Magick (Book 3 in the Coven Series) Page 12

  Keller leans his forearms on the table. “There’s no visible way to open it, and it’s spelled closed. The spell’s so powerful it blew Jax off her feet and burned her fingers.”

  “It’s spelled against dark witches, not a white witch,” Sarah says.

  “You mean she can open it now?” Toni asks.

  Sarah nods. “She’s the only person who can open it.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. But you should be able to tell when you’re facing it.”

  Egan leans back in his chair. “How about we skip that part and you just tell us what the missing page says.”

  “I can’t because I don’t know that either. Penelope had the crypt built well before her death, and she hid the page somewhere inside. She created the spell that would seal the crypt shut for good after her body was interred inside. It would never be able to be opened or even touched by a dark witch. Only a true white witch in full control of her powers can open it.”

  “That’s one important piece of paper,” Rule says.

  “Guess I’m going on a field trip,” I say.

  Sarah holds up her index finger. “Not until Egan gets the surveillance set up and we do anything else we need to outside of this building.”

  “Why?” Toni asks. “Seems like the sooner we get that paper, the better.”

  “Because if any dark witches are in the area, they will detect the discharge of magic it will take to open the crypt,” I say. “I’ll have to be very fast.” I realize in that moment that I feel like I might actually be able to run faster than I used to. I’ll have to test that before I go out.

  “You’re not going alone,” Keller says. Worry fills him.

  “I need to be able to move more quickly than you can.”

  “No,” Sarah says. “I can’t have your energy signature leading any dark witches to our door.”

  “So I’m supposed to take an entourage? Expose them to danger?” I don’t hide the sudden frustration, but it’s not coming from any darkness within me. This is just plain old human emotion.

  “We’ll make a sweep of the immediate area,” Sarah says. “It should give you enough time to get inside, retrieve the page and leave the area by car even if your magic is detected from farther away.”

  I don’t like the sound of that should. Too much can go wrong when you’re dealing with should. But I understand where she’s coming from, too. The last thing I want to do is put the Bane and their centuries-long success rate of staying hidden at risk.

  “Fine,” I finally say.

  Egan pushes back from the table. “Well, I better get to work.”

  He takes Toni, Keller, Rule and Piper with him. The rest of the Bane head off to their normal-people jobs to keep up appearances. Hope, who is off work at the school for Christmas break, goes to the herb shop with Adele. That leaves me alone. I have to keep telling myself to not go to the cemetery, that waiting until everything is in place is the safer plan.

  I use the time to test my speed and find I was right. I was fast before, but the white magic has amplified it.

  It’s odd being alone, but it’s also nice to be able to practice my new skills at my own pace, without an audience. But it’s good that today is the last workday before Christmas. Everyone will be able to stay away from their places of employment for the next couple of days without raising any sort of suspicion.

  Even though I’m making good use of my time, growing more and more comfortable with the white magic, I hate not being out in the danger zone helping my friends. It doesn’t even help when I remind myself that it’s to make sure Sean and any other members of my family don’t detect me too soon. We don’t know if they can detect me now that my dark magic is gone, but it would be stupid to take that risk. So I practice and try not to imagine a million different things going wrong.

  After a couple of hours, Sarah comes back since the library closed early for the holiday. When she sees me, she motions for me to follow her.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Okay, that sounds serious. But, really, everything is serious these days.

  When we reach her office, she doesn’t sit but simply drops her purse atop her desk and walks across the room to stand in front of the fireplace. I stop behind one of the couches and place my hands on its back.

  “I wanted to talk to you alone before the others get back,” Sarah says as she turns to face me.

  “Okay.” A tingle of anxiety runs down my back.

  “There is one final bit of information that I, as head of the Bane, hold. I hesitated telling you until I knew for sure you had full control of your white magic. We don’t know the number of coven witches we’ll be facing, and we also don’t know how many will be too many for you to confront at one time. If necessary during battle, there is a way to up the amount of magic at your disposal.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  When she hesitates, my grip on the couch tightens.

  “A fissure.”

  I’m already shaking my head before she finishes. “That’s dark magic. I’m not risking going dark again.”

  “You won’t. That’s not possible now that you’re a fully functioning white witch.”

  This time, I’m the one who paces across the room. “Anything’s possible. You said yourself we’re rewriting witchlore lately.”

  To my surprise, Sarah doesn’t push the issue. “I wanted you to know just in case.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’ll manage without it. Besides, I don’t know where a fissure is anywhere near here anyway.”

  “The fissure where the covens drew out the magic that first time is on the line separating the original Davenport and Pherson properties.”

  Of course it is. I close my eyes and press the heel of my hand against my forehead. “I’m finally free of the dark magic, and I don’t want to risk losing myself again. I can’t live like that.”

  “Just keep it in mind. That’s all I ask.”

  I nod then leave her office, my thoughts racing. I’m going to defeat the covens, but I’m going to do it with only the white magic inside me.

