Page 14 of A Hunter Cursed
More laughter greeted that statement, and still chuckling, she told him, “Go take a shower, stinky-man. In the meantime, I’ll call Jourdain and see if he knows who might be capable of that level of illusion and might be messing around so we can put your mind at ease.”
“Sounds good. I’ll call you once I’m clean and we can figure out where we want to go for dinner.”
“Looking forward to it.”
When Jeremiah disconnected the call, he was grinning from ear to ear.
That grin, unfortunately, didn’t last. As soon as he walked through the door to his place, he looked down to unfasten his jeans for his shower and spotted a blotch of sticky black slime on his belly. How the hell did it even get there? Using the T-shirt, he attempted to wipe it away but it clung tenaciously to his skin. Even a thorough scrubbing in the shower wouldn’t remove it and he finally had to resort to scraping it off with a razor blade. Like his fingers, his belly was now marred with a gray stain and Jeremiah shook his head. Whatever magic this shit was, it was nasty, and if he ever discovered who cast the spell, Jeremiah was going to clobber the fucker.
Chapter Eight
Keegan hadn’t been overly concerned when she called Destin as she’d promised she would do. She fully believed what she had told Jeremiah, that someone had been practicing a spell and he just happened to witness the result. Perhaps a young witch, possibly even one of the ones she’d be training in combat magic once the Hunter training officially started.
She wasn’t so confident, however, by the end of that call. According to Jourdain, of the known witches in the area, only he, Keegan to some degree, and a reclusive witch named Nedra who resided in the bayou and, as far as he knew, hadn’t been in the city today, were capable of that kind of lingering magic. Anyone else would have had to have been present and Jeremiah would have seen them, heard them speak an incantation. Of course, that didn’t mean it hadn’t been a witch unfamiliar to Jourdain. New Orleans was a tourist hotspot, and while checking in with the leader of the Order of Witches was a courtesy when you were going to be in his domain, it wasn’t a rule.
Now she was wishing she had asked more about what Jeremiah had witnessed in the alley, but his snarly tone that had smacked of jealousy had thrown her for a loop.
She’d heard stories, of course, about the shifters. Growly, snarly beasts, she’d been told, that relied more on instinct than reason, but after spending time with Jeremiah, she had assumed she’d been misled. The man she’d come to know was warm, friendly, with a wonderful sense of humor and a keen intellect. His tone on the phone, however, had given her a glimpse of that other side, had made her leery, but hehadapologized, she reminded herself. Besides, as he had pointed out, he’d been freaked out by whatever magic spell he’d run into so she could understand how that might unnerve someone and make them a bit short-tempered.
Tapping her phone against her lip, Keegan considered calling Jeremiah back and asking him for more details about what he saw but quickly rejected the idea. What he’d witnessed, she decided, wasn’t as important as the magic behind it.
Spells had a signature that lingered for a good twenty-four hours after they were cast. All Keegan had to do was see it, see the nature behind it, and she knew the perfect spell for that. It was a spell Destin had taught her when she’d first gone to him with her theory that she was cursed. He’d suggested that if that were true, she’d be able to see it with the spell if she looked in a mirror, that it would appear as a shadow in her aura. She tried it and hadn’t seen a shadow, but her mentor, Evangeline had pointed out that if it was a curse Keegan had been born with rather than one cast against her, it wouldn’t show up as Destin had claimed. It had been a depressing blow after a moment of hope, but the spell itself was still useful.
Knowing she’d need her full concentration and wouldn’t be able to answer Jeremiah’s call when it came through, she typed out a quick text message giving him the name of the restaurant she preferred and a time for them to meet that night. That done, she shut the thing off to guarantee she wouldn’t be disturbed and headed for her kitchen to mix up the necessary ingredients.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, she was back where she had parked earlier today, ready to retrace Jeremiah’s steps. Taking a few deep breaths to prep herself for what she was about to see, Keegan drank down the concoction and tried not to gag. Gah! Why hadn’t she thought to add some strawberry flavoring to it, or maybe some mint leaves? The taste was nasty and made her feel like she had a coating of fuzz on her tongue. A swig of soda would be welcome right about then, but she didn’t dare risk diluting the effects.
