Chapter 2
ISAAC
Riley attempted to snare the crystal, dropping his flashlight to use his power.
But it hit the ground first.
A terrific boom tore through the air, intense shockwaves of white light threw everyone onto their backsides.
Shit! My butt cheeks complained from the impact, the damp ground seeping through my jeans.
Fuck this.
I sprang to my feet, adrenaline firing like the engine of a sports car at full speed. Without another thought, I summoned my Defensive Sunshine. It blazed to life in my hands, spreading across the fairground within seconds, lighting the place up like a summer afternoon in July.
Take that, you smug fucks.
I moved toward the witches, intent on smacking some pricks upside the head.
“You smashed it!” one of the men cried, collapsing to his knees.
“How could you?” another bellowed.
The heat and brightness of my power brought them all down, their arms shielding their sweaty faces. Immobilized, too overwhelmed to do much.
“Please,” the woman who’d smashed the crystal begged. “We can’t…we can’t take this…spell.”
I moved closer. “Why did you do it?”
“Oh, Hecate! It’s so hot!” she complained.
For a few seconds, I wondered if I could go hotter. Crisp them up until they screamed, screamed, screamed—
No. Never that. My power was defensive, not an instrument for a sunny massacre.
Yet.
“Please…” a different guy added. “Please…”
His whining only pissed me off harder. “Did you just try killing us with a Hecate Crystal?”
Riley’s deathly pale face flashed behind my eyes.
Stop it!
I shoved it away, focusing on these idiots. “Well? Someone start talking.”
“We can’t focus under this spell!” the other woman bellowed. “Please turn it off.”
“Nope. Not until I get an answer.”
Riley appeared by my side. “Maybe turn it down a little.”
“Or maybe not,” I responded haughtily.
Why should I turn it down? You fuck around and you find out, right?
This night was quickly testing my patience. Screw these idiots begging me to cool things off. They’d get some mercy when they gave me what I wanted.
I intensified the heat, their faces now pouring with sweat. My mouth spread into an unpleasant-feeling smile, the dark nature of my blood humming in my veins.
I knew I had to be careful. Being a sacred witch came with a lot of responsibility, as well as many pitfalls. The biggest were arrogance and anger. Combined, the two could make me tumble into the negative trappings of being an Aurora.
I didn’t want that. I never wanted to lose myself and become a monster like Uncle Jonathon where my head was so far up my own ass I couldn’t see anything but my own wretched darkness.
No, no, no. I would not be going down that path.
This darkness was something we had to shape into a tool rather than allow it to consume us.
Our mother, Juliet Aurora, wrote us a message, telling us to use our inner darkness as a weapon.
Riley and I were working on this, incorporating it into our training.
I wish I could’ve known you, Mum…
With that somber thought, reason gave me a slap. I dimmed my sunlight, because how could these witches give us any answers while sweating like me whenever I was told I couldn’t have cake for a year—which was most of the time. And poor Drake, Jake, and Ollie were suffering too.
Riley patted me on the arm reassuringly, then crouched beside his boyfriend to check on him.
I got to questioning the witches, all of them splayed out on their backs.
“Start talking,” I demanded, looming over them in full bad-cop mode.
The woman who’d smashed the crystal, the dying shards of its remains scattered across the ground, took hold of the talking stick.
“This isn’t for you to…to know…yet,” she wheezed.
“Great. Evasive bullshit. My fave.”
She sat up, rubbing her chest, her hair frizzy from sweat. “How…how did you do that?”
A surprising shiver ran up my spine. “Sorry?”
“That sunlight,” she answered, the others sitting up with her. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Shit. I’d possibly poked the bear of suspicion. The cloaking potion should’ve confused things, made them think a spell knocked them off their feet. Clearly, me and my little brother were rapidly evolving beyond the potion’s effects.
I folded my arms tightly across my chest, cocking an eyebrow. “Don’t try changing the subject. Start talking or you all start hurting.”
The woman dipped her head, the man beside her taking over speaking duties.
“We’re trying something new,” he said, wiping beads of moisture from his bald head. “But that’s all you get to know, agent.”
Ah, good. At least they still saw me as an Agent of the High Coven.
I rolled my eyes, tapping my right foot. “We’re really playing this game, are we?”
He scoffed, saying nothing else.
Ollie and Jake appeared, flanking me.
A different man spoke, holding his long damp hair away from the back of his neck.
“Give it up,” he said. “We’re not talking. Not even to the High Inquisitor.”
Ha! I wished them good luck in dealing with him.
Stefan Rushden had gone from working with us to trying to broker a deal with the Kingwoods for the ‘greater good.’ Once that fell through, he’d cut all communication with us and hidden behind his reticent secretary.