  I sense Keller, Toni and Egan before I hear them, and I’m thankful to be able to focus my thoughts in a different direction. I rush toward the exit. Even knowing they’re in the building, I don’t breathe a sigh of relief until I actually see them. When I round the corner and nearly bump into Rule, I step back and try not to look as desperately happy to see them all as I am.

  But of course there’s no hiding that from Egan. He grabs me around the neck and runs his knuckles over my head. “Did you miss me?”

  I slip out of his grasp and smooth my hair. “You’re a dork.”

  He smiles wide, very happy with himself.

  “How’d it go?” I ask.

  “We are wired up and ready to go as soon as I flip the switch here.”

  We head to the room where he’s set up the surveillance system. Keller comes up beside me. “You okay?”

  I force thoughts about that fissure out of my mind and smile at him. “Fine. Just glad you’re back.”

  When we reach tech-boy central, Egan turns on the monitors. They reveal every room of the farmhouse as well as every vantage point looking outward and back toward the house.

  “You all were busy,” I say.

  He adjusts the volume on the feeds, but all we hear now are the breeze, a bird chirping and the distant sound of a vehicle on the road.

  “I’d say I’m impressed, but your ego doesn’t need any more inflating,” I say. This time, I rub my hand over his head to mess up his hair.

  He pushes the rolling chair away from me. “Prepare to be even more impressed.” He pulls out his phone and turns the screen toward us. “I can check into the feeds from anywhere.”

  “Have you heard from the potential defector yet?” Keller asks. I wonder if he knows how yummy he looks just standing there with his arms crossed and being serious.

  “She said she knows of two others who want to leave, an
d she’s going to ask them if they know of anyone. It takes a while to hear from everyone. They’re all being super careful.”

  Having been in the same situation of planning an escape from a coven compound, I understand their caution if they’re for real.

  Halfway through the afternoon, the others come home from work. My nerves start doing some Irish step dancing. No more waiting.

  “You ready?” Sarah asks.

  I nod. “But you should stay here. The Bane have remained hidden all this time, and you need to keep it that way as long as the dark covens are a threat. If something happens to me, you need to be here to pick up the pieces and keep the Bane intact.”

  I can see part of her wants to argue, but a bigger part knows I’m right.

  “I don’t like this,” she says.

  “Sometimes we do things we don’t like.” Like going back to the one place I never wanted to see again, the place where I killed Amos Barrow.

  I would feel more at ease if I was going to the crypt alone, but there’s no talking Keller, Toni and Egan out of it. I don’t know why I even try anymore. But I flatly refuse when Rule wants to go. He stalks off in a huff, but I can live with that. I meet Adele’s gaze, and she nods at how I’m keeping that promise I made to her to keep her son safe.

  We arm ourselves with conventional weapons—guns, knives and Keller’s bloodstone. Before we leave, Egan does a Google Earth search and finds a different way into the cemetery. He locates a road over the hill from the cemetery where the Jeep will be hidden from view. By the time we leave the Bane’s home, the sun is dipping toward the western horizon. Snow still coats the ground, but the sky is clear blue. It’s the kind of day that tempts you to think all is right with the world.

  Hopefully it soon will be. I mentally cross my fingers that there is something on that missing Beginning Book page that will help us. It has to be super-important if Penelope went through so much trouble to separate it from the book and hide it in her crypt.

  Once we reach the spot Egan picked out to leave the Jeep, we hoof it the short distance through the woods. When we top the hill at the back of the cemetery, I stop and try to calm my erratic heartbeat. I stare not at the crypt but at the spot where I last saw Barrow’s body, the spot where I took a human life. Cold sweat breaks out all down my back, and nausea rolls in my stomach. I half expect the darkness to reawaken within me, but it remains absent. I wonder if I’ll ever stop worrying if it’ll rise up again in me someday.

  Keller turns me toward him as Toni and Egan head on down the hill. “Don’t think about it,” he says.

  “Easier said than done.” Especially after Sarah informed me I have at my disposal the well of power bubbling up from that fissure that birthed the covens.

  He cups my jaw. “Then also think about all the people you may be able to help with the knowledge that’s in that crypt.”

  I let his words sink in and give me the courage to walk down the hill. I lift onto my toes and give him a quick kiss before I follow Egan and Toni. They’re waiting outside the fence that surrounds the cemetery.

  “Do you sense anything?” I ask Egan.

  He shakes his head. “You?”

  “No, at least for now the coast feels clear.”

  When we reach the crypt, it looks no different than it did the last time. But it feels different. There’s no more magic pushing against me, no threat of being blasted halfway across the cemetery. I walk around the mass of stone slowly, looking for some way in. When I make the complete circle, the others are watching me expectantly.

  “I’m going to have to engage my magic.” I look back toward the road that leads to the cemetery, but it remains empty of humans or witches. “If I still can’t figure out a way in, I want you all ready to run the minute I say to.” I wait until they all nod their agreement before I face the front of the crypt. “You might want to stand back a bit.”

  Once they put a few feet between them and me, I lift my hands toward the front of the crypt. With a deep breath, I pull up my magic. I gasp at what reveals itself to me. There, on either side of the raised stone sun that’s the crypt’s only decoration, are two handprints. “Do you all see that?”

