Magick (Book 3 in the Coven Series) (9 page)

Hope lowers her hands. “Just a little bit more and the suppression will be gone. You’ll be able to access your power. Even though the bracelet will prevent you from using dark magic, that doesn’t mean there’s not a danger. It’s hard to predict how pent-up magic will behave when released. You might have to quickly get a hold on it.”

“No pressure there,” Egan says. “Okay, let’s do this.” He shakes out his arms, loosening the tension gathered in his muscles.

It surprises me that I can tell there’s tension there. Am I just more aware of the bond between us now, or can it possibly be even stronger than before?

“Can you sense Egan now?” Sarah asks me.

I nod. “Even with the bracelets on. I can’t sense any of you though.”

I can tell by the slight widening of Sarah’s eyes that we’re firmly in new territory here.

Hope uses her magic to finish pulling back the suppression spell. Egan lifts his arm, and his skin looks perfectly normal. Envy flares within me, but I bat it away. I try not to think about where it came from, that maybe a bit of my darkness is already leaking out.

“How do you feel?” Hope asks.

“Okay.” Egan looks at me with a touch of concern in his eyes that he hides from the others. Can he already sense the flare of envy within me? Is he thinking it’s the darkness, too?

Sarah steps up next to Hope. “Access your magic,” she says to me. “Try to control how much and concentrate it only in one hand.”

Egan lifts his hand and flexes his fingers slowly before cupping his hand, palm upward. I feel the power before it appears like miniature lightning arcs jumping from one finger to another. I watch it, mesmerized. It looks like a ball of energy he could throw the same as a baseball.

“Good,” Hope says. “Now try the same thing in both hands at once.”

After a moment, an identical ball of energy appears in his left hand. I feel the relief in him at being able to have magic at his command again and the fact that it didn’t blow up in his face.

“Do you feel any darkness?” Sarah asks.

He shakes his head. “No, which is weird.”

“Look deeper, make sure.”

I can’t feel everything he’s doing, but I know how he’s navigating down one layer at a time.

Again, he shakes his head. “Will the magic still be as powerful?”

“It’s the same,” Sarah says. “The only thing that is different is what you can use it for.” She looks at me. “Since the bracelets negate dark magic, it can’t be used for dark purposes.”

“So it’s white magic?” he asks.

“Not exactly. As we understand it, even the darkest magic is mixed with light. Only the dark magic is so overwhelming that it almost always eclipses the light. Most witches don’t even know it’s there beneath.”

“But I thought you said not every witch has the potential to be a white witch,” I say.

“They don’t. For instance, the Bane are somewhere in between. We know we still possess dark magic, but we keep it under control. Egan can learn to do the same. Yours is trickier.” Sarah shoves her hands into the pockets of the tan slacks she’s wearing. “Because you are the one with white witch potential, your dark magic is also stronger. Were it not for the bracelet, I think it would take over again.”

Cold settles heavily in my middle.

The next hour passes with Egan accessing more and more of his power. I’m equal parts anxious and afraid to tackle my own power, but the longer I have to wait the more my stomach twists itself in knots.

“Let’s take a break and come back after lunch,” Sarah says.

Part of me wants to protest, but I realize a break is a good idea. Even without doing anything on my part, I’m tired. While the Bane members talk to Egan, I slip from the room and wander down a hallway with no destination in mind. Every nugget of information I’ve learned since waking up chained to that chair jostles for position in my mind. I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I don’t hear the clicking of Sarah’s heels until she’s almost beside me.

“You seem to be thinking awfully hard,” she says.

I stop in the middle of the corridor but don’t look at her. “The more I learn, the more I’m convinced my mother was a potential white witch, and that’s why she died,” I say as more pieces of the giant puzzle slide into their designated spots in the overall picture.

“But you said she was killed for trying to flee your coven.”

I start walking again, slower this time. “That’s what they said, but my mother was like no one else in my family. She was kind and loving. Maybe I just didn’t see it, but I never saw her use really dark magic. But I never saw anything like the bright light I emitted during that fight with my coven either.”

“She probably had no idea why she was different, just that she didn’t fit.”

“Things I overlooked before are slipping into place, and I think they killed her because they didn’t want her to find out what she was.” I swallow hard and wonder if I’ll ever not want to cry when I think about her. “My father
 . . .
he’s a horrible man. I believe he killed her so the other covens wouldn’t find out about her and call for a Conclave. To him, it was better to say his wife had run away with his children than to admit he had a potential white witch in our bloodline.”

Sarah is quiet for a moment as my revelation hangs in the air. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug, not trusting myself to speak.

Sarah places her hand on my shoulder, a gesture of comfort that totally surprises me. “From what you’ve told me about her, I think your mother would be proud of you.”

I shake my head. “She’d be appalled. She would have never killed a man.”

“You don’t know what she would have done if people she loved were threatened.” It seems Sarah has at least partially accepted Keller’s explanation for what drove me to kill Barrow.

I try to imagine my mother driving the life from someone like I did with Amos Barrow, and the image simply won’t form.

