Hush (Witches & Warlocks Book 2) Read online

  When I open my eyes, I see he’s paused in his conversation with his friend. His face is pinched, kind of like he’s in pain and kind of like he smells something bad. He presses a hand to his forehead and clears his throat.

  I make my thoughts hard. Angry. I let them expand and fill his mind and when he flinches I smile. My magic rolls into his brain, sick, purple fog and swirling with green venom and burning with fire, and it feels good. Sure, light magic feels good, too, but vengeance is sweet and his pain will make restitution for my pain, for the pain the girl in the bathroom is sure to feel every day.

  I rifle through his head until I find thoughts of the girl he’s with. Funny thing is, he actually does love her. I take that love and I make it big so he can see it and feel it and know it. I fill him up with his love for her. Then I pull up all the betrayals, all the times he’s cheated on her, all the hints he’s dropped about all his conquests to make her feel uncomfortable, to keep her questioning how he really feels about her, and I make those even bigger than his love for her. Force him to feel the guilt he’s been ignoring.

  And then I make my thoughts really tight, like a fist, and I slam them around inside his head.

  The guy - Todd, I found his name in his mind - grimaces and drops his forehead into his hands, groaning a little. His friend looks worried and reaches across the table, only to pull back when blood starts dripping out of Todd’s nose. Like dripping a lot.

  “Shit, dude!” Todd’s friend leaps to his feet and the coffee shop goes quiet for an instant before erupting into a different kind of sound. People are gasping and someone screams. There’s scrambling for cell phones and napkins, and the truly selfish rush for the door.

  There’s the little pop inside my head that I’ve come to recognize as my magic and it’s like I can see through my own eyes again. Noah’s standing over me, leaning down so his eyes are level with mine. His hands are on my shoulder and he’s shaking me.

  I really want him to stop shaking me.

  Todd’s bleeding all over the place and right now, that feels just about fine. He’s also crying. Keeps repeating “I’m sorry” over and over, rocking in his chair like a child. Maybe that doesn’t feel quite as fine. Maybe now it’s starting to feel like I’ve become more of a jackass than Todd ever was.

  Ok, maybe not more.

  But definitely just as bad.

  Shit.

  I don’t want to be the kind of person that hurts people. The whole point of coming out here and stressing me out is to help me learn how to control my dark magic so I don’t hurt people. I meet Noah’s eyes and become aware of the nasty little smile I’ve been wearing. My face goes slack and my eyes go wide. “I’m sorry,” I whisper in conjunction with Todd, my words overlapping his.

  I can at least fix the bleeding. Make up for the pain I caused. With a discrete wave of my fingers under the table, I call upon the tiger - the tiger with the thumping tail, just as disappointed in me as I am in myself - and I ask for her strength.

  “Sanibit percuro.” I keep my voice as quiet as a sigh, which is a little silly because there’s so much commotion around me, no one would be able to hear the incantation.

  Todd stops bleeding, and his tears dissolve into sniffles, but he doesn’t stop rocking, and he doesn’t stop apologizing. At some point his girl came back to the table and he’s fallen to his knees in front of her, holding her legs, apologizing over and over and telling her he loves her. She looks equal parts uncomfortable, vindicated, and grossed out. His blood is smeared on her clothes and hands and I don’t think she knows what to do about that.

  Noah tugs on my arm and I follow him. There’s a moment - just as he touches me - that my magic, my dark magic, reaches out to him. I feel it creeping from my hand into his, and worse, for just the tiniest fraction of a second, I feel the answering nudge of his own magic. His own dark magic. The stuff he’s worked so hard to keep locked up.

  That’s not ok.

  Noah’s good. Even if, like me, he came with access to too much power, his heart and soul are pure. When he agreed to be my mentor, I knew he was taking on a lot of responsibility. I knew he was putting himself in danger. Dark magic is like whiskey to an alcoholic. As long as you keep denying yourself, you’ll probably be ok, but the effort to deny yourself is a constant thing. Being around someone who drinks, or in this case, being around someone who can’t help flinging dark magic around, that makes it all the more likely the alcoholic will fall off the wagon.