  “What?” Egan asks.

  “Beside the sun, two outstretched handprints.”

  “I don’t see anything different,” he says.

  “Me neither,” Toni says.

  Keller steps closer and stares hard at the stone. He shakes his head. “Looks like you’re the only one.”

  I approach the crypt and brace myself at the memory of my first encounter with its protection spell. But when I place my palms over the handprints, all I feel is cold stone. I stare dumbfounded at how my hands fit perfectly inside the confines of the prints. Is that part of the spell? Can it detect the shape of the white witch’s hands?

  I stop asking myself questions in my head when the front of the crypt suddenly starts sliding to the right.

  “Holy crap!” Toni says.

  The stone stops moving, leaving just enough room for me to walk through. I glance back at the others before stepping into the dark interior of the crypt. Keller follows, clicking on a flashlight.

  Toni is next through the doorway. “This is seriously creepy.”

  I don’t know why, but I’m surprised to see a stone coffin in the middle of the small room. It’s like something out of a mummy movie. But I guess if you’re not being buried, you have to have something more than a pine box.

  I walk slowly around the coffin, hoping in vain that the missing page of the Beginning Book will be just lying out in the open for me to take.

  “Oh, man,” Egan says. “Don’t tell me we’ve got to open that thing up.”

  Keller walks around the interior, scanning the walls, ceiling and floor. “I don’t see anywhere else it could be.”

  Egan gives a dramatic shudder. “Oh, hell, let’s get this over with.”

  We all grab a side of the plain stone slab. But as soon as my hands touch it, a scraping sound behind me causes me to spin toward it with magic crackling at my fingertips. A secret compartment has opened in the wall.

  “This gets way more Indiana Jones every minute,” Keller says.

  Egan steps away from the coffin. “I’m just glad we don’t have to see what a three-hundred-year-old dead witch looks like.”

  I click on my own flashlight and approach the opening. With a shaking hand, I lift the piece of paper inside.

  “Is that it?” Toni asks.

  I read the first few words. “Yeah.”

  “What does it say?”

  I hold up a hand to halt the questions while I continue reading. But the more I read, the shakier I get. I’d give just about anything for a chair right about now. When I finish reading, I continue staring at the paper as if the words will change. But they don’t. They keep saying something so incredible it’s hard to believe.

  Keller steps up next to me, his warm presence giving me strength. “Jax? You okay?”

  Instead of answering, I look into the small opening again. I reach in and grasp the object I would have overlooked had the page not told me where it was. With a shaking hand, I retrieve the ring.

  “What’s that?” Toni asks.

  I hold up the simple pewter band that holds a large opal. “It’s the White Ring.”

  “The what?” Toni says.

  “What does it do?” Egan asks.

  I stare at the ring for a long moment before answering. “It gives me the power to end the dark covens forever.” I hold out the book page to let them read the unbelievable words themselves.

  “Damn,” Egan says when he finishes.

  Yeah, that about sums it up. According to the long-lost missing page to the Beginning Book, with this ring I have the ability to drain the dark magic out of every witch I touch.

  Keller meets my eyes, and I see worry in his at the same moment I feel it in him.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s an awful lot of power for one person.” What would he think if I revea
led the little nugget about the fissure, too?

  His concern is nudged aside with determination. “It is, but you have us here. You might have to do the actual act by yourself, but you won’t be alone.” He takes my hand in his. “You’ll never be alone.”

  I’m so caught up in the feel of his hand clasping mine that I almost miss the vibration at the edge of my sensory zone. I grip his hand harder and gasp.

  Egan’s already halfway to the door, pulling Toni after him. “We have to go,” he says.

  Keller pulls the bloodstone from his coat pocket. The stone is glowing bright red.

  “Sean,” I say in answer to the question Keller hasn’t even voiced.

  The stone at the front of the crypt slams closed so quickly that my eyes almost can’t track it. Toni nearly screams, but Egan manages to clap his hand over her mouth in time to stop her. Keller hurries toward the front and runs his hands over the stone as if he can find a hidden lever to release us.

  I hurry to him and grip his arm. “It’s too late. Even if it opens, we can’t get away in time.”

  “We’re trapped?” Toni asks when Egan removes his hand. She sounds more panicked than I’ve heard her since we sat opposite each other beside Egan’s hospital bed following the fight at Shiprock.

  Egan wraps his arms around her with a gesture so protective it makes my heart swell. But when he looks at me over the top of Toni’s head, I see the worry there.

  Even through the thick stone, I sense Sean enter the cemetery. “Turn off the lights and don’t speak.”

  The flashlights click off one right after the other. In the pitch black, Keller pulls me close, too. Even with my phenomenal powers, I still feel safer with his steady presence next to me. An incredible rush of fear at possibly losing him steals my breath.

  Egan reaches through the dark and grasps my hand. I entwine my fingers with his. If I’d grown up in a normal home with a brother, I couldn’t love him more than I do Egan. At times I feel like the love I’ve received and reciprocated is fate’s way of making up for all the years in which I experienced none at all.