A Cold Day in Spell, page 15
“She probably orders take-out. Not everyone makes a three-course meal for breakfast.” I couldn’t help the subtle dig. “We’re not here to assess her on the Betty Crocker Scale of Housewifery. Just keep looking for the wand.”
Heading deeper into the apartment, I started opening doors. The first led to what was probably meant to be a home office, but was completely devoid of furniture or personal items of any kind. The next was a guest bathroom that looked equally unused. Then I hit pay dirt and found Diana’s bedroom.
This was where the woman lived, and it tickled me a little to discover she was something of a slob. Okay, that was an understatement. Expensive clothes mounded over what I assumed was a chair next to the closet, based on the size and shape of the pile. Jewelry spilled across the top of a dresser and dripped down into the open top drawer. All her shoes lay in a pile in one corner beneath a series of dents in the wall. I could picture her walking in and kicking them off without much care for where they landed or what damage the heels did when they hit.
I realized I’d been right about the take-out when I saw the stack of empty containers and the drift of crumbs across the rumpled sheets. Eww. Diana liked to eat in bed and didn’t seem too concerned about sleeping on greasy linens in a pile of her own filth.
If anyone had been taking bets about her sex life, I’d put money down on her having none at all. No wonder she was so cranky all the time.
The idea of pawing through the mess sent a shiver up my spine that had more to do with the heebie-jeebifying possibility of finding a nest of maggots than Diana figuring out she’d been burgled and tracing the crime back to me.
“Did you find—” Delta poked her head into the room and abruptly lost the will to speak. “Um,” was all she said before she beat a hasty retreat. I heard her tell Vaeta, “Don’t go in there. Just keep searching out here. You’ll thank me later.”
Wimps.
Still, Delta succeeded in distracting my attention away from full-on shudder mode, which was a stroke of luck. When I turned back to survey the mess, I’d lost the sense of revulsion and gained some perspective. This was a puzzle to be solved. A messy, disgusting puzzle, mind you, but I’d always been good at seeing patterns in chaos.
Closing my eyes, I dragged in a few meditative breaths. When I opened them again, I kept them slightly unfocused—partly to keep from getting grossed out a second time, but mostly to let the sheer mountain of detritus render itself into manageable chunks. Then I stepped into her shoes.
Not literally because…yuck!
I was Diana Diamond coming home from a long day—or night—of screwing up people’s lives. What did I do? Well, if it was a good night, I danced around a little as I kicked off my shoes and on a bad one, I just winged them into the corner as hard as I could and put on—. I glanced around and my gaze fell on a pair of well-worn slippers. Bingo.
And the soft robe hanging off the doorknob. Double bingo. Jewelry hits the dresser and I’m shrugging off the day with takeout in bed.
No, that wasn’t right. Diana would need to track her progress in some way. Maybe with a calendar or a list—and none of this was helping me figure out where she’d hide the wand and time was running out.
Concentrate, I told myself. You’re only seeing what’s there. What’s missing in this organized disorder?
I made another circuit of the bedroom, and as I passed the open doorway leading to the master bath, it hit me. There wasn’t a mirror in the place. Out of character for someone like Diana, who wore nothing but designer clothes and thousand-dollar shoes. Vain people liked looking at themselves, didn’t they? So where was the mirror?
Now that I knew what I was looking for, the pattern fell into place. Framed artwork danced across the wall behind the bed. Diana’s tastes ran to splotchy abstracts and even numbers. Two on the left of the headboard, two on the right. The adjacent wall carried three and three, but with one difference—a large space between the canvases. One that would be about the size of a wall mirror.
Pay dirt.
Except it wasn’t quite.
I tried every revealing spell in my arsenal and when all else failed, threw a ball of witchfire. Okay, maybe I was frustrated, but the fire picked out the outline of a rectangle, which proved I was on the right track.
Stupid thing was probably keyed to her finger or voice print.