  When Noah took the job of helping assimilate me into this magical world, he put himself at risk. Sure, I have to tolerate minor injustices like the tracking spell he has on me that makes him aware of every place I go, but he has to fight hard to keep the integrity of who he is and how he wants to live whole.

  And I just totally messed all that up.

  “You think we’ll need a cleaner?” I ask as he leads me away from the coffee shop.

  “No.” He’s not looking at me and there’s a whole hell of a lot of concentration straining across his face. “It’s just a bloody nose and a troubled conscious.”

  Noah closes his eyes and swallows hard and there’s a flare of magic that pours from his hand, up my arm, and into my entire body. Maybe even my soul. It feels good. Like praying. Like singing. Like dancing.

  I totally understand why Noah continues to choose light magic. It’s pure. It’s wonderful. It’s light streaming through cathedral windows and birds singing on a sunny day. It’s new fallen snow, crisp and white and bright in the sun, tiny glittering flakes drifting through the air. It’s a soft touch and a warm hug.

  It’s the way the world should be.

  Judging by the path Noah’s taking, we’re heading back to the car, and probably back to Windsor Manor. I stop walking and pull on his arm. He takes one extra step, exhales, and then just stands there. Great. I’ve upset him. Noah, the guy who doesn’t get upset, is upset. He sighs, more of a forced exhalation really, and faces me.

  “I’m sorry.” I say it and I mean it. My stomach is doing that icky sickly nervous dance it used to do when I thought there might be a chance Becca was upset with me. Except this time, I’m nervous about what Noah’s feeling because I genuinely care about what Noah’s feeling. Because I genuinely care about him.

  “I know.” He gives me a weak smile and drops my hand. I don’t like either of those things. I want his sexy smile, and I want him touching me. “But we’re gonna have to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  I don’t have anything to say, so I stay quiet. I’d love to find a quiet place in his arms right now, lay my head against his chest and let his warmth make me feel better, his arms wrapped around me keeping me safe. As if he could read my thoughts, he opens his arms to me and I step right in, pressing my body to his. He rubs his hand over my back and up into my hair.

  “You’re lucky you’re alive. You realize that, right?” There’s something heavy in Noah’s voice. I nod against his chest. “By all rights, Daya, Lucy, and Albert should have ordered your execution at the summit.” He’s told me this before. After I killed all those people, there was this trial, a summit, to discover what exactly happened. For whatever reason, they decided to train me, not kill me. “You’re going to have to do a better job at hiding that you have access to dark magic.” I pull out of his arms and nod my understanding. There’s a light breeze at my back, chilly with the first touch of autumn, and goosebumps break out over my skin.

  An old man ambles passed us, his hunched shoulders flinching with every new step he takes. He pauses as my eyes land on him. The goosebumps race up my arms and down my legs and I can’t help but shiver as he turns to face me. His eyes are big, dark, and empty. Swirling pits of nothingness. His skin hangs from his face in dried out tatters and his cheekbones - like, literally, the bones - shine in the sun like bleached rock.

  “Zoe…” He says my name and his voice is distorted and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. “I saw what you did. I see what you are.”

  Noah
pulls me back into his arms, wrapping one around my shoulder and hugging me tight. “Don’t look,” he says as he leads me off in the direction of the car.

  The remnant - ‘cause that’s what he is, a hollow remnant, a demon - follows us, calling my name, shrieking horrible things at the back of our heads. Noah whispers reassurances to me, keeps me steady even though my entire body is trembling.

  “You can hide from the truth, Zoe,” the remnant says as Noah ushers me into his car. It presses its freakshow face against the glass and his hands leave big streaking smudges down the window. “But you can’t hide from what you are.”

  Chapter Three

  We don’t talk much on the car ride back to Windsor Manor. I guess that’s ok. Guilt is twisting its way through my stomach and I’m so frustrated with myself that I’m not sure I’d be very easy to talk to. I’m so torn. On one hand, I want to understand my dark magic because understanding it would make it easier to ignore. Know thy enemy and all that, right?

