Reawakened (Chronicles of Cas Book 1) (2 page)

After my leg started vibrating, I realized not all of the ringing was coming direct from my ears. I pulled my cell phone out. It was Gigi, a local Wiccan.

I started toward the stairs to lock up the secret library as I answered her call. "What's up?"

"Did it work?"

I sighed. This was totally Gigi. I only knew what she was talking about thirty-five percent of the time. "You've lost me."

"I just tried to contact you."

"I know. I just answered you."

She groaned in annoyance. "No. Before that."

My eyes widened. "That noise? That was you? What the hell were you doing? I was in the middle of something."

Gigi laughed in her husky way as if she were some sort of phone sex operator. "I was trying to see if I could contact you if I needed you in an emergency."

I slipped beyond the bookcase again and shut down for the night, careful to make sure the secret door was locked and secure. On the other side of the chamber, I went out a side door that opened up into a small hallway where I could access a corridor that led outside. It was kind of neat to have all these secret doors and passages at my disposal. I kind of felt like Batman.

"Well, congratulations. It worked. Can you spell me some new eardrums?"

"Sweet. It was that loud?"

"Gigi..."

"Fine..." Gigi's mouth took off in hyperdrive. I tried to pick out only the important words--ley line, power, energy, disturbance?

I stopped mid-stride on the sidewalk. "Wait. What? A disturbance? What were you saying about a disturbance in the ley line?"

"Earlier today I started feeling a rush of energy. It kept building and building. So much so that it's as if I've drank too much magic caffeine. I am brimming with it. The High Priestess thinks it has to be coming from the ley line. And the only way it could be doing that is--"

"A disturbance. Shit."

I picked up the pace and started jogging toward Chestnut Street. There was no way all of this was a coincidence. I get a cryptic message from my brother who left to help other ley line guardians with their ley line problems, now Salem is getting a ley line problem? What is going on?

Spotting the house I grew up in, my jog turned into an all-out run. "I have to go Gi."

Figures the one week Damen left the whole guardian thing to me, shit would go down. And I'd almost convinced him I was better now, too. I ran into the foyer and immediately up the steps to the second and then third floor. Dad told us Grandpa Marston used to spend hours upon hours in the attic and he could never figure out why. Funny if that my dad had just kept his mind open to the possibilities, he would've figured it out long before Grandpa told Damen. Dad never would've been able to handle being a ley line guardian, though. No way. He was too black and white. Paranormal stuff? Well, that lived in the gray area.

My ring allowed me to burst into the attic. Anyone else but Damen or I and the spell around this room would've prevented them from coming in. I stopped in the middle of the attic eyeing the weyfinder. Exactly as I thought, the stone in the middle that detected paranormal creatures was going crazy. When there was nothing paranormal around, the stone was clear, unmagnificent. When something was up, the stone glowed different hues. We hadn't seen all the colors yet, but we knew witches were white, shifters were green, and selkies were blue. At the moment, the stone shone like a rainbow.

There was something otherworldly nearby. Something we'd never dealt with before.

Chapter Three

There were greens, reds, oranges, purples--all varying in intensity and shades. Thank the magical universe that the stone sat still in the middle, unmoving. If there was say a werewolf right behind me, the stone would've been spinning like mad. The closer to a magical creature the weyfinder got, the more the stone would spin. It was really a fantastic detection device. I didn't use it much because Salem didn't call for it anymore. Not since Damen was eleven. That was eighteen years ago.

I grabbed the weyfinder. It vibrated like a tuning fork. Spying my messenger bag strewn over a chair, I stuck the charmed finder inside and turned toward the door. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. Damon was gone. There was no way I was running because I didn't know what I was running from. It would've helped to have a little bit more information there Damen. Or, more than likely, that was the fae's fault. Beside all that, there was something up with the ley line. Past experience told me the supernatural was involved and since I was currently the only ley line guardian in Salem, I couldn't leave my post. My grandfather would turn over in his grave.

I was too young the last time a crazy bunch of evil witches awakened the ley line, but Damen told me stories. He told stories now like Grandpa used to tell stories when we were little. Those two were really one and the same.

Thank the heavens Mom and Dad weren't around anymore. They--Dad especially--never liked any talk of the SPAWN "nonsense". If Salem were about to self-destruct, it was just better they weren't here. I should thank Damen again for convincing them to retire in Florida. When he first brought it up, I thought he was nuts. Sure, Mom and Dad had almost sent Damen to boarding school when they realized monsters were real and that our ancestral line gave us the power to fight them. I was close to being sent to a convent. Luckily, Grandpa was still alive then and he talked some sense into them. I mean, really. The gig wasn't that bad. If I had to choose between librarianship and guardianship, I would pick guardianship in a heartbeat.

On the second floor landing, the glow from the enormous painting of the merchant ship docked at Salem's wharf intensified. That could only mean one thing. A guardian was coming through the portal. Inside the messenger bag, the electricity and the vibration coming from the weyfinder skyrocketed.

I took a deep breath and held it, hoping Damen was about to make his way through the portal that he left through just two days ago. Being the big brother, he'd want me safe. Of course he'd tell me to run if the ley line was brewing up trouble. Damen still thought I was six years old with pigtails half the time.

The air around the portal wavered. I narrowed my eyes to get a glimpse. When I saw who stepped through the painting, my mouth almost dropped open. Almost. One of the first rules of guardianship is to never act surprised.

Jake rushed into the house, stopping dead when he spotted me.

A million different emotions flowed over me. Disappointment that it wasn't Damen. Shock that Jake, the Jake, stood before me. Anger that the Jake who abandoned us was standing in my house after all this time when he hadn't so much as called in years.

