She sat back. "You can also circle your hand, palm down, three times deasil over the runes to help increase their power." She showed us. "That's all there is to it. It's not big magick or especially beautiful magick, but it's very useful magick."

"I think it's beautiful," said Alisa, looking young and sincere. "All magick is beautiful."

"No," I said, sounding more abrupt than I had meant to. "It isn't."

People looked at me, and I felt self-conscious. Hunter and Sky nodded, and I knew they understood. We three had seen magick that was dark and ugly. It existed; it was all around us.

That night I found myself driving behind Bree on the way home from Hunter and Sky's. I felt shaken and upset, not to mentioned bruised and achy: hearing Cal's voice, the frightening fall I'd had, Hunter's awful reaction to hearing about Cal. Was Cal nearby? Just thinking about it terrified me. It was all too much. I just wanted to go home and get in bed and hold my kitten, Dagda.

Bree had taken the short route home, down Gallows Road. There were lots of twists and turns, but it took less time than going on main streets. Bree had always been the more daring driver of the two of us, and despite my trying to keep up, within minutes I lost sight of her in the darkness. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the feeling of being completely alone on a dark road.

Without warning, my headlights flashed on something on the road ahead. I caught a blurry glimpse of something—a deer? — barely in time to slam on my brakes. As Das Boot screeched heavily to a halt, my eyes focused, and my mouth opened in a wordless, "Oh." My headlights shone on a figure who was walking toward my car, hands upraised.

Cal.

9. Cal

Lammas, 1976

I'm fairly well settled into the house now that Clyda's gone. Her death three months ago were a surprise to everyone but me. She'd been sick, getting frailer and weaker. I think it was the dark wave in Madrid that really took it out of her, Really, she had no business traveling at her age. But it's difficult for some people to acknowledge their weaknesses.

I was in Ireland last week and met two interesting witches. One was a gorgeous boy, just old enough to shave, whose power is already frightening and strong and worth watching. I took Ciaran to bed for a night, and he was charmingly youthful, enthusiastic, and surprisingly skilled. I'm smiling even now, thinking about it.

But it's Daniel Niall who's haunting my thoughts, and the irony of this can't escape me. Daniel is a Woodbane from England who came to one of Amyranth's gatherings in Shannon. I could see he was uncomfortable, had come out of curiosity and found us not to his liking. For some reason that made him even more attractive to me. He doesn't have Ciaran's harsh, raw beauty, but he is good looking, with strong, masculine features, and when he looked into my eyes and smiled shyly, my heart missed a beat. Sweet Daniel. He's deeply good, honest, from one of those Woodbane covens that renounced evil years ago. It's oddly endearing and also a challenge: how much more satisfying to seduce an angel than a villain?

— SB

At once I felt a wash of cold fear sweep over me from head to foot, and my hands clenched the steering wheel. Cal gestured with one hand, and Das Boot's engine died quietly and the headlights winked out. Automatically I began to use my mage sight, the enhanced vision I'd been able to call on since shortly after I learned I was a blood witch.

Cal came closer, and I wrenched my door open and jumped out, determined to be standing during any meeting we had. When I saw his face, my breath left me, not in a whoosh but in a quiet trail, like a vine of smoke in the cold night air. Oh Goddess, had I forgotten his face? No—not when he haunted my dreams and my waking thoughts. But I had forgotten his impact on me, the sweet longing I felt when our eyes met, despite my fear.

Then of course came the remembered anger and a fierce rush of self-protective instinct.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, trying to make my voice strong. But in the darkness I sounded harsh and afraid.

"Morgan," he said, and his voice crept along all my nerves, like honey. I had missed his voice. I hardened my heart and stared at him.

"Last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me," I said, striving for a flippancy I was too scared to pull off.

"I was trying to save you," he said earnestly, and came so close, I could see he wasn't an apparition, wasn't a ghost, but a real person in a real body that I had touched and kissed. "Believe me—if Selene had gotten her hands on you, death would have been far better. Morgan, I know now that I was wrong, but I was crazy with fear, and I did what I thought was best. Forgive me."

I couldn't speak. How did he do it? Even now, when I knew I should just jump in my car and drive away as fast as I could, my heart was whispering, Believe him.

"I love you more now than ever," Cal said. "I've come back to be with you. I told Selene I wouldn't help her anymore."

"You're telling me you've broken away from your mother?" I said. Emotion made my voice harsh, raw. "Give me one good reason I should believe you."

Wordlessly Cal opened his jacket. Underneath he wore a flannel shirt, and he unbuttoned the top three buttons and pulled it open so that I could see his chest. Instantly Hunter's naked chest flashed into my mind. Oh God, I thought with a tinge of hysteria.

Then I saw the blackened, burned-looking patch of skin directly over Cal's heart. I focused my mage sight on it so that I could see clearly, despite the darkness. It was in the shape of a hand.

"Selene did that to me," Cal said, and remembered pain thrummed in his voice. "When I told her I chose you over her."

Goddess. I swallowed hard. And then, without allowing myself to think about what I was risking, I put out my hand and touched my fingers to his cheek. I had to know the truth.

His eyes flared open as he realized what I was doing, but he stood still. I pushed through the outer layers of his consciousness, feeling his resistance, feeling him will himself to accept my invasion. For the first time with Cal, I was controlling the joining of our minds. I would see what I wanted to see, not simply what he wanted to show me.

Then I was inside, and Cal was all around me. I saw my face, but the way he saw it, with a sort of glow around it that made me beautiful, unearthly. I was shaken to sense how much he wanted me.

I saw Hunter striding down the street in Red Kill, and felt an ugly burst of hatred and violence from Cal that rocked me.

I saw a steep hillside below me, dotted with small stucco houses with red roofs, that stretched down to a sparkling blue bay. I felt a breeze blowing against my cheeks. In the distance a red bridge stretched from one headland to another, and I realized I was seeing San Francisco, where I'd never been. It was beautiful, but it wasn't what I needed to see, so I kept searching.

Then I saw Selene.

She was looking directly at me, and I had to fight a strong impulse to hide my face, though I knew I was only seeing Cal's memory. She wasn't looking at me but at him. The expression in her eyes was cold fury.

"You can't go," she said. "I won't allow it."

"I am going," Cal said, and I felt his defiance, his fear, his resolve.

Selene's beautiful face twisted into a snarl of rage. "You idiot," she said. Then her hand was snaking toward him, so fast, it was just a blur, and I felt a searing pain as she touched Cal's flesh. Her hand felt deathly cold, as if it were made of liquid nitrogen, but then a wisp of smoke rose up in front of my eyes, and I smelled charred flesh. I cringed and gasped, twisting with Cal as he sought to escape the agony.