Page 16 of A Heart of Winter (Fairy Tale Retellings #4)

Taking Out the Trash

K ai cried out and so did I, but the loudest scream came from Michael on the other side of the door.

Because she’d also pinned the thing she’d grabbed from him with her dagger, invisible as it was. Magic, I realized. She’d taken ahold of the very essence of his magic.

“You seem to be a decent guy,” Morwenna said quietly, entirely calm, to Kai.

Like the two of them were having tea, and she hadn’t just stabbed us both in the hand.

“I appreciate that. It’s exactly what I needed to fix this problem.

Now you’ve just got to prove that impression right, or I’ll have to kill you someday. ”

Kai, somehow, with a madman with a gun on one side and my suddenly stabby best friend on the other, didn’t scream obscenities or anything.

The look he gave her was a little confused and more than a little skeptical, but it wasn’t angry or hateful.

“You’ll forgive me if I say you’re going to have to dig yourself out of a bit of a hole here before I worry about your opinion,” he answered.

Like her dagger pinning his hand to the door frame was a tiny thing.

Her? She grinned back like this was an entirely normal conversation. “Fair enough. I’ll keep that in mind. But right now, I have to fix my best friend.” She turned to the spot where she’d stabbed us, starting to chant in Greek as something started to squirm inside me.

In an instant, it all came together in my mind. Why my magic hadn’t been settling even though my mood had. Why it had been out of control to begin with.

Because it hadn’t truly been about my mood. That had only been the catalyst. Apparently, Michael had learned more about magic than I’d given him credit for.

Unless Morwenna was wrong, which was rarer than a blizzard in San Diego, someone had done a spell to untether me from my magic.

And if Michael had untethered me from my own magic, his intention had to be to turn around and tether it to himself, because he intended to steal it. An action that would literally kill me.

I felt it moving as she chanted. My magic, that had started to feel like an ill-fitting suit over the last month, shuddering as it was ripped out of Michael and slid through Kai and back into me.

Then, there was nothing but light and cold.

So very much cold.

But it wasn’t an attack. It was like a hug from an old friend. It was my cold.

I could hear Morwenna chanting in Greek. Michael shouting that she couldn’t steal his power.

And Kai. I didn’t hear him, but I felt him. His physical presence, but also his mind. Calm, collecting, shockingly soothing. I opened my eyes, only then realizing that I’d shut them, and found myself looking into his warm brown ones, full of concern. Not for being stabbed, but for me.

I gave him the most reassuring nod I could muster, breathing as evenly as I could while the magic within me was pushed one way and then another, like it was being wedged back tight inside me.

How had I failed to realize what was happening? How long, how slowly, had Michael been doing this, that I hadn’t noticed it until my magic had become dangerously unstable?

I could see it all clearly now. Years slowly pulling my magic out of place.

The huge breakup scene had been staged, simply the catalyst for the moment where he gave my power that last yank to destabilize it entirely.

That was why no amount of getting over the breakup had helped fix the problem—the real problem had nothing to do with my emotions.

The real problem was motherfucking Michael.

The chanting stopped as the magic inside me went completely, blessedly still, and I slumped into Kai. He caught me easily.

The thud outside implied Michael had had the same problem, but obviously, there had been no one there to catch him.

“You—you—my magic,” he whined, somehow loud even through the crack in the door. “You stole my magic.”

Stole his magic?

“I did,” Morwenna agreed, tone congenial, pushing past Kai and me to throw the door open.

What the hell was with the people in my life, acting like we were having a tea party and not dealing with attempted murder?

“It’s not like you had enough magic, for long enough, that taking it away is going to kill you.

Unlike Johannes, whom you were in fact trying to murder.

And the only way to make sure you’ll never try this on anyone else was to make sure you had no magic at all. ”

“It’s mine! You can’t! You have to give it back. You?—”

Morwenna’s response was to reach out and tap his foot with her own, which made him gasp and curl up in a ball. Apparently slamming the door on it had done some damage. From the tears on his face, maybe a lot of damage.

She darted forward and grabbed the gun from where he’d dropped it on the front porch and handed it to Kai.

“Why don’t you two get rid of this, and I’ll get rid of .

. . that.” She looked Michael over like he was a leaky bag of trash.

“I’ll drop him off at a hospital in New York and say a cabbie ran over his foot.

Not like anyone’s going to believe a witch in Minnesota slammed a door on his foot while he was trying to break in and murder him.

Hells, he wouldn’t even tell such a ridiculous story. Would you, Jerkwad? ”

Michael didn’t really answer, just curled up tighter and whined. Morwenna seemed satisfied enough, sheathing her dagger at her waist and turning back to us. “I trust the two of you can see to yourselves?”

“We can,” Kai agreed, pocketing the gun and pulling out a handkerchief to wrap around his hand . . . or no. No, he turned to me and started wrapping my hand up in the cotton. “Though I’d love to meet up again in the future, with less stabbing. Morwenna, yes?”

The smirk she gave him boded well for their future, as did the approving nod that came after. Then she leaned down and grabbed Michael’s shoulder, and a second later, she was gone.

Kai closed the door, pulling me inside, all the way to the kitchen to clean and dress my hand, while I protested that his hand should be bandaged first. By the time we were both taped up, I’d calmed down, and instead of worrying more or cooking, I pulled out the pudding and cookies.

Screw whether a sugar bomb for breakfast was a good idea. We’d earned those calories.

We’d been stabbed , for fuck’s sake.

“So Michael was trying to kill you?” Kai asked, bringing us around to the rather long conversation that we needed to have.

I sighed and nodded. “Apparently he was trying to steal my magic, which, as old as I am, would have killed me.” I flushed, my cheeks going hot. “And Morwenna used you to re-anchor my magic in me. She, um, ripped it out of Michael, sort of . . . ran it through you, and back into me?”

He blinked, shaking his head and staring at his bandaged hand. “Wow. That’s . . . something else.” He looked up at me with that bright smile. “But also, now you have to fly to visit me first. I mean, I got stabbed for you. That’s got to count for something, right?”

Incredible. All that, and the man still wanted to be with me at all.

“Something doesn’t cover it. The spell she did needs a non-magic-using human, and I don’t know many of those. You literally saved my life. Not that she asked your permission, but?—”

He waved off the very notion. “Don’t care.

She’d have had it if she had asked, and it’s not like she had time to explain in the heat of the moment.

” The glint in his eye said he suspected Morwenna could have easily come to us before that morning, but he didn’t care to press the matter.

At least not now, and not with me. And he was right, so if he wanted to ask Morwenna for an explanation, I couldn’t fault him.

I was sure as hell going to ask why she hadn’t talked to me when I saw her again. Though, probably, she hadn’t trusted me to look at it rationally, and expected me to continue to trust Michael, like I had for twenty years.

Twenty years. Michael had no more magic. He was going to start aging soon. A tiny part of me, the part of me that had loved him, felt sorry for him.

But the rest of me remembered all too well what happened to witches like me who had their power ripped out.

It wasn’t pretty and left not just a dead witch, but scars on the very land.

Wildfires, earthquakes, and explosions weren’t uncommon.

Me? I might have buried the entire city of New York under snow. Killed millions of people.

Michael hadn’t thought about that, apparently.

Or he hadn’t cared.

“Hey, don’t drift off on me now.” Kai wrapped an arm around my shoulder and started tugging me toward the den and its huge sofa.

“I need an expert to explain everything. Maybe I can’t be a witch too, but I can know what it all means.

Besides, you’re going to train my best friend, right?

Or your friend is. I’ve got to know everything I can, for both of you. ”

Both of us.

Yes, that was it. I was going to have to keep Kai Mori.