Page 28 of My Blind Date is a Warlock

“I was devastated, but Daniel… The news of her death obliterated him. In hindsight, his obsession with the dark arts started after Rosie’s death. I can’t believe I didn’t see this before. I always thought that the reason he was looking for the Book of Shadows was out of some misguided attempt to subjugate humans and other races. But bringing Rosie back to life—” He cut himself off when his tablet started buzzing.

“I should have known.” He swore and pushed to his feet. “That’s a signal from my home alarm; someone just broke into my house.”

“Daniel?”

Jacob nodded. “He must have been waiting for me to leave the house. To think he broke through my protective wards and the security system… I need to get going.”

“I’m coming with you.” I ran after him. He stopped in his tracks and started to protest, but I grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him along. “There’s no use arguing. I may be as helpless as a baby chick right now, but two mages against one sound like better odds than you going alone.”

CHAPTER 26

Jacob’s home was in shambles. Drawers and cupboard doors were left open and furniture was upended. Jacob ignored it all and ran straight to the room he used as his home office. It was much neater than the whole house, but that was because the safe had a giant hole in it. Something had eaten away at the steel as if a vat of acid had been splashed on it, but I could smell faint traces of sulfur, which was usually a telltale sign of a spell having been cast.

“He has the book!”

“Well, he couldn’t have gone far.” We’d arrived within fifteen minutes of the alarm notification going off. “And unless Daniel lugs around the remains of his dead girlfriend with him, he won’t be casting any resurrection spells soon.”

“Good thing I placed a tracking spell on the journal. I need a map of the town,” Jacob said more to himself than me and went to the sparsely packed bookshelf in his office. He pulled out a thin book I recognized as the tourist guide to Mystic Cove sold at The Book Coven. “Grab a knife from the kitchen for me, will ya?” he asked, opening the book to the double spread of the town-wide map.

I rushed into the kitchen and searched for a knife block, but there was no cutlery in sight. His kitchen was bare except for a few appliances and a fridge that must have come with the house. So why did Jacob send me out here when there wasn’t a single knife in the kitchen? My eyes searched frantically around the ransacked kitchen. Drawers were hanging open from their respective cupboards, some of them tossed carelessly on the ground.

“Soph?” he called out from across the hall, an impatience in his voice he’d never used to call my name before. I started to tell him that I couldn’t find any type of blade when a silver glint caught my eye—a dark-handled athame. Every self-respecting witch or warlock owned such a blade. I had a whole collection of athames I’d bought online but never had the chance to use. The blades were not meant to draw blood. Rather, they were used to channel energy when performing rituals. But it was the only thing we had at the moment.

“You need to stop by Home Depot one of these days because this is the only blade you have in your house.” I stuck the tip of the blade in the top corner of the Mystic Cove fold-up map that he had spread across his desk.

“There’s nothing to be done for it. I’ll cleanse it later.” He pulled the athame out and sliced it across the skin of his palm without a hiss of pain or wincing. There were other faded marks across his palm from previous spells like these. His face was a stoic mask of concentration as the dark crimson blood pooled at the center of his palm. Muttering an incantation under his breath, he tipped his hand over and let three drops of blood fall onto the map in the general area of where his house was located and we waited.

“Why didn’t you use a tracking spell to find the Book of Shadows the first time around instead of having Gran track it down?”

His eyes remained glued onto the map where his blood started to stir and trace a red line down Main Street, leading out of town toward Beckford. “That would have required me to have had the book in my possession before. This tracking spell is keyed to my blood. I drew a tracking sigil on the back cover of the book as soon as I found it. Blood calls to blood,” he explained.

“I don't think that’s what that phrase means. Where’s he going, he turned off the highwa— Oh no! I think he’s heading to the coven circle!”

“But why would he go there? Rosie was buried in Concord, her hometown. What could he possibly get by going to your circle?”

“A large battery source of magic?” I left the “duh” unsaid, but Jacob heard it all the same.

“Necromancy requires some serious juice. He could be planning to drain it straight from the source.”

“Jacob, if those ley lines become corrupted, who knows what will happen to our town!”

His lips went thin as we both thought of all the danger that was about to befall all of us if we let his cousin mess with the ley lines.

* * *

I could not stop bouncing my leg and drumming my fingers on my lap as Jacob sped down the highway, taking us to the coven circle. By some miracle, we did not run into any cop cars and the roads were clear of traffic, so we were making good time. And maybe it wasn’t good luck so much as magic. I wasn’t entirely sure whether Jacob was using it to make sure that nothing got in our way. If I was annoying him with all my restless fidgeting, he did not show it. He was solely focused on the road ahead of him, hands clenched on the wheel. Occasionally, he would huff out a sigh of frustration and his eyes would flick over to me, but he remained silent.

He was worried about me, and truth be told, I was worried about what I could possibly do to help. I’d put up a brave front, telling Jacob that two against one had better odds, but I was a liability more than anything. Too bad I realized this too late when we couldn’t possibly turn back. But I didn’t want Jacob to be too focused on protecting me to actually face off against his cousin, so I brought the athame with me. And although I had not renewed my protective tattoos yet, they should still be able to cushion some of the blows I was bound to receive.

The forest looked completely different in the dark, not as enchanting and refreshing as it had been when we were here last. The trees blocked out any of the moon’s light, growing all the way to the heavens. Some of the skeletal branches loomed over us as if they wanted to snatch us up. I kept expecting one of the trees to suddenly develop a set of eyes and a mouth and start speaking like in The Lord of the Rings. Leaves and twigs cracked underfoot, roots stretching out in all directions and tripping me up even with the orb of light floating above our heads that Jacob had conjured up. The light did not illuminate much, so I was basically following his silhouette, my hands held out in front of me and trying not to make too much noise. I made a whimpering sound in my throat when something large and hairy ran across my foot.

“You okay back there?” Jacob whispered, reaching his hand back out for me to take.

“Yeah, I just had a close encounter with a mutant rat thing,” I replied hoarsely, curling my fingers tightly around his. His shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“We’re almost to the clearing—” He slowed down without warning, making me run into his back.

“You hear that?” I started to say when the wind carried with it the sound of someone chanting in Latin. Daniel.

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