Fury bubbled up through the well of magic pooled behind my belly. I let it out in a low shriek that brought Delta and Vaeta running.
“What happened?”
Tiny tongues flickered along the wall and I gestured toward them because I didn’t trust my voice for more than a short, growled description. “Invisible mirror. Hidden by magic. No key. Dead end.”
Shockingly, Delta grinned. Didn’t she hear what I said?
Her sword was in her hand almost before I heard the sound of it leaving the scabbard. The metal burned bright and blue and sang as she brought the tip up to slash a path through the air around the edges of the mirror. When she closed the rectangle, the flare dazzled my eyes and the popping sound pulled at my eardrums. How did I not know Delta had that kind of game?
Spots danced through my vision for a solid minute, and when they cleared, I let out a string of language not becoming a lady. Not that I considered myself in that class anyway. Lexi would have recognized the room that had essentially sucked me through the mirror. This was Diana’s lair, the place where she could be her truest self and count her victories on the wall covered with the darkness-laced cards she’d played.
As I stepped closer for a better look, I heard a tapping sound and looked behind me to see Delta and Vaeta’s anxious faces peering at me though the looking glass. Their mouths were moving, but I had no idea what they were saying, so I shook my head, and turned back toward the wall of shame.
More tapping, frantic this time, and Vaeta used her breath to create steam on the glass. Her finger traced out two words. She’s coming.
Uh oh. Time to find the wand and get out.
Reluctantly, I focused on the only other two things in the room: a bare table and an old, painted cupboard with one door hanging slightly open. More tapping nudged me into yanking my sleeve down over bare skin to nudge the door open without leaving my prints behind. There wasn’t time to do much more than grab the wand and skedaddle back through the mirror, but I couldn’t help snagging one of the Tarot cards from the deck sitting on a shelf alone.
The mirror sucked me back through to the bedroom before I had time to worry how it might work, and Delta reversed her mojo to hide it behind me.
“Elevator’s on the way up, we have to go. Now.” To hurry things along, Vaeta drew a strong breeze to push us back toward the open doorway and Delta twisted around to seal it almost before we were clear. “Hold on.” I heard Vaeta’s tense order while I felt her hand on my arm. With both me and Delta in tow, she jumped off the roof just as the elevator doors dinged open.
Then we were falling and I forgot how to breathe.
Chapter 21
Lexi
My head buzzed like a mosquito on steroids.
“Where am I? We? Alexis, are you there?” No answer.
A flaccid, slanting light lit the space around me in a small enough diameter that I couldn’t make out anything other than a few shadowy shapes. Nothing moved; there were no sounds other than the rasp of my breathing and the lub-lub of my heartbeat.
“Hello! Is anybody there?” Louder now, I practically screamed into the uncanny silence.
“Shut up.” Alexis stepped into the light. “I’m here.”
Seeing her outside my body and in solid form, it struck me how tired she looked.
“Where are we? What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.
The first question I had no answer for, but the second made me stop and think. “We were standing on the front porch. I was annoyed because you were the one who said we shouldn’t try and get back together with Kin and then, there we were, about to kiss him.”
Graceful, Alexis sank down to sit cross-legged on the…well, it wasn’t a floor, exactly, just a nondescript, gray surface. She yanked me down to join her, and I did, though with far less panache.
For half a minute, we simply stared at each other in silence.
“Do you think we’re dead? This could be purgatory.” I looked around at the dim nothingness.
Alexis took stock. “I don’t feel dead, but then I’ve never had the experience, so I can’t be certain. I’ve never heard of a witch version of purgatory though.” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her temple. “Besides, I have a headache. Dead people probably don’t get headaches, right?”
“Probably not.” Now that she’d brought it up, I realized my head wasn’t feeling so hot, either. The power of suggestion, maybe.
As if she heard my thought, Alexis huffed out a sigh. “When are you going to learn we’re the same person? If my head hurts, you’re going to have a headache. It’s not rocket science, Lexi.”
