Page 55

Grey

It’s not far off sunrise when I find myself in the hospital, standing over Mom. She’s unconscious, hooked up to machines, and the scents filling my senses are wrong. I don’t know much about poisons, but I know it’s what I’m smelling.

I’m infuriated. Someone did this to her. Someone put her here.

Fiery fury invades every cell in my body, the fire biting behind my eyes suggesting I’m pulling coven gifts into me to tell me that this isn’t just poison in her system, but spelled poison. I somehow know for a fact she won’t wake until it’s out of her system. I dial Dani so I can find out how to discern what it is, but the call drops. My phone has no signal.

A nurse comes in and bumps into me.

“Oh, sorry!” she whispers, palming her chest as she lets out a breath while gripping my forearm to steady herself. From just that touch I’m immediately bursting with knowledge about her, with things I don’t fucking need to know.

How she’s been stressing out about the fact she can’t make her mortgage payment next week. Because her husband walked out on her three weeks ago and cleaned out their bank accounts. She’s glad he’s gone – good riddance because he was an abusive asshole but she’s fretting about her cashflow. She’s also plagued by guilt that frequently keeps her up at night for stealing someone’s wallet in a nightclub bathroom fifteen years ago.

I further know she has no information about Mom, that she and the ER doc on duty are baffled by Mom’s condition and are planning to run more tests in a few hours as well as call in a specialist.

I lift the landline phone beside the hospital bed and there’s no dial tone.

An older nurse pokes her head in, giving me a once-over and eyeing her stunned colleague, who is standing here staring at me. The other nurse is about to reprimand us both, me for being here at this hour, the younger nurse for standing here gawking at me. But I put my index finger to my mouth as the heat keeps pulsing behind my eyes as I flick my fingers in a go away gesture. The older one goes away, but the younger one continues to stare.

“This is my mom,” I quietly say. “If you have nothing to do for her right now, why don’t you go on and look in on your other patients?”

She blinks off her daze, turns, and leaves the room without replying.

Bailey is snoring softly, looking uncomfortable in that chair with her feet propped on the rails beside Mom’s hospital bed. I leave the room and am ready to dial Riley but still… no signal.

“Grey?” Rye rushes in, a disheveled-looking Erica trailing. “How’s Carrie? Any change?”

“I need to know how to get this shit out of her body like how Erica pulled the negativity out of the village that night. She smells like a bunch of things. A weird flower mostly. Don’t know the name of it but somehow I do know it’s poison.”

Who the fuck would poison Carrie Blackwood and why? Wyatt Meadows? Is that possible?

Rye is in jeans and a tee, but Erica is wearing what looks like a nightgown with her mate’s sweatshirt on top. Sandals on her feet.

“Hey,” she whispers. “You’re okay. It’s gonna be okay.” She touches my arm.

“I was just about to call you. My phone wouldn’t connect.” I glance at it. “No signal. Landline won’t work.”

She gives me a knowing nod. “You’re so honed into magic right now that you’re throwing signals like crazy so nobody’s phone for a few miles around will be working. You’re pulling coven magic; I can feel you pulling mine, which is a little scary, Greyson. Riley set an alarm to wake him so he could come back and meet up with you, but a minute before it went off, we both bolted straight up at the same instant. I felt your energy swirling and Riley felt something in your pack connection letting us know you need us. Take my hands and breathe slowly and deeply.”

“I don’t need to meditate, cuz. I need to get that fuckin’ spelled poison out of her!”

“And we’ll do that, but Greyson, your eyes are glowing and the amount of magic you’re pulling, you could affect Carrie’s and other patients’ medical machines.”

She takes my hands into hers and squeezes them.

I demand, “Why don’t I know what this is and how to fix it if I can pull coven magic?”

Bailey startles and jumps from a dead sleep to standing on her feet. “Greyson?” She looks alarmed and her eyes bounce between me and our mom.

“Deep breaths, Greyson, okay?” Erica says in a soothing voice, and I see bright red and neon blue sparks flying off our joined hands. My energy and hers, I guess. Am I pulling hers?

