Page 10 of Wicked Love
I damn you to your darkest fear
I bind you to dread’s cold embrace
Until your truth you boldly face"
Her arms up, she stopped, and then the force of the spell hit the garden.
It was as though a bomb had gone off. The witches closest to where she stood fell. The flowers and plants near Thea flattened. As the shock hit me, I fell backward.
A moment later, Melasina fell on top of me.
I blinked. The words of the spell rang in my ears, and my cock, which had been distracted at her touch, woke to the fact that a gorgeous woman was lying on top of me. Worse, said woman was moving. Wiggling. This was not the time to be thinking about her on my cock. In any fashion.
Melasina rolled off me and I scrambled to my feet, holding out a hand for her as I looked into the garden. Thea was gone, and there were witches lying on the ground. Some were bleeding from their noses, and I saw one man rubbing blood off his ear.
“Are you all right?” I leaned down to ask Melasina.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“I think we were all just cursed,” I said. I didn’t know for sure, but it felt like it. I needed to get a pen and paper, write down what I’d heard. “Stay here.” I squeezed her hand, and hurried to where Thea had been.
There was nothing left but a scorch mark on the garden stones.
“What was that?” I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see my boss, Lavinia.
“A grade A, no fucking around curse, if I had to take a guess,” I said.
“How did she get in here?”
“I wondered that myself.”
“It’s all hands on deck, Jasper. We’ll need to go over this entire place with a fine-toothed comb.”
I sighed. I thought I’d had other plans, but… I turned to see where I’d left Melasina standing at the door to the garden.
She was gone.
Why in the world would she leave? Especially now, with what had just happened? My sense of unease grew.
“Come on,” Lavinia said. “We might as well get started.” She patted my shoulder and walked back to the house.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” I said. I walked back to the ballroom and looked around. Melasina wasn’t anywhere in the room. She’d left.
Why? As I continued to look around, I saw a glint on the floor. It was a necklace. I reached down, and as I picked it up, I realized it was Melasina’s. A small diamond pendant on a delicate gold chain. I’d noticed it when I was ogling her earlier.
Despite the mess of this moment, and the fact that Melasina was gone, I grinned. I had a perfect excuse to see her again. Even though I’d been unable to talk to her about her mother again, even though she’d cast me out of her house with magic—now I had a reason to seek her out. I wanted to know what the reports I’d been given meant. I wanted to know why she’d sent me away. I also wanted to see Melasina again. I was honest that being around her was part of it.
Just not yet. Whatever Thea had done had to take precedence. Even as I found I didn’t care why Thea was here, or what she’d done. I was much more interested in Melasina Cormier.
For lots of reasons.
* * *
After an hour, we were able to determine that one, Thea was long gone, two, she’d laid a curse on the house, but no one was sure exactly how to break it, and finally, that we had no idea how the curse was going to affect those who’d been in Magnolia House. Nothing seemed to be off, outside of being knocked on my ass, but I’d heard the curse. It had been powerful. And words like that, said that way, were extremely powerful. To me, they spoke of fear. And fear was one of the most powerful things in the world.
I could still hear Thea, her words echoing through the garden, feeling them in my bones. I’d written down what I remembered, and it would be compared with everyone else. Not to mention, someone would access their memories. We’d have the exact wording by tomorrow.
Lavinia, who’d been leading some of the librarians through the events in the garden once more, looked over at me. “You have it all written down and turned in?”
