Awakening

1. Embers

They fled tonight, the lot of them Selene Belltower, Cal Blaire, Alicia Woodwind, Edwitha of Cair Dal, and more—all slipped though my fingers. They knew I was closing in on them. It's my fault. I was too cautious, too worried about proving the case against them beyond all doubt, and so I left it too long. I've failed, and badly. And worse, Morgan nearly dies because I didn't stop them.

I've got to break warding spells and get into Selene's house. She can't have had time to pack up all her things. Maybe I can find some clue, something to tell me where she went or what her group is planning.

Damn, damn, damn!

— Giomanach

I stood with Bree Warren and Robbie Gurevitch, my two oldest friends, on the lawn in back of Cal Blaire's house. Together we stared at the flames that leapt hungrily up from the pool house and cast a smoky pall over the stark November moon. Somewhere in the inferno there was a crash as a section of the roof caved in. A fountain of white-hot sparks flew skyward.

"My God," Bree said.

Robbie shook his head. "You got out of there just in time."

Sirens wailed in the distance. Though it was the last night of November and snow lay inches deep on the ground, the night air felt hot and dry as I gulped in a deep breath. "You guys saved my life," I managed to choke out. Then I doubled over, coughing. It hurt just to breathe. My throat was raw and my chest ached and every cell in my body craved oxygen.

"Barely," Robbie murmured. He tucked an arm under my elbow, supporting me.

I shuddered. I didn't need Robbie to tell me how close I had come to dying, trapped in the tiny, spell-wrapped room that had been hidden in the pool house. Trapped by Cal Blaire, my boyfriend. My eyes, already stinging from the smoke, blurred again with tears.

Charismatic, confident, inhumanly beautiful, Cal had woken something that had been sleeping inside me for sixteen years. It was Cal who had first loved me, as no boy ever had. It was Cal who had helped me to the realization that I was a blood witch, with powers I'd never even known could exist in the real world. It was Cal who had shown me how love and magick could twine together until it seemed that all the energy in the universe was enfolding me, streaming through me, there for the taking.

I shook my head. "I think I'm okay." Now that I could breathe, my body was starting to thrum with adrenaline, and I was getting a weird, disconnected feeling.

"There'll be an ambulance coming with the fire trucks," Bree pointed out. "You should let them check you out, Morgan. You inhaled a lot of smoke."

"Actually, if Morgan's up to it, it would be better if we left now." Hunter cast a glance over his shoulder. The first of the fire trucks was turning into the curved gravel driveway in front of the big house where Cal and his mother, Selene Belltower, lived. "I don't think we want to talk to anyone official. Too many awkward questions. Sky, if you wouldn't mind delaying them for a moment so we can make our getaway. ."

Sky nodded and set off across the lawn at a smooth lope. Stopping a few yards from the house, she held up her hands.

I watched, puzzled, as she moved her fingers in a complicated dance in the air.

"What's she doing?" Robbie asked.

"Casting a glamour," Hunter explained. "She's making the firemen believe the fire has spread to the house. The illusion won't last more than a few moments, but it'll keep them from noticing our cars while we're driving away." He nodded his approval to Sky as she hurried back toward us. "Let's get going. No time to waste. Robbie, if you'll drive Morgan's car, we can all meet down at the end of the block."

I was dimly amazed by the swift way he took charge of the situation. No exclaiming over what had happened. No expressions of shock or horror. Just business. Normally that would have irritated me. But at that moment I felt reassured; safe, almost.

Robbie hurried toward my car. I started to follow him, but Bree took my arm. "Come on, you can ride with me," she said.

My gaze met hers. Even at the scene of a fire, her glossy, shoulder-length hair looked perfect. But the shock of what had happened showed in her dark eyes.

Once we'd been so close that we'd finished each other's sentences. That was before she'd fallen for Cal, before he'd chosen me. This morning Bree and I had been enemies. But tonight I had called her, sent her a witch message with my mind, when I was facing my darkest hour. I had called out to her. And she had heard me and had come to my aid. Maybe there was hope for us yet

"Come on," Bree repeated, and led me toward her BMW. She helped me into the passenger seat then went around to the driver's side. As we drove down the narrow, winding back driveway, she glanced anxiously in her rearview mirror.

