Page 15 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
"We have to figure out its source. Tell me how you lost your magic."
After sucking in a few deep breaths to minimize the burning that wasn’t hers, Madeline managed to sit upright and focus on the question. "Who says I lost it?"
"Come on. I may not have seen you in months, but you’re struggling. It’s obvious."
"I’m good."
Cora crossed her arms and glared in that superior know-it-all way that irritated Madeline.
She rubbed her arms as if they were cold even though they weren’t, ending by gripping her hands tight together in her lap. "I didn’t lose all of it. Only maybe fifty percent of it."
"Has it been gone as long as you’ve had this pain?"
Madeline shook her head. "Ten months on the magic gone. The pain started about two months ago."
"What kind of spell shanked your magic?"
She chewed on the inside of her cheek and lifted her sock-clad feet off the tile floor to tuck them under her in the chair. Because they were cold. No shoes allowed in Cora’s house.
"I can’t help you figure out what’s going on if you’re not honest with me."
Madeline stared at the open doorway behind her aunt that led into a hallway, reassured that Cora’s cottage was heavily warded and safer than anywhere else she’d visited for longer than a few hours in the past couple of months. "I might’ve altered Shane’s curse to give him more freedom."
Cora’s head jerked back. "Shane? As in the Lanzo brother? The one who’sdead?"
"Yes, him."
"Shane isn’t dead?" Cora asked.
She shook her head.
Cora resumed her seat. "To be clear, this is the same Shane who, when we drank too many mojitos a few years ago, you raved about having an ass to die for? But he did die. You grieved for him."
She couldn’t make eye contact. "He’s alive—faked his death. When I saw him, he had a demon possession problem to sort out, which sent him looking for my help."
Those true-blue eyes of his had blazed like hell on fire while cuffed to the bed. His hair, although still a dirty blond, had grayed a bit at the edges and been allowed to get shaggy. Even mussed, it revealed the rugged savagery and angles of his face. With clothes off, he had been unforgettable—the muscles, the strength of him—but with clothes on, a leather jacket over a dark T-shirt and jeans, he’d looked so dangerous when he walked into the bar that her mouth watered. Her pulse pounded at the mere memory. Not engaging him hadn’t been an option, not with her body on fire like that. He'd been a temptation that promised zinger chemistry, which was a witch’s weakness.
She’d noticed him long ago when she’d cast the curse, but she’d been married then. And she hadn’t felt the heart pounding attraction she had when she ran into him in Monaco a few years ago. It'd only gotten worse when she saw him in Puerto Rico. Maybe demon possession roughed him up enough to be more her type? She refused to examine what that said about who she’d become over the last few decades.
"A demon possession brought him to you? He didn’t seek you out to break the curse?"
"That was on his agenda, too."But we got sidetracked.Those kisses. His hands gripping her hips and her fingers curling into his shirt… The betrayal in his voice when she'd cuffed him filtered into her head.
Cora’s brow wrinkled. "Did he find your ass to be fantastic, too? Did you and he…?" She covered her face. "Oh, Lord, did you two—"
Madeline shook her head. "I’m not his type." For good measure she added, "Witches and lycans don't mix, right?"
Cora pursed her lips and studied her. "You wanted to rock on that lycan’s pogo stick while touching his ass." She broke into a wide grin. "Something juicy happened. I need details. How did you inspire the world’s most uptight lycan to cross the line into the forbidden with you?"
When Madeline kept silent, Cora put her hands together in prayer position. "Come on, Madeline. Something please. One itsy bitsy detail? At least tell me he had a magical penis and was ferocious in bed before you dumped him. You had to dump him because the two of you can't...just can't."
"Nothing happened." She regretted not having more time with Shane, which was a new feeling. It wasn’t that she didn’t find men desirable as a rule, or that she didn’t have regular offers. Nothing seemed worth the aggravation. After she lost her one semi-functional relationship, her marriage—okay, it’d been dysfunctional as hell with him barely noticing her, and her sex drive had totally tanked—she stayed away from entanglements. Until Shane. When Shane touched her, she lost her mind to things she hadn’t felt before. She’d been about to make some bad choices before the humans who hunted her across the globe found her that night.
Cora gentled her tone. "You deserve to find someone who rocks your world in bed. I want that for you. I want you to find something meaningful that’s no longer about running from people trying to assassinate you. But Shane Lanzo is a terrible choice. There’s a high chance he wants revenge because you destroyed his life and that of his brothers. Have you recovered anything you lost since you altered his curse?"
She didn’t want to admit a big fat no. She dropped her chin and rocked her head back and forth.
"You’ve been depleted for months, unable to work decent magic? What prompted you to risk it?" Cora put on her pink-frame reading glasses and shuffled tarot cards.
