Shadow Mage: (Witchling Wars: Luxra Echelon, Book 1) Read online

  I pulled her hand back toward me and held it tight. She eyed my hand in hers and held mine back. The tears threatening the corners of her eyes slowly disappeared. She rubbed away what was left then looked back at me.

  “Don’t leave here thinking for a single second that I was in harm’s way because of you. Do you hear me?”

  She nodded her head in submission. That was when I felt it. A soft tingling inside her fingers just over the knuckles. There was energy deep inside her. It was sleeping but it was there.

  ‘Her magic!’

  William was right. There was a powerful spell keeping her magic at bay. But now with mine reactivated I could sense it still running deep inside her, wanting out but forced to remain caged like a pent up desire that she could never act on. We just coped with that desire differently. I kept to myself whereas she did the typical teenage party going life. She yearned for something that she couldn’t have. Whereas I hid away from what stirred inside of me all these years.

  Fiona slowly breathed normally again. I watched as she seemed to stare out into space and let her thoughts wander away from the restaurant.

  “Fi?” I said her name. “Fi?” She seemed far away and completely lost in her train of thought. “Fi!”

  I let go of her hand and clapped in front of her face.

  She snapped out of it instantly, looking a tad embarrassed. “Sorry.” She stretched out her fingers like her hand was stiff and went back to focusing on her spaghetti, twirling the long noodles on her fork.

  “Eat up,” I told her. “I know the jet lag will start to hit you as soon as you have a full belly. You’ll need a good long rest and we can talk more in the morning. I’ll take you out for breakfast.”

  “I can’t stay with you in the hall?” she asked.

  “I’m not staying there right now. Too many memories.”

  She swallowed a mouthful of food and nodded. “I see. Yeah, I understand that. But where are you staying?”

  I couldn’t help myself. My eyes darted over to William and then back to our table. Only this time, William wasn’t focused on the paper in front of him. He was watching us with wide eyes. Something startled him.

  I surveyed the room real quick. The walls weren’t turning dark. There weren’t shadows descending from the various paintings and wooden timber railings high above us. Nothing seemed to change. It wasn’t a sudden appearance of demons that had William worried. It was me.

  He cleared his throat uncomfortably then went back to reading his paper, realizing that I noticed his odd little moment before he looked away again.

  Fiona and I kept talking little by little and shared another pint of beer. She told me everything I missed back home and I told her about my weekend trips around Scotland and the wild nights where I allowed Annette to force me out of my shell. She asked me questions about Annette. What she was like and how we got to be friends given we were exact opposites. I answered her questions with as much optimism and patience as I could handle and then called for a cab to come pick us up.

  The sun began its descent over the city. I caught myself staring at Fiona a number of times in the back of the cab, studying our differences. We both knew we shared the same mother but Keith was her father. Not mine. The topic of my real father rarely ever came up. I could see the pain it caused my mom when I dared to ask questions about him, not knowing many of her memories were erased by William. I learned quickly that it wasn’t something I needed to continue touching because it would only cause her pain. Even if my questions remained unanswered forever, her well-being was more important to me than learning about the guy that didn’t make the cut. And yet, now that I really looked at Fiona, I saw the differences more so than ever. Fiona was like Keith in so many ways. Outgoing and adventurous. A risk-taker. I always thought I was more like my mom. More subdued and tentative. Now I knew the truth. It was the spell causing my mom to be that way. William and Marek knew a completely different person from the one I did. The one who was being controlled by magic to force her into staying in line.

  Who was my mother? Who was I?

  I had my mother’s wild mane of curly red hair, her emerald green eyes, her complexion, and her tendency to look before jumping. She and I could read on the couch together for hours and hours, never feeling the least bit bored. Was that really who my mom was? Did she long for something deeper inside? And what parts of me were my real father? My lips? The shape of my nose?

  Fiona’s hair was the most beautiful shade of bright blond. She had people asking her all the time if it was natural and she would beam when she got the chance to tell them yes. She was a creature of endless fascination, running around the house barefoot like a woodland creature and energy that made me exhausted just watching her. Would I ever know who I truly was without danger being an inevitable outcome of asking?

  “Do I have something on my face?” she asked, reaching for the corner of her lips. “It’s spaghetti sauce, isn’t it? I tried to eat slowly but I was starving.”

  “No, no,” I tried to reassure her. “I just really missed you.”

  I looked away from her and glanced in the cab driver’s rear view mirror. William was close behind in his car, staying far enough away to avoid suspicion but close enough to keep us in his sights.

  We arrived at Fiona’s hotel and I helped her get her luggage out of the back. Then I waited with her until the front desk attendant placed the key in her hand. We walked to her room and I made sure she was comfortable. It wasn’t until she showered, changed clothes, and sat on the large king size bed that she finally began to show signs of exhaustion. I envied her energy.

  “Get some rest,” I ordered her.

