Legacy & Spellbound (8 page)

The figure raised its veiled head.
“The strongest witch who ever lived. Until you.”

She raised the dagger and pointed it at Holly.
“You can save everything. But you must be willing to become the witch you were born to be.”

“I … I …”

“Don't stammer, girl! It humiliates me so! The battle is being lost. They are dying.”

“Then stop it!” Holly cried. “I'll do anything! I—I will!”

“Swear.”
Catherine held out the dagger.
“Swear by your own blood, which is mine, Holly of the Cahors Coven.”

Holly reached forward and touched the dagger; it pricked the tip of her forefinger with a sharp slice. Three droplets of her blood dripped in slow motion toward the featureless black landscape… .

And she was on the street.

With the others.

And she was unhurt.

She gasped; beside her, Amanda said, “What, Holly?”

There were no demons. No imps. No portals. Everyone was fine. The other members of her coven stood in the snow, watching her curiously as she turned in a circle, completely bewildered.

“Where are the others?” she asked. She was stunned. “The guys? The dark-haired man?”

Amanda glanced at Sasha and Silvana, standing nearby. Tommy came up and waved a hand in front of Holly's eyes. “Yo. Everything all right?”

“Joel?” she called.

The snow fell heavily. The wind whistled. Other pedestrians on the street passed by, oblivious to the presence of the Coven, which was warded and cloaked.

“Okay, this is very weird,” Holly said slowly.

“I quite agree,” said a voice as a figure stepped from the snowfall and approached her.

It was the dark-haired man. He cocked his head and studied Holly. “There was a battle,” he began. He gestured to her coven. “And now … there is not.”

She nodded, flooding with relief. Someone else knew what had happened.

From the falling snow, three other men emerged, one very young, looking confused and wary. The others were older, one of them in his forties. Holly recognized them from the battle.

“You stopped it,” the man continued. “Magically.” She had time to notice now that he had a very thick accent.

“Holly?” Amanda asked, her voice rising. “What's he talking about?”

“I stopped it,” Holly agreed.
But there was a price... what was it? Another death? What have I done?

She turned and walked north.

There was no tingling sensation, no sense of anxiety, no impending danger.

“It's gone.” She looked at the dark-haired man, who was watching her carefully. “We ran into something here, and we were attacked.”

Her coven members stared at her. But it was clear
the man remembered everything that had happened as well.

“We were on our way to find you,” he said. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the petals of a wilted lily. “You left this behind.”

“I …” She took the lily, examining it carefully. “I had a vision. I saw you, but I never left … the place I was.” She was careful not to mention the safe house. “Who are you?”

He gestured to himself and said, “We serve White Magic. I am Philippe. Our leader was killed by those whom you fight.”

The youngest one looked stricken. “He was my brother, José Luís,” he said quietly.

“Killed?” Holly gestured around them. “But the battle's … gone.”

“There was another battle,” said the oldest of the men. “There have been many of them.”

“Whom do you serve?” Philippe asked, gazing steadily at Holly. “To whom do you owe allegiance?”

“Holly, don't answer that,” Sasha said firmly, coming up beside her and putting her hand on her shoulder. “We don't know who these men are.”

Holly pursed her lips.

“We lost José Luís during a kidnapping,” Philippe
informed Holly. “The Supreme Coven took one of us.” He paused, then added carefully, “Her name was Nicole.”

“Nicole!”
Amanda cried, rushing toward the man. “Where is she?”

Holly raised her hand. “Amanda, be careful. Don't say anything else until we know what's going on.”

The man looked sharply at Amanda, who was bursting with questions. “You know Nicole?” He narrowed his eyes. “You look much like her.”

Holly stepped forward. “I'm the High Priestess of this coven,” she announced. “You need to deal with me.”

“We are here to rescue her,” the man said. The other men nodded, and the oldest one crossed himself.

“Oh, Holly!” Amanda cried.

