Page 6 of Spellbound
“Uh, okay, but my grandma will be the one driving.”
He glanced over at my seventy-eight-year-old grandma and then back at me with one eyebrow quirked up.
“I’ve been taking pills. Pain pills. For my leg. I have a prescription.”
“Uh huh. Well, follow me, please.” His eyes raked over me again.
“Just go nice and slow, ma’am.”
He went back to his truck, and my grandma and I got back in the car. We began to “slowly”move forward,asper instructions. Maybe he was a cop, at that. I was nervous, considering how thick the fog still was and how I was just learning that there were apparently ditches deep enough that the car could “fall into one of them” on either side of the damn road, which I thought must be aslightexaggeration. We kept going, though, until miraculously, the fog seemed to suddenly start clearing up before we’d gone even another half of a mile. What the hell was that about?
He passed us on the road as we came to a wide spot ahead at yet another nameless dirt track and by that time, I was realizing how tired and hungry I really was—the idea of a meal waiting on us at my great aunt’s house was making my stomach growl in anticipation. I felt like I’d made a bad impression on Ben, and I didn’t know why that bothered me so much. I didn’t give two snaps for his opinion. Besides, I decided maybe Gran was right, after all, and I might actually have low blood sugar.
Chapter Three
“A witch…has magic in their fingers and devilry dancing in their blood.”
~Roald Dahl,The Witches
Ben Cromwell
I’d had an odd, unsettled feeling all day, and now I knew what had been causing it. The second I saw that slight figure walking on the wrong side of the road and leaning heavily on a cane, I knew immediately who he must be. I’d known for some time now that something—someone—was coming, and I had a very bad feeling that he had just arrived.
I’d become increasingly impatient, knowing that a showdown with the man who would “test everything I was,” according to my father, was coming. I was almost happy that he had arrived at last. I didn’t know how or why I’d known him the moment I’d seen him, except for the fact that my father had once told me I would. “You’ll look at him and think, ‘There you are, damn it. What took you so long?’ You’ll meet him, and when you do, you’ll have no doubt he’s the one you’ve been waiting for,” he told me, and I had believed him with all my heart. “The question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Is this a good thing or not?’”
I wasn’t sure what he’d meant by that, and he would never tell me. He’d just shake his head and say, “I don’t know all the answers. I just know he’s coming. You’ll see.” My father had been known for his accurate premonitions, so I saw no reason not to believe him. I’d stopped second guessing his predictions about my future a long time ago, especially when they had always turned out to be so accurate.
He never came right out and used the word “nemesis,” but that’s I thought that was what he implied. It was a strong word and used to describe a constant source of frustration or opposition.I thought at the time he was talking about an enemy. Or perhaps a rival who represented a force to be reckoned with. In essence, "nemesis" carried a sense of inescapable fate or consequence—destiny. I thought, all things considered, the term might just be a perfect one to describe this beautiful little fucker.
I knew the moment I’d spoken to him on the side of the road that he was unaware of the magic churning inside him. I saw right away that there still had been no awakening for him, no “realization” of who and what he was, and what his destiny would be. Nevertheless, I sensed the magic inside him fully formed, like bright tracings under his skin. And something else—something dark, moving and darting underneath his skin. It looked out his eyes at me as he stood on the side of the road, before ducking quickly away as if startled that I’d caught a glimpse of it.
Apparently, I stared at him a little too intently and my magic was a little too heavy-handed as I did, because he started having trouble catching his breath and I had to back off.
He appeared to be in his early twenties, but whatever was inside him was much older. I didn’t think it was an actual possession, or a sentient being—it was more in the nature of a strong curse. It may be what had prevented his awakening, as it was years past the time that should have happened. My own had been when I was fourteen, but then, his life had been vastly different from mine. And his magic had been bound when he’d been only a child, so perhaps it was stunted and twisted now. But no, that couldn’t be right, because I could sense it was bright as a star.
It had been an extreme measure to take to bind him, but at the time the Council had agreed it was necessary, and they haddone so instead of killing him. What did they know about him that I didn’t? All of the records on him had been sealed. Asher seemed totally unaware of the magic that saturated his blood. The power fairly shone out of him, lighting him up from inside. But while his conscious mind seemed to have no concept of it, those of us around him who had magic knew him right away for what he was. His magic wasn’t exactly infernal—at least not yet. But it had the definite potential to be so. It gave the impression of being able to go either way.
Once his magic was unbound or it broke free, he would be either a witch—or a warlock—of tremendous power. It was the latter that bothered me and made him my potential enemy. Whichever one he eventually became was still up to him.And to me.
He was mine to deal with, my father had said, one way or the other. I figured I’d either have to kill him or keep him so locked down and well fucked that he wouldn’t have the energy, much less the time to cause much trouble. I rather liked that last option.
I needed to be his adversary for a while, though, in case things went wrong. I needed to hate him, at least for now, and be extremely wary of him, because I couldn’t afford to like him too much until I saw what he truly was. Maybe I never would, but I wouldn’t know until we had faced off against each other and the full extent of his powers were revealed.
I could plainly hear the hum of his magic fizzing and bubbling through his veins, bumping against his insides and careening around in his bloodstream. It was trying desperately to get out, trapped inside him like shaken champagne in a bottle and ready to spray out in a sparkling jet the moment it was released.
And then there was that something else inside him—that curse. It was dark and infernal and was inside him swirlingaround. It was nothing he needed, and it would eventually bring about his death if it remained. I had to take it away as soon as I could.
The problem was that all the ones who had been involved in the original binding were dead now—both his father and mine, along with Rosalyn’s deceased husband. And the Council had moved on to other matters. If left up to them, I thought it likely his magic would never be unbound by the magistrates and instead would simply burst out of him one day so violently that it would probably kill everyone in his vicinity, including him.
My heart had already started thumping hard in my chest when I first put down my window to confront him, and he’d looked up at me with those extraordinary eyes. Fairy eyes—as green as grass, as seductive as sin, and as treacherous as quicksand.
Perhaps his mother had fairy blood from generations ago that she had passed down to her son. Opal Kinney had been a conjure woman who had lived deep in the Appalachian Mountains when Richard MacGregor, Asher’s father, had been sent to the hollow where her family lived. He had gone there to investigate rumors of a dark power operating in the area outside Asheville.
Whatever happened when he found her and confronted her had sealed their fates, and something had certainly happened, all right, because he had married her only two days later. Her kind of rough conjuring could be potent stuff, but it was far from high magic, like Richard’s or mine. She had also been beautiful, like her son, and that could have accounted for a lot.
Richard had declared her craft to be more in the nature of simple conjuration, a magic that used candles, herbs, spells, and potions she made up herself. He said that Opal’s workings had nothing of the infernal in it and was no threat to anyone. Hewould hear nothing against her, and he fought the entire Council for her sake and won. At least for a little while.
Right away, he’d bought her a beautiful house farther down in the valley, because she refused to go too far away from her dark hollow. Richard moved from his former home in Atlanta up to Asheville right away and they announced her pregnancy only a couple of months later. Yet he didn’t seem all that happy, according to his friends. Word began to circulate that she might have used a powerful love potion on him.
