Crux

Chapter 25

Mackenzie dumped the takeout containers on their motel room’s tiny, scratched table and stretched her arms over her head. “Okay. Let’s eat and you can explain to me how this works.”

Jackson double-checked his notepad and the small bags of herbs in front of him. “Not much to explain. Like May said, it’s a fairly simple spell. The tricky part is finding someone willing to go along with it.”

“Uh-huh.” Even though they’d been sitting for the last few hours, she sank into a chair and reached for the box of chicken fingers. “So you’re going to do something that sort of makes us one person. But it won’t kick in until I shift forms?”

“Right. When you shift, the spell will take effect. You won’t be able to shift back until I release you.”

She nibbled distractedly on the chicken, but most of her earlier appetite had fled. “But I’ll be me, right? I mean, I won’t be a wild animal.”

“You’d have to stay in cougar form without shifting back for a long, long time before you started to lose touch with your human side like that.”

“Okay. So, you hold the spell.” She tossed the chicken finger down and said the one thing they’d been avoiding. “And I kill him.”

“Hell, no.” Jackson leaned back in his chair. “I do the spell and then shoot his ass. Or give him a convenient heart attack, or any number of cool things I’ll probably be able to do as a temporary Seer. You’re my backup, sweetie, not the brute force.”

Her temper flared and she curled her fingers around the arms of her chair in an attempt to keep from tangling them in his shirt. “Well that just seems downright stupid, Jackson, since I’ve got a lot more brute force than you do right about now.”

“You absolutely do, and we might need it. But unless we do, I want you as far away from this shit as possible. I don’t know how practiced Talbot is with fighting as a cat. One lucky swipe at you, and he could take us both down.”

It was logical, even reasonable. But every instinct in her body protested that she needed to fight. She needed to protect Jackson, because he was hers. She closed her eyes. Her fingers hurt as she slowly uncurled them from the arms of the chair. “Okay, I’ll be backup. But you’re not stashing me somewhere. We’re doing this together.”

When she opened her eyes he gave her a lopsided grin. “Wouldn’t do me much good not to bring my backup to the fight, darlin’.”

She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. “Fine. You cast the spell, you shoot him, and we go home before Alec and Mahalia track us down and kill us.”

He rubbed a hand over his forehead and stared at the notebook on the table. “At this point, I’m looking forward to the angry yelling. It’ll mean we won.”

“Yeah, I’ll remind you of that when Nick finds out about what we did.” Just please be alive to yell at us. She sipped her own soda. It was room temperature and flat, but it helped her suddenly dry mouth. “We should do it. Now. So we can figure out a backup plan in case it doesn’t work.”

“It’ll work.” His retort seemed almost automatic. “But we may as well do it. Once we have the spell in place, I can use that talisman to locate Talbot. Then we’ll go find the bastard.”

Mackenzie closed the box of food, shoved it aside and pushed the table aside for good measure. She rose from her chair and crossed the space between them in one step. “Kiss me first.” In case something happens. “Kiss me, Jackson. Promise me we’re going to go home after this and do normal things like go on actual dates.”

Jackson pulled her onto his lap. “Dates. Bowling and bad movies and maybe, if Nicky and Gabriel get their shit figured out, a couple of double-dates. I promise.” He stroked her hair back from her forehead and brushed his lips over hers. “I promise.”

“Good.” She whispered the word against his lips, tilted her head to kiss him, long and deep and desperate. Jackson met her need with his own, twining his tongue with hers, one hand splayed across her back and the other wrapped in her hair.

Finally, he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “Still want to do this?”

No. “Yes. I trust you.”

He patted her leg. “All right. Open the window, okay?”

Mackenzie slipped from his lap with one last kiss. The motel they’d found wasn’t a high-class establishment, had in fact been chosen based on its willingness to accept cash and no names. At some point someone had painted over the window, and she braced herself and shoved as hard as she could.

The window flew up with a dangerous rattle, and a crack webbed across the corner of the glass. “Shit. I keep forgetting.”

“We’ll leave them some extra money when we go.” Jackson opened two of the plastic bags and shook some of the dried herbs onto a sheet of aluminum foil. It looked like something out of a Hollywood movie about drugs, especially when he pulled a lighter from his pocket and set the green mounds ablaze. “Come here.”

