She broke off. We all waited in silence. I set the mug down again and stood so I could peer at them closely. Not that I knew what I was looking at or anything.
“What? What are they saying?”
Her bottom lip popped out of her teeth. She lifted her gaze to meet mine. “They say yes. That everyone is.”
“Everyone, as in the whole group of traveling, singing witches?”
She shook her head, peeled away a blonde curl stuck to her cheek. “No, everyone.”
I walked over to the mahogany cabinets, ran my hand over the black-marble countertop. “Nope. We have an agenda here and no time for that end-of-the-world crap again.”
Blythe jumped up. “I’m not talking the end of the world—I’m talking about us. We’re in danger. According to those stones, we will be meeting up with the band and face a dangerous threat.”
“Singing witches? Come on, Blythe.”
Phro had been trying to use energy to move the stones. She growled in frustration and gave up. “Remember the ghost of the drowned victim you saw in the marshes? When he sang, you were pulled toward him. Witches are alive and still have that life force strong in their magic. A group?” She crossed her arms. “That could be bad.”
“Great.” Sighing, I leaned my head on a cabinet. My forehead had started aching and in answer, the slow-healing gash on my leg began to throb.
There was a shuffling noise by the door and we all turned when Castor padded into the kitchen in socked feet. He’d bought sweatpants like mine, but in gray with a matching T-shirt. We were the same height and could easily swap clothes, especially since I wasn’t all that blessed in the chest department. He hadn’t yet cut his hair and it fell in shimmering waves past his shoulders. I heard Blythe’s soft gasp.
I didn’t cut my hair. Big freaking waste of time since it just grew right back to the same length overnight. Castor didn’t mind slashing his off daily and he made me rethink my habits. Shorter hair would certainly fit under hats better. I usually liked to wear one in public. The one difference in my twin’s hair and mine was the crown of white I had at the top. A crown that ran into long strips of white to the ends. In the sun or even a bright moon, the white glowed. Hats helped me blend.
He halted when he saw us all staring and took in our expressions. “What’d I miss?”
Blythe opened her mouth, I sent her a quick, warning glare, and she snapped it shut fast.
I got up and pulled down a coffee mug for my brother. “We need to get Blythe’s mentor to help with her magic problems, so Blythe and I are going to take a short trip. Sophie is singing in a band and we’re going to a concert to talk with her.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. He let the empty mug dangle from one finger and leaned his hip on the counter. “Yeah right. So what’s with the vibes in here?”
“Vibes?” I turned and winked at Blythe. “I think maybe the witch likes your hair.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded. Hard. “That’s it exactly. The vibes are from that. They’re sexual. Sexual vibes. Because you’re so pretty.”
Way to overplay it, Blythe.
Castor’s copper eyebrows drew together as he scowled. “Pretty isn’t a compliment.”
Another male voice entered the fray as Dooby sidled into the room. “On you, sweetie, it’s merely fitting.”
My brother chuckled and shook his head. He liked Dooby. It was hard not to. Okay, at first it wasn’t. When I met him, I couldn’t stand him. But he grew on me. Once he dropped the kingly wave, egotistical shows of his power and the general bitchiness toward his ex-girlfriend Blythe, he was just…well, the Doob. Stunning, graceful, a little girlish and as I’d learned the hard way, not the least discerning in whom he took to bed.
The Doob went with pretty. Male, female, supernatural creature…didn’t matter.
His presence here, and so early, surprised me. I had to swallow a chuckle when I took in his outfit. Today must be rock-star day. Brown leather pants clung to every slim muscle in his long legs, and a flowing white poet shirt was open to the waist, framing a damned-impressive six-pack. Suede, knee-high boots completed the outfit. He’d dyed his auburn hair black about a week ago and today, he’d pulled it into a high ponytail and cut bangs.
Bangs.
I watched him get a mug of coffee for himself and send a flirting wink to Castor before settling against the counter next to him. Thankfully, he’d lost most of his antagonism toward Blythe, but I saw the way he watched her sometimes and expected it to flare back to life.
“Love the locks long,” Dooby murmured, putting his full lips together in an air kiss aimed at my brother. “You should leave them like that today so I have good fantasy material for later.”
Castor handled Dooby as he always did. He grinned and accepted the flirting for what it was. He did blush. A little. Twirling his empty cup, he turned his gaze back to me. “So? What about those vibes again?”
“Ooh, vibes?” Dooby asked. “Do share.”
I narrowed my eyes at the necromancer. “You never get to Elsa’s before ten, so what gives?”
“I heard about the fire. Figured you’d all come here. Castor let me in and I must say, this place is spectacular.” He suddenly lost his grin. “Please tell me you saved the book.”
Nodding, I got up to get a refill of coffee and frowned when there was only a quarter of a cup left. “The book is here. There’s a big table in the gathering room you can use to work on or you can use the library.”
His eyes, baby blue like Blythe’s, lit up. “Gathering room? Library? Do show.”
Castor sent me a probing look. I glared at him, but he only laughed. “I found the library last night. I’ll show him.” He set his coffee mug on the counter and padded out of the room.
Dooby waved and followed.
Blythe propped her chin on her fist. “Why didn’t you want Castor to know about the danger?”
“Because I want him to stay here. Elsa will keep an eye on them both.” I pulled out the decanter to start another pot. “I need you to find out where their next concert is and then you and I will take a short trip.”
She opened her mouth and I could tell she was going to bring up all the danger again when her blonde eyebrows nearly met in the middle of her forehead. I held up my hand to shut her up. “It’ll be a short trip. We’ll find her, get a fix for your magic and come home. I want to do the elemental summoning near this house, so you guys can bring my body here for safety. Which reminds me, we have to find a spell to keep me asleep.”
