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If I dreamt, I didn’t remember—excessive fatigue could do that. I woke up alone, sunlight drawing yellow lines around my curtains, and fumbled for my cell phone. Inch-high numbers blinked on its face.
Nine? AM? No way in the world did I just sleep twelve hours.
I tumbled out of bed, slipped my robe on, placed the cell phone securely in a pocket, and made my way downstairs. The scent of coffee wafted up as I descended. Somebody loves me. I padded into the empty kitchen and found a mug by the coffeemaker with a small heaping of sugar inside. Yup, this is love. A note on the fridge caught my eye:
Out for a long run. Don’t leave before I get back.
He signed it with a heart and a single capital ‘J’. If gushing could overflow, I’d be drowning.
I poured the coffee slowly. Who made carafes so you had to pour slowly? It wasn’t like wine. Coffee didn’t need to ‘breathe’. I’d almost bought one that was all self-contained, like a thermos from those breakfast restaurants, but Sera had given this one to me as a housewarming present. Didn’t hurt that it was red, my favorite color.
Thinking of my sister, I pulled my phone out, took that first sip, and called her. It rang a few times and went to voicemail. Hmm. I dialed Lucy, and it rang twice before going to voicemail. What’s that modern day adage? Two rings then voicemail means they saw you were calling but didn’t want to talk to you? I dialed her again, and once more, two rings and then voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message.
Something wasn’t right.
The front door opened and closed. “Good morning, sexy lady.”
“Hello, my hot tamale.” I showed him my phone. “No one’s answering.”
He gave me that look that meant he needed more information, and waited for me to continue.
“I called Sera, and it went to voicemail. I called Lucy—twice—and both times two rings and then voicemail. Something’s wrong.”
“Then let’s go check. Want to call Mike?”
I shook my head. “No, let’s see what’s going on first. Then we can call in the cavalry if we need them.”
We were dressed and in his car in less than twenty minutes—no makeup to catch bad guys. The knot in my stomach wriggled as a million possibilities ran through my head.
Jacob patted my leg. “I’m sure they’re fine.”
I chewed my bottom lip, wrapped my hands around his and held on tight. “I hope you’re right.”
We arrived to find Sera’s front door closed, their two cars still parked in the driveway.
I reached out with my psychic feelers. The house felt empty except for a single, familiar heartbeat. “Jacob, I can only find Lucy!” I jumped out of the car and ran across the front lawn. “Lucy!”
“Zoë, be careful!” Jacob yelled from behind me. “You don’t know what we’re walking into.”
It took every ounce of restraint to stop at the door, but he was right. I was armed, but that wouldn’t save me from any booby traps.
“Where is she?”
I closed my eyes and searched the house again. “Upstairs, in Esther’s room.”
He nodded. “Let me do my thing.”
I stepped back. “Be careful.”
On the list of ‘interesting things about Jacob you’d never expect’ was his thief skillset. A prominent Baltimore lawyer who knew how to do a little breaking-and-entering without leaving a trace or getting caught? Yeah, that’d be my guy. He tried the door knob first, but it didn’t budge. He ran back to his car, popped open the trunk, and pulled his kit out of a duffle bag we’d jokingly referred to as his ‘bag of tricks’. He returned in a jiff, and had the door opened in a quick second.
He stood there, eyes closed, and grunted. “Wait right here. Do not come in until I call you.”
“You feel something?”
He rummaged through the bag again and pulled out an asp and a small pull-string bag. “Yes.” Implements in hand, he grabbed my shoulders and kissed me. “I love you. Please. Stay. Here.”
He turned to enter the house, and I snagged an arm. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good.” I let him go, and he walked up to the front door, pocketing the asp. He opened the bag and poured some powder into his hand, then blew it off his palm, and the threshold glistened with a million cobwebs. He drew a seemingly-random pattern, the webbing sparking where his fingertips touched, and the entire mess popped audibly before dissipating into nothingness.
“I’m serious about you staying here, Zoë. Even the windows are covered in this trap, and I don’t have time to show you how to undo it.”
“Can’t I just, well, break it?”
He shook his head. “It would kill you. There’s enough power in the weaving to drop you where you stand. So please, for the love of Pete—”
“Stay right here,” I finished for him. “I promise.”
