Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (24 page)

He still smells like sandalwood, still tastes like lemon and cinnamon and my early-morning latte. His lips are still firm, his body still hot and hard against mine. And I still melt the second he runs his tongue along the indention in my upper lip.

My hands come up and clutch at his too-long, silky hair, holding him in place even as he holds me. His response—a quick nip of my lower lip—has me gasping and pressing my body against his.

He takes instant advantage of my open lips, his tongue sneaking inside to slide over my own before exploring the rest of my mouth with lazy strokes that make me forget everything but the heat flaring to life deep inside of me.

He strokes the roof of my mouth, the sensitive skin between my upper lip and my gums, and then the spot right behind my front teeth that always makes me crazy. I shudder, press myself more tightly against him as I pull the flavor, the essence of him, deep inside me. It’s his turn to inhale sharply and then his tongue is thrusting against mine in a powerful in and out motion that has me trembling and crying out. Then he’s brushing his thumb
over my cheek in a caress that is both tender and exciting.

It freaks me out a little—not the excitement, but the sudden tenderness, because it speaks of more than this one passionate moment of time. It takes me back, really back, to those hours by the lake when he held and kissed me like he was never going to let me go.

Except he did.

And when he shifts, moving his hand from my cheek to the back of my neck in a hold so blatantly possessive that it makes me squirm, I pull away. After eight and a half years without so much as a postcard, he has no right to touch me like this. I have no right to let him.

We’re both breathing hard and Declan’s body feels like it’s carved of stone wherever it’s touching mine. Something tickles my cheek and I reach up to brush it away just as Declan does the same. At that moment, as our fingers intertwine, we both recognize that I’m crying, tears running silently down my face.

Declan curses at the first touch of wetness, yanks himself back. And then he’s gone, striding through my house and out into the night without a backward glance. Though the front door does slam behind him, meaning he fixed it on his way out.

This time, I don’t even think of following. After all, I should have seen it coming.

T
he slam of the door behind Declan echoes through my empty house and I let out a breath I wasn’t even aware that I’d been holding. I wipe the last remnants of tears off my cheeks and walk over to the fridge, open it up. I haven’t eaten since the half sandwich I’d had for lunch during Nate’s inquisition and hunger is beating at me, turning my legs shaky and my breathing uneven.

Yes, I tell myself as I pull out some lettuce and sliced turkey. It’s lack of food that’s making me shaky, not the fact that Declan just kissed me senseless. And I let him.

For a moment I want to lay my head down on the counter and just bawl. But I’m not a child anymore and I’ve never been much of a crier anyway, no matter that Declan brings it out in me. I can’t believe I let him kiss me, can’t believe I let myself be sucked in all over again. Hadn’t he hurt me enough eight years ago, when he’d left me in the middle of the forest after spending most of the night making me feel like I mattered? Like I was important to him?

Am I really willing to just forget all that?

To open myself up to that kind of pain and rejection all over again even with everything else going on in my life right now?

It’s not like I can ignore the fact that I’ve found two bodies in my entire life—both times under a strange compulsion and both times after I’d come into contact
with Declan. I don’t count Amy because, while I was there soon after she was found, I wasn’t the one who stumbled across her. Thank God. But Declan knows about her anyway, even though the IPD kept it quiet and her death didn’t make any of the papers.

I don’t know why, but a picture of my bed back home flashes in my mind—covered in bunches and bunches of begonias. A warning from my brother to be careful, and yet that interpretation suddenly doesn’t feel right anymore. Declan? I wonder, as I assemble my sandwich. Or am I just being paranoid?

There’s no evidence that points to him being in Ipswitch at all, and yet I can’t shake the idea that he was there the entire time. Especially when I remember those terrible moments in the parlor when I felt such overwhelming pain or in the garden when I was certain I was being watched. At the time, I’d put it down to the ridiculous costume I was wearing, but now I’m not so sure.

