Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (9 page)

“
Yes,
I can!
”

I held the braid out. “Loop
the
leather around your wrist. Let me embed the arrowhead in the ring,
and you can test it again.”

I left him standing there,
the braid on
the counter. “I know how this feels, White Feather. I've been
stalked before.”

He glared at me, an inferno
about to
explode. But he had been there. He remembered. For a second,
sympathy flashed, but it was quickly replaced by anger. Still, one
fist unclenched enough to reach for the braid.

I took my time on the ring,
hoping that
giving White Feather some space would make him more receptive to my
help.

The obsidian arrowhead was
too large
for the ring, but instead of carving it smaller, it occurred to me
that turquoise would provide even better protection. My hand hovered
over my bracelet again. Not only was turquoise a healing and
purifying stone, it would strengthen the good and dispel the bad
without interfering with magic. Only for a family member would I
donate any of Grandma’s turquoise. Or for White Feather.

I pried the turquoise out
of its
setting and chipped a chunk from the bottom where it would be least
noticeable. Turquoise was perfect for causing spells to slide off and
away. It soaked up evil, detoxifying it.

It took careful carving to
form an
arrowhead from the turquoise, but the shape as well as the mineral
had to be perfect. Embedding the turquoise in the silver ring was
easy.

I cooled the ring in holy
water before
returning to the living room.

White Feather paced across
the small
space like a caged tiger.

“I've one more ingredient
to add
to the leather band I made you.” It came out more a question
than I intended.

White Feather saved his
glare for the
band around his wrist as he untied it. He watched without comment as
I embedded the leftover turquoise dust in the leather.

When I was done, I offered
White
Feather the ring.

He took it, his eyes
hooded. “Aren't
I the one who is supposed to give you a ring?”

It took me a minute, but I
finally got
it. “I...what?”

He rewarded me with a weak
smile that
reached all the way to his eyes--and my heart. “I'm not
accustomed to accepting help.” He spun the ring around the tip
of his finger. “Thanks.”

My face flushed. “Me
neither,
not really.”

He put my hand on top of
his and slid
the ring on his finger, still holding my hand. The silver was warm,
but wearable. The arrowhead was spelled, earth to earth. Hopefully
it was strong enough to absorb the taint lingering around him.

“If it heats up, get
yourself
into water. A swimming pool, shower, whatever is closest.”

“Or fire. Or I could dig
myself a
hole in the ground.”

“That would work, but it
might be
easier to stay alive if you chose a different option.”

Neither of us laughed.
Whatever spell
had been used was subtle enough to cross the threshold of my home
without detection and strong enough to not be completely blocked by
the adobe. Of course, I always welcomed him in, which would make it
much easier on a stowaway spell.

“If someone comes after me,
I’ll
give them their money’s worth.” He squeezed my hand hard.

“Be careful, White Feather.
Whoever is messing with this isn’t just using wind. They're
trying to access
you.
” And whatever aura was out
there had partially succeeded, at least
when Sarah’s bones had been involved. We needed to break the
link. Yesterday.

The slope of his shoulders
echoed the
weight resting on my own. He reached for me, but then dropped his arm
and took two strides to the door instead. “I'll call you
later.”

I wanted to scream out my
fear, but
there was no time to waste on self-indulgent luxuries. Welcome or
not, I was going to save his hide from whoever had marked him, be she
dead or alive.

When
the door clicked
shut behind him, I locked it and immediately began to plan.

My first chore was to eat
because no
witch does her best work on an empty stomach. I grilled a cheese
sandwich and then read about cats, possessions and spells.
Using extremely dangerous magic, a cat could be possessed by a living
witch. Even possessed, convincing a cat to cooperate was difficult
because cats had natural protections against magic--and a mystical
ability to ignore orders or coercion.

They couldn't be spelled or
trained to
cooperate. On rare occasions they could be cajoled into helping, but
they were capricious.