“They're still running around the main house. No one's even gone into the backyard yet," she said. A smile tugged at her lips. "Sky's spell really worked, I guess. All this witchcraft stuff really blows my mind."

She gave me a sideways look. "It was wild hearing your voice so clearly in my mind," she added after a moment. "I thought I was going nuts. But then I figured, enough bizarre things have happened lately that I probably should take this seriously."

"I'm glad you did. You saved me," I replied. My voice was hoarse, and the act of speaking triggered another coughing fit

"Are you sure you're okay?" Bree asked when I straightened up. "No burns or anything?"

Not on the outside, I thought bleakly. I shook my head. "I'm alive," I said. "Thanks to you." It wasn't exactly a reconciliation, but it was all I could manage at the moment.

At the end of the dark, quiet block we pulled up to the curb behind Sky's green Ford. Robbie was already there, leaning against the door of my car, Das Boot. I winced as I looked at the battered 71 Valiant. It was already dented and missing a headlight from a minor accident I'd had a week ago. Then, moments ago, Robbie had used Das Boot to ram through the wall of the pool house where I was trapped. Now the hood was badly dented, too.

"Right, then," Hunter said. He spoke briskly, but I felt like I was hearing him through a layer of heavy cloth. Somehow I just couldn't focus. "People are going to be asking a lot of questions about what happened here tonight; how the fire started, and so forth. We need to get our stories straight. Robbie, Bree, I think it's best if you simply pretend you weren't here. That way no one will question you."

Robbie folded his arms. "I'm going to tell our friends in Cirrus the truth," he said. "They have a right to know." Cirrus was the coven Cal had started. Robbie and I were members, along with four other people.

"Cirrus," Hunter said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You're right, they should know. But please, ask them to keep it to themselves." He turned to me. "Morgan, if you can bear it, I need to talk to you. I'll drive you home in your car afterward."

I cringed. Talk? Now?

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" Bree asked sharply.

"Yeah," Robbie agreed. "Morgan's a mess. No offense, Morgan."

"I'm afraid it can't," Hunter said. His voice was quiet, but there was a final tone in it.

Robbie looked like he was about to argue, but then he simply handed Hunter my car keys.

Sky turned to Hunter. "I'll try to find out where they've gone, as we discussed," she said.

"Right," Hunter agreed. "I'll see you at home later."

"Where who's gone?" I asked. This was all moving too fast for me.

"Cal and Selene," Sky told me. She pushed a hand through her short, silver-blond hair. "Their house is sealed with warding spells, and both their cars are gone."

I swallowed hard. The thought that they were out there, who knew where, was terrifying. I had a sudden, irrational conviction that they were hiding behind a tree or something equally melodramatic, spying on me at this very moment.

"They're not in Widow's Vale anymore," Hunter said, as if he'd read my mind. "I'm sure of it. I'd be able to tell if they were."

Though the logical part of my brain told me that nothing is ever certain, something in the way Hunter spoke made me believe him. I felt a burst of relief, followed by a wash of intense pain. Cal was gone. I'd never see him again.

Hunter put one hand under my elbow and steered me over to my car. He opened the passenger door, and I slid in. The inside of the car was frigid and that, combined with the adrenaline still pumping through my body, made me shake so hard, my muscles started to ache. Hunter cranked the engine, flipped on the one remaining headlight, then pulled out onto the quiet, tree-lined street.

He didn't say anything, and I was grateful. Usually Hunter and I were like sparks and gunpowder. He was a Seeker, sent by the International Council of Witches to investigate Cal and Selene for misuse of magick. He'd told me they were evil. Before I'd learned, to my horror and shock, that he was right, Cal and I had almost killed him. That was just one of the things that made me intensely uneasy around him.

