Song of the Ancients (Ancient Magic Book 1) (28 page)

"I'll give you an angry crutch. Get the fuck out of my head!" I tried to give the presence in my head a push, but it held on.

"Come to
me,
Samantha. Ignore him, come to
me
. Give me what I need.
Now. Give me the key NOW."

The pressure in my head increased until I thought it would explode. Jumbled images blasted through my mind: My moonstone locket, Nuin's lips brushing my cheek, the black leather grimoire and its twig-like lettering, Nicholas's surprised face. In none of his precautions had Nicholas warned about the pain. The pressure sent a searing red explosion through my left eye socket.

I screamed and clamped my head between my hands, thrashing in the bed sheets. "Get out! Get out! You're hurting me!"

No answer. I felt the presence of intense anger, and shards of stabbing pain that hadn't been there when Nicholas was seducing me earlier.

I squeezed my eyes tight and forced the screams back down into my chest, biting down on my bottom lip until I tasted blood.
Don't give in to fear. Concentrate
.
Get past the pain.
I moaned the last like a mantra over and over.
This isn't physical. Separate the pain from your mind. Compartmentalize it, and you can overcome it.
I made my mind blank, white and empty. Void of all feeling. Void of all fear. Void of all emotion.

Then I visualized a heavy door, like a steel bank vault. I stepped behind it and shoved it hard. Ran behind it, still pushing.

SLAM!

The pressure eased and the pain was gone as quickly as it had begun. The silence was exquisite. I took a shuddering breath and let my cramped muscles release.

Nicholas opened my door but didn't come any closer. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms folded across his chest. "I heard you screaming. What did you do, finish without me?"

I sat up and still couldn't stop shaking; my muscles had been clenched for so long.

He stepped closer and tried again. "Tonight has been entertaining. Confusing as all hell, but entertaining."

Hurling the tangled sheets to the floor, I stomped over to stand nose to nose with him. "You waited until I fell asleep. Not fair."

"I'm trying to teach you to defend yourself, darling girl. The best time for psychic attack is during sleep when your guard is down—as I have just proven." His eyes locked on mine, and I saw desire just below their obsidian surface. "Did you like it?"

I raised my fist to swing at him but he caught my wrist.

"Control yourself or you will regret it."

"Don't flatter yourself. You hurt me!" I replied furiously.

"Hurt you?" His eyes wandered to my bare shoulder, then traced a deliberate line down to the top of my thin nightgown and across my chest. "You have an interesting way to express pain."

"Fuck you." I spit the words at him. I hadn't said the phrase to anyone before, even to my ex at our lowest moment.

"It would probably improve your mood." One corner of his mouth quirked.

Red fury flooded my vision. "Any more words of wisdom?"

"No." He leaned against the doorframe and pulled out a cigarette. Stuck a match, but blew it out without using it. "Not a syllable."

I felt like that wooden match scraped roughly across a match-book of repressed emotions, but extinguished before the feelings could ignite. My anger sputtered and died.

He finally raised his eyes back to my face. "As delightful as our brief dalliance was, perhaps I was unclear on the exercise? You were supposed to resist." He waggled a finger at me, dangling a piece of lacy white cloth from its tip. "Well, look here. I brought something back."

I was acutely aware then of new bareness under my thin nightgown. I crossed my arms across my chest. "You're right. I had a moment of weakness, entirely unpleasant, thanks to you."

His expression was wounded but I didn't care. "You just wouldn't leave. You said you wouldn't purposely hurt me. You lied. You…you." My lips trembled. "You lost your temper, you got angry again and
hurt
me."

Nicholas had a puzzled expression on his face. He shook his head. "I didn't. I was careful to be gentle. It shouldn't have hurt."

I put up a hand to stop him. "You are despicable. You used tactics on me that you –quite conveniently – neglected to mention beforehand. This is the last time you will demonstrate
anything
without teaching me first. In fact, I'm not sure you're mentally fit to be a teacher."

I straightened my shoulders, no longer concerned whether he could see through my gown. I held out my hand. "Give me my underwear. I'm going back to sleep. We'll talk about this in the morning." I put both hands on his chest and pushed him out of the doorway and into the hall. "Stay out of my room."

