Page 56 of Cast in Shadow
Emerson stared at me with those stony eyes for so long, I was pretty sure he’d disappeared into his own head.
“Megan Navali should be a mid-level witch at best,” I said, hoping to drag him back from wherever he’d drifted off to. “She shouldn’t be able to reach out to the veil alone, but with the lives she’s taken and the power she’s stolen, it might be what she’s working toward.”
He blinked a few times, slowly, before pulling in a deep breath and stepping back. “You were well beyond mid-level when you di—left.”
There was nothing to say to that. He’d helped me hone my craft. It was thanks to him that I was able to shape my magic into something more. He was the one who had guided me through harnessing it without the help of a coven and using it to heal others. The Alius, though, that was where I’d learned to use it to defend myself, in more ways than one.
It was learn or die on the other side, and I’d come close to losing that battle many, many times.
“How long were you there?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” That was the god’s honest truth. “At the time, I was alone, living in an abandoned cabin out in the boonies. There was no one nearby who would’ve bothered checking in on me and no one who would’ve noticed I’d gone missing.”
The more I talked, the more color drained from his face.
“I’m not telling you this for sympathy. You know that, right?”
He nodded, despite the world of pain simmering in those gray-toned eyes. I reached out for his hand, but he pulled back. And damned if it didn’t sting.
“Just tell me what happened,” he said angrily.
Right. Skip to the end.
“From what I was able to piece together when I got back, I was gone for a few months.” Though, at the time, it felt like an eternity had passed. Brutal, painful, and unending.
When I met his gaze again, the first hint of color was making its way back into his irises, just not the color I was hoping for. A sliver of ruby ringed his pupils. “Months?” he breathed, barely containing the fury twisting the question.
“Give or take.” I offered him a little shrug, as if to say it was no big deal.
Emerson was practically vibrating. “Time doesn’t move the same on the other side.”
“Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way, but it is so far in the past for me that it hardly matters. You know what does matter?”
He just stared at me in a tense, focused silence that made my skin tingle.
“You know as well as I do that the demons in the Alius aren’t like most of the ones we have here. If she makes that connection and there’s something on the other side waiting for her, something that could latch onto a living being from this side to pull itself through, we might be dealing with another demon as powerful as you and the rest of the Brethren.”
His eyes narrowed. “That would be a problem.”
No shit. I couldn’t say with absolute confidence that it would happen, but based on my own experience, it was a definite possibility. The creatures on the other side of the veil were the epitome of feral. Bringing one of them here, into a world packed with fragile mortals who mostly refused to believe in even the simplest magic—let alone witches and immortal demons—was equivalent to setting a rabid wolf loose in a park filled with ducklings.
“What was it about Megan that put her on your radar in the first place?” I asked.
Lexa had started tracking her when she’d been exiled from her old coven. Then she’d started dabbling in darker spells and shadowy magic. Power like that had a way of infecting everything it touched if the person who called on it didn’t keep it firmly leashed. That was the point where I’d decided to step in and take the case.
“The dark magic,” Emerson said, still with that crimson glow doing strange things to my insides. “We received a couple reports through our network, places where it seemed to be spreading. All roads led to her.”
And me, since the wicked witch had made her way to my city.
“At least now I know why she chose this place.” He eyed me carefully.
“Why?”
“Because of you.”
Okay, now I was genuinely confused. “I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“Power is a magnet. Dark draws dark. Light draws light. The math is pretty simple.”