His hair was darker than I remembered it. I'd been thirteen the last time I saw him. His shoulders were broader. His face was more angular, grown up. There was even some man stubble across his cheeks and chin. It was him, but it wasn't the Jake I remembered.

His eyes widened. "Cas?"

I stared at his black tactical gear. I'd known he joined the Guardian Elite team, but I'd never seen one of them in real life and this was not just one in my living room, but the one that had torn my brother apart when he decided to leave. "Sweet getup," I said, pulling my messenger bag higher up on my shoulder. "Do you have to pay for your own? Or do they give a set when you make it?"

His eyes narrowed as he studied me. His gaze paused at the pink streaks in my dark hair. I wanted to tell him a lot had changed in eleven years and not just my hair color.

He took two steps, still studying me. "Thank God you're okay. When I heard about Damen, I came right away."

"Damen?" My heart freefell into my stomach. "What about him?"

"Maybe you should..." He eyed the sofa in the corner.

Oh hell no. Gone forever and still going to treat me like a little kid? Not going to happen. "Jake, I'm not thirteen anymore. I'm a full-fledged guardian myself. If there's something I should know about my brother, you need to tell me."

Jake tipped his head up, his chin strong. "He's been captured. We don't know where he is."

My chest hollowed out. A thousand denials bubbled up inside me. Damen was the best of the Ley Line Guardians. That's why he was always off helping the other guardian groups. "Are you sure?"

"He was at Stonehenge--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. They needed help. Something about their line. But what happened? Is he okay?"

Jake paced around the small landing, not looking at me. His eyes stayed trained on the hardwood floor. "We think it was a trap. Damen had no way of knowing but we've been investigating weird phenomena in the line that runs from the UK to the States. In each of our hot spots, we've recorded instances where something out of the ordinary happened."

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. "And of course you wouldn't share that with the lowly Ley Line Guardians. Why should we know something that would help us do our jobs better?"

Jake squared his massive shoulders and set his jaw. "Not my decision. The point is, I think that they--whoever they is--wanted to get Damen out of Salem and they knew if they asked him to help, he would leave. Here, Damen has all the protection he could ever want. Out there, he's more vulnerable."

I pushed past him down the stairs, my mind still trying to wrap around the fact that no one knew where Damen was and that couldn't be a coincidence considering what I'd just learned. I bit down on my thumb knuckle and wore a path into the carpet. "Makes sense they'd lure him out since there's something gone screwy with our line now. But why? Why this part of the line? And other than the obvious, why wouldn't they want Damen here?"

Jake blocked my path and ran his hands through his hair. "There's something wrong with the line? What is it?"

I glared at him and continued walking. "Don't know. Only that it seems to be blasting off energy."

"Shit. What are you doing about it?"

I turned and scowled at him. Typical holier-than-thou bullshit. Relay the problem and then wonder how someone's going to fix it. "Nothing yet because I'm standing here talking to you."

"Cas..."

I waved him away. We hadn't needed Jake in eleven years, I could figure this all out on my own. "So Damen's been captured. The ley line is giving off energy. Obviously the two are connected."

He interrupted my path again and grabbed my shoulders. "I'm here to help, Cas. I came as soon as I found out. I--"

He trailed off, not finishing his thought. The despair in his eyes was apparent though. I shook my head, not understanding the sudden feelings for Damen. If he'd cared, why hadn't he stayed in touch? "What's Damen's status? Do you guys have any idea where he is? Any leads?"

His gaze dropped to the fancy red oriental carpet at our feet. "We don't know."

I blew out a hard breath. I was well trained as a Ley Line Guardian. I wasn't worried about that part at all. Damen was number one, but I was his number two. It was just this all happening at once that got my spidey senses up.

Okay. Think. What would Damen do?

He would tell me to worry about what was in front of me and push aside anything I didn't have control over. I didn't know where he was and there was no way I could leave Salem right now to help find him. I'd have to trust that the Elite Guardians were doing everything that they could to try and get my brother back. As for myself, I needed to find out what was wrong with the ley line.

"The Elite are looking for him though, right?"

"We're doing everything we can."

I took the hair tie from around my wrist and put my hair in a pony tail. "Shouldn't you be helping? I can handle Salem's problems. It's not as if I'm new to this."

"I--well, my captain--thought I'd be of more use here."

"If you're worried about me, I'll be fine. I have things under control."

Three short raps sounded on the door. The weyfinder pulsed in my bag. I pulled it out. The stone in the middle was pure white and spinning. It was a witch. I looked at Jake. His eyes were round and big, and he eyed the weyfinder as it were a thing of fairy tales that he'd just found out was real. I offered it to him, but he shook his head and stepped away.

Weird, considering this was one of Jake's favorite devices when he was in SPAWN.

I shrugged, put the weyfinder away, and then strode to the door. Gigi was on the other side. Her eyes were dull and her features drawn tight across her face. She held her hands out in front of her, nervously clasped together. "Oh Cas. Thank the goddess you're here. You need to come downtown. It's like kindergarten class with all the residents of Salem. There's yelling and screaming, confusion, I think I even saw someone pee their pants."

Her eyes darted behind me and for once, her mouth stopped moving. Eyelashes lowered, she looked up at Jake like she wanted to devour him. Typical Gigi, actually.

She sauntered in and smiled at him like a luring siren. "I'm Gigi. And you are?"

Mr. Guardian Elite in my living room squared his shoulders and bowed his head.

"Oh please," I sniffed. "Gigi this is Jake. He used to be Damen's best friend until he bailed on him. Now he's an Elite. Jake, this is my friend and before you ask, yes, she's a Wiccan. No, we don't have slumber parties. And yes, we can trust her."