The smell threatened to overwhelm her from ten feet away. She wrinkled her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth. “Okay, that’s not going to make me high, is it?”

“It’s hyssop and meadowsweet,” he murmured, “moistened with a little lavender infusion to make it smudge. You won’t get high, but your eyes will burn. It can’t be helped.”

She watched smoke waft from the pile of herbs on aluminum foil. “So what do I have to do?”

“Just…concentrate on me.” He held up his hands, his palms toward her. “Put your hands on mine and focus on me.”

In spite of her conviction and trust, her hands trembled. They looked tiny compared to Jackson’s, delicate and pale and incapable of containing the kind of strength they held now. She pressed her palms to his and drew in a breath when she felt his energy tickle against her. “I—I can feel the magic—”

“Shh.” He closed his eyes with a deep inhalation and whispered, “Geminare.” A faint golden light flared between their palms and settled into a steady glow. Jackson looked at her. “Breathe.”

She inhaled instinctively, and the light between them disappeared. “Is that—”

“It? Yeah.” He dropped his hands and glanced over at the table and the smoldering herbs. “For now. But that was just the groundwork. The real fireworks should happen when we activate the connection.”

“Which I do by shifting.” She glanced at her T-shirt and slacks. “I’m going to put on something easier to get out of, in case I have to do it in a hurry. I can’t forget Steven’s cautionary tale of the cougar trapped in underwear.”

Jackson’s faint smile vanished. “Yeah, probably not the best plan of action.”

She watched as he picked up a bottled water and extinguished the herbs. His shoulders were set in a stiff line, and he heaved a sigh before turning to face her. “Did Mahalia make you feel bad? I should have asked before.”

“No, she tried real hard not to, but God, Jackson. Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t blame her if she hated me.”

“She doesn’t.” He sank into the chair again and rubbed his hands over his face. “I think she always thought there’d be time for them. Now she doesn’t have that. It’s not you.”

There was a lesson to be learned from that, too. Mackenzie pulled a pair of loose cotton shorts and a tank top from the duffle, both of which she could wiggle out of in seconds. She shucked the T-shirt and reached back to unhook her bra. “I just hate knowing I’ll always be a reminder,” she whispered as she pulled on the tank top. “That she’ll be unhappy when she sees me.”

“She won’t.” He nodded toward the dresser. “The amulet?”

“Yeah, I dropped it next to the TV.” She kicked off her pants and underwear, tugged on the shorts, and tried not to imagine what she’d look like if she changed before she managed to get out of her clothing. A cougar in cute pajamas. Charles can laugh himself to death.

Jackson raised an eyebrow as he snagged the talisman from the scarred surface of the TV stand. “Good thing it’s warm out.” He sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. “This’ll only take a minute.”

“Mmm.” She folded her clothes haphazardly and shoved them into her bag. “Don’t get distracted by how naked I am under my teeny-tiny shorts.”

“I’ll try,” he murmured absently, already intent on his task. After several seconds, his fingers clenched around the wooden disk. A shudder wracked him, and he almost slid off the end of the bed.

“Jackson?” Mackenzie closed her fingers around his shoulder. His entire body had gone stiff, and his muscles trembled under her hand. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

His eyes shot open. “No.” He grunted and grabbed his head as magic slashed tangibly through the room, stealing her breath. “He’s—”

The door flew open, flew outward as if someone had torn it from its frame. Mackenzie stared in shock as it landed in the parking lot with a deafening crash.

Dust billowed up from the dirty sidewalk, and Charles waved a hand as he stepped through the open doorway. A small smile, devoid of any real feeling, curled his lips as he looked at Jackson. “The backlash from a location spell can be painful if your target happens to be standing outside.”

Jackson’s eyes locked on hers as he reached for his ankle. “Now, Kenzie.”

There wasn’t time to take off the clothes. Mackenzie closed her eyes, reached for the power inside her—

—and found herself blocked.

Her eyes flew open when Charles laughed again. “Not right now, dear.” He flicked his fingers in an absent gesture, and a solid wave of power slammed into her so hard it knocked the wind out of her. She barely realized her feet had left the ground, not until the solid bulk of the wall crashed against her back. Pain arced through her as her head cracked into the aged wallpaper, and the last thing she saw before blackness overtook her was Charles’s tiny, chilling smile.