Chapter Seven
When Elliot watched Damon crash into his teammate on the baseball field, he almost had a heart attack. His chest ached so much that it threatened to bring him to his knees. He’d ignored the pain and ran onto the field, trying to push through the players and coaches and medics.
He wasn’t quick enough. Someone grabbed him and held him back before he could get close enough to touch Damon and heal him.
Elliot watched, helpless, as they put him into the ambulance. Damon’s eyes were closed, and his arm was bent in a sickening angle.
Elliot’s magic burned through him, straining, reaching, yelling out for his best friend.
Elliot had ridden the bus that morning, so he didn’t have his car. He called his mom and dad, but they were both slammed with work and couldn’t drive him to the hospital.
His grandmama drove up to the baseball field twenty-five minutes later. She took one look at his hands, which were intermittently blinking white light, and said, “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the key to your magic.”
Elliot could only nod. Too numb from shock. He got into the car and squeezed his hands together to get the magic to calm.
“What happened?” Grandmama finally asked after Elliot’s heartbeat ratcheted down.
“I’m pretty sure his arm is broken,” Elliot said. “I’m going to heal him. He’s got a scholarship for baseball. An injury could make them revoke it.”
Then they wouldn’t go to college together.
Elliot was not going to let that happen.
Grandmama tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “You do what you got to.”
Grandmama never instilled fear into Elliot about sharing his power, not like the covens did, which was why Grandmama and Elliot were considered outcasts among them. She wanted to do more to help people, but the covens were too afraid of risking exposure.
The world they lived in was ruled by powerful drug companies who would defend the use of their expensive medicines until their last breaths. If entire industries could be toppled with a simple wave of a witch’s hand? They’d be courting extinction, the covens warned.
So healing witches worked on the peripheral and didn’t draw attention to themselves.
Elliot stared out the window, gnawing on his lip and thinking about his best friend. “And I already decided I’m going to tell him.”
“That you’re in love with him?”
“I’m not in love with him!” Elliot said. “It’s just a little crush.”
Grandmama hummed.
“But no. I’m not telling him that. I’m going to tell him I’m a witch. I can’t keep secrets from him anymore.” Damon deserved to know whose fault it was his dad was gone. Elliot shouldn’t have kept it a secret for as long as he had.
“Seems a little contradictory,” she said, and Elliot grimaced. “But you do what feels right.”
“I’m a witch,” Elliot said. “I healed your broken arm in the first grade, and I healed the other like forty-five minutes ago.”
Damon just blinked. His long black eyelashes fanned his face. Even all disheveled and in a hospital gown, Damon was gorgeous. Elliot was entranced by the strong cut of his jaw and his plump lips with the little dip in the middle.
Elliot shook himself out of ogling his best friend and continued, “I healed us after the car crash. Accidentally. I don’t really have control over my powers.
I’m not good at them. I tried”—he hiccupped, tears blurring his vision again—“I tried to heal your dad, but it didn’t work.
I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for not telling you.
For not being better. For not saving him. ”
Elliot sniffed and wiped his eyes, searching Damon’s face for any clue that he believed him, or if Damon was about to punch him in the face.
But Damon kept blinking.
Maybe Elliot broke him.
Damon finally took a long inhale and sighed it out. His fingers intertwined with Elliot’s. “The police report said Dad was dead on impact. No one could have saved him.”
“No, no. I could have—I should have been able to—”
Damon squeezed his hand. “You may be a healing witch, Elliot, but you aren’t a god. Unless you’re about to tell me that you can do necromancy too?”
Elliot’s jaw quivered. The disbelief over his casual acceptance was staggering. That he could joke about this.
Damon smiled, his eyes narrowing, and then he was nodding his head. “You know…this explains so much.”
It was Elliot’s turn to blink dumbly.
“So can you heal concussions too?” Damon asked. “Because my head hurts like a bitch.”