Demons (Darkness #4)(32)

Stefan bit back a laugh. That change in topic was welcomed. “I have to get through the Regional before I make Regional.”

“Give Sasha a few hard knocks with the council, just to get her riled up, and you two will be unstoppable. She learns quickly, she’s got limitless potential, and she’s…got your back, like you said. It was the last boost you needed to step up.”

“Chess board is set up, huh?” Stefan drolled as they neared a paler-than-usual Toa.

“She’s not the only one that has your back. If that male was any whiter, he’d look like a snowman.” Jameson smirked before peeling away toward the driver’s side.

“Need to check out anything before we go?” Stefan asked Toa.

Toa just shook his head, for once with nothing to say. Stefan wished it would hold through the evening as well. They’d have to sit at the same dinner, after all. The same dinner, hoping no one had to challenge anyone else…

Chapter 9

The women in the clearing sat with bowed heads, eyes closed, and breathing deeply. Focusing.

“Okay, women, call the corners,” the leader said quietly. “Let’s try to cleanse the negative feel of this place.”

Dominicous and Jonas shifted at the same time, tiny movements hinting that their focus just got a lot more…focused.

The air electrified around us. Magic pulsed and beckoned, looming around me. Swirling and dancing, playful and joyous, it begged me to fill myself and become one with the women in the clearing. To suck in as much as I could hold and join hands. To laugh harder and louder than I ever had. A smile curled my face as Charles bent to regard my expression in confusion.

They can access their magic!

I felt the flame within each of them. The leader burned a bright orange, filled with a mass of raw, blasting power. The mousy one simmered with only green, but it twisted and churned in such a strange and intricate way. The twins each sported red, their faces screwed up in intense concentration.

“I thought you said humans couldn’t access their magic.” The words tumbled out of my gaping mouth quietly. They were like me! I could feel it. I could sense the rightness of it, the sameness, in a way I couldn’t feel the clan’s at all.

“What did you say?” Dominicous stepped close to me, bending to catch my words. “They have magic, did you say?”

“These old broads?” Charles whispered incredulously.

I opened up to the elements, feeling that rush as sweet magic filled my body. Without even thinking, I joined that throbbing elixir in the clearing. I entwined my magic within theirs, feeling the community of it in a way I’d never felt in my whole life. Feeling at one with it. I wasn’t linked, because we weren’t sharing power, but more…hanging around each other. Nodding to each other, magically.

“What is…” The leader’s brow furrowed.

Almost immediately, that wrongness from the spell left behind sullied the magic. The jagged fragments corroded the natural world around it. A failed spell, maybe, but a nasty one.

The women were trying to wash away the magical stink. All they were succeeding at, however, was playing with the elements. They could suck in magic, but they weren’t really doing anything with it. They lacked training and focus.

I didn’t.

Without meaning to, I swept them all up into my focus, like holding hands from a distance; reveling in the unity, feeling the embrace of like-using magical people. Toa and I hadn’t been able to do this—when my spell touched his magic, the power leaped to him, forcing a link. With these women, with similar magic, we just kind of kumbaya’ed around the clearing, beating our magical drums in harmony.

No, it wasn’t strictly useful, magically speaking, but it was bolstering my spirits with each passing moment. I wasn’t alone!

I analyzed the spell left behind. It hovered like a burned frame of a house, decrepit. Concentrating, trying not to laugh in glee, I smothered what was there while also knocking down the foundations. I wiped away solid traces of the spell, collapsing the rest of the framework with it.

“What’s happening?” Charles asked. His hand squeezed my shoulder. “What are you doing with the magic?

I focused with all my being on one sticky part. Like an intricate knot in the hands of someone who bit their nails, I couldn’t quite get it. I couldn’t disentangle it. I could probably blow it up, which would greatly help my frustration, but it wouldn’t help much else.

Just as I was about to throw up my hands and let it go, I felt a deft magical touch, as though soft, light hands covered mine and took over. With a complexity that would piss Toa off, the small details of the spell were finally unraveled. The rest of the magic disintegrated like snow falling, settling back into the world around it.

“What just happened?” Dominicous asked in a low hum. His gaze hit mine. “Did you unravel that spell?”

“What was that?” the leader asked, her eyes blinking open in confusion.

“Did you feel it?” the mousy woman asked, eyeing the leader.

I nodded at Dominicous dumbly, holding on to the feeling of this new magical community. Sisterhood. I wanted to hug somebody.

“Oh really? Now you want to get up on me? Woman, you’re taken. Get off.” Charles peeled my hands away with a grin.

“It worked!” one of the twins exclaimed in shock. “We did it.” She paused, staring at the candles. “How did we do it? That was weird.”