. “What’s his plan? Besides apparently killing us all?”

Harper looked at Alek, who slid his arm
around me.

“We think Samir is going to resurrect Balor, then eat his heart,” Alek said.

“He wants to become a god,” Ezee said.

“Fucktoast on a stick,” I muttered. “Will that work?”

“Yosemite thinks it is possible, yeah,” Harper said. “Samir seemed very convinced, too.”

I wanted to ask her more about her captivity, but I was afraid. It was partially my fault she had ended up like that. I kind
of didn’t want to know what had happened. I had enough guilt clogging my brain. I vowed to ask later, maybe after that bastard was dead as fuck. Or at least destroyed. Thinking about him hurting Harper, I was on the fence again about killing him. If the dagger didn’t work, I wouldn’t have a choice. He had to be destroyed.

Before he turned into a god. Because why would life take it easy on me?
Ha.

“He needs a unicorn?” I asked, thinking of the illusion at the farmhouse.

“Last tear from a unicorn, last feather of a phoenix, last drop of blood from a dragon, I guess,” Ezee said. “Harper also stole what we think was dragon blood and we destroyed it.”

“Phoenix feather? Like in Final Fantasy?” I asked. Last drop of blood from a dragon sounded pretty bad, considering I’d just brought him
myself. I had no intention of giving him my last drop of blood. Or any drops.

I was glad it was the last drop, because Noah the vampire had taken some of my blood. I hated the idea of him helping Samir at all, but I didn’t trust the Archivist and wouldn’t put it past him. However, the blood he had was hardly my last. It wasn’t even the last blood I’d shed.

“Yeah, I guess. Magic is weird,” Harper
said.

Levi dipped out a cup of boiling water and dropped a tea bag into it. He repeated this until the water was low, then dumped the final amount into the final cup. There weren’t enough to go around, so he and Junebug shared. I watched him hand the cups around and accepted mine gratefully. It helped thaw my hands. This was how they’d been living for weeks.

I had amazing friends. I was going
to get maudlin if I wasn’t careful.

Tea handed out, everyone sat around in the circle of sleeping bags and looked at me. They were waiting for an explanation.

I leaned into Alek’s warmth. I’d taken off his coat when we sat down, but now I wished I still had its bulk so I could hide in it. No. No more hiding. Time for the truth. Or at least most of it.

“This is going to sound kind of crazy,”
I warned them.

“Jade, seriously? We’re a bunch of shapeshifters and a sorceress camped out in the wilderness in a shelter grown by a druid, all because your evil ex-boyfriend is trying to raise an ancient god so he can eat its heart and attain phenomenal cosmic power.” Harper folded her arms across her chest and made a face at me as she finished speaking.

“Okay, good point,” I said. Right. Out
with it all. “I set up the contingency with Iollan before the fight with Samir in case we were in over our heads. I didn’t tell you guys because I knew you’d probably be pissed about the idea of running away.”

“Damn right,” Harper muttered. “So you ran before things even got going. Who wouldn’t be pissed about that?”

“Let Jade speak,” Rose said, touching Harper’s arm gently. She and Harper were
seated directly across from me.

I toyed with my mug for a moment, not wanting to meet Harper’s eye. There was nothing for it but to keep going, as Rose said, and hope they understood. Hope they even believed me.

“That’s what you remember,” I said as I looked up and met Harper’s angry green gaze. “But that isn’t how it went down. We did fight.” I held her gaze while I recounted the events, trying
to maintain clinical distance from my memories. “Junebug got shot out of the air. Then Samir hit Iollan with a spell and ripped out his throat. Alek took a spell meant for me. It ripped his chest open. A giant bear killed Ezee and Levi. Everyone was dead or dying. Even me.”

I stopped and took a deep breath, looking upward at the tangle of branches.

“Samir ripped out my heart,” I said. I had
told Ash all this, but it still wasn’t easy to say aloud. “He had it in his hand. I still had the ley line magic. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I turned back time.”