I hated the snide, condescending way she talked to me. “You’re a jerk, you know that? A cold, heartless robot with no sentiment whatsoever. Logic isn’t the answer to everything, you know. Sometimes you have to follow your heart. Let your feelings be your guide.”
“Oh really? And where did that get you, Lexi Balefire? Following your heart right down the tubes is where. Nothing about this is normal.”
“Pfft. Like I don’t know that. Normal took a hike around the time the Bow of Destiny dragged you into my life.” Since then, it had been one strange turn after another. Sure, there had been some good mixed in with the bad, like getting Gran back, and meeting Aunt Mag. Ending a years-long feud with Serena and getting to meet Kaine.
The throbbing in my temple went up a notch when Alexis stared at me for a full minute with her worst version of the you’re an idiot expression. I’d have slapped it off her if I wasn’t nearly certain I’d feel the blow.
Except I didn’t really want to hurt Alexis, and I knew she didn’t want to hurt me.
“This might not be the best time and place to have an existential crisis.” When she raised an eyebrow, I corrected myself. “Okay, it might not be the best place to try and solve an existing existential crisis. Let’s see if we can figure out where we are and how to get out of here first.” Without waiting to see if she agreed, I rose and strode out of the circle of light and into the darkness.
Sylvana
“Nothing is working. She's slipping away—can’t you feel it?” Just when I’d found my family again, it was being ripped apart. “Come on, baby. Fight. Please, you have to come back. Just come back.”
I’d hoped to see a change in her condition when we returned with the wand, but if anything, she’d gone deeper into stasis, and another day passed with no change
“Kin’s here.” I turned to him and noticed he looked about as miserable as I felt. He had bags under his eyes and they looked hollowed out over a two-day scruff of beard. In fact, none of us looked like we’d slept or eaten in a week. Aunt Mag had her skirt on inside out. Given the garish nature of the print, it almost looked better that way. “He’s waiting for you to wake up. We all are.”
Not a twitch or even a flicker under her eyelids to show she’d heard me.
“Kiss her.” Soleil’s command seemed a little too cheery for the somber tone in the room. “Go on, Kin. Kiss her like she’s Snow White and you’re Prince Charming.”
She glanced at the sea of raised eyebrows she’d caused and said, “What? It could work. What have we got to lose?”
“Besides my dignity?” Red-faced, Kin took a step back, then looked at Lexi and shrugged. “I wasn’t all that attached to it anyway.” Shoulders squared with purpose, he settled down next to her, leaned close, and laid his lips over hers.
Every other person in the room sucked in a breath.
“It’s not working.” Soleil stated the obvious.
“Then he must be doing it wrong. Go ahead, plant one on her, boy. Make it count. A great big smackeroo, and put some wax on it.” Mag rubbed her hands together.
Despite the somber atmosphere, Vaeta let out a little snort, and Mom kicked her sister in the ankle. Glowering, Mag subsided.
Kin looked like his fondest wish would be for the floor to open up and swallow him whole, but he bent his head and tried again.
Alexis
Silent, clinging to each other, eyes straining to see more than a few feet ahead, Lexi and I walked through the dismal twilight for about an hour that felt longer than forever.
“If we ever get out of this, I’m going to start carrying one of those little penlights in my pocket,” I said and then I jumped at the sound of Lexi’s hand slapping her forehead.
Witchlight dazzled my eyes when it flared to life in her palm. “Don’t say it. I already know I'm an idiot, you don’t have to tell me,” she said when I opened my mouth.
“I was going to say that was good thinking, but we can go with yours if you prefer.”
“Maybe you could just shut up and work with me for once.” Lexi griped.
I sighed, and turned to face her, “I have been working with you, you’ve just been too angry to notice. You’re the one who decided to fracture yourself, and now I’ve got to listen to you whine about it. And considering I’m just a part of you, all you’re doing is irritating yourself.”
