Chapter 22

As I walked toward Kin, I let all the pieces of me fall away. Goddess and witch and Fate Weaver shed like clothing under the hot fire of the sun warming a cold day, leaving only the woman behind. Not because they were parts of a fractured whole, but because I needed this moment to be simple and pure.

Man and woman. Leave your cosmic roles at the door.

My heart raged and my fingers tingled, but not with Balefire magic. The only power I carried in the most essential heart of me was the enormity of my love for him. A love that had nothing to do with fate, or destiny, or the kisses that sealed both.

The Bow of Destiny slipped out of my fingers to land, for the first time since I’d repaired it, solidly on the floor. My hair spilled from a ruthlessly cropped slash of pink-tipped white to curl down my back in a chestnut fall of silken glory.

Kin blinked, shook his eyes, and stared at me. Being told I was a witch, and seeing it were different things, but at the time, I didn’t know he knew.

“I'm not the wicked witch, Kin, and I’m no princess, either.” I was both and neither and everything in between. I was Lexi Balefire, and for the first time in…well, ever really, I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted. Damn Diana Diamond and her interfering ways, but I was going to get my man—and then I was going to deal with her black heart.

He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure he heard me.

Somewhere underneath the confusion, I saw something else. A spark of recognition, a flare of the heat we’d once shared; even if he didn’t quite remember me as I was before. We had something between us now, and that would have to do.

“Lexi, I feel like…something is happening to me. Something big.”

“Yes.” I breathed the word on a sigh that fluttered gently into the air between us. “It is.” And I closed the distance between us.

“How did—”

“Shut up.” I ordered as I twined my arms around his neck and offered myself to him. Just me. Just Lexi, the woman who loved him more than life.

Full of hope, I pulled him into a kiss. For a breathless moment, he stood rigid under the assault, and I died a thousand deaths knowing all was truly lost and he didn’t want me. Would never want me. Ice shivered through my veins. Not even the Balefire could warm me now.

“Lexi?” I heard him say my name, felt it against my lips like the brush of butterfly wings.

When the dregs of Diana’s spell seeped out of him, it had nothing to do with the power bestowed on me by the blood of my ancestors—either side of them. Love conquers all and has its own magic. The kind stronger than anything I could conjure or cook up in a cauldron and stronger than a living gold arrow tip forged by a god.

“It’s you. It’s always been you.” Then he was kissing me back like a man who had stumbled out of the desert to find an oasis of shining blue. He drank me in.

I tasted the unique flavor of Kin salted with the mingling of our tears and it was good.

True love’s Kiss. A one time event. Nope. Not always.

Nothing born of magic would touch us again. Diana Diamond could ascend to Olympus and take up with Zeus himself and that still wouldn’t give her enough oomph to shove so much as a splinter between Kin and me again.

My head was still spinning when Kin’s lips finally pulled away from mine. “You really remember everything?” I asked him, even though I already knew the answer. I wanted to hear the words come out of his mouth, wanted to revel in them before I had to come back down to earth and face everyone I’d treated so abominably over the last few months.

“I remember everything. I remember you, and me, and all that us being together entails. And I’m never going to forget it again.” We lost ourselves for another moment before the sounds of sniffling alerted me to the fact that we were being watched by my entire family.

I felt like Dorothy, fresh off her trip to Oz, only instead of recounting my journey, I needed to make amends. Salem and the godmothers topped the apology list, and I’d virtually ignored Gran and Mag while I worked out my issues.

“I’m so sorry.” The sorry came out muffled when I ended up in a group hug that made me feel like a quarterback in the middle of a team huddle. “I’ve been an absolute mess.”

“It’s okay.” Terra said and I suddenly became angry.

“It’s not okay. I appreciate your forgiveness, but it means you’re still handling me with kid gloves, and I don’t deserve it. Terra, when have you or any of the rest of your sisters ever let me get away with acting like a jerk? You’ve been holding back, and I appreciate that, but I know it cost you, so say what you need to say. I can take it.”

