The Gleaning (7 page)

Logan nodded.

“Hey, Chance?”

“Yeah?”

“Before I passed out from the smoke, Jude was whispering in my ear. Something in a language I didn’t recognize.”

His eyebrows lowered. “Do you remember any of the words?”

“No.”

“I bet it’s something to do with the hex that connects you to this doll. But I’m pretty sure I can remove the hex, so if the doll ends up in the wrong hands again, you’ll be protected.”

“And if we just destroy it?” Logan asked.

Chance paused for a beat. “Then you risk destroying her.”

“Even if you’ve removed the hex?” That didn’t sound right.

Chance caught our suspicious looks and shook his head. “Look, Cheese, what you don’t know about Voudon is a whole lot. Just trust me here. I can temporarily remove the hex, but I can’t entirely protect her. Apparently, Jude knows his way around the dark side of voodoo magic. But I’ll do my best.” He turned to me. “This will only hurt for a sec. May I?”

I nodded as he entered my personal space. His energy was different from Logan’s: older, darker. I sucked in a breath as his large hand swept behind my ear, and he plucked a hair from my head. “Sorry.”

“After what I just went through? Believe me, that was nothing.”

He laughed. “So now I’ll just need a droplet of your spit, and a piece of a fingernail.” He held out his palm expectantly.

I didn’t exactly want to spit in Chance’s hand, especially in front of Logan. But there they were, waiting. And since lives were at stake, specifically ours, spit in his hand I did. He rubbed his palms together and then cupped them in front of me, waiting for the piece of fingernail.

I peeled the tip of my pinkie nail off. It glittered in his palm on top of the spit.

“Good. Okay. Now comes the complicated part.”

Chance reached into his pocket and pulled out a cloth drawstring pouch. He poured some grains of what looked like salt and pepper and some other seasoning in his palm. Then, he poured it back into the pouch along with my hair and fingernail. “You’re going to need to ritually bathe yourself. Or, I should rephrase.
Someone
is going to have to ritually bathe you.”

Someone.

Ritually bathe?

Sounded…kinky.

Lily

“No time to get all self-conscious on me,” he said, reading my reaction. “Consider it a…religious experience.”

I glanced over at Logan, who shrugged, like
Just trust him, and let’s get on with it
. “Where do we get the water?” he asked Chance, who looked at me.

I couldn’t spin a whole bath full of water out of nothing, so I led them to where I knew a natural brook ran. “Is this good enough?”

Chance’s eyes were steady and focused. “Should be. We need eight and half quarts.”

“Can you heat it up?” Logan asked me.

“I don’t normally heat things up. I’m more of a cool down kinda witch.”

“I got this,” Logan said, with a cute glance that made my knees weak.

He knelt beside the brook, set his palms over the water, closed his eyes and concentrated on supplicating his energy. I couldn’t tear my eyes off his back as the muscles tensed and relaxed with the rhythm of the heating spell. His thin white tank top barely concealed the thick, weaving patterns of his ink, which conjured the image of an ancient language scrawled on a cave’s wall. Steam rose around him as the stream bubbled like a geyser.

“That ought to do it, buddy,” Chance said, grinning.

“You said heat it up.” With a shrug, he stood and walked back over to me. I sucked in a breath.

“I think I’ll leave you two alone for this part.”

I flushed.

“What do we do?” Logan asked Chance, without taking his eyes off me.

“You pour the water over her nine times, at an angle. Then toss the mixture over her opposite shoulder.” Chance handed him the pouch.

I couldn’t even meet Logan’s eyes as Chance disappeared around the corner. “You got about five minutes,” he said, a playful seriousness in his warning. Logan must’ve been making a face, because Chance added, “I mean it, bro.” Then he retreated into the woods, laughing.

Once we were alone, I dipped my toes in and yelped, “Too hot.”

“Sorry! Might have gone a little overboard.” He frowned at the boiling water.

“A little?”

His eyes looked up to my lips.

Opening my mouth, I blew cool air onto the pool until the bubbles calmed into a light sizzle, like the jets of a hot tub. I tested the temperature with my fingers.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much.”

“Let’s get to it, then.”

Logan

“I know it’s already thrashed, but I don’t want to get my dress wet.”