Holly softened. She decided to trust him. After all, they had risked death to fight beside them. “So are we,” she said.

After a brief discussion, Holly decided the best thing to do would be to go to the second London safe house for which Joel had given them directions.

She was worried that he had not reappeared after Catherine had eliminated the battle for them. Of
everyone she had seen at the battle, he was the only missing person.

There was to be a price,
she reminded herself, with a terrible feeling of dread.
If I caused his death …

She could not think further about it.

She had a coven to save.

San Francisco

Tante Cecile gasped as she was wrenched from her meditations. The girls were in danger. She glanced uneasily around the Victorian house and wondered if she should go find Dan. They had been in San Francisco for several days, watching over Amanda and Nicole's father and Holly's friend, Barbara Davis-Chin.

It had been hard to be separated from her daughter, Silvana, knowing that they might never see each other again. Still, each of them did what they had to for the good of the Coven.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples slowly, trying to draw the images she had seen into clearer focus.
A great battle, her Silvana fighting nobly. Then, suddenly it was over, as though it had never been. Why? She saw Holly standing before a veiled woman promising her... what? Something.

Her eyes flew open as her heart skipped a beat.
Oh, Holly! What have you done?

London, Safe House

The second safe house was more in keeping with what Amanda had expected the first one would be like: a small London flat festively decorated for Yule with garlands of holly and ivy, and a Yule log atop a cheery mantel awaiting the birth of the sun. The flat was over-seen by a female witch named Rose, who ushered in the ten fugitives and led them as far away from the doors and windows as possible.

“There's no guarantee you're safe any longer,” Rose told them after Holly related the story of the battle and the undoing of it. “But I don't know what else to do.”

She gave them something to eat and excused herself to figure out sleeping arrangements.

As they crowded into her sitting room, Philippe approached Holly and Sasha and said, “We must talk.”

Amanda frowned, somewhat hurt by the exclusion. She was obviously not one of the inner sanctum of their group.

Then Tommy took her hand and said, “Let them deal with it for now, Amanda. Holly's our leader.”

The contact of his skin, though she had felt it a hundred times during rituals, sent an unexpected shiver through her. Her mind began to go someplace that frightened her.
Tommy... Tommy Nagai is a man...
he's a guy … and I … I'm a woman … we're growing up. We can … there are things we can do and be together, the two of us … if, um, he wants …

Suddenly she wasn't interested in what Holly and the man were talking about. She wasn't jealous that Sasha had been allowed to join in and she wasn't. She was just intensely aware of Tommy.
None of them is with him. I am.

She looked down at his hand in hers. She felt herself flushing and said, “Nagai, you're making contact with my skin.”

His smile was wicked gentle. His almond eyes were dancing. He looked as if he had swallowed a flashlight, and her breath caught.
We're so having the chemistry thing,
she thought.

“Tommy, you're … you're holding my hand.”

“So?” He chuckled.

She gave his hand a shake. “C'mon, let me go.” When he didn't, she said, “What's your deal, Tommy?”

“You are such an incredible dork,” he told her fondly. “Anderson, I've been crushing on you for years. Haven't you ever noticed?”

“Oh.” She was taken aback.
Tommy?

Tommy the joker, who never took her seriously but who was always there, always listening, always commiserating over everything that ever happened to her?

Hello?

“Years,” he repeated, as if trying to penetrate her astonishment. “Since we were babies, practically.”

“Oh.”
She gave him a shy smile. “Hi.” It wasn't poetry, but it was all she could think to say. Somehow, though, it was all she needed to say.

He smiled back. “Hi.” Gave her hand another wag. “Not so bad?”

“Not so bad,” she agreed. “But we're still babies.” “Not so much.” He pecked her cheek.

“Mew.”

A cat jumped up onto Amanda's lap. Startled, she jumped and then settled as the cat began to purr and curled up as though to go to sleep.

“Well, where did you come from?” she asked the bedraggled-looking feline. “Are you Rose's cat?”

