Текст книги "Bespelled"

Автор книги: Laura Thalassa

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

CHAPTER 3

I blink groggily and stretch, basking in the feel of dappled sunlight on my skin and the masculine smell clinging to my sheets.

I reach for the owner of that smell, but my hand lands on nothing but blankets.

My brow creases, and I sit up, stifling a yawn. I have a destabilizing moment where I’m confused, because I’ve never laid eyes on the massive, glass-encased room I’m now in, and I can’t remember how I got here. I remember last night all too well, no thanks to the sorcerer, but my memory does a nosedive after I got in the car with him.

Memnon must’ve carried me in and placed me in this bed. His bed. That makes my spine straighten and my eyes sharpen. I must be in his house, though the man himself is nowhere to be seen.

My gaze greedily takes in the room. The first thing I notice is the space. You have to be a rich bitch to afford something bigger than a tin can here in Northern California.

Memnon is definitely a rich bitch.

The room is massive, and it’s made all the more cavernous by the lack of furniture. There's this bed, a bookcase on the wall to the left, and a side chair next to it. Beyond that, there’s nothing, save for the panoramic windows that take up most of three of the room’s walls. Out the windows directly across from the bed, I can see the rolling coastal hills, and out the ones to my right, I see several evergreen trees that flank the house. Past them, the forest looms dark and lonely. I don’t know how far we are from Henbane Coven, but these woods look similar.

Also along the right wall is a massive en suite bathroom, and to my left is the doorway out.

“Memnon?” I call out.

The building remains silent. A minute later, however, Nero pads into the room, his coat looking particularly sleek as he moves in the soft light. He walks right up to the bed, then hops on.

I reach out and pet him. “Have I told you that you’re the best familiar in the whole wide world?”

He gives me an uncomfortable look, his ears twitching a little. I imagine this is the expression teenagers give their parents. I guess he used up all his sentimentality last night during our reunion.

I run my hand down his neck. “Memnon?” I call out again.

Where in the seven hells is the sorcerer? He finally has me in his bed where he’s been apparently angling to get me this whole time, yet now he’s the one missing.

I throw the sheets off, biting back an oath once I realize that I’m in an oversize shirt—his shirt—and my panties from earlier.

He undressed me. Of course he did.

Bastard.

A small, reasonable part of me is willing to throw the guy a bone—he probably just wanted me to sleep comfortably. But fuck him and the fact that he saw my tits while I’m still angry with him. I seethe at the thought.

Memnon, I all but growl down our bond.

The first thing I sense is his smile.

You’re awake, fiancée. Did you sleep well?

I grimace at that word. Fiancée. I swear he keeps using it just to rile me.

You better have closed your eyes when you changed me, I say.

All I feel is that persistent grin from his side of the bond, damn him.

And where are you? I demand.

Is someone upset that I wasn’t in bed with them when they woke?

I grind my teeth. He’s so cavalier and playful at the moment.

When are you coming back? I ask.

I feel glee from him. Miss me already?

If that keeps your fragile ego from shattering, then sure. I miss you so desperately I might die if I don’t see you again.

On the other side of our connection, things go quiet, still.

Finally, Memnon says, Speak to me like that again, and I will give you your heart’s greatest desires.

My heart desires to be rid of you. If you can give me that, sure, I will whisper some empty platitudes in your ear.

On the other end of the bond, Memnon is no longer jovial. If anything, I swear I sense a flicker of woundedness. I nearly cackle at the thought. I might not be defeated yet.

I will be home soon, he says instead.

Soon? Soon? The fuck does that mean? Fifteen minutes? Two hours? I need to know how much time I have.

But to him, I merely say, Oh good, then I’ll get the knives out and sharpened for your return.

His amusement returns. Empress, you’re speaking my love language. With that final, disturbing thought, he pulls away from the connection.

How does he even know about the concept of love languages? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I need to get out of here.

I glance at the oversize black shirt I wear.

Well, change, then escape.

I head for the walk-in closet next to the bathroom. Halfway there, a scrap of lace hanging inside it catches my eye.