  But it’s more than that, my dark magic isn’t really my enemy, it’s part of me. Doesn’t the whole quote suggest I should also know myself? I wrack my brain, distracted for a moment by my desire to remember the quote. It’s from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, I think. The gist of it is something along the lines of needing to understand the enemy as well as yourself in order to succeed.

  But if the only way to understand my dark magic is to use it, well, I’m not interested. Not if it ends up with me hurting someone. And certainly not if it ends up with me liking it when I hurt someone. ‘Cause let’s be honest. There was a part of me that enjoyed doing what I did to Todd.

  “You feeling ok?” Noah squeezes my knee and glances at me.

  “No.”

  “Accidents are going to happen…” He doesn’t finish his sentence and I don’t know if that’s because he’s busy judging me for the latest ‘accident’ or because he’s hoping I’ll speak up.

  I make an exasperated sound in the back of my throat. Accidents. Accidents are things like spilling something on the counter or forgetting where you put your keys. Accidents don’t end up with people bleeding in a coffee shop.

  Noah glances at me. “Alright, look. Did you hurt that guy? Yep. Did you kill him? Nope. Was what you did a good thing? Not really. Is it the end of the world? Not at all.”

  I lean my head against the window and the cool glass presses against my forehead. It feels good for just a second until I remember the face of the remnant, pressed here just a few minutes ago. I jerk back and sigh.

  “I’ve got you, Zoe.” Noah takes his eyes from the road and waits until I look his way. “It’s all going to be ok.”

  I can’t help but smile, not so much because I believe him - I’m not sure what I believe right now - but more because I can’t help but smile when I look at him. From the very first moment I saw Noah, there’s been something about him, something that makes me feel safe. Seen. Wanted. It’s a good feeling.

  Thing is, whenever I start feeling those things, whenever I let myself enjoy being with Noah, part of me starts to feel bad about Luke.

  Which is stupid.

  You don’t have to tell me, I know. I tell myself that all the time.

  My entire relationship with Luke was fake. Built on lies and deception and I still have no idea why he was deceiving me. He could have been working with Becca, he could have been working for someone else, or hell, he could have had his own agenda. Whatever his reason, my feelings for him were brought on by magic. He spelled me to feel comfortable around him.

  But here’s the thing, all the spells put on me by Becca, Luke, and whoever else were countered the day I checked in at Windsor Manor. By Daya herself. And she’s like, the baddest witch of us all. So, technically, my feelings for Luke - feelings that are the result of a spell - should be gone.

  The fact that they’re not makes me kind of sick to my stomach. I’d like to think I was stronger than that, you know? I’d like to think I valued myself a little more. It’s not at all logical for me to still have any feelings for Luke whatsoever, but emotions don’t exactly believe in logic. I’ve got weeks of memories of wonderful times with him. Like, good times stacked on good times. They didn’t just disappear because I learned Luke was lying to me. I still remember laughing with him, talking late into the night with him … kissing him.

  When it comes to Luke, I’m just woefully confused.

  Noah pulls up in front of Windsor Manor. The valet’s waiting (ya, that’s right, we have a valet) to take the keys from him and park the car. Part of me wants to tell the man to wash the window, to get rid of anything the remnant left behind, but I don’t think remnants are much more than apparitions, so they don’t really have anything to actually leave behind. I shudder, remembering the bones in its cheeks, the sagging flesh...

  Instead of leading me up the many stone steps that lead to Windsor’s massive front door, Noah pulls me aside. He entwines his fingers into mine and leads me around the side of the main building towards the gardens. The leaves are turning, burning bright red, yellow, and orange against the clear blue sky. Sunlight filters down, casting long, slanted shadows, so bright and warm despite the cool air.