In one of those weird connections that seemed common among blood witches, Hunter was Cal's half brother. But where Cal was dark, Hunter was fair, with sunlight-colored hair, clear green eyes, and sculpted cheekbones. He was beautiful, but in an entirely different way than Cal. Hunter was cool, like air or water. Cal smoldered. He was earth and fire.

Cal. Every thought led back to him. I stared out my window, trying to blink back tears and not succeeding. I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

Gradually it dawned on me that I didn't recognize the road we were on. "Where are we going?" I asked. "This isn't the way to my house."

"It's the way to my house. I thought it would be better if you washed up first, got the smell of smoke out of your hair and so forth, before you faced your parents."

I nodded, relieved that once again he'd thought it out. My parents—my adoptive parents, really—weren't comfortable with my powers or with me practicing witchcraft. Besides the fact that they're Catholic, they were frightened by what had happened to my birth mother, Maeve Riordan. Sixteen years ago Maeve and my biological father, Angus Bramson, had burned to death. No one knew exactly how it had happened, but it seemed pretty clear that the fact that they were witches had had everything to do with it.

I pressed my hand against my mouth, trying desperately to make sense of the last few weeks. Just a month ago I'd discovered that I was adopted and that by birth I was a descendent of one of the Seven Great Wiccan Clans—a blood witch. My birth parents had died when I was only a baby. Tonight I had almost shared their fate.

And it had been at Cal's hands. At the hands of the guy with whom I'd hoped to share the rest of my life.

Ahead of us, a fat brown rabbit sat frozen in the middle of the icy road, paralyzed by my car's headlight Hunter brought the car to a stop, and we waited.

"Can you tell me what happened tonight?" he asked, surprisingly gently.

"No." My hand was still pressed against my mouth, and I had to take it away to explain. "Not right now." My voice cracked with a sob. "It hurts too much."

The rabbit came out of its paralysis and scampered to safety on the other side of the road. Hunter pressed the gas pedal, and Das Boot surged forward again. "Right, then," he said. "Later."

Hunter and Sky's house was on a quiet street somewhere near the edge of Widow's Vale. I didn't really pay attention to the route. Now that the adrenaline of escaping the fire was leaking away, I felt exhausted, groggy.

The car pulled to a stop. We were in a driveway beneath a canopy of trees. We got out to the night's chill and walked up a narrow path. I followed Hunter into a living room where a fire burned in a small fireplace. A worn sofa covered in dark blue velvet stood against one wall. One of its legs had broken off, and it listed at a drunken angle. There were two mismatched armchairs across from it, and a wide plank balanced on two wooden crates served as a coffee table.

"You'll need a shower and clean clothes," Hunter told me.

I glanced at a small clock on the mantel. It was nearly nine. I was more than late for dinner. "I've got to call my folks first,” I said. "They've probably called the police by now."

Hunter handed me a cordless phone. "Should I tell them about the fire?" I asked him, feeling lost.

He hesitated. "The choice is yours, of course," he said at last. "But if you do, you'll have a lot of explaining to do." I nodded. He was right. One more thing I couldn't share with my family.

Nervously I dialed my home number.

My dad answered, and I heard the relief in his voice as I greeted him. "Morgan, where on earth are you?" he asked. "We were about to call the state troopers!"

"I'm at a friend's house," I said, trying to be as honest as I could.

"Are you all right? You sound hoarse."

"I'm okay. But Cal and I. . we had a fight." I fought to keep my voice steady. "I'm—I'm kind of upset. That's why I didn't call earlier. I'm sorry," I added lamely.

"Well, we were very worried," my dad said. "But I'm glad you're all right. Are you coming home now?"

The front door opened, and Sky walked in. She glanced at me, then looked at Hunter and shook her head. "Not a trace," she said in a low voice.

Ice trickled down my spine. "In a little while, Dad," I said into the phone. "I'll be home in a little while."

Dad sighed. "Don't forget that tomorrow is a school day."

I said good-bye and hung up. "You didn't find them?" I asked Sky anxiously.

