Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Icrept around the edge of the bedroom like a chasm was about to split the floor and suck me in, but I made it to the door.
Leaning flat against the lavender-painted wall, I pressed my palms against the wooden doorframe, feeling for energy traces inside the house.
The door had a special two-way ward on it.
On my side, it was connected to every other room in the house.
From the other side, the room would be invisible.
It seemed like the house wards were holding, but I couldn’t check the backyard from the window because my bedroom was at the front. Ori should be safe to come in the front door.
How could a demon breach the pillar wards? Fighting demons wasn’t an exact science, but I’d trusted Mom’s wards to hold. Still, dealing with the unexpected was part of what I did. I should be able to defeat whatever this was. The demons didn’t appear to be in the house. That was a positive.
Glass clinked in the bathroom. I clenched my teeth. Right now, the wizard-man-spirit might be an even bigger problem than the garden. Demons I had experience with. Whatever was in the bathroom was all-new trouble.
I ransacked my carved, redwood bookcase beside my altar table for anything that might help. Most of the books were bedtime reads on herbs, spellcraft, and demon types. None explained how to banish cursed bracelets or the wizards they unleashed—if that’s what he really was.
The wizard’s presence seeped into the room behind me.
“I thought I told you to stay put,” I said, whirling to face him. Goddesses, he was stunningly handsome. Perhaps it was a spell.
“There’s nothing else to do in there. I already reorganized your herb cabinet.” He smirked.
Internally, I screamed, You reorganized my cabinet?
But I calmed myself. No reason to upset the potentially dangerous wizard-thing.
“There’s nothing for you to do in here until I figure out exactly what you are.
” And how dangerous you are. I didn’t say that out loud, either.
I backed up a step. He hadn’t attacked me, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.
“I told you, I’m Ahknim.”
“Exactly. That tells me nothing.” I’d cross-checked all the spirit and demon directories.
What I really needed was some scholarly expertise—and some backup.
I grabbed the emergency burner phone out of its lead box and went to the window.
I’d have to put a hole in the wards to get a text out.
Electronics had air signatures that I couldn’t risk messing with my wards.
Anything modern with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi wouldn’t work in my bedroom.
“What are you doing?” Ranth asked, walking toward me with a fluidity that reminded me how muscled he was.
“Stop. Sit there and don’t move.” I pointed to the clothing-covered amethyst velvet chair in the far corner and set the phone on the windowsill.
Satisfied he’d changed direction, I closed my eyes, reaching out for the cut I’d placed in the ward.
Delicately, I severed the stitches on the wraps of power until the slit gaped wide enough for my hand.
Then I opened my eyes and grabbed the phone.
The ward was designed to self-heal, so I only had a minute or two.
I typed in the passcode and then a quick SOS to Ori.
Be careful coming in. Portal in backyard, phone in kitchen, strange wizard in bedroom. I’m safe—I think.
I glanced at Ranth who was standing beside the bed, interacting with my stuff like a human.
Terrifying.
I swallowed, considering my options. Keeping control was my number one goal.
“So how does whatever that is work? Is it a spell?” he asked, waving at the window. His eyes were bottomless pools of darkness, now.
“No, it’s tech not a spell, but it’s still sort of magical in a way. My friend, Juke, is a tech genius. She figured out how I could make a hole in the ward for an emergency, but this is the first time I’ve had to use it. She’ll be lit that it worked.”
“Interesting. I don’t quite understand, but perhaps you’ll explain when you’re not so busy.” He grinned and picked up my Language of Herbs book. His towel slipped, giving me a healthy view of gorgeous and tantalizing hip bones.
“Put that down,” I snapped, then texted Ori.
Sorrel:
If you can, bring clothes for an adult male: pants, shirt, socks. I glanced at his feet. Shoes or sandals. Big ones. Like 13 or 14.
Ori:
I’ll make a detour and be there in 15
I didn’t bother asking how she’d find clothes and still make it here that fast. The ward opening was almost closed.
I got a couple more searches in before the cell service died, but the internet had nothing for Ankh-nim, S-fers, D-rellers, or pesky cursed wizards.
With a sigh and silent hope that Ori would have some great ideas, I closed the window.
Ranth was holding my purple fluorite gemstone D20. “What are the numbers for? It looks lovely outside. Are we going to stay inside all day?” he asked, flopping down on my violet duvet embroidered with my natal astrological chart.
“Don’t you dare get cozy on my bed. Get up and put that down. It’s a die, for RPGs.” I yanked the matching purple silk pillow out from behind him.
“What’s an RPG?” He rolled the die between his fingers.
“Role-playing games, and I asked nicely.” I pointed for him to replace the die on the shelf, then returned the cell to its box.
He got up and adjusted the towel again before setting the die back in its tray. “This is an elegant spell. Did you cast it yourself?” He waved at the room.
Dazed, I leaned on the wall. “How in the hellebore can you see my ward?”
His nose wrinkled like I’d yelled at him, making the little scar stand out. “Because I’m a wizard like you.” His eyes met mine.
Endless wells of walnut shell ink. Intense and deep enough to drown in.
“No one is like me, not even me sometimes.” I squared my shoulders against the wall and started a breath count. My insides jittered like I’d drunk too much yerba mate.
“I’m sorry, Salad. I didn’t mean to make you sad.” Ranth sat up, and the towel gaped precariously.