Lexi narrowed her eyes and I thought, for a moment, that she had finally started to come to terms with the notion that we were one and the same.
“We’ve been here before. I recognize that shadow. We’re just going around in circles,” she wailed, ignoring me completely.
Maybe it really would be better if I took over operating our body. The witch was positively daft. “Of course we’ve been going in circles. That’s what we’ve been doing for months. Possibly even years.”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t even know you existed. I was supposed to be a witch—I didn’t ask to be part goddess. I didn’t ask for you at all.” And there was the rub.
“Suck it up, buttercup.” I retorted. “There’s nothing you can do about it. You are who you are. And all things considered, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping you safe while you’ve been wallowing. What’s so wrong with being part goddess anyway? It’s more than insulting that you keep acting like I’m some redheaded stepchild.”
Lexi’s eyes widened. “That’s offensive to redheads, and unnecessary. I never said there was anything wrong with being a half goddess. But all I wanted was my powers—I never asked to be in charge of people’s fates. I don’t want that level of responsibility.”
I huffed a breath out through my nose. “So you’d rather just act like a spoiled brat and turn the other cheek? Guess what? You can’t get out of this, and deep down you don’t really want to. Otherwise, you would never have opened the door to me in the first place.”
Lexi
I stomped off into the darkness, hoping I could lose Alexis somewhere along the way. Go back to how things were before. But she followed at my heels like a little yappy dog you just want to kick.
“There’s no getting away from me, Lexi. And if you’d stop being so stubborn, maybe we could work together to find our way out of this mess. I do have useful skills, you know,” she snapped.
“Oh yeah, such as?” I popped my hands on my hips and stared Alexis down. “Because as far as I can tell, all the magic comes from my side of the family. Without Daddy’s little bow and arrow, you’ve got nothing.”
“Is that what you think? You think the ability to bring two hearts together means nothing? That weaving the threads of fate to make the world a better place doesn’t count as power? That’s all on me, sweetheart. Always has been.” Alexis had begun to pace while she ranted. “You wouldn’t even have FootSwept if it weren’t for me. I told you, I’ve always been there. This has always been your destiny. Maybe I can’t shoot witchfire out of my palm all by myself, but don’t you dare think for one second you’d enjoy the level of power at your disposal if it weren’t for me.”
Maybe she was right. Or I was right, whatever. But I still wasn’t ready to admit it. “Just stop talking. You’re making my headache worse.”
“Right back at ya.”
“Why don’t you put some of your special powers to good use, then, and help us find a way back home?” I demanded.
Alexis crossed her arms and stared at me, “I don’t think it’s going to work that way. We’re going to have to go together or not at all. That’s what my gut is telling me. And you know our gut is never wrong.”
She had a point. I’d always trusted my intuition, particularly when it came to making matches. The pull in my belly I’d always called my Love Positioning System had never led me astray. I’d just assumed it was part of my witchy powers, but standing there staring at the goddess half of myself, I realized I didn’t feel a thing. Alexis was right, I’d become so fractured I’d lost the one thing that had been a constant for as long as I could remember.
Maybe there was something to what she was saying. “Fine. Let’s work together then. What did you have in mind?”
“Give me your hand,” Alexis said, and grabbed it before I could comply. Our fingers entwined and we both closed our eyes and pooled our power. “Lexi, look.” My goddess whispered.
When I opened my eyes, it was to find a ball of swirling witchfire in my hand. Except, this time it wasn’t white or blue or even black—it was bright, shining hot pink—the same color of the symbols that floated above the heads of our potential matches.
“Holy Hecate!”
“Yeah, that’s new, isn’t it?” Alexis grinned like an idiot, and I returned the expression.
Our elation lasted for about thirty seconds, and when nothing happened, my good spirits deflated like a three-day-old party balloon. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Yes, it is. Look.” The pink fire trailed off into the distance, and up ahead I could see a gilded door. It looked like the proverbial gate to Heaven, and quite frankly scared the living daylights out of me.