Ghosts were easier to
handle. They
could be forced in and out of realms and, as I suspected, their bones
could serve as a control. They could be called using personal objects
or drawn to the living by unrequited desires. It was almost unheard
of for a ghost to draw power from the realm of the dead
on
its
own
, but it could be forced as a medium through which some
nasty
stuff could flow.

“Aztec curses.”

At midnight, more confused
than before,
I showered again and went to bed.

Sleep didn't provide any
answers, but
it did help me to prioritize. Whether the cat had anything to do with
Sarah or not, we needed to find out if Sarah was haunting White
Feather. He probably wouldn’t be pleased with my interference,
but it was imperative to know one way or the other.

Gulping fully-caffeinated
tea, I
slogged into the lab at daybreak.

Sarah’s spell was my last
link to
her unless Mat sold me the other spell. Preserving at least some of
the spell was crucial. Hmm....maybe a silver toothpick through the
cork?

No, the spell would rub off
on the way
back through. A hook would get stuck...Silver with a little crevice
to hold some of the spell?

I coated a thin steel pick
with silver
and notched one side an inch from the tip. It should be enough to
capture bits of spell and aura.

It took some finesse to
insert the pick
without the jar spinning away from me. Extracting the pick without
popping the cork wasn’t all that easy either.

Once out, there was no sign
of any
chemicals nestled inside my specially crafted indentation, but aura
and spells weren't always visible to the naked eye.

I spelled the witching fork
with the
invisible aura, packed my backpack, ate breakfast and debated calling
ahead.

He couldn’t say no if he
didn’t
know I was coming.

I was ever so slightly
nervous over
whether he would accept any more help from me. If he refused, did it
mean he was under a spell? Or that he was just stubborn?

I had only been to his
place once; it
had seemed to be an introduction of sorts, a stop on the way to
bigger and better things. Until bigger and better had dwindled to
phone calls and emergencies.

My hands were not sweating
from
gripping the steering wheel as I drove. It was a nice day and not hot
enough for sweaty hands.

White Feather, true to his
nature, had
designed his home off-grid, completely powered by solar and wind. The
solar panels were mostly for show because he generated enough wind to
charge the storage batteries whenever necessary.

Backpack in hand, I was
barely out of
the car when White Feather barreled out the front door. “Adriel!”
His wind reached me before he did. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

He halted on the walkway.
“You’re
sure? No ghosts? Or spell-demon cats, dogs, whatever?”

I hadn't expected such
concern over me
arriving unexpectedly at his front door. “No, I swear I’m
fine. I brought my witching fork to check your place for traces of
Sarah.”

He settled back on his
heels and
rearranged his train of thought. Finally he said, “Not a bad
idea.”

I joined him on the
walkway. “If
Sarah has anything to do with whatever has spelled you, I want to
find it.”

He leaned in and kissed my
lips
lightly.

I blushed, caught off-guard
by the warm
welcome. “I would have called first, but...” I could
hardly tell him I planned to check for Sarah come hell or high water.

“It's a good idea to hunt
for
her,” he said. “The ring is warm, all the time, even on
home ground.”

I touched the silver band.
It radiated
a steady heat, not enough to burn, but a constant warning.

White Feather led the way
inside. Like
many newer Santa Fe properties, his house was brown adobe with lots
of tile. Not only was it possible to see from the living room into
the kitchen, with a breeze White Feather could easily check down the
wide hallways and into the bedrooms.

The tiled floors were
generously
decorated with Navajo wool rugs. His home was everything mine was
not; large, open and expensively furnished. The colors were similar
to mine, a mix of desert earth browns with generous splashes of the
deep blue of the sky.

Before I was halfway into
the living
room, a bright pink purse on a side table caught my attention. I cut
my eyes to White Feather. He didn’t notice my sudden tension.

Okay. This was too obvious
to simply
ignore. “New purse?”

“What?”

I pointed to it.