Emerging from her car, Keegan swept her eyes around the surrounding area. Nothing out of the ordinary, but then, Jeremiah had said he’d seen whatever it was in an alley. Heading to where she’d seen him disappear from her rearview mirror earlier that day, she turned into the shadowed space between the two buildings.
Grunge and litter along the edges of the buildings, a few street tags on the brick walls, metal fire escapes, dumpsters – a typical alley – and nothing magical. The potion she had taken should allow her to visualize any spells. Some would look like a colorful mist, some would appear as sparks in the air or like ripples in a pond, while others would look like heat waves coming off the asphalt.
Walking forward slowly, she let her eyes scan every nook and cranny up and down the outer walls of the buildings. She’d reached the half-way point and still hadn’t seen the slightest hint of any magical interference when it suddenly felt like a wave of heat washed over her and a phantom hand was gripping her heart, squeezing the organ painfully. Keegan gasped and her knees buckled, bringing her down hard on the pavement.
There was a roaring in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to pull enough air into her lungs. She felt like she was drowning, being pulled under by something that felt so malevolent her skin crawled. Chills racked her followed by another surge of heat that had sweat popping out all over her body.
Bile rose in her throat, and there was a rush of saliva in her mouth but Keegan couldn’t swallow past the restriction lodged in her gullet. She tried to crawl, pulling herself forward, her hands seeming so very far away as her vision warped at the edges and darkened.Breathe, she kept mentally repeating as her fingers clawed at the unforgiving pavement. She refused to lie down, refused to give up despite her body’s desire to collapse.Breathe!
It was like breaking through a bubble. There was a hint of resistance, a feeling of something giving way, and Keegan was suddenly drawing in a deep inhale as she threw her body forward and away from whatever the hell that had been.
Rolling several times to put some distance between her and it, she looked back, searching for the edge of that bubble, a signature, something to explain what she’d just felt. There was nothing there. Even with the potion she’d taken, she was blind to whatever this was.
Rubbing a trembling hand over her still aching chest, Keegan pushed herself up into a sitting position but moved no further. She knew her legs weren’t yet capable of taking her weight, so she didn’t even attempt it. What the hell was that? Her experience may have been different from Jeremiah’s, but she could now definitely understand why he had been freaked out and snarling. Honestly, she felt like snarling too. Pulling out her phone, Keegan turned it back on. She needed to inform Destin.
Jourdain arrived in an impressively short amount of time, the giant of a man jogging down the alley in one of his signature three-piece suits, a fedora perched on his bald head. Seeing him rapidly approaching the spot that had dropped Keegan to her knees, she threw out a hand in warning. “Stop. Don’t come any closer.”
He complied with the order and Keegan carefully levered herself upright, her legs quivering as she gained her feet. “That spot about two feet in front of you is where I felt it. It was like a panic attack and drowning, and…” cutting herself off, she shook her head. “It was like a bubble of evil that was surrounding me.”
Destin gave a sharp nod then began to cautiously circle the area, his fingers reaching out, attempting to feel the outer edges of the bubble. A moment later he halted with a sharp breath. “Cold,” he murmured distractedly. “But heat as well, like an open flame.” His fingers danced through the area. “The air feels heavier like something is trying to pull me in.”
“I took a revealing potion,” Keegan informed him, “yet I was completely blind to whatever this is. I walked right into it.”
Jourdain nodded. “This is no spell,” he told her, his voice hard and his eyes glinting with anger.
“What is it?”
“A thinning.”
Before Keegan could ask him what he meant by that, Jourdain straightened to his full height. “I’ll have this area cordoned off. It’s not safe.”