My stomach bottoms out as, for an instant, I’m filled with dread that some other woman has been here with Memnon.

No, that can’t be right. Can it?

I hate that I care. He and his poor life choices can rot.

Still, my pulse pounds between my ears as I hustle toward the closet, drawn by a horrified fascination at what I might find inside.

Women’s clothing? Weapons? Bodies? Who the fuck knows.

The walk-in closet is about as big as my entire room at the coven. He’s such a rich bitch. Despite the space, there’s not much inside as far as Memnon’s clothes go. I see a handful of suits hanging up as well as some folded shirts and pants on the shelves.

Not that I’m paying much attention to those.

My eyes are pinned to that single scrap of lace, which now that I’m closer looks like a slip dress. I reach for it, my stomach plummeting at the thought of someone else wearing this around Memnon until I notice it has a tag still attached.

I exhale, my breath shaky. Okay, so it’s not some mystery woman’s. What a relief. For her, of course. Best not to get within striking distance of this dude.

Letting it go, I tug out another dress. This too has a tag still attached.

All the women’s clothes seem to have tags.

They’re also all roughly my size.

These are meant for me, I realize.

That really shouldn’t stun me—Memnon intends to marry me, after all. Still, this is…a lot.

An old feeling, one that belongs to Roxilana, rises.

This would’ve won her over. Easily.

Before Memnon took her away and married her, she had little to her name. Even for me, independent though I am, being doted on is alluring.

This is blood money, Selene. And the price is letting the asshole get his way.

Dicks will sprout wings before that happens.

I stare at the clothes a moment longer. I do have to get dressed, I concede. I rifle through the women’s clothing until I find a pair of jeans and a simple white shirt.

Goddess, forgive me for taking from the devil.

On a shoe rack below, there are three different pairs of shoes in my size, one of which happens to be a set of Doc Martens.

I grab the combat boots.

Forgive me, Goddess, for taking these too. And for keeping them.

I mean, it’s not every day one gets new Doc Martens.

Grabbing the items, I head into the bathroom and quickly pull on the clothes, my agitation growing. I don’t know where Memnon is, but the time I have before he returns is limited.

When I straighten, I notice that tucked into the bathroom mirror is a photo. Of me.

In it, I’m clinking a champagne flute with a few people who are off camera. I know from memory that it was taken this last New Year’s Eve, when Sybil and I and a few of her coven sisters were all at an apartment party. It’s an action shot of me, one where I’m genuinely smiling and my eye just happened to catch the camera.

My heart does a funny thing, finding this picture in Memnon’s otherwise bare bathroom, knowing he must’ve taken it from one of my photo albums and placed it here where he’ll see it every day, alongside his own face.

I stride out of the bathroom and snatch up my phone, which rests on one of the bedside tables. It clings to a mere five percent of battery life.

I slip it into my back pocket and survey my surroundings once more.

There’s not much to see in this room, nor was there much to the bathroom and closet. For some reason, I assumed there would be. Memnon is good at playing the game of rulers, and in the modern world, so much of that is owning lots of expensive things. But so far, there’s really not that much that screams self-involved.

I guess my warlord ex is a little too rugged to bother with more creature comforts. That, or he’s still amassing his wealth, one victim at a time.

I need to go, now.

Yet my attention moves to the one place where Memnon has accumulated items: his bookshelf. Without intending to, my feet lead me over to it.

There are books from Pliny the Elder written in their original Latin, alongside the Greek versions of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Herodotus’s writings, and some ancient poetry. There’s a biography of Nero as well as some histories of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas that span the time frame when Memnon and Roxilana lived.

My eyes move to the lower shelves, where they snag on the familiar spines of my notebooks.

I don’t breathe.

It’s not possible. Memnon burned them. I watched him burn them.

I drop to my knees, disbelief and hope—painful, awful hope—riding me, and I pull one notebook out. This one is covered in gold foil constellations. I open it up, and a little sound slips past my lips when I see my name and the date range in my handwriting. On the next page is a set of notes about how to get to the restaurant where I was working at the time. Alongside it is a spell I scribbled in for removing wrinkles from clothes.