“Breathe. We’ve got this. We’ll work together to heal Carrie. Okay? We’ve got this, Grey. You don’t know what Dani knows. You’d need to know more about ingredients before you’d identify what you’re smelling. Let’s focus together on pulling the poison out of her. Intention, Grey. Okay? Just pull it out.”

She starts slow-breathing while continuing to hold my hands. As soon as my breathing synchs up Erica’s, a phone starts buzzing and Bailey is saying, “Linc’s calling.” She’s putting her phone to her ear and saying his name. Immediately she’s looking at me with fear on her face.

And I feel it, too. Something isn’t right.

Stacy?

Stacy! I reach for our connection in my mind. We’re too far apart; I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know by my connection to Linc and Jase probably because they’re together and one is on the phone connected with my sister beside me that something is wrong.

Erica’s soothing voice speaks some more and I don’t know what she’s saying as I’m zoning in on the phone in Bailey’s hand, on Linc’s voice which I can hear from here and the fast words he speaks that I’m making out come through my mind sounding tinny as I go numb and his words nearly take my feet out from under me.

Stacy is gone. Something about a sewage problem taking everyone’s focus and someone moved Jared’s trailer up front and it, along with Boyd’s pickup truck which it was attached to because Jared was at that massage parlor with me. It’s around an hour since anyone saw her. Someone told Linc Stacy was asleep on Cat’s bed, but he realized it’s not her scent, it’s someone who was sick and brought in from their trailer. The Airstream and Boyd’s truck are gone and Linc says her scent trail stops there.

Gone?

My wife is…

Gone.

A roar of rage flies from my mouth.

Hands are on me. Riley has my shoulders. He’s behind me.

Noise rushes into my head and new shapes are in the space. My father. Rye’s father. Mase’s dad. I hear Riley speaking but make out nothing over the adrenalin pounding through my veins.

Bailey holds that phone. Erica has my hands. They’re either circling me slowly or I’ve got vertigo. My mom. The woman who raised me in the hospital bed is hooked up to machines because someone fucking targeted her. And she needs to be better. She needs to wake up. Wake up and be okay so I can go find my fucking mate. Heat intensifies not only in my eyes, in my entire head.

Pull.

Pull.

Smoky shadows ooze from the walls and float directly over her. The shadows are still, but the room has begun turning slowly, around and around with everything turning except Erica who still has my hands. Red and blue sparks fly, hitting the shadows and sparking loudly, like crackling electricity.

“Pull,” Erica urges.

And now the sparks are purple. Mine and Erica’s magic working in tandem.

I pull in a deep breath and suck the shadows straight out of the air into my lungs.

Mom is suddenly sitting straight up, eyes open, gasping for air, and I’m immediately releasing my cousin’s hands, turning to the bathroom door in the corner of the room, rushing for the sink and vomiting whatever I’ve pulled from those shadows, straight into the drain.

My guts are convulsing painfully.

It's rancid. Rotting. It’s hatred. Pure, covetous hatred.

Covetous? Why do I know that?

I taste the meaning behind the poison. I know what spell was used. If I were more experienced, I’d know exactly how to cast it. Someone poisoned her, someone who wants what she has.

My ears are ringing. Erica’s hands are on my back as steam from the hot, running water rises. I spit into the sink and whatever it is bubbles back up in the drain like black sludge before a slurping noise pulls it back down.

“Grey,” Rye puts his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll help. We’ll help, brother.”

Erica mutters something, holding her hands over the sink, flexing her fingers.

Wind, seemingly from nowhere, blows her hair back.

And I hear my father loud, clear, but baffled. “Baby? Why the fuck do you smell like that?”

I stare at the drain another beat while the hot water continues to run before I reach for the tap and turn it off, then take in my distraught father.

He turns to me. “She smells like your mother.”

He’s not making sense. Or I can’t fathom anything because I’m reeling at the news that Stacy is gone.

“Carrie smells like Soleil,” my father clarifies, and he looks pale.