I looked around at their faces. Ezee had his head tipped to the side, considering. Levi and Junebug were holding hands, both of them looking at me with raised eyebrows. Rose nodded, seeming to accept this. Harper shook
her head but the gesture was more contemplative than negating. I turned my head and looked at Alek. His ice-blue eyes looked down into mine and he nodded slowly.

“That makes sense,” he said, his voice soft.

“It does?” Ezee asked.

“The Council of Nine told me once that if I stayed with Jade, I would die. I saw myself with a mortal wound in my chest. So yes, this thing makes sense.”

“That’s
why you told Iollan to get us out?” Harper said, half question, half statement. She looked like she was working something out in her head. “That’s why you couldn’t do anything. You had used too much magic already.”

I didn’t tell her that I’d had Iollan getting them all out before I turned back the clock. Better she didn’t know that little detail.

“It was worse than that,” I said. She’d given
me the perfect opening to explain why I’d been gone so long. “I only turned back time a couple minutes, but it totally wrecked me. It burned out my magic. I couldn’t use any magic at all. I couldn’t even feel it.”

“That is why you left?” Alek said. I loved him for the lack of reproach in his words. I had hurt him, I knew, but he was able to comprehend why. Alek would never judge me too harshly
for having to make tough calls and tougher decisions.

“I needed to get my magic back,” I said. I filled them in on the rough details, though I savored the look on their faces when I mentioned I’d met Alek’s sister.

“Kira?” Alek said. His eyes narrowed to slits. “She is still angry?”

“Yeah,” I said. I figured I’d ask him about what he’d done, why he had killed her friend, and hear his side of
the story, but not until later. Much later, at this rate. We had way bigger problems. “She helped me, though. We broke my biological father out of prison. Then I followed him to a magical pocket of time and space and he helped me get my magic back.” I hand waved the Veil and explaining it. There just wasn’t time, and I wasn’t even sure I knew exactly where we had been or what was happening.

“So you are stronger, faster, better?” Levi said with a grin.

“Oh, it’s better than that.” I took a deep breath and smiled slowly. Then I told them the rest.

Being back with my friends, sitting next to my lover, and knowing everyone was safe? Worth everything.

Getting to tell my friends that I was a freaking dragon? Priceless.

In the excitement and explanations that followed, I conveniently
forgot to mention the whole “can’t kill Samir or else magic apocalypse” thing. Whoops.

Yosemite still hadn’t returned by the time we were all figuring out sleeping arrangements. It worried all of us, but as I’d told Ezee, the druid knew these woods and could take care
of himself.

I was worried, too, that Samir had set a trap at the farmhouse he’d been using as a base. Junebug offered to fly into Wylde and scout around, but while her owl self didn’t mind the darkness, with the druid missing it felt unsafe. I was bothered that Freyda and her wolves were missing as well. They had gone to find Softpaw, apparently, but even so, that was over a week past now. Between
that and whatever Samir was up to with all the mercenaries in town, things looked not great for the good guys.

But I was back. I was here and ready to fight. It wouldn’t go the same as before. I wouldn’t let it. Nor would I shut out my friends or refuse to let them help. They had done more these last few weeks to delay and threaten Samir’s plans than I had, after all. I had learned the value
of trust and I wasn’t going to fuck up again.

At least, I wasn’t going to fuck up in the same way. No plan survives contact with the enemy, after all.

I pulled on Alek’s coat and went outside with him to take first watch. We wanted to be alone, and while it was cold, it was better than nothing.

“Moon is full,” I said as he wrapped his arms around me. I leaned back into his warmth and looked
up past his face at the sky. The moon sailed through a sea of stars, not a cloud in sight. It made the snow-covered trees around us into a softer world of glitter and shadow.

“Not quite,” Alek said, dropping into Russian. His voice rumbled in his chest and into my back. “Tomorrow night.”