  Needless to say, the grounds here are gorgeous. The whole place is gorgeous actually. The buildings are all stately brick things, with white columns and wood floors and furniture that looks like it all belongs in some movie where women sweep into rooms wearing stately ballgowns. Windsor is set back away from the road, kind of nestled against a forest, and professional landscapers keep the gardens looking half wild, almost like they’re part of the forest.

  Noah draws to a stop under one of those magnificent trees in the garden, one with red leaves, my favorite kind. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “When I was learning how to use my magic, I had a chance to explore my dark magic as much as I explored my light magic. It took me to places I never want to go again.” He brushes a finger across my forehead and a breeze catches my hair and blows it off my shoulders.

  It’s funny how even now, with me as stressed as I am, with so many questions in my head, I kind of melt at his touch. The red leaves, the wind in my hair, Noah’s proximity, it’s all working together to make me forget about what I did to Todd.

  Kind of.

  “But that’s the thing, how am I going to learn how to avoid my dark magic if I never learn to understand it?”

  “Well, that’s the thing you see, I’m trying to save you from having to understand it.” There’s a darkness in Noah’s expression that doesn’t sit well on his face.

  I sit back on my heel and give him a once over. “I’m not so sure ‘tormented by your past’ is a good look for you.” Old Zoe never would have gotten that sentence out. New Zoe does a little better. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I’m still nervous, waiting for him to respond. I guess a lifetime of shyness - even if it was created by a spell - creates certain automatic responses.

  His lips part, and his eyes refocus, his brows do that funny scrunched together thing while he puzzles out what I just said. And then he smiles and I can’t help but smile back at him. Noah glances over his shoulder, back towards Windsor Manor, before looking at me. You know, one of those deep, ‘I see to the very bottom of your soul’ looks. He cups my face with one of his hands and I kind of lean into it, closing my eyes. The contact feels so good.

  And then he puts pressure on my cheek, ever so slight, ever so gentle, as he lifts my face towards his. I loved every kiss from Noah since the first one on that night we hung out at Flannigan’s, throwing darts. That night I got my words all tangled in my head and told him the apples were good. His hand slides up into my hair while the other clutches my waist.

  I slide my fingers into the belt loops on his jeans - the jeans he wears so well - and give them a little tug, bringing his hips closer to mine. And then the strangest thing happens. My magic flares to life, the tiger appearing at my side, tail swishing. The feeling is intense and beautiful and I can’t help but open my eyes. Golden light i
s surrounding us, this shell of energy, swirling at the edges.

  “Wow,” I say, nearly whispering.

  “I know.” Noah rubs his nose against mine, a gesture my mom used to call an eskimo kiss. “Those apples are good.”

  I laugh. “Hey! I can’t be held responsible for the things I say when I’m nervous!” I try to pull back, but his arms are tight around my waist, keeping me close.

  “You don’t seem nervous now.” He’s leaning in close again, his lips brushing mine as he speaks.

  “No. Definitely not nervous now.” My words are a whisper.

  And then his lips are on mine again and in this instant all worries about light and dark magic and learning to understand myself, those all dissipate and it’s just us, Zoe and Noah, and it’s good. Like, really good.

  My magic expands, and as I kiss Noah, I hear birds swinging and squirrels flitting through trees. I hear leaves dancing in the wind. I feel the wind in my hair and the grass tickling my ankle, but most importantly, I feel my magic entwining with his magic. My essence twisting around his. I open my eyes and pull away, sighing.

  Noah bends forward to press his forehead to mine. “We’re gonna get through this, you know.”

  “You keep saying that and I might believe you one day.”

  Noah grabs my hand and gives it a little tug. “Here, follow me, I want to show you something.”

  Casting another furtive glance over his shoulder, he leads me into the forest. We keep walking until the view of Windsor Manor is obscured by trees. For as purposefully wild as the gardens are, this place is genuinely wild, untouched by human hands. They leave it this way for the witches who find their power best in natural spots. We pick our way through the underbrush, ducking under branches that somehow manage to scratch my skin anyway, until Noah comes to a stop at small stream. There’s a break in the trees, and light to falls down onto the moss covered rocks and glints off the water.