“Um, okay,” Logan said, imagining an alternative he was quite okay with. Her dress was still wet from the water they’d woken her with. But if she insisted on taking it off, who was he to stop her?

“Turn around,” she said with a little twirl of her fingers. “Logan? I mean it.”

Smiling, he turned his back to her and waited.

Lily

As I pulled my dress over my head, I watched his back nervously. Though he could See everything if he wanted, I could tell he wasn’t peeking.

I tossed my rag of a dress in a little heap to the side of the pool, and waded to the center of what was now an ideal-temperature hot tub. He waited, like a perfect gentleman, for me to tell him it was okay to turn around.

The stream was only waist-deep. My hair was long, but not that long, and didn’t quite cover everything. The expression on his face when he turned around let me know that part was definitely a pleasant surprise.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, softly. He had ripped off his tank top. “Should I, um? If Jacob finds me in the dungeon with wet jeans…”

“We could magically dry them?”

“Oh, and you couldn’t your dress?” He half-grinned.

“I hadn’t thought of that.” And I hadn’t. I was having a hard time sticking to logical thought at all. He was now down to his boxer shorts and was standing there, so ridiculously gorgeous, it was as if he were ripped off my favorite CW TV show.

He blinked. It was so sweet, the way he was trying so hard to look at everything but what he wanted to look at.

My shoulders rounded, and I tipped my head to the side. “Chance said we only have five minutes, remember?”

“Right.” He blinked again. “Right.”

Approaching me slowly in the water, he stood in front of me, careful not to lean in so close that we’d touch. He cupped a handful of water in his large hands. Carefully, he poured it over my left shoulder. I shivered as it poured down my hair, over my chest, and down my stomach. “It’s not too hot?”

“It’s perfect.”
You’re perfect
, I wanted to say.

The next handful was over the right shoulder.
Shivers.

This went on until he finished the ninth handful. I somehow managed to stay perfectly still as his hard-muscled chest, ripe with ink, shifted inches away from my naked torso. And then, when he was finished, I reached out and held the sides of his hips. Only then, did he finally pull me into him.

Logan

Her lips tasted like saltwater taffy, the kind you could buy at the Boardwalk; and her hands and fingers were everywhere. He wished like hell that five minutes could turn into fifty, and they could dissolve into this pool. And he could show her how much he wanted her—that she was all he’d ever want.

Lily

My thumbs traced the outline of his hipbones as our mouths desperately took advantage of our remaining minutes. My bare breasts were pressed against his chest, and his ink was just aflame. Under my thumb, a fire surged, a deep and tangible burn that stopped me. I glanced down, and sure enough, there on his iliac crest was a black mark. The broken-rose moon.

My warlock was my Rognaithe. My Logan was our Chosen.

Logan

Her eyes flew up to meet his. “Logan! The mark!” she whispered urgently.

He looked down, stunned.

“You’ve never seen it before?”

He ran his thumb over the raised ink on his iliac crest bone. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “No.”

“Incredible,” she murmured. “Logan?”

“Yeah?”

“You know what this means, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It means everything.”

Lily

Afterwards, I did my best to blow the water off my skin (the fact that the boys forgot a towel reassured me they were just as male as human boys). I was surprised by the new warmth of my breath. The droplets blew off my shivery skin into the air, dancing like fireflies in the darkness.

Logan opened the neck of my dress and swept it over my arms, pulling the waist down and kissing me gently. Then, without even asking if I wanted a ride, he swooped me into his arms and carried me out of the woods, back to where Chance was waiting. On the walk, I breathed in Logan’s sweet salty scent, savoring the feeling of my skin against his. I cradled my cheek into the concave dip in his neck, where his collarbone arched in a half moon, relishing the sensation of his heart beating against mine. For now he was okay, and he was mine, and I was his. We were together.

I kept my eyes closed until a warm breeze and the scent of eucalyptus welcomed us back into the clearing. Back into the real world, where I’d be torn from him again.

When he kissed me goodbye, I tried to memorize his image—his white-tank top now spotted with water from our bath; his damp hair grazing his strong shoulders—as if I’d never see him again like this. Alive, perfect…my Rognaithe.

