Page 29 of Ensnared
That’s the question Jack asked me. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m light-years behind any other adult witch with even a little power. They are trained all through childhood, and if they’re any good, they study on their own their entire lives. And I’ve never in my life showed any affinity for magic beyond manipulating tech.” I pause, then voice my real thoughts. “I think you’d be better off importing another witch to do the job for you.”
“No.” His reply is instant and harsh. “No other witches.”
“Okay, but someone like my sister—” I try again.
“No other witches are setting foot in this village.” There’s a hard gleam in his eyes that tells me pursuing this line of thought is futile.
“Fine.” I blow out a breath and turn back to the flashlights. “But this won’t cut it as training. I need to begin a formal education.”
“How?” Aiden is all business now, as though I’m about to whip out a curriculum and he’ll get to drill me in exercises.
“I need to call my sister.”
Eleven
Aiden
Skye gives me a hopeful smile.
“You can’t call your sister,” I say.
“Ha!” She exclaims. “I knew you’d say that.”
I growl low in my throat. This woman is seriously trying my patience. “I just told you that no other witches will ever come to this village.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not inviting her here, dummy. She’s already sending me my things, so I’ll ask her to send me some grimoires, too.”
Grimoires?
“What’s that?”
Skye shrugs. “Our family’s spell books. The books on witchcraft you see in new age bookstores are cute, but they’re not the real deal. I need stuff from my family’s library if I’m going to make any progress.” She pauses, then adds, “And my ownBook of Shadows.”
I chew on this for a moment. “Fine. But you’re calling her from my phone, and we’re putting her on speaker.”
Splotches of color appear on Skye’s cheeks. “You still don’t trust me.”
The accusation in her tone stings, even though it’s justified.
“I can’t risk the safety of my clan,” I explain. “There’s too much at stake.”
“Am I ever going to have a phone of my own again?” she asks. “Or unsupervised access to the internet?”
I don’t know the answers to these questions, so I don’t reply. Instead, I motion at the other flashlights in the row in front of us. “You obviously mastered this part. What would you say comes next?”
Her expression goes blank, and for a moment, I think she might knee me in the balls again. Then she lets out a long breath and sits on the matted, dry grass. I stare down at her, then follow her lead, sitting across from her.
“What are we doing?” I prompt her.
She rolls her neck from side to side. “I’m going to try and levitate something.” She searches around and produces a dried, brown leaf. “This will do. Levitation is one of the easiest manipulations in the book.”
Holy shit. I sit still and watch as she closes her eyes and holds the leaf in her cupped hands. With every breath she takes, the wind dies down more, and I wonder whether she’s the one causing it. Or maybe the universe itself is leaning in to see what this amazing, beautiful, infuriating woman will do next.
Skye’s heartbeat slows, and she goes into that strange state of hers that I’m becoming familiar with. Earlier, she was silent and still for so long, I’d called her, afraid she’d gotten lost in the depths of her magic. It’s strange to me, this inner working of hers. For a dragon, our magic is very much external: we change into our other form andbecomesea creatures.
Skye opens her eyes and focuses her gaze on the leaf in her hands. She stares at it intently, her forehead furrowed. She holds her breath for a long moment, then lets it out in a rush.
“Shit.”
