Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(50)

His fingers glistened as they swept over the sigil, leaving behind the Heka needed to charge the spell; so much for the pristine edition of his rare grimoire. When he spoke the incantation, his voice cracked, then settled. His Latin was flawless—as good as mine, if not better. I scrambled to focus on the lost memory that I was trying to recapture, and when the last of his Latin tumbled out, I realized why the spell was called The Wheel.

His energy poured into me in a steady torrent. I felt it, recognized it as his. Such a strange feeling, almost as intimate as sex, and something I’d never experienced. It mixed with my Heka, then left me in a rush, just as if I’d pushed it out intentionally. The energy link. That was what the instructions for the spell had meant. Our combined energy moved in a circle, gathering strength and speed as magick circulated between us. His arms wrapped around me, and mine around them, and we held on to each other like we were in the middle of a tornado, trying to ride out the spinning storm.

A flood of jagged, partial memories surfaced and faded, each one vying for attention. Flashes of faces. Fragments of sentences. My old life returning after years of sitting idle under a layer of dust. Streams of hot, silent tears spilled over my cheeks, but I wasn’t sure why.

Then it became painful. Wrenching. The magical wheel was off-track. Colors blurred into blackness and my mind felt as if it were being bulldozed from the inside out. I strained to break away and heard Lon groaning to do the same. Without warning, the spell derailed completely, and the shock of it threw us backward together. The room reappeared in my bleary vision as I slammed against him. We hit the shelves behind us so hard, a row of books flew out and rained down on our heads as we tumbled to the floor.

I gasped for air and struggled to untangle myself from Lon as someone called in the distance. Three loud knocks pounded on the locked library door. Apparently now home from school, Jupe spoke in a muffled voice from the other side.

“Dad? What was that loud noise? Is Cady here? Her rental car is outside.” He pounded on the door again. “Are you guys okay? What just happened?”

I wondered the same thing as I zipped up my jeans with shaking hands.

19

“Well, Mr. Piggy, it looks like I’m going to be your second mommy for a few days.” Kar Yee bent down to open the door to my hedgie’s crate and reached inside to pull him out. The two long locks of hair on either side of her face were a little messy. It was early; she hadn’t tweaked them into points yet.

“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked, plopping down on the white couch in her living room. Everything in her apartment was white, cream, or gold. Not my taste, but her stuff was way nicer and cleaner than mine, so I couldn’t really complain.

She held Mr. Piggy up to her face and inspected him critically, one eye squinting. I was a little worried that he would take a nip at her for doing that, but he behaved. He obviously knew he needed to make a good impression.

“He can stay in his crate while I’m at work. I’ll put up his pen in the kitchen and let him get some exercise while I’m at home.” She tucked him under her arm and lazily plodded over to an armchair. “If he pisses on anything, he’s getting locked up in the bathroom.”

It wasn’t the piss she had to worry about; he was a poop machine, but I didn’t want to remind her about this or she might change her mind. “There’s plenty of dry food in that clear container, and he can go without crickets for a week, so you don’t have to feed him those.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t.”

“But give him a little fruit once a day. I already cut it up into cubes for you.”

“Yes, yes. Quit being a worrywart. He’s a hedgehog, not a baby. I’ll manage.”

I sat cross-legged on the couch but unfolded my legs when she gave me a disapproving look. “My shoes aren’t dirty, you know.”

She clearly disagreed. “So you need a week off from work. Go ahead and tell me what to expect.”

“Huh?”

“The trouble you’re in. Is it boy trouble or family? Or did you steal something?”

I laughed. “No stealing. I guess it’s … family trouble.”

“How can a woman whose parents are dead have so much family trouble?”

When I first met Kar Yee, I told her my parents had died in a plane crash, a hard lie to maintain when you’re continually worried about two people whom you should have buried and mourned years before; but as the years went by, it became second nature.

“It’s trouble with my godfather,” I said. Not completely a lie. “And trouble involving magick.”

Lon had gotten us a meeting with an evidence tech who worked for the Portland police department. When Lon had called earlier that morning to tell me this, he’d carefully avoided discussing the sex magick we’d done in his library yesterday afternoon, just asked me if everything was “okay” on my end. I took that to mean that he was curious if the spell had awakened any buried memories (which it hadn’t). After telling him this, he bluntly informed me what time he’d pick me up to drive to the airport, then hung up.

It was a quick flight to Portland—just a couple of hours—so we were going up and back today. But there were now only five days left before the Luxe deadline, and I didn’t feel I could spare anything for work. I wanted to use every bit of my time to help Lon research the albino demon. Even if we were somehow able to persuade the evidence technician to let us borrow the glass talon, we still couldn’t do anything without the demon’s summoning name.