Even Ollie and Jake were left out in the cold.
Prick. I hoped he’d fallen from grace, rotting in a cell somewhere dark. But I knew that wouldn’t be the case. Guys like him didn’t lose their powerful positions easily. He was cooking something. I could feel it in my bones.
“We’ll tell him the same,” another guy threw in.
Yes, because it would be all sunshine and rainbows telling Stefan to go fuck himself in no uncertain terms. Once Ollie and Jake brought these witches in for further questioning at the High Coven HQ, the gloves would be off.
They wouldn’t get to set the narrative, only be forced into a brutal one where they’d be screaming and begging for mercy.
Especially for breaking a Hecate Crystal.
The guy holding his hair away from his neck spoke again. “We aren’t supposed to break crystals.” He scowled at the woman who broke it.
She snarled at him. “Why are you talking?” She called on a bangle spell, blue magic dancing around his hands.
Ollie used the Taser spell on her. She collapsed, twitching across the ground.
Rather than behave, the others summoned magic to their hands.
I snapped, not thinking, and unleashed my sunshine, delighting in their wails.
“Just had to play the fuckhead cards, didn’t you?” I bellowed.
“We’ve got this,” I heard Ollie rasp.
“What?” I questioned, my lips drawn back in a snarl.
“Let us do our job,” he breathed.
Oh. Yes. His job. And using my sunlight wasn’t a good idea right now.
I switched off my power before offering my hand to Ollie, who was seated on the floor beside me, leaning back on his hands.
He refused it, getting himself to his feet. He grunted, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his witchcop jacket.
“Sorry,” I said meekly.
He didn’t answer, making a quick call on his cell phone instead, summoning the Brambles and the back up witchcops.
Okay. Whatever. No need to look at me like I’d just hit him in the face with a cream pie.
I know what kind of cream pie I’d like to dabble in with him…
Silence, dirty mind!
He got to work making arrests with Jake, using their spells, doing their witchcop thing. The Bramble sisters and the two agent guys also joined in.
Before I knew it, the witches were all trussed up and bound, waiting for the High Coven van Jake called in to take them away.
I waited with Riley and Drake back in the car, wondering if those witches were starting to chew over the sunlight thing some more.
Would they put two and two together and make me?
Hopefully not. And details on the history of House Aurora weren’t freely available to the public these days.
I’d only known a sliver of info before I discovered my true ancestry.
The High Coven implemented a lot of restrictions on the world when they rose to power. They controlled magic, they ran the show. We were only permitted to know what they wanted us to know.
Speaking of knowing, were my parents aware of my lineage when they’d adopted me? What would they say when I finally brought this up with them? Things were bad between us already, and it wasn’t like I had my brother David to confide in to temper things a tad.
Hell no.
Yes, I’d have to call them at some point to hash this stuff out, but right now they’d be staying on the back burner with the rest of the ball ache I’d left back in December.
Once the blue witchcop van showed up, everything moved on quickly.
“Why would she do that to a crystal?” Riley questioned, watching the proceedings outside from the back seat with his lover.
“The others weren’t happy,” Drake answered. “Such strange behavior.”
I occupied the front passenger seat, picking nervously at my fingernails. I’d be needing a manicure stat if I kept this up—a habit Helen often yelled at me about.
“I’m getting cult vibes,” Riley added.
“Me too, honey.” I turned the car heater up a tad. “I’m sure fuckface will grill some stuff out of him in no time.” My forehead creased. “If he’s still in a position to grill.”
I watched Ollie speak with Jake. I stared at him as if in a trance, losing myself in his stunning aesthetics. He ran a hand over his tightly cropped brown hair, sending bursts of electricity to my balls.
I seriously needed to purge this shit from my mind.
A flash of white light snapped me out of it.
“What the hell was that?” Riley spoke for all of us.
I rubbed my eyes, a second flash coming from the direction of the bumper cars. The Hecate Crystals shimmered brighter, looking like they were expanding.
“What is that?” I questioned, leaning forward.
The crystals never did anything but shimmer.
Flash, flash, flash.
This wasn’t good. My skin crawled with unease.
A tremor rocked the car.
“We’re out of here,” I declared, flinging the door open.
My brother and Drake did the same as the flashes became rapid, and a second quake made the car bounce.
Ollie jogged over. “I’m—”
Before he could say anything, a white beam burst from the biggest of the inflating crystals. Light pooled on the mulchy ground, forming a rippling disk.
I backed away, throwing out a protective arm before Riley. “Be careful.”
Talk about an overstatement.
The light became a puddle, luminous white liquid splashing around its edges. Within seconds, it launched a jet into the air, changing, twisting into the shape of a blazing white shade.
Oh. Shit.