Magical Influence Book One (22 page)

It was just my yard. You couldn't hear
anything, you couldn't see anything, and in short, it looked as if
nothing was there.

Jacob still had his arm around me, and
his shirt was covered in blood. If it wasn't for that fact, maybe
he would have doubted what had just happened. Though he took
several more moments to stare into my yard, obvious surprise
shifting through his expression, he took one look down at my arm,
and then reached for his phone.

He was about to call for an ambulance,
wasn't he?

I shifted around and closed my
palm over his before he could open his phone. I shook my
head
. “Don't
get anyone else involved,” I pleaded.

He held my gaze.

I swear that was the longest we
had ever looked at each other up to that point. Before, all we'd
shared were blunt, aggressive glances. Now he slowly shook his
head
.
“You're injured.”

I shook my own
head
.
“Please, don't get anyone else involved.” To prove that I was okay,
I pried myself from his grip and stood up, holding my arm, but not
wavering on my feet.

“I'll be fine...” I took a step back from
him. “You can go now. This has nothing more to do with you.” I kept
on stepping backwards.

Jacob just stood there. His
expression was unreadable. Gone was the arrogant jerk who had
haunted me for the past hour. In its place was
... somebody I couldn't read.
Someone I suddenly understood that I didn't know at all.

“I have a first aid kit in my
car.”

Car. As if on cue, I turned
around.

There she was, my monster truck.
Parked on the curb, glistening in the sun that made it through the
clouds, and all but begging me to clamber inside. Suddenly I was
more than thankful that my grandmother had insisted we buy the
largest and most ridiculous vehicle we could find. The idea of
climbing into a hatchback and zooming away from the devil himself
was not nearly as comforting as hauling myself up into that truck,
gunning the engine, and listening to it roar in
approval.

“So do I,” I lied. “I’ll deal with my cut
myself.”

It was time Jacob and I
separated. It was time for Agent Fairweather to get out of this
world while he still could. To ignore me, to forget me, and to go
about the rest of his day assuming that these past several hours
had been spent in a drug-
fueled hallucination.

Taking another step back from him, not
being able to tear my gaze off his for some reason, I reached the
driver's side door. I put a hand on it.

His look of concern crumpled in
that moment. He shifted his gaze up to the monstrosity that was my
new car
. “Is
that yours?”

I nodded
. “My car got stolen yesterday,
remember? Well this is my replacement.”

He looked at me askance. But it
didn't last. Because his gaze quickly darted down to the blood
still seeping through my Santa Claus sweater
. “I'm not even going to talk
about the fact you replaced your hatchback with a monster truck.
And I'm not going to leave you on the street bleeding. Where is
your first aid kit?”

“It's over, Jacob. We’re out of the house.
You can go. Like you wanted to,” I forced myself to turn
around.

I didn't have the keys for my car, but
hell, I was a witch. As soon as we had signed those papers, this
car had become part of the family. It was a Sinclair vehicle now,
and it had been sold to me by my cousin. So yes, that meant I
didn't need a key; as soon as I reached up and tugged on the
handle, it opened, and I swear it gave a purr too.

“Hey, what are you doing? I can’t let you
drive around with an injury like that. You’re going to crash into a
train. Get back down here.”

Why did people keep on telling
me that this truck could take on a train? I knew enough about
repetition and affirmations to
realize that the more people repeated
that, the more likely it would become. And frankly, I really had no
intention of slamming my brand-new vehicle into an oncoming
locomotive.

I didn't get down. Instead I closed
the door.

As I laid my hands on the wheel, I
almost forgot about the pain of my injury. The vantage from this
car was incredible. I felt like I was in a tank. It actually
brought a smile to my lips.

As I looked out at the storm above, it
seemed duller, dimmed down. In my massive black monster truck the
weather no longer appeared to be able to affect me as
much.

I leaned down to turn it on. Though I
didn't have any keys, I just made the motion of doing it, and the
thing roared into life. Again, not something your ordinary car
would do, but something a Sinclair family vehicle had no trouble in
learning.

Before I could pull out from
the curb, my passenger door opened, and Agent Fairweather clambered
in. He fixed me with a steely, deadly gaze
. “Turn the car off.”

Before I could react, he leaned over
and went to grab at the keys from the ignition.

Except they weren’t there.

I watched his expression
falter. He looked for them, checked my hands, then looked back at
my face
. “I
don't get it, have you installed some kind of voice
recognition?”

I snorted at
him
. “No,
it's magic. As if I could afford a fancy ignition.”

With that I patted the steering wheel,
and the car growled. Yes, growled. It didn't rumble, the engine
didn't suddenly rev. The truck growled like it was a lion getting
ready for a fight.

“Where’s the first aid kit? Esme, where is
your first aid kit?”

Where we on first name terms
now?

“Look, Agent Fairweather, I got you out of
the house, or you got me out of the house, whatever. The point is,
you can leave like you wanted to. Just leave this up to
me.”

“Leave this up to you? I've seen what you
can do. If a man is in trouble, you throw a broken fence picket at
his feet. How exactly are you going to keep yourself
safe?”

“Are you forgetting how I got this,” I
took one hand off the wheel and pointed to the deep, deep gash in
my arm. My sweater was thankfully a cheery red, so the sight of
blood soaking it wasn't as stark. Yet I was sure he got the picture
clear and sharp.

It got Jacob's attention, and
that arrogant look on his face faltered
. “Where's the first aid kit? Now
please, turn the car off.”

“I don't have time. We might appear safe
now, but those things will still be after me. It's different out
here in the real world, but they’ll find a way. I have to get to
the rest of my family.”

