Page 20 of Catastrophe

I nodded and squeezed his hands before letting him go. He walked backward into the portal, which swallowed him up in a flash of blue, and our bond stretched further than it was prepared to do when being so new. My heart ached with the distance between us, but I breathed through the pain and gritted my teeth until it eased.

Elizabeth didn’t offer me time to deal with my separation from my soul mate. “Pack a bag and meet me at the port in half an hour. We’ll get the ferry back to the mainland and drive the rest of the way.”

I frowned. “How is a ferry coming here?” Only witches could get to the island, and they were gone.

She huffed. “I called one. Told them we are stranded on an island and gave them the coordinates. Now that the wards are broken, it will be visible to all, and many humans will be confused about an island that appeared out of nowhere but has buildings, electricity, and running water—all which isn’t paid for.”

My face fell as the implications sank in. “So what do we do? Can’t we re-hide it? This was a family’s home and the home of lots of witch archives. We can’t just abandon it.”

She shrugged. “We can’t do anything except deal with the fallout when this is all over.”

I shook my head as indignation rose inside me. “I can’t accept that. Maybe there’s power left in the wards that you could use to disguise the buildings? At least temporarily. Otherwise, the whole supernatural community will be in even more danger of being discovered and you won’t be able to deal with the fallout at all.” I tried to read her face, but she gave nothing away as she stared out the window. “Please, Elizabeth, we have to try something, or more supernaturals will die because of witches.”

She gave a hateful scoff. And I understood it completely. It was terrible when someone was right and you didn’t want them to be.

With only ten minutes before the expected arrival of the ferry, we kneeled at the wreckage of the ward shed as Elizabeth tried to draw on its power. With her palms out and hovering over the broken wood, she hummed and hawed and muttered something under her breath until something responded. Magic.

But it didn’t feel like before, when Karin asked me to pour magic into the wards. That felt sinister and unnatural. This was a buzz of energy, which bounced gently around us like a rabbit jumping through the woods. It kind of hummed low, like a sigh, and tickled my skin like the caress of a soft breeze. It was lovely.

“Can you feel this, Clawdia?” Elizabeth asked excitedly. “There is magic here. It’s not completely gone. The wards were here so long that the magic didn’t dissipate. It stayed in the earth.”

“Can you take it? Use it to perform another protection spell?” I asked. While I knew some spells from my time as Winnie’s familiar, I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to suggest something more helpful. I felt useless.

“I cannot and will not take it into myself, as Karin did. That is dark magic,” Elizabeth remarked sharply. “But I can hopefully use it to hide the homes and give anyone uninvited to the island a sense of impending doom and dread. They hopefully won’t stay long enough to discover our secrets.”

“That’s great!” I replied.

“But your help would be appreciated, too.”

“You want me to pour magic here?”

She raised an eyebrow, not understanding my hesitancy, but I pulled up my big-girl bloomers and put fear aside. This magic felt kind.

I’m sure it won’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.

On a slow release of breath, I visualized pushing out magic through my pores and directing it into the ground. In my mind’s eye, I saw it welcomed like the water of a creek meeting a river, like old friends embracing, and smiled as I realized there was no force which would grab and pull at my magic now. There was only joy.

I’d never understood the happiness Winnie got from being a witch and performing spells. For me, the spells we cast were draining, and the magic coming from me felt pulled. But giving it freely … Well, if performing magic felt like that, I could understand how addictive it could become.

“Perfect, Clawdia. You can stop now. This won’t take a moment.”

I opened my eyes to watch Elizabeth mumble. The surrounding sky suddenly darkened as gray and thunderous clouds rolled in from out of nowhere, and a sudden chill made me shiver.

Elizabeth’s chest heaved, and her voice rose as she poured her energy and directed the ward magic into the spell. But I couldn’t make out the words. Whatever she was saying, it seemed to work. The main house and the cabins at the bottom of the hill seemed to blink and fade in and out of the landscape like a holographic card.

When her eyes opened and rain splattered hard against my skin, she grinned. Her chest heaved from the exertion. “It should be safe for now. Let’s go.”

We raced down the hill to the harbor in time to see the ferry heading toward us, and by the time it reached the dock, we were both soaked through and the lake was swept into roaring waves by the wind. Shivering, we quickly boarded the boat, and the two men on the crew smiled sympathetically while handing us blankets. I snatched one like a pick-pocketing street urchin and wrapped myself in it while I resisted the urge to shift into my familiar form to get warm faster.

“How did you two end up out here?” The blue-eyed, blond-haired man asked in thickly accented English as he stared at us, suspicion clear on his face.

“We fell out of our boat and made it to this island. Thankfully, my phone didn’t get wet, and I was able to call for help. We’re so grateful to you for helping us. We wouldn’t have lasted long there with this storm,” Elizabeth simpered.

The blond man opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp look from his brown-haired colleague stopped him. The man offered us a kind smile and replied, “We’re just glad to have found you before something worse happened.”

“This storm seemed to appear just as suddenly as this island did.” The blond man raised his brow. “I’ve been driving ferries in this lake for many years, and I’ve never seen that island before.”

“It’s just not possible, Erik,” hissed the brunet, then he turned to us. “Ignore him.”

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