I flip through several more pages, which are full of Polaroids, sticky notes, to-do lists, directions, spells I thought were worth remembering, and hasty sketches.

My thumb runs over one such sketch, this one of a Sarmatian griffin. I swallow down the strange rush of emotions it brings forth before moving through the rest of the notebook.

It is, without a doubt, mine. Somehow, it’s whole once more.

This is a trick. It must be. I saw these notebooks burn, and I touched their charred remains. I remember the acrid, smoky smell that clung to the room once they were nothing more than cinders.

I grab another journal and flip through it. Then another.

I pinch my eyes shut, my throat tight with emotion. Despite my efforts, a rebellious tear slips out.

I don’t know how Memnon managed to weasel these out of my room or fake their fiery demise, but they still exist. He saved them.

For one-point-five seconds, I feel a rush of tenderness toward the sorcerer. Then I remember that he still manipulated and coerced me. He still framed me for murder and forced me to lift that curse against my will.

So screw him and his small kindnesses.

Moving back over to his closet, I look for anything that might be able to hold my notebooks. Tucked away in a far corner, I find a black duffel bag that has a knife, rope, and some zip ties.

Not fucking suspicious or anything.

Emptying the bag, I haul it over to the bookcase and dump all my books into it. There are so many of them that I can’t zip the bag up. The spines of several of the journals peek out as I heft the bag onto my shoulder. I suddenly feel more like myself, having my notebooks close.

I pull out my phone and, ignoring the slew of messages and notifications waiting for me, order my familiar and me a car.

“Nero,” I call out to the panther, who’s still sprawled out on our enemy’s bed. “It’s time to go.”

I don’t wait for him to follow. My body is jittery with nerves and resolve. I’ve got my notebooks. Now I need to get back to the coven and ward the shit out of my room so that pushy sorcerers can’t approach me.

I leave the bedroom, Nero at my heels. The two of us pass by several rooms that branch off the house’s hallway as well as a sprawling living room. I lament the fact that I have to get out of here. I really am curious about the rest of Memnon’s home.

The front door is a bronze monstrosity. I reach for the handle, only when I go to open it, it doesn’t budge. It’s then that I notice the ward shimmering on both the lock and the door handle’s surface.

I glance down at Nero, who’s come to a stop at my side. “Memnon has a bad habit of locking us in places while I’m unconscious.”

The big cat blinks up at me, clearly bored.

I lay my palm on the door and simply wait. After a few seconds, deep blue tendrils of the ward peel themselves away from the door and crawl up my fingers. Like last time I did this, Memnon’s magic can’t seem to help but draw near. They wrap around my wrist like they’re desperate to hold on to me, and as they do so, the spell’s structure warps and melts until the whole thing slides off the door completely.

It lingers on my skin for several seconds, then dissipates.

When I try the door again, it gives, sunlight slicing through the opening.

In my pocket, my phone vibrates, and I know without looking that my ride is approaching. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

My gaze drops to Nero, and I run my teeth along my lower lip. He’s going to be a problem for whoever picks us up.

Lightly, I place a hand on the big cat’s head, causing his ears to twitch. “Do ulibad povekomsa pesagus diveksu kuppu mi'kanutgusa buvekatasava.”

Hide this great cat from all eyes but mine.

My power, which is still recovering from last night, sluggishly sifts out of me and pours down Nero’s body.

The spell is not accompanied by the usual prickling or throbbing in my head I’ve come to expect, the one that took memories from me.

My memory loss really is no more.

At the reminder, I feel the burn of betrayal all over again.

Yesterday might’ve been Memnon’s day, but today fucking isn’t.

I glance back at the foyer and living room. It really is a lovely house. Shame.

Closing my eyes, I focus on what little magic remains. It’s not much, yet I only need a spark.

Memnon made a mistake, leaving me and my wrath here in his inner sanctum.

I extend my arm palm up, and my eyes snap open. “Elements of old, feel my ire. Light this fucking house on fire.”

