Page 83 of Earth-Bound

I slipped around Joe, making sure I didn’t touch his legs as I walked past him and went down the stairs. I’d seen some tools in the kitchen before. I remembered distinctly because Arram had been forced to put them in there, away from Dee and Dum, where Cuthbert stood guard in the kitchen. They’d only been allowed the ones they needed for their roofing, and then only one at a time.

Sure enough, I found a bag of tools and searched through it for a crowbar. Taking the crowbar back upstairs, I said, “I’m going to pull up the floorboards.”

“No, don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you touching that spell.”

“We can’t leave it there,” I reminded him. “It’s hurting you.”

“It’s not so bad, now that I’m away from it. Maybe if I go further….”

He’d balked as I stepped around him, and we both knew it. I couldn’t let a spell lie there if it was harming my mate, and Icertainly couldn’t allow it if it was making him physically sick at my presence.

“I won’t touch it. I just want to see it.”

That was the first step. Perhaps I could describe it to Matty and we could establish what it did. That would help.

I slotted the crowbar between the planks in front of the window seat and levered one up. It creaked and groaned, protesting against the movement, but it gradually came loose. I had to manoeuvre the crowbar along inch by inch until the plank popped free.

The hole it made was just wide enough that I could get my arm inside but the hole was dark and I couldn’t see anything, and I was unwilling to stick my arm right into a spell I knew nothing about, so I levered up another plank, and another.

Joe crawled forward. The nearer he got, the worse he looked.

“Please stay back,” I begged, but he shook his head.

“Want to see.”

“It’s making you worse.”

“Why does it affectme?” he asked. “I didn’t even know Mulgrave.”

That was an excellent point. In my panic, I’d forgotten to think things through logically. There was a spell, and it affected Joe but I could not sense it at all.

“I don’t know. Perhaps it is designed to harm anyone in the room.”

“But I didn’t feel like this before. Only a bit creeped out. I feel half dead now.”

It’s possible Joe meant that as a joke but I gave a cry of despair.

“Terrund, it’s going to be ok.”

He didn’t know that. He couldn’t know that. I’d only just found him and, somehow, I felt responsible for the spell that was eating away at him. Mating me should have given him life and energy and we should have lived hundreds of years together, right here on this land.

Instead, Joe said my name one last time and then passed out again.

Chapter 34: Joe

Icame to at the top of the stairs. Again.

This was getting to be quite the habit.

I could hear Terrund in the master bedroom and the splintering of floorboards.

Downstairs, I heard the door rattle and then heavy footsteps. Two sets of voices drifted up to me, in tones I recognised.

Broadmire said, “Stay there.”

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