“I don’t want to die yet.”
Heading deeper into the apartment, I started opening doors. The first led to what was probably meant to be a home office, but was completely devoid of furniture or personal items of any kind. The next was a guest bathroom that looked equally unused. Then I hit pay dirt and found Diana’s bedroom.
This was where the woman lived, and it tickled me a little to discover she was something of a slob. Okay, that was an understatement. Expensive clothes mounded over what I assumed was a chair next to the closet, based on the size and shape of the pile. Jewelry spilled across the top of a dresser and dripped down into the open top drawer. All her shoes lay in a pile in one corner beneath a series of dents in the wall. I could picture her walking in and kicking them off without much care for where they landed or what damage the heels did when they hit.
I realized I’d been right about the take-out when I saw the stack of empty containers and the drift of crumbs across the rumpled sheets. Eww. Diana liked to eat in bed and didn’t seem too concerned about sleeping on greasy linens in a pile of her own filth.
If anyone had been taking bets about her sex life, I’d put money down on her having none at all. No wonder she was so cranky all the time.
The idea of pawing through the mess sent a shiver up my spine that had more to do with the heebie-jeebifying possibility of finding a nest of maggots than Diana figuring out she’d been burgled and tracing the crime back to me.
“Did you find—” Delta poked her head into the room and abruptly lost the will to speak. “Um,” was all she said before she beat a hasty retreat. I heard her tell Vaeta, “Don’t go in there. Just keep searching out here. You’ll thank me later.”
Wimps.
Still, Delta succeeded in distracting my attention away from full-on shudder mode, which was a stroke of luck. When I turned back to survey the mess, I’d lost the sense of revulsion and gained some perspective. This was a puzzle to be solved. A messy, disgusting puzzle, mind you, but I’d always been good at seeing patterns in chaos.
Closing my eyes, I dragged in a few meditative breaths. When I opened them again, I kept them slightly unfocused—partly to keep from getting grossed out a second time, but mostly to let the sheer mountain of detritus render itself into manageable chunks. Then I stepped into her shoes.
Not literally because…yuck!
I was Diana Diamond coming home from a long day—or night—of screwing up people’s lives. What did I do? Well, if it was a good night, I danced around a little as I kicked off my shoes and on a bad one, I just winged them into the corner as hard as I could and put on—. I glanced around and my gaze fell on a pair of well-worn slippers. Bingo.
And the soft robe hanging off the doorknob. Double bingo. Jewelry hits the dresser and I’m shrugging off the day with takeout in bed.
No, that wasn’t right. Diana would need to track her progress in some way. Maybe with a calendar or a list—and none of this was helping me figure out where she’d hide the wand and time was running out.
Concentrate, I told myself. You’re only seeing what’s there. What’s missing in this organized disorder?
I made another circuit of the bedroom, and as I passed the open doorway leading to the master bath, it hit me. There wasn’t a mirror in the place. Out of character for someone like Diana, who wore nothing but designer clothes and thousand-dollar shoes. Vain people liked looking at themselves, didn’t they? So where was the mirror?
Now that I knew what I was looking for, the pattern fell into place. Framed artwork danced across the wall behind the bed. Diana’s tastes ran to splotchy abstracts and even numbers. Two on the left of the headboard, two on the right. The adjacent wall carried three and three, but with one difference—a large space between the canvases. One that would be about the size of a wall mirror.
Pay dirt.
Except it wasn’t quite.
I tried every revealing spell in my arsenal and when all else failed, threw a ball of witchfire. Okay, maybe I was frustrated, but the fire picked out the outline of a rectangle, which proved I was on the right track.
Stupid thing was probably keyed to her finger or voice print.
Fury bubbled up through the well of magic pooled behind my belly. I let it out in a low shriek that brought Delta and Vaeta running.
“What happened?”