“Then I'll drive,” he nodded at the
wheel.

My eyebrows crumpled, my lips
pulling thin
. “You don't have to help me; I can do this on my own. Get
back to your real life. Aren’t you worried you're still
hallucinating? Aren’t you worried this is all some kind of
drug-fuelled nightmare?”

He ignored me. He pointed at
the wheel
.
“Shift into the back seat.” I'll drive.

I laughed through a
cough
.
“Agent Fairweather, don't you want to go to the hospital to check
to see what we put in your biscuits? Aren’t you suspicious about
what my grandmother was flicking at you from that ice cream
container?”

“I can handcuff you, if that would help?”
He crossed his arms.

I stared at him with an open
mouth
. “You
don't have any handcuffs. And what are you doing? Why do you want
to help me so much? You already made it clear you think I'm mad,
that I'm a criminal, and that you want to get away from me the
first chance you can get. Well you’ve got your chance now, so
go.”

“Are you serious? Do you think I'm going
to leave you alone? I've seen what you can't do. You may be a
witch, but you're the worst one I've ever met. You think I'm going
to leave you in this monster truck to be chased around the city by
the Devil's finest? The damage will be irreparable.”

I turned around to face him,
getting ready to argue my point. Then I stopped. I leaned
back
. “Worst
witch you've ever met?”

His expression had been even up
to that point. Now his cheek twitched
. “Get out of the driver's
seat.”

“What do you mean worst witch you’ve ever
met?”

“Don't make me wrestle you into the back,
because I will.”

“Why are you so good at seeing magic?
Don't you dare tell me that you are a magical creature. Don't you
dare tell me that you’ve been keeping that from me,” suddenly it
didn't matter that my arm was still gushing blood. It didn't matter
that I was in a perilous situation and the longer I stayed on the
curb arguing with Fairweather the more likely I was to be kidnapped
and killed by ghosts and gnomes.

What mattered was this growing sense
of unease. I'd already noted that Jacob Fairweather didn't have
normal reactions around magical creatures. Ordinary people who had
no experience with the bizarre didn't pause to quip on the second
landing and point out giraffes with voodoo pins. Neither did they
have such extended arguments with witches when they could just as
easily haul themselves to the nearest hospital to get their blood
checked for hallucinogens.

“If you’re not going to tell me where that
first aid kit is soon, you're going to lose consciousness,” he said
clearly, moving his lips slowly.

“I don't care if I lose consciousness,
have you been lying to me?” I pointed at him, stupidly using the
same arm that was now weakened from injury and blood loss. As soon
as I moved, I groaned and I blinked heavily.

“That's it, I can't take this anymore,”
Jacob leaned over to me, grabbed at my arm, and closed his palm
around my injury.

At first I tried to fidget
back
. “What
are you doing?”

“Hold still,” he snapped at me through
clenched teeth.

“No, what are you...” I trailed off. Not
because I couldn't think of an appropriate insult to fling Jacob's
way, but because my mind suddenly became hazy. It became hazy
because my body filled with a warmth, unmistakable and impossible
to ignore.

Magic.

It spread from the wound, up the arm,
through my chest, and down into my torso. It was like popping into
a bath after a cold and stressful day, or sitting down to a
fantastic plate of chocolate cake in front of a warm fire.
Everything that had been troubling me melted away. The fact I was
being hunted became just a curiosity, the fact I still had so much
to do if I wanted my life back, became nothing more than an odd
thought at the edge of my consciousness.

My eyes closed, and I fell back
against the driver's seat.

“You are such a pain in the ass,” I heard
Jacob mumble.

“You're a jerk,” I replied, automatically.
But my words were mumbled, and as soon as my lips closed, I
couldn't open them again.

I succumbed to a deep, inviting,
healing sleep.

At the touch of Jacob Fairweather, the
apparent ordinary Federal Agent, my wound healed itself.

Chapter 16

I woke up with a start. A rattling
snort in fact.

“Wow, you were knocked out for ages. Call
yourself a witch? You have about as much magic in you as my left
pinky.”

It took me a while to adjust,
but soon enough I
recognized the voice as belonging to my dear favorite Agent
Fairweather.

My head was pounding, but the feeling
slowly subsided.

Soon enough I was aware of the
fact I was in a car travelling somewhere. My memories were having
trouble coming back to me, but after several moments of listening
to the engine roar, I
realized where I was, who I was with, and what had
just happened.

I sat bolt upright.

I was sitting in the passenger seat,
belted in, with a jacket rolled up and lodged behind my head. As
soon as I sat upright, it fell onto my lap, and out of the pocket
tumbled a badge. A Federal Police badge.

I turned to him slowly.

“Don't do anything stupid. I mean, don't
do anything else stupid; you've already ruined this day as it is.
Just be a good girl and sit there quietly.”

Be a good girl and sit there quietly?
Instead I tugged off my sweater, pulled up the sleeve of my top,
and checked my arm. There was no wound. It was completely gone, not
even a mark was left.

Magic like that, the likes of
which was required to knit flesh without a scar
... was staggering. It was also
far, far beyond me. My grandmother, possibly, if she were in a
powerful mood, could have done something similar. But Jacob
Fairweather?

I turned to him slowly again, this
time I leaned towards the window, as if I were trying to get as far
away from him as I could. Because, frankly, I was. The man I had
thought had been a belligerent, if arrogant but still relatively
innocent Federal Agent had just surprised the hell out of me. He
was obviously magical. What did he want, why was he here, and why
had he pretended not to know anything about my world and
witches?