"They're gone. They hid their tracks with so many concealing spells that I can't even tell which direction they went," Sky said. "But they're definitely nowhere nearby."

I stood there, feeling my heart beat, not knowing how to process that information. After a moment, Sky took my arm and gently led me upstairs. I was too out of it to notice much more than that there were two doors up there that were closed. The third, in between them, opened into a narrow bathroom.

Sky disappeared through one of the doorways, then reappeared a moment later holding a bathrobe. "You can wear this when you come out," she said. "Leave your clothes outside the door, and I'll throw them in the washer."

I took the robe and closed the door, feeling suddenly self-conscious. I turned and dared a look in the mirror. My nose was red and swollen, my eyes puffy, and my long dark hair matted and flecked with ash. Soot streaked my face and clothes.

I'm hideous, I thought, as Cal's face rose in my mind again. He'd been so incredibly beautiful. How could I ever have believed he could really love someone like me? How could I have been so blind? I was such an idiot.

Clenching my jaw, I stripped down. I opened the door a crack and dropped my clothes in a heap on the hall floor. Then I got into the shower and scrubbed my body and my hair hard, as if the water could wash away more than dirt and smoke, as if it could take my sorrow and terror and rage and sluice them down the drain.

Afterward I dried off and put on the robe. Sky was taller than I was, and the robe bunched at my feet, looking shapeless and drab. I pulled a comb through my wet hair and went back downstairs.

Sky was sitting in one of the armchairs, but as I came down, she rose gracefully to her feet and went up to her room. As she passed me, she let her hand rest briefly on my shoulder.

Hunter stood at the fireplace, feeding a log to the fire. A small ceramic teapot and two mugs sat on the coffee table. He turned to face me, and I was keenly aware of how good-looking he was.

I settled myself on the sofa, and Hunter sat in a worn armchair. "Better?" he asked.

"A little." My chest and throat weren't quite as sore, and my eyes had stopped stinging.

Hunter's green eyes were locked on me. "I need you to tell me what happened."

I took a deep breath; then I told him how Sky and I had scryed together. How she'd helped me to spy on Cal and his mother in their spell-guarded house as they talked to their coconspirators about killing me if I refused to join them. How I saw that Cal had been assigned to seduce me, to get me onto their side so that my power could be joined with theirs. How I'd learned that they were also after my birth mother's coven tools, objects of enormous power that they wanted to add to their arsenal of magickal weapons. How I'd gone to talk to Cal, how he'd overpowered me with magick and taken me back to his house.

"He put me in a seomar in the back of the pool house," I said, a vivid picture of the horrible little secret room rising in my mind. "The walls were covered with dark runes. He must have knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I heard Selene arguing with him outside. She was telling him not to do it, not to set it on fire. But Cal said" — my voice broke again—"he said he was solving the problem. He meant me. I was the p-p-problem."

"Shhh," Hunter said softly. Reaching out, he laid his palm flat against my forehead. I felt a tingling warmth spread outward from the spot, like a thousand little bubbles. His eyes held mine as the sensation washed over me, dulling the edge of my pain to the point where I could just bear it.

"Thanks," I said, awed.

He smiled briefly, his face transforming for a moment. Then he said, "Morgan, I'm sorry to press you, but this is important. Did they get your birth mother's tools?"

Maeve had fled her native Ireland after her coven, Belwicket had been decimated. I had recently found her tools, the ancient tools of her coven. Selene had wanted them badly. "No," I told Hunter. "They're safe. I'd know if they weren't—they're bound to me. Anyway, I hid them."

Hunter poured us each a cup of tea. "Where?"

"Um—under Bree's house. I put them there right before I went to see Cal," I said. It sounded so lame as I said it that I cringed, waiting for Hunter to yell at me.

But he just nodded. "All right I suppose they'll be safe enough for now, since Cal and Selene have fled. But get them back as soon as you can."

"What can they do with them?" I asked. "Why are they so dangerous?"