  One more giant bear hug and I was ready to meet William outside.

  “You sure you don’t want to stay here with me? I have plenty of room. You didn’t have to get me a place with a king size bed for crying out loud.”

  “Nonsense,” I argued. “I know my little sis likes the best of comfort.”

  “Are you saying I indulge in vanity?”

  I took out her rather large makeup bag from her suitcase and plopped it on the bed. “Not at all.”

  “Ha ha!”

  I made my way to the door when she shot up from the bed and came over to me. “Wait!” she said urgently. “I want you to take this.”

  She removed the key necklace from her neck and held it out for me. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of it again.

  “I… I can’t do that, Fi. I gave it to you. I wanted you to have it.”

  “You said it would bring me luck.” She ignored me and thrust her arms around my neck to close the clasp. “You need a lot more luck than me right now given everything that’s happened. I want you to take it back. Please. Wear it for me.”

  Under any other circumstance, I would have taken it with pleasure. It was one of my most prized possessions. A gift my mother entrusted to me and Fi and I always argued over. I guess it never occurred to me back then that might be because the key itself was special. It held secrets that neither of us was privy to.

  I took the necklace and touched the key as it sat over my front.

  “What’s that?” she asked, touching the vial of blue liquid William gave to me.

  “A new sort of luck, I suppose.”

  “Well, now you have double luck. You need it.”

  I turned around and headed out the door, all the while keeping one hand firmly over the key. I buttoned up my jacket to make sure the material hid it from plain view.

  Fiona watched me as I walked out the door and probably listened as I went down the stairs. I sucked in a deep breath, realizing only then that it was probably best that I took the necklace. I didn’t want anyone from my new world of magical beings with a grudge to see it on her and get the wrong idea. If anything, my having it might keep her safe until I could get her the hell out of there. Nevertheless, I zipped up the brown leather jacket and hid it beneath the material.

  I walked out the door downstairs and nearly bumped
into William. He stood just outside the door with a stern look on his face. One I might expect from a father or authority figure about to give a lecture.

  “What?” I asked. “I did everything you said down to the last detail. Did I miss something?”

  “Yes.” He inched closer to me to the point where I could feel the heat of his breath hitting my face. “You narrowly missed committing a crime. A very grave crime within the witchling world that could have gotten you arrested by those who rule over our kind, Kayla.”

  I felt the need to get defensive. It’s not like I knew much about being a witchling let alone the laws that witchlings respected among each other. Only I couldn’t raise my voice to William. Something stopped me. An instinct that forced my mouth shut and let him stand over me in a way that made me shudder.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s call magic tapping. It’s a skill demons possess and your father obviously passed down to you. You sensed your sister’s magic deep inside her and you dulled it. You dulled her senses. Demons use it to control humans and witchlings alike. When done with enough finesse a demon can dull a person’s senses so much that their heart stops beating. You could have killed your sister, Kayla. She could have dropped dead right beside you at the table.”

  14

  William grabbed onto my arm and refused to let go until he shoved me into the passenger side of his car. I clicked my seatbelt into place right away and gripped the leather seat, holding it tight between my fingers. Anything to channel my nerves somewhere else.

  William started the car and sped off. I nearly asked him to slow down, my relationship with cars being what it was now. I didn’t want to have to hold onto the dashboard as he drove.

  He must have seen my nerves were fragile because he let out a deep breath. My chest pushed forward as he put pressure on the brakes and slowed down.

  “I don’t mean to sound harsh, Kayla,” he said. “I apologize. But you must understand how dangerous this is. I know that it comes with being your father’s daughter and it’s not something you can control. Not yet. But you must learn how. I will teach you properly. It will take time. Lots of time.”

  I opened my mouth. The inside went dry the second I tried to speak. I shut it again and swallowed hard, thinking carefully about what I wanted to say.

  “Could I really have killed my sister right there in the restaurant?”

  He didn’t answer me right away. He watched the road as a group of tourists crossed the street and were out of the way.

  “There’s a chance. A small one but it’s always going to be there.”

  “That’s it then,” I mumbled to myself, turning my gaze to look out the window at the dreary fog engulfing the narrow streets.

  “What’s what?”

  “That must be how my father got the best of my mom. If he was able to dull her senses she wouldn’t know what he was doing to her.”

  He was silent. I could see his knuckles getting white as his fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

  “And he dulled your senses too,” I went on. “You told me you didn’t know how he hid what he was but that wasn’t the whole story, was it? You didn’t know how he managed to dull your magical senses too while he was deceiving her.”

  I had no idea if William was a hot-headed sort of man. I gathered not given he was already so patient with me. Even after I stabbed him with a shard of glass and ran away from his home after he opened it up to me. He amazed me even further when he didn’t get angry. He simply nodded his head.

