wasn’t his to be proud of, and the only reason he’d been disappointed was because he’d wanted to be her champion again.
And wasn’t that a bitch of a revelation.
He’d been attracted to different women through the years—of course, he had—but it had always been a purely physical thing and while not easy to resist, it was bearable. This felt...different. Maybe it was just time, like Grace had said, to consider finding someone he could trust to bind himself to. He’d made a good run of the whole celibacy thing, but if he was starting to lust after every new woman to enter his social sphere then it was time for a new strategy.
The song ended, shaking him out of his reverie, and he climbed from the truck. His breath puffed white in the air as he jogged up the steps to the sidewalk and pulled open the old wood door. A bell above his head jangled a welcome and warmth surrounded him, like walking into a summer day. The scent of flowers almost overpowered the other assorted herbs Lois kept here, but not quite. Such an interesting mix of earth, magic and living things—he could have spent hours trying to sift through it all.
Raquel stood behind the display counter, a worn mortar and pestle beside her, a thin scrap of paper folded between her fingers as she tapped powder into a clear glass jar. As he crossed the room, she glanced up and smiled.
Christian was an idiot.
“Hey, Fen. I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
He came to the counter and tilted the pestle. “Valerian?”
“A tonic for insomnia.”
He examined the other items spread across the countertop. Skullcap, hops, what looked like a clip of human hair. He wrinkled his nose. “They have pills for that you know. Ones that don’t involve body parts.”
“This will work better. It’s gentle. No side effects and no chance of developing a dependence on it. And besides, there are always the purists.”
Mostly the elderly who didn’t want to let go of the old ways. Of course, it was impossible for any of them to completely give up on the old ways—it was what kept them alive. But Fen had always thought it was a sad way to live...no modern medicine, TV or internet. Their society was insular enough.
“I’ve never understood the hair thing,” he said. “It seems like that
“Well, I say that the hair works and I’m not an old wife.”
“Not yet.” When she raised her eyebrows, he added, “You’re not married yet.”
She leaned over the counter and her scent enveloped him, sunshine and magic. His gaze dropped to where her hand rested on the glass display case. Slender fingers and short, perfectly shaped nails. The large, very expensive engagement ring Christian had bought her looked gaudy on that pretty little hand.
“It’s a DNA sample,” she said in a low voice, like a spy imparting state secrets. “The hair. It ties the magic to the physical plane. Well, all of the ingredients do. They each bind some aspect of the spell to this world. The order is important. For example, you wouldn’t want to mix a crow feather—or any death avatar—with water unless you wanted to drown yourself or call a flood. But if you bind the feather to a specific person first...”
“You have a death spell.”
She nodded and a strand of hair fell from her shoulder, curling down to rest on her breast. He lifted his gaze to her face.
“It’s all about the DNA. Hair and nails are easy because people shed them constantly, but saliva would work, or semen.” She smiled and pointed at him. “Don’t tell Lois I’m giving away our secrets. She’s the kind of purist that holds them tight.”
He straightened and cocked his head to one side. “I thought you were...blocked. That you couldn’t do magic.”
“I can do small magics, the kind of things any hedge witch can do. Kathy made sure I was well trained, and this is just prep work really. If it’s a simple enough spell, you don’t need to be very powerful to activate it. And runes...well, I’ve always been good with runes. There are a few that help, ummm...thin the barrier between me and the magic. I haven’t quite got the combination right, but when I do I’ll tattoo them on my forehead.”
“Subtle.” He laughed at the mental image. “You find the right combination, I’ll work them into a design for you. We’ll find someplace better than your forehead to put them.”
He winced, hoping she wouldn’t take that the wrong way. Tried to ignore the images in his own mind of creamy skin and hidden places.
She paused in putting away the materials to look up. “You do that? Tattoos?”
“Graphic design, actually. It lets me work from home. Office work can be hard on hounds. But yeah, I’ve designed tattoos before and placed them, mostly for the pack.”
She straightened. “Are you serious about the offer? Because I’m serious about trying to use runes to break through the block. I’ll take you up on it, if you mean it.”
Heaven help him. “I’m serious. I still have the equipment.”
Her smile was slow and brilliant, chasing away the storm clouds in her eyes. And no matter how stupid, he couldn’t make himself regret the offer.
“Okay, then.” She tucked the shoebox away behind her on the bookshelf and pointed toward a crate beside the door. “The wards are over there. I carved the runes onto the rocks and Lois sealed them to the stone. Just place them about five feet away from the ward stones on this side of the fault. I’ll come out and power it up in the morning. It should keep a portal from forming unexpectedly.”
“Lois says it may make a split more likely to form somewhere else.”
She nodded.
“And there’s no way to predict where it will happen? Or when?”
“Not with any certainty. I used to walk the fault with my grandmother and can usually feel the weak spots, but they can also form quickly.” She crossed her arms in a classic defensive pose and he wondered at it until she said, “Lois isn’t sensitive enough to feel the changes. She tries to hide that from your Odin, but she can’t hide it from me.”
It didn’t surprise him one bit that Lois would put her pride before the safety of the clan. The note of bitterness in Raquel’s voice did surprise him, however. Lois must be riding her pretty hard. “I’ll let Aiden know...discreetly.” No point in adding any more tension to the mix between Lois and her apprentice. He did his best to ignore the warm thrill of pleasure that she trusted him enough to confide in him. “Thanks for telling me.”
She waved it aside and he hefted the crate into his arms, trying to pretend it wasn’t heavy. It had to be at least a hundred pounds of rocks. She came around the counter to open the door for him.
“If you have any trouble with those, let me know.”
His shoulder brushed against her hand and she startled. Afraid he’d accidently hurt her, he paused. But he hadn’t hurt her, that wasn’t it. There was a faint blush at the crest of her cheek and when she looked up, he saw something in her eyes that shouldn’t be there, felt something inside himself rouse sleepily awake.
She wouldn’t admit she felt that strange little connection if he waited a hundred years, which was just as well. She was Christian’s and this—whatever
Lois picked Raquel up first thing in the morning to set the rune stones. After the last rogue surge, everyone was on edge. She’d been told the surges were becoming more frequent and unpredictable as time passed. Usually, the winters were a little bit slower, at least in this hemisphere. Usually, the surges didn’t occur outside the new and full moons. No one had a good answer as to what was causing the irregularity other than that the wards had reached the end of their life expectancy. Everyone looked to the clan witch and her new apprentice to solve the problem. The first step was strengthening the wards that surrounded the fault.
About two miles in length and located dead smack in the center of acres of ?sir-owned farmland, the fault cut through a large stretch of woods that surrounded a lake. The portal could open anywhere along it and the
