Page 52 of Wildfire Witch

I wiggled my fingers over my head, wetting my hair with a rain of hot water and brushing it out. A different gesture summoned a warm wind to dry it fast, and I fixed in a tail, turning to see my men staring at me. “What?” I asked.

“You’re stunning,” Rusty said, smoldering at me.

“A vision,” Ceridor agreed.

“Just the casual magic use, you know?” Seth answered. That was probably the real answer. He glanced at my other two men. “And what they said.”

I blushed and limped for the door. “Let’s get some breakfast…hey!” Rusty scooped me up in his arms. “You can’t just carry me everywhere.”

“Why not? It’s my fault you’re sore, my diamond,” he answered.

I made a show of crossing my arms, but silently appreciated the lift to the diner. Seth passed me some ibuprofen, and I was ready to walk on my own after a hearty, greasy breakfast. The moodbetween us sobered after we did a pass around the area, looking for signs of fire bros. Still nothing, not even a sniff of them to Rusty’s nose. It was a reminder that I needed to break my curse before they arrived.

That done, we got into Seth’s car and drove to Spells Hollow. Now that our things were at the motel, I sat in the back with Ceridor in the freed up seat. My heart was in my throat to see what was left of my old home, the location I’d grown up and also the place I was cursed so viciously.

The dirt path leading to the ruins was terrible. We hit a particularly bad pothole and there was a crunch from the wheel well. Seth exclaimed, “My car!”

“I got you, bro,” Rusty said, rolling the passenger’s side window down. He stuck his arm out, shifted up to the elbow in brown scales and sharpened claws. The path smoothed out ahead of us like an invisible pair of hands pulled it taut.

“Won’t the locals notice if you re-pave the road for them?” Ceridor remarked.

The dragon shifter shrugged. “It’ll go back to how it was behind us.”

I breathed a tense sigh as I sensed an ominous presence looming. Ceridor reached over, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. “You feel it,” he murmured.

“Morfran’s magic,” I said. The signature of his black magic was unmistakable, even from a distance. It only got worse as we slowly rolled towards the ruins, Seth still driving cautiously due to the low visibility around us from encroaching tree limbs. Until there weren’t any trees, only blackened stakes in the groundamongst charred and brittle grass and distant buildings in varied states of disrepair.

Rusty whistled low as we drove past it. “This part of the land is dead,” he said. On cue, we hit another pothole. Dead earth didn’t respond to an earthen dragon’s will.

“This must be the blast radius of Morfran cursing the land itself.” I felt sick. I curled in on myself, clinging to my fae husband like a lifeline. From my past life, I knew the feel of Spells Hollow deep in my gut, and the hollow silence in my magical senses wassowrong. The once-great font of magic governed by the high priestesses of the Nightshade line was ruined.

“Pull over here,” Ceridor said. “Do you see that line? We will want to proceed on foot past it.”

I lifted my head to look past Seth’s seat, seeing exactly what he was talking about. We rolled past an ancient wooden gate that’d been thrown open and scorched by what looked like lightning. Past it, there was a thick black line bisecting dead ground and living earth, curving in a massive circle to encompass the ruins beyond. Something had protected this part of the land from the full extent of Morfran’s magic, as the wilderness was overtaking some of the standing buildings.

As soon as Seth parked and turned the car off, I stumbled out and touched the ground. There were no earth motes to answer my summons, just the vomit-inducing feeling of black magic. I crossed the scorched line and repeated the gesture. I hadn’t communed with the earth as a green witch since before my curse and only dared to try it now because of my connection with Rusty.

Earth motes gathered beneath my fingertips, sharing their wisdom. Aged magic hummed under the circle,wards. It was Nightshade magic, Melisande’s doing. She had protected what she could of the town.

Ceridor was standing next to me once I straightened. “Do you recognize where we’re standing?” he asked.

I pivoted to get a better look around. The rundown husk of a building over to our right…that was the town hall, once a three-story building. Straight ahead of us was the town square, which meant only one thing.

“There’s our house,” I said, pointing to a patch of black past the closest coven house. There were nine coven houses in total, and mine had been engulfed in flames centuries ago. Nature had moved in around some of these homes, but it hadn’t reclaimed the Carmine family home.

The men followed as I headed for my old home. It’d been the backdrop for my whole first life. Growing up, bonding with Aodhnait, and later running my shop and bending over my alchemy table for long days of experimentation. All gone. The collapsed ruin of the house remained a heap of charcoal, long after the original fire, and from it spread a swathe of dead ground, covered in the same brittle black grass as the area outside Melisande’s wards.

I stopped at the edge of the ruined land, leery of bending down to confirm that it was dead, too. I stood there, staring, until twin trails of tears slipped down my cheeks.

After I woke up from the shock of the curse settling in my body, I’d dragged my body in the same general path the blackened ground formed. There’d been a bigger blaze around me, butmost of the land had healed. Not where the memory of my first life had burned, though.

When a sob escaped my mouth, it was Seth who put his arm around me, cradling my head. I clutched his shirt in my fists and cried, even when the moment became a bear hug as Ceridor held me too, and Rusty pulled us all in. We swayed together, and no one said a word while I mourned what I’d lost.

“There’s something else I want to see…before we try to break my curse,” I murmured. There was still an oppressive force in the air, and I wanted to see if I could destroy it.

“Of course, love. Lead the way,” Ceridor said.

I edged closer to my old home, seeing the edge of an unburnt circle of wood. My body had laid there safely while the rest of my world burned down. I pulled out the stick of casting chalk I’d brought, setting it down as a bright line in the dead grass, so it would be there when I needed it. Then, I skirted the burned land and headed towards the high priestess’s home…and the source of the feeling of unease that sat low in my gut.

---