“Until I call you.”
“Until you call me. Please be careful.”
“I will. Be right back.”
***
Waiting is a bitch and a half, especially when there’s pretty much nothing else I can do. Five minutes passed, and I kicked at the ground. Ten minutes and I noticed an absence of animal noises outside. Nothing. Mid-morning in this suburban neighborhood, at least birds should’ve been singing.
Fifteen minutes, I started to plan the excuse I would give him when I barged in. The silence was killing me, and to add to the weirdness, not a single car had passed since we arrived. Come to think about it, we hadn’t seen a car since we pulled onto her street. It was almost like we’d entered a pocket of time and space. Time travel? That was reaching. No more BBC America for me.
A loud boom interrupted my tangent, and a sulfurous blast of smoke exited the front door, whipping my hair across my face. “Jacob!”
Nothing. I hit the doorway in two steps. “Jacob!”
The inside of the house look like it had just exploded. Unlike the scene from last year, this had a less monsters-ate-my-house motif and more of an oh-my-gods-someone-set-off-a-bomb feel. My sister’s home was no longer homey, but shattered into a million pieces embedded into the furniture and the walls.
“Zoë, don’t move.” He was somewhere outside of my periphery on my right.
I froze. “Jacob, I thought you were dead!”
“It was a close one, but babe, I need you not to move. You’re standing on a landmine.”
Oh, gods. I looked down. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s a spell. Look again.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and turned on my other sight. Sure enough, a bright red disc of magick circled my feet, covered with luminescent golden runes. I glanced around me and spotted more mines spread out in a not-so-random pattern on the floor. Someone had even woven magick into the walls. Like wards.
Well, craptastic. “What do I do?”
“Do you trust me?”
I swallowed. That sounded like a line out of some bad action flick. “Yes, I trust you. What do we do next?”
“I’m going to unweave it, and you’re going to jump.”
He moved behind me, and I turned my head to look over my shoulder at him. “Are you serious? Jump, how? Where?”
He pointed in front of me at an askew couch.
“You want me to jump from here over to that couch?”
He smiled. “You can do it.”
He’d clearly never seen me jump. “It’s like ten feet away. This thing I’m standing on, is it what caused all this, er, shrapnel?”
He nodded.
“Oh gods, Jacob, so if I’m not fast enough—”
“I’m going to diffuse it.”
“If you’re not fast enough, and I’m not fast enough, we’re both dead.”
His face remained amused, dammit. “Do you trust me?”
I sighed and rubbed at the middle of my forehead. “Yes, Jacob, yes, I trust you.”
“I’m going to count to three.”
“I’ll do my best. Just... be careful, okay? I don’t want you to die.”
He hugged my legs from behind me. “It’s kind of my life goal, too, babe. Ready?”
I patted his head without looking at him, eyes on the couch. Two steps, maybe three, then over the couch. I could do this. “Ready.”
“One... two... three!”
It actually took only one step before I dove over the couch and landed on the floor. No big ba-da-boom, just some speedy spellcasting from the boyfriend, and then....
“It’s done.”
I clambered up the couch and peered over. The mine was gone.
Jacob was sitting on the floor amid the debris, a little paler than I liked.
“Hey, you okay?”
He brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, just... man, that sucked some serious energy out of me.” He exhaled one long breath and shook his head, exhausted. “If there’s any more upstairs, we may be screwed.”
Normal magick could be wearing on a witch, and what he’d just done was far from normal. I helped him off the floor, and together we headed for the staircase. I saw nothing, as if the chaos and the magickal weavings all stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“Do you see anything?”
He shook his head.
“Lucy,” I called.
A low groan emanated from upstairs.
“Luce, is that you?”
Another groan.
“You sit here.” I pointed to a stair.
Jacob shook his head. “I’m not letting you go up there alone.”
“You look like hell in a handbasket, sweetheart. There’s nothing up there but my bestie. If I run into trouble, I’ll yell, or throw a magic missile.” I cocked my head to the side. “I’ll probably just yell.”
He sat down with a slow shake of his head. “You’re a brat.”
“Eh, but you love me anyway.”
“I do. Now go and save your friend.”