Down my arm, my magic trickles and gathers until a wisp of pale orange smoke rises from my extended hand, curling and transforming into flame.

I toss the ball of flame into the living room, where it lands on a fringed rug. In a matter of seconds, the fire smolders, then grows, consuming what it can of the rug and anything else nearby.

“C’mon, Nero,” I say. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

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CHAPTER 4

By the time Nero and I return to the coven, the sun has disappeared behind a thick layer of clouds, and I feel like I’ve been hit by a cauldron.

Memnon’s pain-numbing spells must’ve worn off, and my body is feeling all the aches of last night, as well as the deeper exhaustion that comes from overusing my magic.

Once I enter my house, I head toward the dining hall, lured in by the smell of soup and fresh bread. Halfway there, I feel a prickle at the back of my neck. I glance around and notice a couple of witches staring. And when I enter the dining room, a witch who had been playing a fiddle now stops, and the chatter in the room quiets as my coven sisters glance my way.

I’ve been distracted by my wicked fiancé, but for these women, my arrest must’ve been the drama of the night—especially since Memnon spelled them to forget their own brushes with death.

Ignoring the looks, I grab a bowl painted with vines from a stack at the front of the buffet line and fill it with steaming soup. Snagging a bread roll from a nearby basket, I beat a hasty retreat from the room, Nero at my heels.

All I really want to do is snuggle into my bed and binge-watch something on my laptop, but I haven’t spoken with my best friend Sybil since last night, and so much has happened since we parted that it feels wrong to hole up without at least stopping by her room first.

I don’t bother knocking when I get there, I just step inside, Nero trailing in after me, and I set my bread and soup down on her desk.

Sybil’s back is to me while she tends to her wall of plants, her lilac magic threading through the room. She’s lost in her own world, humming something under her breath that the leaves are swaying to. Merlin, her barn owl familiar, rests on a perch over her bed, his eyes hyper focused on Nero.

“Sybil,” I call out.

My friend startles, nearly dropping her watering pail.

“Goddess’s wrath,” she curses, turning. As soon as she sees me, she gasps. “Selene!” Now she chucks the pail aside, causing Merlin to flap his wings as water sprays him and his perch. She crosses the room and throws herself at me. “I’ve been so worried.” she says, holding me tightly. “I heard you were arrested, but when I called the station, they told me you’d already been released. But then you weren’t answering your calls, and you never showed up here.” She pauses to inhale a breath. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been with Memnon,” I say tiredly. I shrug off the duffel bag I’ve been carrying, nearly clobbering my familiar in the process.

Nero gives me what can only be described as a dirty look.

“Sorry, bud,” I say to him.

His ears flick at the term. You just cannot please everyone.

“Memnon?” Sybil says, making a face. “Last I checked, we hated his guts.”

“We still hate his guts,” I confirm.

“Oh good. I mean bad.” Her brow furrows. “But last night when he was carrying you out of the dance, you guys seemed like you’d ironed things out. What happened?”

I let out a jaded laugh that ends as a sob.

Hell’s spells, where to begin?

I sit down heavily on the edge of her bed, Nero curling up at my feet. “If you have an hour, I’ll tell you everything.”

She nods, pulling her computer chair over to sit. “I’m listening.”

So I tell her the whole, sordid truth, from Memnon asphyxiating a room full of supernaturals then altering their minds, to framing me for the murders to forcing me to agree to his shitty demands.

Sybil keeps saying “What the fuck?” over and over again, her eyes glued to me.

Once I finish, she lets out a hysterical little laugh. “So let me get this straight: you’re no longer a suspect”—I nod—“but you’re engaged to a psycho”—another nod—“and you can now remember your past?”

I give her a sad smile. “Yeah, that’s about where the situation is.”

“I don’t believe it,” she says, staring at me intently.

I probably wouldn’t either, if roles were reversed.

“Ask me about a memory, one you know I’ve forgotten,” I say.

Sybil sits back in her seat. “Um…okay.” She drums her fingers on the armrest. “What did we do on the night of our high school graduation?”

