Page 28 of Her Dreadful Will
Soleil darted in and caught his left hand, inspecting the tattoos. Between the nail and the first joint, each finger bore a different leaf. Oak for courage and power. A jagged elm leaf for intuition and wisdom. Five-pointed maple for balance and beauty. And on his pointer finger, a broad aspen leaf. The aspen was the tree of the dead and of resurrection, the tree the Celts revered as a connection point between this world and the next. An odd choice as a permanent power totem.
“What’s this one?” she touched his thumb.
“Redwood. For eternity.”
“So your affinity is nature.” She collected his right hand and studied it. “This one is ash, right?”
“Yes.” He flexed his middle finger. “And this one looks similar to ash, but it’s actually thesamanea saman, the rain tree. Its properties enhance love-making and fertility.”
Soleil was suddenly aware of the low, seductive ripple of his voice, edged with a smile—the heat of his body permeating the cool air between them—the cut of his tattooed chest. Where her fingertips touched his, a tingling sensation trickled along her nerves.
She risked a tiny look upward, into green eyes sparkling with lascivious humor. Her mouth went dry, but she didn’t release his hand. “And the others?”
“Black hawthorn. Elder. Hazel. Rowan.”
A nature witch she wasn’t, but Soleil had always loved trees. She remembered enough about the two weeks of tree lore in Botanical Sorcery class to identify most of the beneficial ones, the trees associated with positive magic. But these trees on his right hand—they weren’t familiar. “The elder—isn’t that one unlucky?”
“Not unlucky so much as misunderstood. It was said that if you crafted a flute from the wood of an elder tree and played it at dusk, you might see the faeries.”
Soleil eyed him, suspecting she was being mocked. He seemed to have shed a layer of himself since they left the restaurant. Gone was the modest, awkwardly polite dentist; he was all eagerness and high spirits now, his excitement practically vibrating through his skin.
Soleil’s gaze traveled farther along his fingers, to the magical sigils tattooed between the second and third joints.
But before she could catch more than a glimpse, he drew his hands away and pulled his gloves back on. “If you want another look at the goods, love, you’ll have to agree to a redo of our date.”
Did he really just call herlove? Who did that in real actual life? No normal person. Though obviously this Dr. Gilliam was far from normal.
He was a witch.
His very presence here disturbed the order of things, jostling her carefully laid plans. Another witch in Wonderland? What were the odds? Especially when she had met only one other witch face-to-face in her lifetime—Tarek. Tarek’s discovery of her powers had occurred on a date too. An odd coincidence, but not necessarily suspicious. Witches were often inexplicably perceptive about each other’s presence—sensing another witch in the vicinity the way a tiger might discern a rival’s invasion in his territory. And like the tiger, Soleil grew more territorial the longer she thought about Achan Gilliam being inhertown.
“You should move on.” She jerked open her car door so that it separated their bodies. “This town is taken.”
“Move on?” He smirked. “You’re saying ‘This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,’ or some shit like that? Really?” He rested both forearms on the top of the car door and leaned closer, his voice softening. “I don’t buy it, Soleil. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really afraid of?”
“Nothing.” She faced him, nose to nose, refusing to back off again. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
His eyes angled down to her mouth. “I believe you. Someone with your power has no reason to fear anything but her own recklessness.”
She spoke low and fierce. “What do you know about my power? Who taught you that shield mark and the ritual for applying it? What do you want? Why are you here?”
“Slow down,” he whispered, his breath ghosting across her lips. “If you’ll agree to see me again, I promise to give you some answers.”
“Will those answers make me want to kill you?”
“God, I hope so. I’d love to see you murderously angry.”
Lightning coursed through Soleil, raw and unfamiliar. She couldn’t remember ever being this furious at someone. She swung into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Jamming the key into the ignition, she cranked it.
The car chugged gamely for several seconds, trying to start—but the engine just wouldn’t kick in.
Soleil’s anger and frustration spiked higher, a fever crawling under her skin, threatening to burst out. Of all the times for this rusty beast to fail her—
She tried again, while Achan Gilliam leaned against the neighboring vehicle and crossed his arms, an infuriating sneer on his face.
“Damn you, you stupid car.” Soleil clicked open the glove compartment and shuffled around for her charm kit. She found the starter sigil she’d made back in college—a piece of magnetite scratched with the alchemical symbols for wick, crucible, and fire, wrapped with copper wire. She pressed it between her palms and focused, whispering, “Start, you useless hunk of metal.”
Soleil had once heard a Highwitch professor ridicule humans for thinking that dead languages could provide magical power simply because they were old and mysterious; when in fact, the most powerful words a witch could use were those of their heart-language, the language in which they thought and dreamed. A witch like Tarek, with lexical affinity, could learn and use any language with equal power.