Some people, most people, would probably say that a lot of this is just a case of horrible coincidence, but then, I’m not most people. I accepted many years ago that all things happen for a reason. I had to believe that or I would have gone bat-shit crazy trying to figure out a solution to my latency—maybe even as crazy as my mother and Salima.

The thought of them makes me cringe as I put the sandwich fixings back in the refrigerator. They’re both crazy enough that they’d be thrilled to find out I made fire—even if that fire nearly killed me. Somehow, I think they’d both view it as progress.

And maybe, in a messed-up way, it is. It’s not like I’ve ever been able to do anything like that before. But why now? That’s the million-dollar question, and one I don’t have even a semblance of an answer to. Except that I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Declan.

I think back to those moments on the bed when I was
finally able to free myself from my bonds. Again, Declan hadn’t been there, but he’d been aware I was in trouble. He’d called twice, and then shown up at my door, like he’d known exactly where I was.

I don’t know how he figured it out, any more than I know why his star, his mark, had spun through my head in those final moments before the fire would have engulfed me. Just like I have no idea why that mark is even now engraved in the skin of my back—not once, like my own, but twice.

I start to sit at the kitchen table, but my curiosity overwhelms me so I grab my sandwich and head to the back bedroom to eat it. It’s hard to forget those moments, lying stranded on the bed and thinking that maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should have listened more to my mother and Salima. While I don’t think the stuff the witch whisperer gave me will make any difference in my ability, or lack thereof, to do magic, I figure reading it is worth a shot. Especially if there’s anything in there that talks about bizarre moments of magical clarity.

I know they exist, have heard witches and wizards—even warlocks—talking about them my entire life. Those moments when everything comes together and the magic you do is pure, perfect, easier than anything you’ve ever done. Heka has always been impossible for me but I’m wondering if the fire, and the release of the restraints, were my own moments of clarity. Except nothing about those moments had felt pure or easy.

I pause in the middle of the hall, one step away from the spot where I can see into my bedroom door. I admit to myself that I’m a little afraid of going in. I don’t know how much work it’s going to take to get it back together and I just don’t know if I’m ready to see, really see, just how close I came to dying.

But I can’t stand in the hall forever, clutching a half-eaten
sandwich and cowering like a little girl in the dark. So I take a deep breath, steel myself, and walk into my bedroom.

It’s nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be. Declan must have done a lot of work in those few minutes when he went to ensure the fire was out. The wall opposite my bed is still scorched, but it’s nothing a coat of paint won’t be able to take care of. There are no holes in the wall, nothing to show that flames spent long minutes eating away at it.

The carpet is gone, yanked out and rolled up in the corner, waiting to be disposed of. I’m walking on a bare cement floor. My bed is fine, the iron gleaming like it had never been touched—I’m not sure how he managed that—though my sheets and comforter are ruined. Declan has stripped the bed and folded the bedding into a neat pile on the floor near the trash can. The mattress is untouched.

I don’t know how he did what he did, have no idea why he could repair things like the wall and bed, but not the carpet or bedding. Instinctively, I know that if he could have fixed everything, he would have. I can sense his anger, his impatience, when I look at the ruthlessly folded sheets. It’s hovering in the room, all but tangible to me. Though I try to deny it, I know his feelings come from the same place the deep-rooted horror I’m feeling comes from—looking at the burned comforter reminds me of just how close I came to being set on fire myself.

Worry blooms inside me, along with a healthy dose of self-pity, but I push them away—just like I push away the little voice deep inside of me that says this would never have happened to a real witch. Whining over the obvious isn’t going to change anything.

I walk into my bathroom, grab a spare set of sheets and a heavy blanket from the linen closet and smooth them over the bed. The blanket will have to do until I
can get to the mall and pick up a new comforter. It’s not very warm—especially against the open windows that are clearing out the last of the lingering fire smell—but I can’t see myself doing much sleeping for the rest of the night anyway. Not when the memory of how I almost became flame-broiled is still vivid in my head.