She grimaced and then set her mouth in a determined line, “You’re an adult, Lexi. I think the time for lectures has passed.”

More fiery than her sister, and with good reason, Soleil might as well have sprouted devil horns on her head when her narrowed eyes zeroed in on me. “You want to hear the truth? You acted like a spoiled brat. You disrespected your godmother, and me, and my sisters, not to mention the rest of your family and friends.” She had been walking toward me as she talked, and now with every word the pointed tip of her fingernail dug into my shoulder. “You should have known better, should have handled your problems like an adult if that’s the way you wanted to be treated.”

I’d been around the block a few times, and I recognized the signs that Soleil was about to pop. We were T-minus five seconds from steam pouring out of her ears, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on and merely allowed her to berate me. Then abruptly, her kettle stopped boiling and she placed a gentle hand on my cheek, her eyes boring into mine. “But we still love you, and we understand you were hurting. Just don’t shut us out next time.”

“Now,” she clapped her hands and I heard pans rattling in the kitchen. “You must be starving.”

 

A great howling wind rent the air, and blew some papers off the console table in the foyer. The entire house shook, and a loud knock sounded on the door. When I answered, Delta stood on the stoop, somewhat disheveled. “I hate to break up this happy reunion, but you need to come with me.”

I didn’t have time to revel in the realization that I’d not only been fused together in all my frayed places, but that I also had Kin back and was surrounded by the people I loved most in the world. There was still work to be done, and I knew my reunion with Kin had resulted in a wave of love that Diana Diamond and her hideous minions must have felt.

In the most savage corners of my psyche, I hoped it burned her proverbial butt.

I glanced toward my mother, who sat near the fireplace and watched me like a hawk. An uncomfortable conversation was coming my way, but that too would have to wait.

“You’re not going to drop everything and take off with that Fiach, are you?” Aunt Mag asked with an edge to her voice that let me see her concern. Worry etched a few extra fine lines into her face, and my heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. I leaned into Kin’s hand, which seemed to have taken up permanent residence against the small of my back as if he was afraid that if he stopped touching me, the events of the past few hours would reverse and he’d lose me again. Needless to say, it was a sentiment I shared wholeheartedly.

“She’s going to have to,” Delta insisted. “We’re running out of time. We got the wand, Lexi. Your mother and Vaeta and I. And now Diana knows we know she’s behind the attacks.”

I winged another glance at Sylvana, who held my gaze as though threatening me to blame this on her, but it was Vaeta who jumped in to exonerate her. “It’s not her fault, Lexi. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked, but you were in danger, and we thought we were doing what we had to do. I still think it was the right choice.”

“So do I,” Delta agreed. “She was probably going to figure it out anyway, and now we’ve got the wand. And, she’s shown her cards, pardon the pun. She’s running scared. Her offices are shut down, and her penthouse is empty. I say we go find this Fate Weaver and figure out how to mount an attack. Diana might have gone back into hiding, but that doesn’t mean she’s gone.”

“The girl just woke up from a three-day coma,” Aunt Mag griped. “Can’t you see she needs to recharge?”

“Lexi will be safe, Maggie,” Gran said, coming to Delta’s defense. “Whoever owned that wand has done an excellent job of outsmarting his or her enemies thus far, and if there’s a lead, she has to follow it. You know you’d do the same.”

Aunt Mag nodded once and declined to respond, but I heard her mumble something about getting her hands on whatever cloaking spell the mysterious Fate Weaver was using. I doubted very much that Mag had any need of it, considering she’d been out of the combat magic game for decades, and that she and Gran were quite safe in the little nearby town of Harmony.

“Evian, please go let Serena know what’s going on, and tell her she can bring Kaine here if she wants to. I’ve got a flutter in my belly, like the one I get when I’m tracking down a match, but it feels like more; like something big. I’d feel more comfortable with everyone together.”

“Of course, dear.” Evian squeezed me into a tight hug and planted a kiss on my forehead before she flitted out to complete my request.

“Could we?” Delta held out a motorcycle helmet.

I looked at it and then at her. “Are you kidding me? In this weather? We’ll freeze to death.”