"I'm not sure exactly what they could do," Hunter said. "But Selene is very powerful and very skilled in magick, as you know. And some of the tools, the athame and the wand in particular, were made long ago, back before Belwicket renounced the blackness. They've since been purified, of course, but they were made to channel and focus dark energies. I'm sure Selene could find a way to return them to their original state. I imagine, for example, that Maeve's wand in Selene's hands could be used to magnify the power of the dark wave."

The dark wave. I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. The dark wave was the thing that had wiped out Maeve's coven. It had also destroyed Hunter's parents' coven and had forced his mother and father into hiding ten years ago. They were still missing.

No one seemed to know exactly what the dark wave was—whether it was an entity with a will of its own or a force of mindless destruction, like a tornado. All we did know was that where it passed, it left death and horror behind it, entire towns turned to ash. Hunter believed that Selene was somehow connected to the dark wave. But he didn't know how.

I put my head in my hands. "Is all of this happening because Cal and Selene are Woodbane?" I asked in a small voice. Woodbane was the family name of one of the Seven Great Clans of Wicca. To be Woodbane meant, traditionally, to be without a moral compass. Woodbanes throughout history had used any means at their disposal, including calling on dark spirits or dark energy, to become more powerful. Supposedly this had all changed when the International Council of Witches had come into being and made laws to govern the use of magick. But as I was learning, the world of Wicca was as fractured and divided as the everyday world I'd known for the first sixteen years of my life. And there were many Woodbanes who didn't live by the council's laws.

I happened to be Woodbane, too. I hadn't wanted to believe it when I first found out, but the small, red, dagger-shaped birthmark on the inside of my arm was proof of it. Many, if not most, Woodbanes had one somewhere. It was known as the Woodbane athame, because it looked like the ceremonial dagger that was part of any witch's set of tools.

Hunter sighed, and I was reminded that he was half Woodbane himself. "That's the question, isn't it? I don't honestly know what it means to be Woodbane. I don't know what's nature and what's nurture."

He set down his mug and rose. "I'll see if your clothes are dry. Then I'll run you home."

Sky followed us to my house in her car so that she could drive Hunter home. He and I didn't talk on the way. Whatever calming effect his touch had had on me was entirely gone now, and my mind kept replaying Cal lying to me, shouting at me, using his magick to nearly kill me. How could something that had been so sweet, that felt so good, have turned into this? How could I have been so blind? And why, even now, was some shameful part of me wanting to call to him? Cal, don't leave me. Cal, come back. Oh, God. I swallowed as bile rushed up into my throat.

"Morgan," Hunter said as he pulled up in front of my house. "You do understand, don't you, that you can't let your guard down? Cal may be gone, but it's likely he'll come back."

Come back? Hope, fear, rage, confusion swept over me. "Oh, God." I doubled over in my seat, hugging myself. "Oh, God. I loved him. I feel so stupid."

"Don't," Hunter said quietly. I looked up. His face was turned away from me. I saw the plane of his cheek, pale and smooth in the milky starlight that filtered in through Das Boot's windshield.

"I know how much you loved Cal," Hunter said. "And I understand why. There's a lot in him that's truly beautiful. And—and I believe that he loved you, too, in his own way. You didn't imagine that. Even though I was one of the ones telling you otherwise."

He turned to face me then, and we stared at each other. "Look. I know you feel like you'll never get past this. But you will. It won't ever go away, but it will stop hurting quite so much. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about."

I was reminded of the time he and I had joined our minds, and I'd seen that he had lost not only his parents but also his brother to dark magick. He'd suffered so much that I felt I could believe him.

He made a movement as if he were going to touch my face with his hand. But he seemed to stop himself and pulled his hand back. "You'd better go in before your parents come out here," he said.

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't start crying all over again. "Okay," I whispered. I sniffed and looked at my house. The lights were on in the living room.

I felt suddenly awkward. After that moment of connection, should I shake Hunter's hand? Kiss his cheek? In the end I just said, "Thanks for everything."