Then, because I can’t not do it, I pick up the books Salima gave me. There’s no way I’m taking the herbs—been there and nearly died doing that—but it can’t hurt to at least look through the book. If there’s something in there about this weird pull I seem to have to Declan, then I want to see what it is.

Climbing onto my bed, I open the spell book randomly, letting it fall open to whatever page it chooses. I may not be much of a witch, but I’ve been in the community my whole life and I know not to discount the power of the universe to do what needs to be done—or to tell me what I need to know.

The book falls open to a binding ritual, one that is meant to tie two people together with powerful bonds. It’s the closest Heka has to a marriage ritual.

Since Declan and I are very obviously not bound in that way, I flip past it a few pages and somehow land on another binding ritual. This one is meant to tie a person to his or her wandering soul.

I’ve never heard of such a thing and I read the ingredients and words of the ritual carefully. At the bottom of the page is a list of characteristics for a person with a wandering soul and I have none of them, yet these pages are oddly compelling to me. I read them again and again until I have the strange ritual memorized. Then I flip over yet another section of pages, and land on a binding ritual yet again.

The goddess is definitely trying to tell me something. I just wish I knew what it was.

This spell is the most complicated of the three I’ve
looked at, and its purpose is to bind powers of great strength and magnitude, to prevent the magical being from being able to access his or her magic. For some reason Declan pops into my head while I’m reading the spell, his face hovering on the page in front of me no matter how many times I blink to clear the image from in front of my eyes.

The whole idea that this spell was used on Declan is ridiculous—I’ve never seen a more powerful warlock. Or wizard or witch, for that matter. And if the universe is suggesting that I try to do this spell on Declan, maybe as a way to jump-start my own powers, then it is out of luck. Because there is no way I would do this to anyone, let alone the man who sets every nerve ending I have aflame.

I have no plans to let Declan get close enough to kiss me again, but at the same time I don’t want to harm him. Not when he’s never done anything to hurt me and in fact tonight did everything he could to save me. I deliberately ignore the pain of his desertion all those years ago. That pain is nothing compared to what this spell is suggesting—part of me can’t even believe it’s in a book of regular Hekan magic. Especially when I read over the spell and realize just how dark it really is.

This is black magic, the kind no smart witch dabbles in. Because while it may deliver power more potent than any other, it also demands a steep, steep price for whatever it gifts. That’s just the nature of the beast.

I slam the book closed, drop it on the floor. What kind of witch is Salima, that she has a book like this in her collection? Though I know it’s foolish, I have an almost overwhelming urge to go into the bathroom and wash my hands. I wish I could scrub my brain out as easily—that’s how dirty that spell has made me feel.

And yet I can’t stop thinking about it—or the other binding spells I just looked over. Maybe it’s because I so
obviously just escaped being bound myself. None of those spells had dealt with being physically restrained, but I’m not certain it matters. Tying up someone in any way is abhorrent to me.

At the thought, a sudden chill sweeps through me, turns my calm to panic in the blink of an eye. Maybe I know what the universe is trying to tell me after all. I grab my phone, dial, before I can think better of it. Declan had asked who I’d pissed off and I hadn’t been able to answer him. Since then, I’d been so wrapped up in the weird stuff going on between Declan and me that I had completely forgotten to focus on the most important question of all—who had bound me to my bed like that, and why?

I wouldn’t put it past Salima or my mother in yet another effort to wake up my latent powers, but it seems extreme—especially considering what had almost happened. Not that extreme isn’t my mother’s middle name, so maybe I’m giving her too much credit here.

But when she answers the phone, she sounds surprised to hear from me. Not fake surprised, like she’s trying too hard, but actual surprise. Surely, if she’d had anything to do with that little nightmare from earlier, she would have been expecting my call.

“Xandra, how are you, sweetie?”

“I’ve been better.”

The delight fades from her voice. “What’s wrong?”

Part of me wants to just come right out and ask her if she bound my physical body to my bed, but if she didn’t, she’ll freak out and then I’ll have a houseguest or two tonight that I didn’t plan on. Especially since I can’t see my quiet but overprotective father staying home after news like that.