Tiny tongues flickered along the wall and I gestured toward them because I didn’t trust my voice for more than a short, growled description. “Invisible mirror. Hidden by magic. No key. Dead end.”
Shockingly, Delta grinned. Didn’t she hear what I said?
Her sword was in her hand almost before I heard the sound of it leaving the scabbard. The metal burned bright and blue and sang as she brought the tip up to slash a path through the air around the edges of the mirror. When she closed the rectangle, the flare dazzled my eyes and the popping sound pulled at my eardrums. How did I not know Delta had that kind of game?
Spots danced through my vision for a solid minute, and when they cleared, I let out a string of language not becoming a lady. Not that I considered myself in that class anyway. Lexi would have recognized the room that had essentially sucked me through the mirror. This was Diana’s lair, the place where she could be her truest self and count her victories on the wall covered with the darkness-laced cards she’d played.
As I stepped closer for a better look, I heard a tapping sound and looked behind me to see Delta and Vaeta’s anxious faces peering at me though the looking glass. Their mouths were moving, but I had no idea what they were saying, so I shook my head, and turned back toward the wall of shame.
More tapping, frantic this time, and Vaeta used her breath to create steam on the glass. Her finger traced out two words. She’s coming.
Uh oh. Time to find the wand and get out.
Reluctantly, I focused on the only other two things in the room: a bare table and an old, painted cupboard with one door hanging slightly open. More tapping nudged me into yanking my sleeve down over bare skin to nudge the door open without leaving my prints behind. There wasn’t time to do much more than grab the wand and skedaddle back through the mirror, but I couldn’t help snagging one of the Tarot cards from the deck sitting on a shelf alone.
The mirror sucked me back through to the bedroom before I had time to worry how it might work, and Delta reversed her mojo to hide it behind me.
“Elevator’s on the way up, we have to go. Now.” To hurry things along, Vaeta drew a strong breeze to push us back toward the open doorway and Delta twisted around to seal it almost before we were clear. “Hold on.” I heard Vaeta’s tense order while I felt her hand on my arm. With both me and Delta in tow, she jumped off the roof just as the elevator doors dinged open.
Then we were falling and I forgot how to breathe.
Chapter 21
Lexi
My head buzzed like a mosquito on steroids.
“Where am I? We? Alexis, are you there?” No answer.
A flaccid, slanting light lit the space around me in a small enough diameter that I couldn’t make out anything other than a few shadowy shapes. Nothing moved; there were no sounds other than the rasp of my breathing and the lub-lub of my heartbeat.
“Hello! Is anybody there?” Louder now, I practically screamed into the uncanny silence.
“Shut up.” Alexis stepped into the light. “I’m here.”
Seeing her outside my body and in solid form, it struck me how tired she looked.
“Where are we? What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.
The first question I had no answer for, but the second made me stop and think. “We were standing on the front porch. I was annoyed because you were the one who said we shouldn’t try and get back together with Kin and then, there we were, about to kiss him.”
Graceful, Alexis sank down to sit cross-legged on the…well, it wasn’t a floor, exactly, just a nondescript, gray surface. She yanked me down to join her, and I did, though with far less panache.
For half a minute, we simply stared at each other in silence.
“Do you think we’re dead? This could be purgatory.” I looked around at the dim nothingness.
Alexis took stock. “I don’t feel dead, but then I’ve never had the experience, so I can’t be certain. I’ve never heard of a witch version of purgatory though.” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her temple. “Besides, I have a headache. Dead people probably don’t get headaches, right?”
“Probably not.” Now that she’d brought it up, I realized my head wasn’t feeling so hot, either. The power of suggestion, maybe.
As if she heard my thought, Alexis huffed out a sigh. “When are you going to learn we’re the same person? If my head hurts, you’re going to have a headache. It’s not rocket science, Lexi.”