“You can do what she didn’t have the opportunity to,” Sarah says. “She wanted to be free, and if we can figure out how to bring your white witch powers to fruition maybe you can find a way to convince the covens to change their ways. At least some of them. If your mom, you and Egan can be different, it stands to reason there are others.”

I think about the message Egan received from someone claiming exactly that and decide to tell Sarah about it.

She considers what I’ve said for a moment. “I agree it’ll be tricky to find out without giving yourselves away, but maybe we can help with that. Let me think about it, talk with the others.”

I look down the hallway behind us. “Do all of you live here? And why aren’t there any men?”

“We stay here when the need arises, like now. But we all have normal lives, too. Homes, families, jobs. I’ve got the library. Amanda is a teacher. Hope is a stay-at-home mom, though her little ones have gone to visit her husband’s grandmother in Connecticut until this is all over. Caren is the local medical examiner. Piper goes to school in Marblehead. As for the men, it hasn’t always been all women. Right now it is because none of us have male children, and all of us are descended from the original Bane through our mothers.”

The sounds of a door opening and closing are followed by the thud of footsteps.

“Sounds like your friends are back,” Sarah says. She takes a step away. “We’ll start again in a couple of hours.” She heads back the way we came just as Toni and Amanda round the corner ahead of me followed by Keller and Piper.

Something ugly rolls inside me, and I catch my breath at the fear it’s the darkness making its presence known. But then I realize it’s just good old-fashioned jealousy. When Keller notices me and smiles, the jealousy flickers out. That smile tells me more than words that I have nothing to worry about. Even Piper’s friendly smile tells me my initial reaction is foolish. She’s been nothing but nice to us, and we need all the friends we can get.

That thought reminds me of Rule. I wonder how he and Adele are doing. I hope that they’ll not do anything too dangerous, that they’ll stay safe and well out of the line of fire. Honestly, I wish they would leave town until this is over. But even if I could communicate that message to them, I doubt they’d heed it.

“Hey,” Toni says when she looks up from her conversation. She looks past me as Amanda follows in Sarah’s wake. “Where’s Egan?”

“Working on becoming Egan the Good Witch.”

“Not too good, I hope,” Toni says under her breath.

Piper laughs, and Keller covers his ears. “I have to bleach my eardrums now,” he says. But he lowers his hands to pull me into his arms, planting a kiss on top of my head.

“I’ve so got to get a boyfriend,” Piper says as she shakes her head.

Toni looks at her with disbelief, and I’m pretty sure my expression is similar.

“You probably have boys lined up for miles to go out with you,” I say.

“Ha,” Piper says. “My dating pool is pretty thin. Like nonexistent. Well, nothing remotely serious anyway.”

Where moments ago I was jealous of her, now I totally sympathize with her plight. Going out for pizza or to a school dance is probably not difficult for her, but a serious relationship? That gets a little stickier when you’re a witch, even if you can’t use dark magic.

We start down the hallway, heading to lunch.

“Did you get all of our stuff?” I ask.

“Yeah. The clothes and other things are already in our rooms,” Toni says.

“The vehicles are stashed in an underground garage, weapons included.”

Keller holds me back so that Toni and Piper get a bit ahead of us. “How did things go this morning?” he asks.

“Okay, but they haven’t unharnessed me all the way yet.” I lift my arm to show him. “I was afraid of releasing both of us at once, so we’re taking it slow with Egan first. But I’m on tap this afternoon. Don’t guess there’s any chance of you skipping out on that now that you’re back, is there?”

“Nope.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He hugs me close. “I have faith in you.”

“Yeah, we’ll see what you say once your pants are on fire or I start a cyclone inside.”

He laughs, but I’m not sure I couldn’t do both of those things fairly easily. Keller is well aware of that too, despite his vote of confidence. “So, where are we, anyway?” I ask.

“On a big tract of wooded land a few miles outside of Salem. There’s an average-size house above this facility. When you leave here, you exit through the house. You’d never know this underground building is here. And not even the house is visible from the road.”

“Sounds perfect for hiding out for three centuries.”

I don’t eat much at lunch either due to the same anxiety. If I can get through this afternoon without setting the place on fire or maiming someone, I’m going to be ready to eat a buffet all on my own at dinner. But food is the last thing I’m concerned with when we return to the stone room. I’m so nervous I can’t stand still. I pace, wishing I could go outside instead and run until I totally exhaust myself.

Keller grabs my hand as I walk by him and pulls me to a stop. “It’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he says. “But even if you do get off to a rocky start, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. You have to believe that.”

I take his other hand in mine. “Sometimes I think you’re too good to be true.”

“Be careful, you’ll give me an ego big enough to rival Egan’s.”

“I heard that,” Egan says.

I smile, determined to prove Keller right. I turn and face the Bane members, and the stone walls of the training room surrounding us gives me an odd feeling of going back in time, reminding me of just how long the Bane have been around. Keller and Toni retreat to the back of the room near the door. As Egan did this morning, I lift my arm. This time it’s Caren who steps forward to unbind the magic. Sarah, Hope and Piper are nearby just in case their combined power is needed. I try not to think about how it won’t be enough if the darkness totally grips me. Not even a dozen members of my family coven could stop me.