Page 92 of WitchCurse
I blinked at them. Why would they not be able to leave?
“We’re sort of worried we are ghosts,” Nick added.
They felt alive to me. They ate the food I ate. Was I dead too? Was it all a dream? Not an unpleasant one, but if it was a dream, I hoped to never wake from it.
“Are you still hungry?” I asked them.
“I’m always hungry,” Toby said. “It’s part of the wolf. But I’m not starving.”
“I’m full,” Nick said, patting his stomach. “Maybe we should all nap and see what happens? Will we wake up back in the sanctuary? Or not at all?”
I didn’t like the thought of that and grasped a firm memory in my mind of what Liam’s backyard looked like. Instead of creating it within my realm, I rocketed us to the spot. The area around us shifting from the trees and familiar warm pulse of my realm to a bloom of lavender and a field of well-trimmed grass leading to the giant mansion Sebastian called home. The sun overhead blazed bright and hot, but everything was green and bright as though it were spring, while the heat maintained it was late summer.
Toby gasped, rising to his feet. “Is this real?”
The back door of the house opened, Liam emerging with Sebastian at his back. “Ow,” Sebastian said. “Maybe knock next time? I’ve been trying to perfect barriers and you just blasted through like a cannon.” He held a cloth to his nose, which appeared to be bleeding. “Oh, and you’re naked, super.”
I got to my feet, Nick and Toby close behind me. Glanced down, flushing when I realized that I was indeed nude. I wrapped a layer of glamour around myself, adding clothing, but not changing my skin or hair color. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to cause pain.” How did I explain that my scions…my bondmates, had been worried they were ghosts? I reached for Sebastian, but Liam stayed between us. “I only wished to heal him,” I offered.
“It’s just a nosebleed from the power surge. He’ll be fine in a minute. You guys doing okay?” Liam asked Toby and Nick.
“Feeling alive, hoping we aren’t zombies or something,” Toby said.
Sebastian laughed. “You look alive. I hear your heartbeats.” He kept his nose pinched. “Maybe you all can help us learn shields and stuff.” He put his hand to his forehead. “Now I have a headache forming. Really? Fucking, ow.”
“I don’t think Kiran knows his own strength,” Nick said. “Sorry about that.” He wrapped an arm around me from behind. “We were hoping to get more food? Toby’s still hungry, and Kiran is a little too.” He pointed to the picnic spread which sat at our feet, everything empty. I hadn’t realized I’d brought it too. And a handful of seedlings. A tree took root a few feet away, growing instantly from sprout to small tree, and Liam frowned at it. I reached for it and the essence of it curled around my fingers, sliding up my arm and wrapping itself around my shoulder blade without hesitation. I’d take it back to my realm. The other seedlings came to my hand as well.
“Okay, that was cool,” Sebastian muttered. “Can I do that?”
“Perhaps?” I wondered. The vague memories of my youth were long faded, but helping the forests grow had been part of them. “My bondmates are concerned that they are ghosts.” I waved at them, Nick at my back, arm around my waist from behind, and Toby at my side, hand on my elbow. “Do they appear as ghosts to you?”
“Nope,” Sebastian said. “Magic weave says life. Ghosts don’t really have a weave. I can see through your glamour now. Emperor with no clothes.”
Nick sighed and tugged me behind him. “I hope we have real clothes. Are we nude too?”
Sebastian raised a brow but didn’t comment. Wise choice if my males were bare as well. Could I weave them clothing from more than my magic? Their clothing felt like something I’d created rather than an illusion, and I couldn’t see through it, no matter how I stared at them. Was the fox teasing them?
“The camper is where we left it,” Liam said. “Anything inside should still be there. Ari said they see it, though haven’t been inside. None of you look dead to me. TheHuntlooked dead. I think you’re living, though maybe not wholly human?” He shrugged. “Not that any of us really are anymore.”
“Bummer,” Toby said. “I was looking to haunt some assholes.”
Liam’s gaze narrowed. “You haven’t been haunting Isaac?”
“Pretty sure I’ve been mostly dead for months.”
“Isaac is locked up here,” Liam said. “Gone half insane from what he calls nightmares, and ghosts haunting him. His wife left him, took the kids, moved down south with her mother. He’s here awaiting a trial from the tribunal…a counsel of wolves we formed to handle this stuff since no one knows where the Volkov is.”
“Do you guys remember seeing the Volkov in the winter court?” Sebastian asked. “Or Wesley? Neither of them has returned.”
I couldn’t recall seeing the seer, nor the wolf king of old that peppered the fox’s memory. “I do not recall their presence,” I said. I had been very focused on retrieving my wolf and battling the court.
“Apawas behind the throne, encased in stone or something, sort of half morphed into something else…” Sebastian said sounding sad.
“There was no throne. We were in some sort of warehouse and the court was flat and wide open. An area slightly raised where the fae stood, but nothing elevated,” Nick said. “I know Zephyr is dead. A couple other fae too. I don’t know if the winter queen escaped or not.” He looked apologetic. “It was take the darkness or die. I hope I didn’t do too much damage.”
“The Winter court might still be a problem then,” Liam said with a frown. “But with no one answering my calls, maybe they took a pretty big blow?”
“No more Zephyr is good,” Sebastian said. “Not that I ever planned to leave you for him. Maybe Wesley is away mourning him? I thought they were a thing?”