“Unless we leave the portal open the whole time, you’ll stay that way permanently. How will I know when to open it back up?”
My stomach clenched hard. “I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll get Dooby and Castor to start researching, see if anything like this has ever been done or if there’s a spell to maybe bind the elemental into keeping the portal open.” I closed my eyes, rubbed my temples. “There’s so much to figure out before we do this. Let’s just get your magic fixed first. I don’t want you binding yourself even more this time.”
“Or burning down the city.”
“Yeah, I’d thought of that.”
Later in the day while Blythe packed, I rummaged in a greenhouse I discovered behind the house. It was obviously under construction because no actual plant life resided inside, just a lot of boards and tools. I assumed Nikolos planned to build more of the long tables he had in here. There were two.
The sprite was still sleeping—I hoped—in the windowless bathroom, but I needed something to put him in for the trip. I wasn’t letting him out of my sight. Who knew when we’d find another ancient?
I ended up building a kind of rudimentary mini-coffin. It wasn’t pretty, but I glued the hell out of every corner so I was sure no sunlight could get inside. We couldn’t just keep him wrapped in shirts the whole way.
I was wondering if vampires could suffocate later as I watched Blythe pull up a search engine. Dooby and Castor had grocery shopped, so Blythe and I made a quick dinner of sandwiches and chips before settling in front of the computer to find this band.
“The witch who answered the phone said the band is called Staglina.”
It wasn’t hard to find them. They must have been popular because they came up on the first search page. Their website was a dark, serene blue with an image of the moon hovering over an ocean. There were no concert locations, no band member biographies…nothing but a link to a video.
Blythe clicked and sat back with a
thump
against her chair when the music started. So did I. My heart pounded harder, warmth filled my chest. Women’s voices raised in a harmony like nothing I’d ever heard filled the room. Castor and Dooby left the table where they’d been poring over the ancient spell book translations and approached the computer.
We all waited until the last note played, then I released a shaky breath. “Whoa.”
Blythe shook her head. “Sophie can’t be in that. This is magic.”
“Of course it’s magic—they’re witches.” I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I was trying not to do that so much around Blythe with her habit of stating the obvious. I did catch Phro’s eye roll in my peripheral vision. The goddess couldn’t care less about the little witch’s feelings.
Castor leaned over my shoulder and used the mouse to restart the video. He turned the speakers down. “Look at their faces.”
I squinted at the small video. All I saw was a blur of women in blue dresses. “What faces? This is obviously a poorly recorded phone video from a concert.”
“And Staglina linked to it?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? That song alone would pull a lot of people to their concerts.”
“Nothing around them is blurred—just their faces.”
The stage, the trees behind it, everything else showed up sharp and crystal clear. “Creepy.”
“Suspicious,” Blythe replied. “Wonder what Staglina means?” She clicked back to the home page. “And why wouldn’t they have a concert listing? I was told Sophie called them from Alabama. Some small town near Birmingham.”
“I think Staglina is Norse.” I searched the memories of my stint with an obsessive Norse mythology fascination. I’d been trying to find a troll and got completely caught up in the old stories. I wouldn’t be telling Aphrodite this, but I never got quite as fascinated with the Greek myths. “I’m sure Nikolos has some books on Norse myth in his library, but I think I remember it having something to do with a chain and anchor.”
Blythe clicked on another page. Empty again. “I don’t get it. What kind of band has no useful information on their site? How are fans supposed to find them?”
“See if you can find a mention of their concert.” I took a bite of the ham sandwich, enjoyed the extra kick of sharp cheddar. “Maybe someone who went to the last concert blogged or something.”
An hour later, all we had was the location of the last show in Alabama, and that came from a small news piece on cops being called out to break up a concert.
Blythe sighed and stretched her neck back and forth. “I’ll stay on this and read comments on the video page. There were hundreds.” She picked up a potato chip and crunched it.
“Have fun with that. Comment sections on any website never fail to sap at my belief in the general goodness of human beings.” Grimacing, I reached for the mini-coffin I’d built. “I’m too tired to deal with that little creature in the bathroom tonight. Have Elsa or Castor… Wait.” I turned to Dooby, who’d gone back to the book. “You have power over the dead, right, Dooby?”
He looked up. “Yeah, but vampires aren’t technically all-the-way dead.”
“Do you think you could figure out how to feed him so he doesn’t starve before we can get to the spell?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Give me the little coffin.”
I didn’t trust that ornery expression but I walked over and gave the box to him, then walked to the door. “Hey Blythe, don’t stay up too late. We have a long trip tomorrow.”
“In the car?” Blythe avoided my gaze.
Suspicion gave me sudden goose bumps. “I think taking a vampire sprite on an airplane would be a bad idea, don’t you? Why?”
“Nothing. I just don’t like long car rides. But before you go to bed, I want to try something.”
I waited for her to go on. Tapped my foot when she didn’t.
“I think I know how you can see Nikolos again. I have some yerba santa. If we pour boiling water over it and pour it over your ankhs, I think he might come to you in your dreams.”
Even the thought had my heart pounding hard. “Let’s do it then.”
It only took a few minutes to boil the water and strain the concoction over my necklaces. It took me forever to fall asleep because I couldn’t help wondering if it would work. I wiggled so much the sheets tangled about my legs.
When I finally slept, I realized that once again, Blythe had gotten a spell wrong. Instead of Nikolos coming to me…I went to him.
Chapter Four
It would have been nice if I’d been aware of the trip. Visual markers for when I actually went in after him would have helped. But I just woke up standing in the corner of his room. I let go of the ankhs and took a step toward him then stopped, heart breaking into a million pieces.
He slept on a filthy pallet in the corner of a dirt-and-stone enclosure. Thinner, his body had been turned into a canvas for someone who loved black and blue. And red. Choking back a sob, I stood there, frozen.