I hated the snide, condescending way she talked to me. “You’re a jerk, you know that? A cold, heartless robot with no sentiment whatsoever. Logic isn’t the answer to everything, you know. Sometimes you have to follow your heart. Let your feelings be your guide.”
“Oh really? And where did that get you, Lexi Balefire? Following your heart right down the tubes is where. Nothing about this is normal.”
“Pfft. Like I don’t know that. Normal took a hike around the time the Bow of Destiny dragged you into my life.” Since then, it had been one strange turn after another. Sure, there had been some good mixed in with the bad, like getting Gran back, and meeting Aunt Mag. Ending a years-long feud with Serena and getting to meet Kaine.
The throbbing in my temple went up a notch when Alexis stared at me for a full minute with her worst version of the you’re an idiot expression. I’d have slapped it off her if I wasn’t nearly certain I’d feel the blow.
Except I didn’t really want to hurt Alexis, and I knew she didn’t want to hurt me.
“This might not be the best time and place to have an existential crisis.” When she raised an eyebrow, I corrected myself. “Okay, it might not be the best place to try and solve an existing existential crisis. Let’s see if we can figure out where we are and how to get out of here first.” Without waiting to see if she agreed, I rose and strode out of the circle of light and into the darkness.
Sylvana
“Nothing is working. She's slipping away—can’t you feel it?” Just when I’d found my family again, it was being ripped apart. “Come on, baby. Fight. Please, you have to come back. Just come back.”
I’d hoped to see a change in her condition when we returned with the wand, but if anything, she’d gone deeper into stasis, and another day passed with no change
“Kin’s here.” I turned to him and noticed he looked about as miserable as I felt. He had bags under his eyes and they looked hollowed out over a two-day scruff of beard. In fact, none of us looked like we’d slept or eaten in a week. Aunt Mag had her skirt on inside out. Given the garish nature of the print, it almost looked better that way. “He’s waiting for you to wake up. We all are.”
Not a twitch or even a flicker under her eyelids to show she’d heard me.
“Kiss her.” Soleil’s command seemed a little too cheery for the somber tone in the room. “Go on, Kin. Kiss her like she’s Snow White and you’re Prince Charming.”
She glanced at the sea of raised eyebrows she’d caused and said, “What? It could work. What have we got to lose?”
“Besides my dignity?” Red-faced, Kin took a step back, then looked at Lexi and shrugged. “I wasn’t all that attached to it anyway.” Shoulders squared with purpose, he settled down next to her, leaned close, and laid his lips over hers.
Every other person in the room sucked in a breath.
“It’s not working.” Soleil stated the obvious.
“Then he must be doing it wrong. Go ahead, plant one on her, boy. Make it count. A great big smackeroo, and put some wax on it.” Mag rubbed her hands together.
Despite the somber atmosphere, Vaeta let out a little snort, and Mom kicked her sister in the ankle. Glowering, Mag subsided.
Kin looked like his fondest wish would be for the floor to open up and swallow him whole, but he bent his head and tried again.
Alexis
Silent, clinging to each other, eyes straining to see more than a few feet ahead, Lexi and I walked through the dismal twilight for about an hour that felt longer than forever.
“If we ever get out of this, I’m going to start carrying one of those little penlights in my pocket,” I said and then I jumped at the sound of Lexi’s hand slapping her forehead.
Witchlight dazzled my eyes when it flared to life in her palm. “Don’t say it. I already know I'm an idiot, you don’t have to tell me,” she said when I opened my mouth.
“I was going to say that was good thinking, but we can go with yours if you prefer.”
“Maybe you could just shut up and work with me for once.” Lexi griped.
I sighed, and turned to face her, “I have been working with you, you’ve just been too angry to notice. You’re the one who decided to fracture yourself, and now I’ve got to listen to you whine about it. And considering I’m just a part of you, all you’re doing is irritating yourself.”
Lexi narrowed her eyes and I thought, for a moment, that she had finally started to come to terms with the notion that we were one and the same.