“Her name is Astarte. She is Nicole's. She came to Nicole a few nights before she was kidnapped. She has joined us in the search,” Pablo told her.

Amanda felt her stomach twist into a tight knot. A few nights before she was kidnapped …
Did this cat come to her when Holly drowned Hecate?
she wondered. A chill rippled up her spine.

Philippe looked over at Amanda and Tommy. He looked envious. “They found each other,” he murmured.

“Well, they didn't have far to look,” Sasha said dryly. She looked expectantly at Holly.

Holly cleared her throat. “As you know, there was a battle, and I … I made contact with a veiled woman. She undid it somehow.”

“What was her price?” Sasha asked. As Holly flushed, she pressed; “It was worse than the cat, wasn't it?”

Holly narrowed her eyes. “That's my business.”

“No, it's not, not when you're part of a coven. We all have to agree on things. It's the way of the Mother Coven.”

Jer's mother was putting Holly on the defensive, and she didn't like it. Holly threw back her head and shot back, “And that's why the Mother Coven is so weak, Sasha. Look at us. They can't even protect us, while the Supreme Coven kidnaps some of us and kills others. They're lame.”

Sasha blinked. “I can't believe you can say that, when—”

“Alors,”
Philippe said, raising his hands. He turned his attention to Holly. “I beg your pardon, but we must move to action, not discuss philosophy.”

“You're right,” she said tersely. “What's done is done. What I did or said …” She exhaled. “I'm not certain
what I agreed to, in all honesty. But it saved us.”

“Sometimes that's not the right thing to do,” Sasha insisted.

“Well, when you get down off your high horse, let me know.” Holly turned on her heel.

“Holly,” Philippe called, following her as she stomped into the kitchen. She looked around, found Rose's electric kettle, and lifted it to see if there was water in it. Satisfied that it had recently been filled, she plugged it in and rummaged through the scattering of tea things on a silver tray for a tea bag.

“You're the one Nicole called,” Philippe said, leaning against the white-tiled counter. “It was then that James and Eli were alerted to our location. Then that José Luís was killed.”

She hunched her shoulders as she selected a Prince of Wales tea bag and smoothed the string away from the little pouch of fragrant tea. “Are you trying to guilt-trip me into saving her? Because you don't need to. I said I'd do it and I will.”

“I'm only saying that I care about her. We care about her,” he amended.

“No, you don't.” She scowled at him. “You're just as bad as the Mother Coven. All this talking isn't going to get anyone back.”

“We need to figure out who each of us is first,” he replied. He gestured to the tea bag. “May I have some as well?”

“Sorry,” she muttered, picking up a second bag. “There should be some cups around here somewhere… .”

He opened a cabinet and pulled out two mugs that said LILITH FAIR. He chuckled. “Rose is such a one who would go to a thing like that, eh? Sarah McLachlan?”

Despite herself, Holly smiled in recognition. “My mom loved her stuff. She thought that made her hip and cool.”

“Moms yearn to be hip and cool.” He chuckled. “My own mother is a traditional French housewife. Except that she sells magic herbs and potions to all her rich girlfriends.”

“Some sell Avon, some sell love spells.”

“Exactement.”

She pointed to the cabinet. “You have a bit of psychic awareness. There's no way you could have known the cups were in there.”

“Peut-être.”
His shrug was pure French.

The kettle began to burble. Holly took the cups from him and settled the tea bags inside them.

“Okay. You've broken the ice and found common
ground, thereby bonding with me. What do you propose we do now?”

“Transportation spell,” he said. “Go to them.” Her grin widened. “I like that.”

He grinned back and pointed to his head. “Psychic awareness,” he replied. “You see? We will work well together.”

“I hope so,” she said as she lifted the kettle again.

He frowned. “Let it boil. Americans never let it boil.”

Setting the kettle down, she folded her arms. “I'll let it boil over, if that's what it takes. To make good tea,” she added pointedly.