He remained in the hallway, looking puzzled. "Samantha, I don't understand what happened tonight."

"You think?" I shook my head wearily. "I suppose I should thank you. You taught me a valuable lesson tonight."

He was staring at the door behind my head, but a tense muscle in his jaw began to twitch. "And what would
that
be?"

You were right about trust. And about caring. It makes me vulnerable. I
won't
make the same mistake again."

Chapter 41: Crowded Mind

The following morning I awoke early after a mostly sleepless and, I admitted ruefully, frustrating night alone with my own traitorous thoughts.

I was determined to be up and downstairs before Nicholas, to take him off guard and begin the conversation on my own terms. I didn't want to end my study with him, but I did plan to learn his tactics and make them my own.

He sat at the table, and empty cup in front of him. Did the man never sleep? He looked up silently when I came into the kitchen and pulled a coffee cup from the cabinet.

He'd been writing, but put the notepad aside as I sat down, and folded his long fingers together on the table.

"Please accept my apology for my actions–or rather, thoughts–last night." He looked down at his hands for a long moment and then met my eyes again with a level gaze.

I turned my back on him to fill my coffee. Let him squirm.

"Your preparation is important, much too important for me to toy with your emotions. I let my own wishes get the upper hand. I promise it won't happen again."

Dr. Jekyll, in the morning light, apologizing for his previous night's Hyde. I deliberately kept my back to him as I fussed with cream and sugar, stirring my brew thoughtfully. Something had happened last night, and it didn't add up. At the height of the pain, my thoughts had been jumbled and all over the place. I wasn't sure how to order them into coherent form so we could discuss them this morning.

"Remember the discussion we had in the shed, after I started the fire? About not lying?" Nicholas asked. "Yet here we are still, with half-truths and evasions." He tapped a finger on the table to emphasize each word. "Betrayal."

I sat down across from him. "Don't talk in riddles Nicholas. If you want to know something, just ask." I pointed my own finger at him. "I am sick of you asking me, 'where's the key, give me the key.' I told you already, I don't have a key. Then you had to sneak your astral self around and go through all my stuff?"

At least he had the decency to look contrite. "I can't imagine I'll ever be one of your most trusted allies," he replied, "but I thought we were supposed to be, as they say, in this together."

"Funny." I slapped my palms on the table in frustration. "So did me."

He sighed. "Then let's do be perfectly honest. I know you've opened the grimoire. I warded it and the wards were broken. You opened it."

"Yes, I opened it." I held up a hand before he could reply. "It
looked
at me Nicholas. It opened its creepy eye and looked at me. Then it
talked
to me. Your grandmother created one freaky book."

Nicholas stared at me slack-jawed. His anger simply drained out and he slumped down in his chair. "What did it say?"

I shrugged. "No key is necessary when you are known."

"And the missing page?"

I gestured toward Jaco Hunsley's desk across the room. "There's a false door inside the desk. It's still there, where I found it."

"Now it's my turn." I leaned on my elbows across the table toward Nicholas, clear into his personal space. "What the fuck happened last night? And don't you dare tell me you don't know."

He stared off into space, biting his lip and nodding, as if ticking off points in his head. Finally he asked quietly. "Last night. Was there someone else on your mind, someone you care for?"

"You've lost me. What are you talking about?"

Nicholas watched me carefully. I'm sure he could see the conflict his questions had caused. "I sensed another entity may have…slipped in…with me last night. Not everything you were responding to was coming from me."

"I thought it was pretty clear who I was interested in." I felt the embarrassed flush in my cheeks. "If I recall, you
lectured
me when I finally said yes. What exactly do you mean?"

Now Nicholas looked uncomfortable. "I overstepped my bounds last night, Samantha, and I am sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. And I really don't want to control you." He stopped again. "But it appears, perhaps, someone else does."

I immediately recalled the threat:
He will have you for the power, or see you dead.
Nicholas's explanation made sense.

"I know you've been doing some studying with a Native medicine man," Nicholas said.

"Sinclair."