Easy. “We got drunk off cheap booze and skinny-dipped in the Irish Sea. It was tit-chappingly cold too.”

Sybil’s mouth parts with her surprise. “Holy midnight,” she says softly. “You remember.” The lights in her room flicker, punctuating the statement. “And your magic won’t take any more memories the next time you cast a spell?”

I shake my head. “No.”

Sybil’s eyes well as they move over my features. “How do you feel about that?”

I sigh and get up, grabbing my bread roll before returning to her bed. Bread will help, right?

“Awful. Angry. A little hopeful and then guilty that I feel hope.” I rip the roll in half, then take a bite of it. “I don’t know. I’m so conflicted.”

Sybil moves next to me on the bed and rubs my back. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Now is probably not a good time to tell you what’s been happening here.”

I glance over at her, my brow creasing. “What are you talking about?”

“Another witch was murdered.”

It’s my turn to stare at her in disbelief.

“What? When?”

“I think someone discovered the body sometime in the middle of the night out in the Everwoods,” Sybil says.

A shudder runs through me when I realize this must’ve been Memnon’s doing. He’d moved the previous bodies into the Everwoods when he was framing me for murder. He must’ve spent the hours I was incarcerated unframing me for it. After all, he didn’t scheme to marry me just to leave me behind bars. No, he has far more carnal plans for the two of us.

All at once, fear floods my chest, making it hard to breath. I place a hand over my heart, choking a little on the sensation. I can’t understand my own extreme reaction⁠—

SELENE! Memnon bellows down our bond.

Speak of the fucking devil.

Panic continues to grip me, and I realize it’s his emotions I’m feeling, not my own.

Answer me if you can! His tone is frantic. Tell me you’re okay.

“Are you okay?” Sybil says, echoing the sorcerer’s words. Her brow crinkles as she eyes me.

I nod. I’m fine, I push down our bond, just to beat back this terror pouring from Memnon. It clicks then. You found the fire.

I sense the instant realization strikes him.

You set this?

I feel relief spreading down our bond, and it’s like a balm to his previous fear.

He begins to laugh. The hairs along my arms rise at the sound. Only he would find arson funny.

Clever, vicious woman, he continues. I should know by now that you would have vengeance to match my own.

“Selene?” Sybil snaps her fingers in front of my face. “What is going on? You’re zoning out.”

“Memnon’s found the fire,” I say distractedly.

“What fire?”

“The one I started in his house.”

“You started a fire?” Sybil squawks.

I nod.

Where are you now? Memnon asks.

Home.

I don’t see you, he says.

My home, I clarify.

“You’re not serious, are you?” my friend says. “You can’t just light people’s houses on fire.”

“You can if they suck.”

“Selene.” Sybil gives me a patronizing look.

Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t come over right now and haul you back here, Memnon says.

I will light your house on fire again, I respond, doubling down on my actions. Assuming any of it still stands.

When will this man learn not to fuck with witches?

How are you doing? Memnon says, pivoting the conversation. Getting uncomfortable yet since we made that oath?

Why would I be uncomfortable?

There’s a spark of amusement. You’ll find out soon enough. Once ignoring it becomes intolerable, soul mate, you can come find me.

Tits will talk before that happens, I say. In the meantime, have fun figuring out where you’ll sleep tonight.

I withdraw from the connection then and glance at Sybil. “I should get back to my room.” I have the rest of my dinner to eat and notebooks to put away. Plus, Nero likely wants to get out and stretch his muscles in the Everwoods.

“Wait a damn second,” my friend says, “you can’t just leave after you casually mention that you lit some dude’s place on fire.”

“Not ‘some dude,’” I say, grabbing my soup. It’s long since gone cold. “My evil soul mate. And I’ll tell you more about it later.”

I heft the unzipped duffel bag of notebooks onto my shoulder and head out her door, Nero prowling after me.

To our backs Sybil calls out, “I’m holding you to that!”

Nero and I make it up to the third floor, passing by several framed portraits of wild eyed witches and a random bat flying down the hallway.