  “Magic tapping is dangerous for many reasons, Kayla,” he finally spoke again. “As witchlings, we can occasionally channel each other’s magic. It’s perfectly safe when done properly. Magic tapping, however, is essentially stealing. A witchling’s magic can drain but it always comes back. It heals just like a cut heals on human flesh over time. But when a demon taps into a witchling’s magic, it doesn’t come back. It doesn’t heal. If done over a long time period a demon can drain a witchling of all their magic.”

  My eyebrows shot up. It made sense to me now. My mom didn’t cast the spell on herself to get rid of her memories for a reason. She had to ask William to do it because my father drained too much of her magic. The coven in Dallas had to cast spells on my sister and me to make sure our magic remained dormant because she couldn’t do it herself. That was why she never felt compelled to return to Scotland. If her magic was mostly drained, there was nothing inside compelling her to come home again.

  I leaned into the headrest behind me and let it all soak in. The Roganach-Ciar coven wasn’t wrong. I was dangerous. I could harm other witchlings. If what William said was all true, they had a right to kick my mother out and banish her. It wasn’t entirely her fault. She was tricked. Deceived. Manipulated beyond imagining. Even so, it wasn’t something a coven of witchlings could forgive without placing everyone inside it at extreme risk.

  “I saw them yesterday,” I mumbled under my breath, hoping he wouldn’t get mad that I never mentioned it before.

  “Saw who?”

  “I went to a pub after the memorial service to unwind a bit. There were a few demons there trying to seduce people.”

  His eyes briefly left the road to look at me as if I had just opened the car door and tried to throw myself out.

  “The vial you gave me must have worked,” I said quickly. “They didn’t notice me. Hell, they didn’t even look in my direction for once.”

  William drew in his bottom lip and looked back at the road. He was stunned into silence. I wasn’t sure if it was because I got out of the pub alive or he couldn’t believe I didn’t tell him right away.

  “Is that what they were doing to them? Dulling their senses?”

  “Among other things.”

  “What other things?”

  He let out a heavy breath, doing his best to let go of how I had annoyed him.

  There was a tension in the car now that I desperately wanted gone.

  “They can access a person’s memories,” he explained slowly. “Look into them, learn what they can to manipulate people, and use what they find against their victim. They can only look through a week or so of memories but they can learn enough about a person to know what makes them tick so they can deceive them.”

  The image of the girl at the pub came back to my mind. The way she longed to have the demon look at her, flirt with her, and how she giggled as he eased into her. He dulled her senses, picked up on her loneliness, and went in for the kill. She was just another stupid girl falling prey to sleeping with a demon and carrying his spawn for reasons I couldn’t even imagine. It was evil. An evil I didn’t understand and probably never would.

  “When do we start training?” I asked William, keeping my voice low, calm, and collected. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Too many people have already died because of me.”

  He parked the car behind his house and took the keys out of the ignition. “If you aren’t going to lay blame at your sister’s feet for what happened, then I’m not going to let you do the same. You’re not at fault.”

  ‘Way to eavesdrop, friend.’

  I nearly scowled at him.

  “I firmly believe this was done to you on purpose. There are plenty of people among our kind who have done much worse and rationalized it. I’m determined to help you find out who they were and to prevent something like this from ever happening again. The first thing you must learn above all else is that the car wreck was not your fault, never was your fault, and never will be your fault. We won’t even begin moving on to other lessons until you accept that.”

  My eyes fell to my feet sitting on the floor of the car. Shame took hold of me. A profound sense of guilt that I wasn’t sure I could simply throw off because he wanted me to.

  “There’s always pain following such tragedy,” he went on, obviously seeing that I wasn’t on board with the idea of letting myself off that easily. “Don’t confuse pain with guilt. Soldiers go to war and come back feeling guilty for surviving when their frien
ds did not. People survive natural disasters and wonder why the devastation took their loved ones and not them. The smart ones among them know the truth. Surviving is pain. Not guilt. To feel guilt over such things is to indulge in one’s grief. Don’t be the latter.”

  He opened the car door and let himself out. Only he didn’t go inside. He waited for me to get out of the car with his arms crossed and a determined expression written all over his face.

  I knew the second that I opened the door and let myself out that I was making a promise. I was agreeing to not let my pain become an indulgence. Pain was normal. Natural. Necessary. Over-indulgence wasn’t. I would probably always grieve for what happened but there was a difference in what William was trying to tell me. There was no way out of it. There was just a way through it. I could pass through the storm of grief and come out tougher on the other side or I could stay inside that storm until it consumed me.

  ‘No more. I can’t run anymore.’

  I opened up the car door, set my feet firmly on the hard wet pavement, and followed William inside. I was done running. I had to become a student of a different kind. A student of magic. William offered to be my teacher. And if he and my mom were such close friends, I knew I was in good hands.

  William let me in and I removed my shoes the instant I took note of how clean his floors were. He might have been something of a mad magical scientist with all the vials of what I imagined were potions everywhere but he valued a clean space. I could respect that.