"Yes, right." Nicholas said. "Could it be him? I'm sure astral travel is firmly within his abilities."

I shook my head. "No. It wasn't Sinclair. For one thing, this entity, as you called it, was demanding. Sinclair is very direct, but he's polite. He has a strong sense of personal boundary. I'm sure it wasn't him."

"How is his teaching?" Nicholas asked.

"I honestly have no idea how to describe it," I said. "His beliefs are based on oral tradition. A lot of them border on mystical." I wondered how much I could tell Nicholas without having him mock me. "He can summon ancestral spirits much like you did at Samhain."

"How do you know?" Nicholas sounded surprised.

"I saw them. He thinks I can call them when I need them. I just need to find the right song, my own words."

I tensed, waiting for Nicholas to laugh at me, or make a cutting remark.

But he just looked at me with his dark eyes, almost like he was seeing me, really seeing me, for the first time. He nodded slowly. "He has taught you well. You're different, Samantha. Stronger. More sure of your abilities."

He paused. "Have you also been studying with the Crescent Moon Priest, Nuin?"

"No. We've talked about a few things. Athames." I waited a beat. "You."

"I'll bet it was an interesting conversation," he said wryly.

I chuckled. "He's not in your fan club. But why don't you like him?"

Nicholas shook his head. "I'm not going to express my opinion of a man you're dating." He stopped suddenly. Turned to me. "If you are intimate—" At least he had the grace to look pained at the idea. He ran his hands through his hair and continued. "Perhaps he was the second entity to visit you last night."

"We're not intimate. We're not dating. I went to dinner with him. Once."

"Why just once?" Nicholas kept his tone light. But the truth was in his temple, that one little vein throbbed.

I thought,
Here goes
. "Since we're being honest," I began, "I didn't get involved with Nuin, because I wanted to get to know you."

Nicholas stilled.

I held my breath, waiting for his reaction.

He walked around the table, knelt in front of my chair. Putting his arms around me, he pressed his face into the curve of my neck and held me close.

"Nicholas, I—"

He shook his head, then leaned back and framed my face in his hands. They weren't steady. Nor was his breathing. His eyes were dark, intense. "You scare the hell out of me," he said softly. "I scare the hell out of me." He kissed me, gentle and tentative, almost a question. I pulled him close and deepened the kiss. My body ached with longing for him, and we moved from sweet discovery to searing in a disorientating instant. I arched toward him, but he moved away from me and stood. "I don't think I can do this Samantha."

"Why not?"

"I don't trust you." He looked away from me and raked a hand through his hair. "I'm afraid to be honest, to let my guard down. And it can't be both ways. It matters too much." He let out a long, unsteady breath. "I'm afraid I'll hurt you."

You will hurt me
. The certainty of it shivered through me. The pain would come. I didn't care. "I'll find a way to make you trust me."

Chapter 42: The Hidden Triad

"Sam, you're holding out on me," Rumor said. "You spent the night with Nicholas and haven't told me a thing." She paid for our Cokes and grabbed my arm, steering me to the corner booth, and slid in beside me. "Are you okay? You haven't said a word since we left work."

"I'm fine, just distracted."

I'd been thinking about Nicholas all morning. His fingertips trailing lightly across my skin. His anger and our argument afterwards. Our heated kiss. Oh, that kiss. I shivered, remembering the urgency I'd felt in his body responding to mine.
He doesn't trust me.
No matter how many times I ran through the whole scene, I always ended up there.
He doesn't trust me.

When I tried to get him to open up more to me about it, he said he needed some time, "to sort things out." All of this drama because of a stupid grimoire? Or was it a result of my one date with Nuin? One date!
Betrayal
. It seemed a strong word to describe my indiscretion. But Nicholas adamantly refused to talk about it further.

To say I was distracted was a huge understatement. Miserable was more accurate. And guilty.

His reaction had forced me to look honestly at my behavior. There were things I should have told him, but hadn't.
Yet
, I added in my own defense. But it was time for me to come clean. I felt awful for acting dishonestly. If he chose to confide further in me, I would listen. If not? Well, his nature was to be secretive. He had told me so plainly.