“Suck it up, Balefire.” Handing me back the wand and shoving the helmet into my hand, she practically dragged me out the door. I managed a single backward glance at the room full of my loved ones and hoped I’d see them again.

Okay, maybe I was being a little melodramatic.

Seated on the bike, I heard Delta’s voice in my ear. “Hold on, we’re going to take a shortcut.” Before I had a chance to think, she’d stomped one foot down in the snow and used it as a pivot point to whip the bike around and point it in the opposite direction. The motor screamed, and I think I did, too, as the icy wind found its way inside my clothes and tried to burrow into my bones.

There was a crash of thunder, the smell of ozone, and then blessed warmth. I opened eyes I didn’t remember closing and found we were speeding through the gray area between worlds.

When Delta took a shortcut, she didn’t fool around. This was my second trip to the middle dimension, or whatever it was called because she never said, and the first time hadn’t been a piece of cake either, but that was a long story.

Gray area aptly described not only the color, but the feeling of the landscape. Gray light slanted over everything, making trees and houses look flat and featureless. It was as if we were driving through shadows, but without darkness or light to make them stand out. The atmosphere seemed heavy, and turned the roar of the engine and the hum of the tires into buzzing echoes.

We drove for maybe two minutes before she pulled up at a crossroads, cut the motor, and dismounted.

“This is where you earn your keep.” She pulled out the Fate Weaver wand and handed it to me. In the washed out light, the faceted stone tip dulled to a charcoal-colored lump. “What are you waiting for? You’re a Fate Weaver, activate the stone.”

She might as well have said dogs do cartwheels in the bathtub. It would have made the same amount of sense to me.

And, frankly, I was getting tired of people assuming Fate Weaver blood came with some kind of secret handbook. Worse, it seemed like she knew something I didn’t. Again. So, I did what any self-respecting witch would do: I tried to fake it.

“Okay.” It had been only a couple of hours since I’d come out of a magical coma where I’d spent time getting my emotional poop in a group. The last thing I needed was a test of how well I'd done.

Letting my eyelids flutter closed, I concentrated on drawing magic up from where it pooled behind my belly button, and funneling it into the wand. The wooden shaft heated between slightly trembling fingers. That was a good sign, right? Delta’s face, when I risked a glance, said no.

Chanting at it didn’t work, either. Or blowing on it. Infusing it with balefire turned the wood dark and the stone made a crackling noise. By then, Delta was staring at me over crossed arms, and her toe tapped out her frustration on the ground.

Still holding the wand, I waved my hand at her and said, “If you have any ideas, now would be the time to trot them out. I’m standing in a puddle of suck here.” The waving turned into a little angry flourish at the end. The stone hummed and flared like a beacon.

“Guess it needed the old swish and flick.” Delta grasped my shoulders and turned me in a circle until the humming increased. “There, now we follow.”

An hour and seven turns later, we popped out of the gray area and found ourselves on a sunny street lined with moss-draped oak trees that looked like ancient brides standing in a row. “Where are we?” I shouted over the engine’s roar.

“Savannah.”

“Georgia?”

Delta nodded and we followed the wand a mile or so out of town to a ramshackle house on a back road that almost blended into the trees. If not for the wand, I’m not sure we’d have noticed it. Or maybe it was the wards on the place that made our attention pass right by. As it was, Delta didn’t stop.

“Where are you going? That was the place.”

“I know.” She slid the bike into a graceful U-turn and putted back toward town. Halfway there, she yelled for me to hang on, gave the throttle a vicious twist, and plowed us right back into the gray flatlands between realities.

Now that Delta had a lock on her quarry, the return trip went by in a blur that ended with me back in front of my house, shivering on the sidewalk. “I’ll be back in an hour, two at the most. This is a job best done alone,” she said when I pressed her for a reason why she hadn’t just approached the Fate Weaver the first time around. “Go back inside, Lexi.”

I’d have asked her who died and made her my mother, but she’d ripped the quiet to shreds and was already roaring into the void before the words could form on my lips.