Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(8)

I clenched my right hand into a fist, drew a sliver of magick out of myself, and then opened my palm sharply. When my fingers stretched, a shining ball of light burst into existence, sending a pulse of bright, silver light in all directions. Instead of waiting to see if I could spot the thing I had seen moments ago, I ran, pushing my legs as hard as they would go in the direction of the road. As I heard the second set of footsteps, I knew it was behind me.

Again, I clenched my hand into a ball and let a trickle of magick to gather inside. Sparing only an instant to glance over my shoulder as my feet kept pounding the wet earth, I threw the ball of light into the darkness and watched it explode like a soundless bomb. But there was no one there. The light touched the trees and car, but no person.

No madman with an ax. No monster with three heads. Nothing at all.

I stopped running now and backed away slowly, breathing heavily to match the pounding of my own heart. My eyes moved wildly from side to side, taking every possible inch of this swamp in. I thought of throwing another bright pulse into the darkness, but a car hissed along the road behind my back. Civilization—and humans—were close, and I didn’t want to risk being seen.

Humans couldn’t see magick, but a ball of light was a ball of light.

I picked my way up the embankment and back onto the road, feeling the semi-solid gravely sand beneath my feet and exulting in the sensation. I grabbed my phone now and, finding a signal, decided in the moment to call Remy. He would know what to do.

When he found me, I was sitting next to the broken barrier, keeping my eyes wide open for any sign of the thing I was almost sure I had just seen. Before he arrived, I’d been completely sure there had been something on the road and in the woods. Now, the memories were a little blurry; the details were sketchy and ephemeral, like a half-remembered dream.

Remy pulled up alongside me, the wheels crunching to a halt on the gravel. He stepped out of the car and circled around the hood with his hands in his pockets. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”

“And the car?”

I threw my thumb over my shoulder. “In there somewhere. I called the emergency services. They’ll be here soon.”

Remy pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed them in front of his chest. “How the hell did you wind up out here?”

I looked up at him. Thanks to the mist, encasing us in a gray cocoon, it looked as if we were the only two people on the planet—completely separate from the rest of the world. “Is it possible something followed me from your house?” I asked.

“Followed? How?”

“I don’t know. But is it?”

“There was no one else there but us. Who could have followed you?”

“I don’t know. A spirit, maybe?”

“Spirit?”

I sighed. “You know more about blood magick than I do, Remy. I did something in that house I’ve never done before, and now I’m sitting here, having been run off the road I didn’t know I was driving on, by something I don’t even remember being there.”

Remy cocked his head. “You don’t remember?”

“No. I mean, I know I was driving, but then I got lost and turned around somewhere, then I was on this road and something caused me to drive my car into the barrier. I think I saw it again in there. But now I’m not even sure I know what it looked like.”

“You don’t know if it was human or animal?”

I shook my head. “I think it was human,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

Remy took a deep breath and surveyed the area where my car had gone into. You couldn’t see the back of it from here. The darkness beyond the road was full of misty tendrils and hanging moss, shivering with the cool, night wind. Something about the dark made my heart want to gallop again, so I looked away.

“I’ll go inside and have a look,” Remy said.

“No,” I said, probably a little too quickly. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“You’re sure?”

“I think so. I may have spooked it. Either that or it was just playing with me and it chose to leave. Whatever it was, do you think it had anything to do with the magick I just did?”

Remy seemed to consider this for a long moment—longer than I would have liked. “I can’t say,” he said.

His words made my stomach go cold. “You… can’t?”

“You’re a high magician; you don’t cast magick from the mind, you cast it from the heart. I don’t know of many other high magicians who use blood magick. And those who do probably don’t use it to bring things back from the dead.”

“So, you aren’t sure if we just did something we shouldn’t have done.”

He turned his face down and shook his head.

“Well, shit. Now what?”

“Nothing,” Remy said, “I’m going to figure this out and get to the bottom of it. The best thing you can do now is get back to Lumière. Its magick will protect you.”

“What about Tamara?”

“What about her?”

“Do you think she…”

“It’s not like her to do something like this. Tamara isn’t subtle—she’d have wanted you to know it was she who did this to you.”