The door to my room hangs slightly ajar—no one bothered to fully close it last night after I was taken away. My heart twists at that.

I push it open and step inside. The space is still covered with sticky notes, and my newest journal sits wide open on my desk. It’s a time capsule of my life before my memory was restored. This version of me—the one who meticulously crafted her life to work with her memory loss—I feel like I lost her when I gained these memories.

And even though there’s a lightness to me where the curse once bore down, I feel a bit like a ship without an anchor, forced to drift about aimlessly.

Nero prowls over to my bed, then hops on it, completely uncaring that I’m having a moment.

He stretches out his forelegs, then sprawls out on his side, closing his eyes.

“Clearly, you’re super torn up about last night,” I mutter, dropping the duffel bag with my notebooks. A few of the journals spill out.

I move to my desk, looking over the open page of my newest notebook. I run my fingers over one of the last messages I left myself:

Do not trust Memnon the Cursed.

I can still remember the anger and the panic I felt in the moment. Strange to be on this side of it. My eyes slip away from the warning to a sticky note placed in the center of the page. I smooth a hand over it before I realize the penmanship isn’t my own.

I pull the sticky note off the paper.

You might’ve forgotten what happened at the spell circle, but we have not.

I drop the note on my keyboard, staring at it before looking first to my window, then to my previously open door. The wards I made to keep out intruders are still in place, the spidery threads of them softly glinting in the air.

Whoever wrote this got past those wards. A chill runs down my spine. How? Someone who meant me ill shouldn’t have been able to, not without ripping the spells down.

I glance back at the ominous message. Whoever left this is aware of my memory loss but not that the magic causing it was lifted.

And they won’t learn of this, I decide. I will keep that revelation as quiet as I can.

Something ancient and buried stirs within me. Enemies ended me once, long ago. I didn’t endure that fate to be played once more.

I pull out my chair and sit down, opening my new notebook to a fresh page. I might no longer need this journal to remember my tasks, but there are other things it can be useful for.

Grabbing a pen, I jot down the disturbing events that have happened on campus since the school year began:

Murdered witches

Monthly spell circle with illegal binding spells

I’ve been connected to both of these events. Until now, I was too busy trying to stay one step ahead of the shitstorm to actually address either of them. But now I can. I glance at the sticky note again.

I must.

Returning my attention to the notebook, I tap my pen against the paper. Many of the murdered witches attended Henbane Coven.

There are so many questions I have about these murders, starting with Memnon’s involvement, but before I can get too distracted by that, I force myself to look at the other incident listed. The spell circle happens every new moon, and if my experience was typical, then these all center around forcibly binding an unwilling supernatural—in my case, it was a shifter—to the high priestess running the circle.

According to the sticky note, she and the other witches haven’t forgotten that I fucked their spell to shit, and unfortunately for me, I don’t know who those witches are. They’d all worn masks. But I do know they can get past my wards and into my room.

A bit of that old, iron-fisted spirit of mine rises in me again.

If I want to live in peace, I’m going to have to deal with these enemy witches before they deal with me. Removing whatever threat they pose to me is more important than even my studies.

My pen moves to write the information down, and only halfway through scribbling my plans out do I realize it’s unneeded. I won’t forget.

I will, however, need help.

I tap the top of my pen against the paper.

In the past, Memnon was just as keen to discover these witches as I was. I don’t think his interest had anything to do with revenge. Even then in the depths of his anger, I believe he still sought to protect me. I’m nearly positive he would be willing to get his hands dirty on my behalf once more if I asked.

But he might simply use this request as leverage to get something else out of me. The thought leaves me cold.

No, that will not happen. I won’t let it.

My mind strays back to the last of my ancient memories, the truly painful ones, and I press my lips together.

I have leverage of my own.

Memnon, I reach out down our bond.

I feel warmth from his end of the magical cord. I’m sure he thinks this is me caving to his wishes.

Before he has a chance to speak, I say, Meet me in the Slain Maiden’s Meadow in an hour. I… I close my eyes, forcing the next part out. I need your help.

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