I studied the wreath of rosemary and rowan over my bed, but my heart was somersaulting. Wizard or not, he was affecting me like some hot hunk of goodness was in my room. This was all levels of disaster. “It’s Sorrel.”
He smiled, the kind of wide smile like a kid who ate all the strawberries.
I divided my messy braid into a quick fishtail because the repetitive motion was a way to clear my head. I side-eyed him. There was something animalistic about the way he sat on the edge of my bed observing me. Like I was prey.
An itchy tingle crawled through me, not unlike walking through cobwebs.
I folded my arms to quash the discomfort.
“Look, we need to smooth out a few facts. You say you’re a wizard, and I’m guessing you were trapped in the bracelet?
Is it a curse or a spell? How long have you been in there?
” I had no idea if I could trust him, but I could at least hear what he had to say.
“Cursed, yes, and trapped for centuries, I assume. It has not been pleasant.” He examined the edge of the towel.
“But you’re human?” His skin was luminous and smooth like it had been burnished with oil. I flexed my fingers, admiring where his washboard stomach met the towel edge.
He glanced at his chest, then back at me, and nodded.
“You can do spellwork? Call spirits? And can you see them? Spirits? Demons? Both?” The bracelet slid down on my wrist.
“Both. The Ahknim are selected at birth and trained by mentors to use their innate powers.”
“Innate powers” caught my attention. “Selected? How?” Could this wizard really be like me?
My spine tingled like fingers were trailing it, and I shook off the feeling.
My entire life I’d searched for an understanding of how I could see things others can’t.
But with Mom gone, everything I’d learned was by experimentation, and I wore those scars proudly.
His head cocked slightly. “The bloodlines are known. Only a few of each generation are worth training. The parents of these bloodlines offer their children for the testing.”
“What do you mean by offer?” I rubbed my upper arms. There was space between us, but my bedroom wasn’t big.
“We are left to journey to the Temple. The ones not accepted return to their families.”
My chest tightened at the thought of leaving my family. “Why would someone ever give up their kids?”
“To support powerful ones. There are great riches.”
“For treasure and money? That’s brutal.”
“Books and artifacts. You might call them treasure. It is an honor to have their children selected. The Ahknim temples are hidden in the Thebais Mountains. They can be found by those who know where to seek them. But only worthy children can find the path.”
“It is not honorable to give up your kids—your family. Do you mean the paths to the mountains are warded like this room?”
“Similarly, but on a grander scale.”
I kept a hand on the wall. If he could tell the room was warded, what else could he see? “Where is Thebais, exactly?”
“I’m not sure what you would call it now.”
“But it’s a place in this world, right?”
“It was.” He nodded. I was running out of good questions, and I didn’t know enough about history to ask the right ones.
We both turned toward the thud of a beanbag smacking the window.
I leaned against the window frame and looked down.
Ori waved, her brown hair braided into rows and tied back in a bouncing ponytail.
She carried a black duffel, and her pink tracksuit explained where she’d found clothes.
We’d met a personal trainer at a gym a couple of blocks over, in the same group she had a membership, and the trainer had started giving Ori tips.
I was waiting to hear if she’d asked Ori out, but no progress so far.
I nodded at Ori to use the front entrance.
Crossing the room, I placed my hands on the wall beside the bedroom door.
Connecting with the house let me listen to her move through it.
Ori was the sweetest person I knew. As part of her research as a grad student, she had access to most of the special collections.
She’d help me find a quick answer to my wizard problem—if there was one.
The house energy shifted, prickling across my palms as Ori put the copper key in the custom front door lock.
A rush of fresh air blew through the house and rippled through me.
I already felt stronger with my best friend nearby.
Ori’s positive energy brightened the house’s buzz as she moved from the front door to the kitchen.
Fear rippled through her as she got close to the back door wards, probably peering out into the garden.
I gripped the doorframe. Could the demons still be there?
I leaned on the wall, forcing what positivity I could scrape up into the house energy.
She should be safe. Besides, demons didn’t wander around our world, plucking up random people.
They couldn’t spend much time in our reality, and their goal was energy in whatever form was closest and plentiful.
Often that was plant-based. I’d never seen them attack a human unless one had summoned them, except for my mom and Brenda.
Brenda’s rolled-back eyes would haunt my dreams. Mom, well, I would never stop reliving the moment she was pulled through by the Sisters.
Ori made thirty-one steps through the rooms, and I readied to open the ward when she made it upstairs.
Ranth’s heat pressed at my back.
“Hey, give me some space.” Keeping one hand on the wall, I waved at him with the other.
My hand was still inches from his chest. I couldn’t feel his energy like a normal human—but I also couldn’t see it like a demon’s.
He was more like a ghost or a spirit, but those never had a corporeal form, and there was no question that Ranth was one hundred percent in this room with me.
He’d stepped back, but he was distracting as foxgloves.
My heart skipped a beat as Ori ran from the kitchen to the stairs. I activated the lock, and the doorway shimmered watery silver.
Papers shuffling pulled me out of the spell. Ranth was rifling through a sheaf of handwritten research spells from my desk.
Rage bubbled. “Please stop. Those are personal. Put them back.”
His lips pressed together, but he continued to page through them.
I couldn’t let go of the wall yet. Ori was almost at the door.