“We’ve been here before. I recognize that shadow. We’re just going around in circles,” she wailed, ignoring me completely.
Maybe it really would be better if I took over operating our body. The witch was positively daft. “Of course we’ve been going in circles. That’s what we’ve been doing for months. Possibly even years.”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t even know you existed. I was supposed to be a witch—I didn’t ask to be part goddess. I didn’t ask for you at all.” And there was the rub.
“Suck it up, buttercup.” I retorted. “There’s nothing you can do about it. You are who you are. And all things considered, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping you safe while you’ve been wallowing. What’s so wrong with being part goddess anyway? It’s more than insulting that you keep acting like I’m some redheaded stepchild.”
Lexi’s eyes widened. “That’s offensive to redheads, and unnecessary. I never said there was anything wrong with being a half goddess. But all I wanted was my powers—I never asked to be in charge of people’s fates. I don’t want that level of responsibility.”
I huffed a breath out through my nose. “So you’d rather just act like a spoiled brat and turn the other cheek? Guess what? You can’t get out of this, and deep down you don’t really want to. Otherwise, you would never have opened the door to me in the first place.”
Lexi
I stomped off into the darkness, hoping I could lose Alexis somewhere along the way. Go back to how things were before. But she followed at my heels like a little yappy dog you just want to kick.
“There’s no getting away from me, Lexi. And if you’d stop being so stubborn, maybe we could work together to find our way out of this mess. I do have useful skills, you know,” she snapped.
“Oh yeah, such as?” I popped my hands on my hips and stared Alexis down. “Because as far as I can tell, all the magic comes from my side of the family. Without Daddy’s little bow and arrow, you’ve got nothing.”
“Is that what you think? You think the ability to bring two hearts together means nothing? That weaving the threads of fate to make the world a better place doesn’t count as power? That’s all on me, sweetheart. Always has been.” Alexis had begun to pace while she ranted. “You wouldn’t even have FootSwept if it weren’t for me. I told you, I’ve always been there. This has always been your destiny. Maybe I can’t shoot witchfire out of my palm all by myself, but don’t you dare think for one second you’d enjoy the level of power at your disposal if it weren’t for me.”
Maybe she was right. Or I was right, whatever. But I still wasn’t ready to admit it. “Just stop talking. You’re making my headache worse.”
“Right back at ya.”
“Why don’t you put some of your special powers to good use, then, and help us find a way back home?” I demanded.
Alexis crossed her arms and stared at me, “I don’t think it’s going to work that way. We’re going to have to go together or not at all. That’s what my gut is telling me. And you know our gut is never wrong.”
She had a point. I’d always trusted my intuition, particularly when it came to making matches. The pull in my belly I’d always called my Love Positioning System had never led me astray. I’d just assumed it was part of my witchy powers, but standing there staring at the goddess half of myself, I realized I didn’t feel a thing. Alexis was right, I’d become so fractured I’d lost the one thing that had been a constant for as long as I could remember.
Maybe there was something to what she was saying. “Fine. Let’s work together then. What did you have in mind?”
“Give me your hand,” Alexis said, and grabbed it before I could comply. Our fingers entwined and we both closed our eyes and pooled our power. “Lexi, look.” My goddess whispered.
When I opened my eyes, it was to find a ball of swirling witchfire in my hand. Except, this time it wasn’t white or blue or even black—it was bright, shining hot pink—the same color of the symbols that floated above the heads of our potential matches.
“Holy Hecate!”
“Yeah, that’s new, isn’t it?” Alexis grinned like an idiot, and I returned the expression.
Our elation lasted for about thirty seconds, and when nothing happened, my good spirits deflated like a three-day-old party balloon. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Yes, it is. Look.” The pink fire trailed off into the distance, and up ahead I could see a gilded door. It looked like the proverbial gate to Heaven, and quite frankly scared the living daylights out of me.
“I don’t want to die yet.”