He rolled his eyes. “Tara.
She
left it here after a particularly bad training session a few weeks
ago, and then forgot it the next three times. I need to drop it off.”

“Oh.” I relaxed, but threw
an inward curse at Tara for causing jealousy about some Claire person
that may not even exist. I set my backpack down on one of the six
woven fabric chairs. The arms and legs were sturdy oak, carved with
gorgeous detailed patterns, ones I’d love to investigate
someday.

Six was a magical number,
and White
Feather was a warlock. Either the number of chairs was significant or
the way they were aligned was protective, magical or both.

White Feather said, “If
Sarah is
the reason for my paranoia, and she’s only a ghost, I’ll
give her a send off she won't want repeated.”

I pulled out the witching
fork. “You
can get rid of a ghost easily?”

He smiled, but his eyes
held steel. “A
specific ghost, yes. Especially if there’s an object here tied
to her. If not for Grandfather, I would have purged for all ghosts
after you told me you saw one.”

“Ah, your grandfather might
not
like it if you purged him.” I walked the perimeter of the
living room. The fork didn’t vibrate even slightly.

Working my way into the
kitchen, I held
the fork high, low and in-between. The bar at the side of the kitchen
held one of White Feather’s inventions, a beautifully detailed
electric train powered by concept windmills.

On my last visit, he had
demonstrated
how the train delivered whole coffee beans to a grinding station and
then paused with one of the cars positioned under the chute at the
other end. Once filled, the train took the freshly ground beans up a
hill and dumped them into a chute that fed either the espresso maker
or the coffee pot.

The train completed the
circuit past a
detailed forest backdrop where it collected green beans from another
hamper and deposited them at a roasting station. White Feather had
carved each car from a different type of wood.

I gave the train a friendly
pat. “I
love your train.” The witching fork didn't quiver the least bit
near the train. Relieved, I looked at him for permission before
going down the hallway.

He nodded, looking slightly
amused.

I had never been in his
bedroom. It was
as neat as the rest of the place. It was more suggestive than any
other room too. The tingle in my hands and toes was not from the
witching fork.

White Feather's desk was
pleasantly
cluttered; model windmills and parts sat alongside papers and a
laptop. No less than four computer screens stretched across the
desk. One of them displayed a graph of windmill speeds and battery
charge level stats.

I approached the handmade
dresser, a
design that quite obviously followed the pattern the wood had
supplied. Rather than a perfect rectangle, the dresser was tall, more
like a very large tree with drawers. The wood was a stunning mix of
reddish browns, too dark for oak. I couldn’t resist running my
fingers across its smooth surface.

From the doorway, White
Feather said,
“It’s mesquite. Grandfather made it.”

I jumped and dropped the
witching fork.
“Whoops. Must be where you inherited your talent for wood
carving. It’s gorgeous.”

He smiled. My heart
stopped. Being in a
bedroom around White Feather was a whole new level of temptation. I
stooped to retrieve the witching fork. “I’m not getting
anything at all. I thought for sure there would be a reaction.”

White Feather had used wind
at Sarah’s
cabin and some type of force had responded. He felt something the
night Sarah appeared at my place. Then when he brought Sarah's
bones, a malignant wind had appeared again.

But now, the witching fork
was silent.

“Let me try.” He reached
for the fork.

We had merged magics
before. “Are
you sure? If she’s attracted to your wind, it could be
dangerous.”

“Better on my territory
than
hers.”

He was right about that. I
waited while
he added his wind to the spell already set.

“Try it again.”

I detected no change, but
knew the
spell was stronger with his magic added. Together we paced the room,
not avoiding the bed or anything else. Working with him was heady
stuff. I was wildly attracted to him even without our elements
colliding; add the suggestion of the bed and my magic, and it was all
I could do to keep my hands off of him.

Our bodies brushed as we
moved from the
bedroom to the master bath and back out. He put his hand on my
shoulder and let it drift to my lower back as we walked down the hall
to the guest bath.