Logan

“Hey,” Logan said, tilting Lily’s chin up to look into his eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon.” He kissed her again, pulling her in close.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” she asked, floral breath in his ear.

“Other than Chance? No. I need to think about how I want to play this out. See how much Jacob knows, and what he has planned for me, so I’ll know how to duck around it.”

She backed out of his arms and looked up at him. “I saw what he did to you in the clearing, Logan. He’s so powerful.”

“Yeah, well. So am I. I wasn’t fighting back there, remember?”

“Right,” she said, but there was fear in her eyes.

“Dude, it’s getting late,” Chance said from a few yards away.

“You better go,” Lily said. She was tugging on the bottom on Logan’s t-shirt in a way that let him know she didn’t really mean it.

“Lil?”

He wanted to tell her about his dream. How his mother must’ve known he was the Rognaithe, but this wasn’t the time. This was about them.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For believing there was good in me. All my life I’ve been told otherwise. If you hadn’t believed in me, well, I don’t think the mark would’ve appeared to anyone else.”

She didn’t say anything, not with words, anyway. Instead, she hugged him tight, kissed the soft spot on his neck. Logan cupped her face and kissed her mouth, warm and deep with appreciation.

Lily

On my way home I thought about Logan.

How, as I watched him walk away from me, I marveled at how quickly a day can reverse itself. How my believing in him—just trusting my instincts and knowing I was right—had led to that moment. And changed Logan’s destiny forever.

When I got home I was surprised to find my front door, which we never lock, latched shut. My thin gown had no pockets; I didn’t have my bag, keys, or cellphone—anything. I stood outside, ringing my own doorbell, yet no one answered.

In my mind’s eye, I Saw my coven lying unconscious in my living room, slumped over on the couches and easy chairs. Mom’s mouth was open as she lay in her armchair, with a book splayed across her chest. “Geez, so much for waiting up,” I muttered. Whispering a frantic spell, I snapped the latch open with my palm.

“Mom!” I ran over to the chair, shaking her. Nothing. “Mom, wake up!” This was starting to creep me out. Something was wrong. After how worried she was about the Enchantment, and then no contact for the rest of the night? I figured she’d be up pacing, worried sick, not slumbering away.

I shook her harder. She was so still and limp. Fearing the worst, I checked her pulse. It was there, just weak, like she was in a deep, deep sleep. Laying my palms on her heart, I spun a quick energizing spell, and magic coursed through me and into her. It was like my hands were defibrillation paddles restarting her heart.

The magic I gleaned from Logan when he healed me seemed to have increased my powers.

Iris’s eyes slowly opened and took me in hazily, as if she was waking from a dream. “Lily?”

“Mom, are you okay?”

“What happened to you? Why are you so dirty?” She rubbed her eyes, looking genuinely confused.

The other witches stirred, waking slowly, gazing at me with matching “duh” expressions. I ran to the kitchen and brewed a huge pot of strong coffee, which I tossed a dash of clarifying herbs into. After pouring the magically enhanced coffee into an array of brightly-colored ceramic mugs, I carried them back into the living room on a long, wooden tray. In my torn gown, I must’ve looked like Cinderella catering to her Stepmother’s Evil Book Club.

“I apologize, Lily. We must’ve fallen asleep. What time is it?” Camellia said with a suspicious eye rub/yawn combo. She looked perfect in her white suit, so I wasn’t buying it.

“Just after two a.m.,” I said, eyeing her warily.

“We must’ve dozed off after our long walk back from the Grove. Our apologies.”

The other witches looked confused, and more than a little “dozey.”

“Good thing no complications arose,” I said sarcastically. “It’s pretty odd that it took electric hand currents to revive my mother and only a pot of magic coffee to wake the rest of you.”

Camellia’s eyes narrowed into two slits. “What are you implying?”

“That the coven was drugged.”

“Who would drug us?” she asked, eyes now wide and innocent.

“Oh, I can think of a couple people who might not want our entire coven to know what happened tonight. You’re surprised to see me, aren’t you?” I walked slowly toward where she was sitting, with her back to the unlit fireplace. With a flick of my swordfinger, I ignited the logs, startling her. “Didn’t think I’d be able to get out of that quicksand so easily, did you?” I said.