Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
REID
I knocked softly on Jessie’s door, my heart beating faster than usual. I was afraid that she’d either ignore me or open it only so she could slam it shut in my face. After the drama I’d caused yesterday—and my role in her abduction—I wouldn’t blame her.
When she didn’t answer, I knocked again. The door swung inward and she flashed me a good-natured smile as she removed a pair of headphones from her ears.
“Sorry,” she said, stepping aside so I could enter. “I couldn’t hear you over the music. Would you like to come in?”
I wrung my hands and shuffled from foot to foot. “No, I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t scare you, or… hurt you.”
Hamish had assured me that Jessie was unharmed but it was difficult to believe that without seeing it for myself. I’d been throwing my magic around wildly—at least until the oath quashed it—and from what I’d heard, she’d been the first person brave enough to approach me to try to calm me down.
I just hadn’t reacted to her. At all.
Apparently, I hadn’t responded to anything until Zander arrived.
“I was scared,” she began, her expression growing serious.
I nodded. “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me anymore. If you need me to move—”
“I wasn’t finished.” Her lips thinned and she arched her eyebrows. “As I was saying, I was scared but only for your sake. It’s clear that something intense was happening to you and I had no idea what. There was nothing I could do to help and I felt kind of useless.”
I frowned at that. “You’re not useless.”
“And you’re not a bad person,” she shot back. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“Are you sure?”
Giving me a look, she stripped off her sweater and showed me her bare arms. “See? There isn’t a mark on me.”
I narrowed my eyes. There were still plenty of places that a burn could be hiding, but she didn’t seem to be moving as though she was injured. Perhaps she was telling the truth.
“So.” She put her hands on her hips. “What actually happened?”
I looked around, reluctant to say anything where someone else might overhear me in case I worried them unnecessarily. She gestured me into her room and I sat on the empty bed opposite her.
Another girl had slept here until a couple of weeks ago, but she’d relocated since it was too stressful for her to sleep in the room she’d once been abducted from.
I explained the strange sensation I’d had from the magic that seemed to be seeking me out. I even divulged how unsettling I’d found its familiarity. Fortunately, she seemed to accept my words at face value. No part of her expression suggested that she thought I might be paranoid.
“Do we need to be worried about someone coming here?” she asked, waving to encompass the whole of the house.
“Not unless they’re strong enough to break through my wards.”
“And how good are your wards?”
I considered this briefly. “Decent for a beginner, but the warlock Trent’s pack hired only taught me the basics.
” He’d focused on personal shields so I could protect Trent if the necessity arose, but the principal was similar.
I’d never let on to Trent that I was experimenting with larger wards.
“There are others who are much better at them than me though.”
She nibbled on her plump lower lip. “Is there a way we can make them stronger?”
“I can continue adding power to them whenever I have some to spare.” Which, for me, was most of the time. “The trouble is that I can make them more potent, but if I’ve missed something when setting them up, it wouldn’t be difficult for a skilled warlock to get around them.”
It was like adding reinforcement to a building without knowing where its weak spots were. Against a blunt attack, it would do the trick, but anything more than that and the additional power would be more or less useless.
She grimaced. “That’s not exactly what I wanted to hear but we should be safe, right? I mean, what reason would a skilled warlock have to try to break in?”
I nodded but didn’t say anything because I didn’t share her optimism. I was afraid that I was the reason someone might try to break in here.
No one in Grizzly Ridge knew it yet, but I was basically a huge magical battery. I had more than enough power to tempt people who might want it for themselves.
“I’ll go add to the wards now,” I said, but then my gut dropped.
I couldn’t add to the wards. My magic still hadn’t returned after the oath had stolen it away.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if the wards were working at the moment. Did they rely on me having my magic to keep operating, or would they be fine because I’d had access to magic when I’d created them?
My eyes stung and I blinked against the tears. I hated this sense of powerlessness. It made me feel like a sitting duck. What if someone came for me and my wards failed and I couldn’t defend myself?
No wonder Dr. Black had chosen this as the consequence of failing to keep my oath. It was awful.
I walked the length of the house, holding the obsidian pendant in one hand as if that might somehow boost the wards despite my current situation. Even without training, I knew that a protection crystal could only do so much.
I sighed. Perhaps if I’d had an actual mentor, I’d understand the more intricate aspects of warding. Then I might know if we were safe right now or not. I had a lot of reasons to hate my parents, but my lack of magical education was one of the things I was most bitter about.
“I’ll make sure you’re taught everything you need to know,” I murmured, running a hand over my little bump. “I don’t know how, but I promise. You’ll never end up like me.”
I returned inside and helped prepare lunch. We ate together and I was focusing on keeping the meal down and finishing my drink when Hamish told me there was a delivery person at the gate.
I wasn’t expecting anything and after yesterday, I was reluctant to venture far from my safe space, so he accompanied me out and grilled the delivery person before accepting the small box.
The delivery person left, visibly grateful, and I opened the box. Nestled inside, on a bed of white tissue paper, was a small figurine of a bear carved from rose quartz.
My breath caught. I picked the figurine up between my thumb and forefinger. I knew without reading the note that this had come from Zander. Recalling our conversation about the obsidian—and how I’d asked him whether he knew what it did—I wondered whether he’d done his research this time.
Rose quartz was the crystal of love. It symbolized compassion, peace, healing, and unconditional acceptance. It was connected to the heart chakra.
It was beautiful, and I wanted it.
Last time, I’d stolen his gift in secret. This time, was I brave enough just to take it?
I wanted to believe there would be no strings attached.
I put the bear back inside the box and went looking for Jessie again. Jessie was like me. She’d been through some shit. She might understand my thought process.
I knocked on her bedroom door. When there was no answer, I wandered through the house and found her lying on the sofa in the living room, her feet propped on the arm of the couch, reading a book with a sexy bare-chested man on the cover.
I hesitated, reluctant to interrupt her, but she must have sensed me there because she looked up and smiled.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.
I wandered over and sank to the ground beside her, bringing my knees up to my chest. I grimaced as I realized that before long, I wouldn’t be able to sit this way because my belly would be too big.
“Um, Zander had a gift delivered to me,” I said, showing her the box but not what was inside.
“And that’s a problem?”
I inhaled slowly. “I know that he isn’t like the alphas from Trent’s pack and I want to accept the gift but it’s hard.”
“Ah.” Comprehension dawned on her face. “Yeah, I get that. Has he given you the impression he’ll want anything from you?”
“No,” I admitted. “He seems… good.”
“Good” was such an inadequate description, but in my opinion, it was vastly underrated.
She slid a bookmark into the book and closed it. “I don’t know Zander well, but he seems decent. Is there any way you can use your magic to tell what kind of person someone is?”
At that, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t have my magic right now, and even if I did, I don’t know how to use that kind of magic. If I did, I’d never have ended up with Trent in the first place.”
Her dark eyes scanned me. “Then I guess you have to trust your gut. What does it say?”
I bit my lip, my hand tightening around the box. “That he won’t ask for anything I’m not willing to give.”
Gods, I hoped that was true.