We both got out of the car. Hunter gave me my keys and headed down the dark street to where Sky waited in her car. I walked up the drive, my body on autopilot. I hesitated at the door. How was I going to act normal around my parents when I felt like I'd been ripped apart?

I opened the front door. The living room was empty, and the house smelled of chocolate chip cookies and wood smoke. There were still embers in the fireplace, and I could smell a faint tinge of the lemon oil that my mom used on the furniture. I heard my parents' voices in the kitchen and the sound of the dishwasher being unloaded.

"Mom? Dad?" I called nervously.

My parents, Sean and Mary Grace Rowlands, came into the living room. "Morgan, you look like you've been crying," my mom said when she caught sight of me. "Was the fight with Cal very bad?"

"I–I broke up with Cal." It wasn't exactly true, but it wasn't the falsehood that shocked me as much as the truth of my situation. Cal and I were no longer together. We were not a couple. We were not going to love each other forever. We were not going to be together again. Ever.

"Oh, honey," said my mom. The sympathy in her voice made me want to cry for the hundredth time that awful night.

"That's too bad," my dad chimed in.

"Um, I also had a little accident in Das Boot," I said. The lie slipped out before I'd even fully formulated it. I just knew I had to explain the crumpled hood of my car somehow.

"An accident?" my dad exclaimed. "What happened? Are you all right? Was anyone else hurt?"

"No one got hurt. I was pulling out of Cal's driveway and I hit a light pole. I kind of messed up the hood of my car." I swallowed. "I guess I was pretty upset."

"Oh my God," Mom said. "That sounds serious! Are you sure you're all right? Maybe we should run you over to the ER and have them take a look at you."

"Mom, I didn't hit my head or anything." I smothered a cough.

"But—" my dad began.

"I'm fine." I cut him off. I had to get to my room before I had a nervous breakdown right in front of them. "I'm just beat, that's all. I really just want to go to bed."

Then, before they could ask any more questions, I fled up the stairs. I was relieved to see that the door to my sister's room was closed. I couldn't handle another explanation. Or even another syllable.

In my room I paused briefly to pet Dagda, my little gray kitten, who was curled up on my desk chair. He mewed a sleepy hello. I went over to my dresser to get out my softest flannel pajamas. But I paused, staring at a tiny gift box on top of my dresser. It was one of the birthday gifts Cal had given me last week: a pair of earrings, golden tiger-eyes set in silver. I couldn't stop myself from opening the box to look at them again. They were as beautiful as I remembered: the silver swirling in delicate Celtic knots and the stones that were the same color as Cal's eyes. I could still see him, his dark, raggedly shorn hair, his sensual mouth, the golden eyes that seemed to see right into me. The way he used to laugh. The way he had felt like a soul mate from the start.

I laid the earrings on my palm. They gave off a little pool of heat. They're spelled, I realized with a rush of nausea. Goddess, they're just another tool to control me, to spy on me. I remembered thinking, when he gave them to me, that these gifts were wrapped in his love. But the fact was, they were wrapped in his magick.

I couldn't keep them anywhere near me, I realized. I would have to find a safe way to dispose of everything Cal had given me. But not tonight. I stashed the earrings in the back of my closet, together with his other gifts. Then I put on my pajamas.

As I was pulling back my covers, there was a soft knock at my door. A moment later my mom stepped in. "Are you going to be all right?" she asked. Her voice was quiet.

And then the tears were flooding down my cheeks, my defenses completely overwhelmed. I sobbed so hard, my whole body shook.

I felt my mom beside me, her arms encircling me, and I clung to her as I hadn't in years. "My darling," she said into my hair. "My daughter. I'm so sorry. I know how much you must be hurting. Do you want to talk about it?"

I raised my head and met her eyes. I cant. .. I whispered, gasping. "I can't. .."

She nodded. "All right," she said. "When you're ready."

When I'd crawled into bed, she pulled the comforter up to my chin and kissed my forehead as if I were six. Reaching over, she turned off my light. "I'm here," she murmured, taking my hand in hers. "It'll be all right."

And so clutching her hand tightly, I fell asleep.