1 Witchy Business (11 page)

“Don’t close off. It gets better, Elle,” Niall murmured, and those few words were enough that I held on, just a little longer. “Open your eyes. I am with you. All the way. Trust me.”

I hadn’t realized that I’d closed them again until that moment. I forced my eyelids open, and clarity hit me. I gasped. The emotions were still there, pouring into me, filling me, flowing through me, but I was floating on top of them, as clear and calm as if I were sitting on a raft in the middle of the ocean. I looked around, and it was as if I was seeing every detail of the room for the first time, hearing every sound there. It felt incredible. So incredible that when my eyes returned to Niall, it just seemed so obvious that he was going to kiss me.

He did.

It was a slow kiss, with him leaning in tenderly so that his lips could move softly against mine, his hands moving to settle on my shoulders, not in rough possession, but in tenderness. His kiss didn’t feel like taking. It felt like he was giving to me.

My mouth opened eagerly to him, tasting him, wanting the moment to last. Never wanting it to end. We stood there and kissed in the middle of the dance floor for what felt like an eternity before we pulled back, staring at each other in what must have been an afterglow, even without sex. There I was, breathless as I felt…a new emotion. Was it love?

“That was…” I didn’t have the words. “It was incredible.”

Niall smiled. “The kiss or the other part?”

Of course, he would know about the rest of it. He was the same as me.

“Both. Definitely both. I always thought…I had always been told that—”

“You were told what people thought it was best for you to hear. That it would destroy you to let in others, or even let them get too close. It won’t destroy you, Elle. Not the way they said. It isn’t wrong. It is simply what you are meant to be. Come back with me and I will explain everything. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, and…oh, damn it. Not now.”

I could see him glancing around the club, and I tried to work out what he’d seen. Before I could though, Niall placed another kiss, gentle again, on my lips.

“I have to go, Elle,” he said. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”

“What? All of this and you’re leaving?”

His expression matched the pain I could feel coming from him. “I have to, Elle. If I’m here when they get to us…I’m sorry.”

He stepped back, and he seemed to move faster than he had a right to, slipping back into the crowd, and then disappearing in a matter of seconds.

With a cry, I tried to look around for him, tried to catch some sense of where he was going or why he’d run, and it was then that I saw them. Two figures, advancing through the crowd of clubbers toward me.

Rebecca and Evert had found me. And they both looked furious.

The two of them moved through the crowd like knives. They were obviously in a huge hurry from the way they shoved through the swarm of humanity towards me, not stopping, regardless of what happened.

One guy made the mistake of turning to try to rebuke Rebecca for roughly pushing past and spilling the drink from his hand. “Hey, you! Watch where you’re going.”

Rebecca didn’t even stop. She just lightly put one hand on his chest, hitting him with a blast of power that sent him sprawling. He landed on the floor with an “oomph” as the fall knocked the wind out of him. The girl he was with cried out in alarm, but the music swallowed her dismay. The girl helped him up and even through the rest of it, I could feel her fear and anger mixed in with the crowd. Things were getting out of control.

Would it have been that difficult for two witches to simply
walk
across a crowded club to have a word with me? Instead of using magic that openly? To everyone around, I knew it would just look like she’d physically shoved him over, but even so, she must have been in a real hurry to use her magic like that.

Something witchy this way comes…

I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. But I had a sinking feeling that I should have done both. Maybe Niall had the right idea to flee when he saw them coming. I certainly wished I could. The only question was why he’d done it so quickly. What did Niall know that I didn’t?

Evert reached me and looked past me for a moment before Rebecca stopped him with a simple touch on his arm. “Niall Sampson has already gone. Elle must be the priority.”

“Yeah!” I said. “Apparently, he saw you two coming in here like gangbusters and wanted to avoid a showdown. And using all that power out where people could see you? I want to know what is going on with you two.”

“We have to get Elle out of here,” Evert said. “She’s drunk.”

“Um, I’m right here. And I am
not
drunk. Why are you talking about me in the third person, as if I am a child?”

“Your life is in imminent danger,” Rebecca said. “You’re just too drunk on emotions to see it. You may not be in control of your own actions.”

“My life’s in danger?” I said, looking around. It didn’t
feel
like my life was in danger. In fact, the crowd seemed to be having a great time as they went back to their dancing and drinking. Even the guy who had been shoved down so unceremoniously was now laughing with his girl. The only negativity I could feel was the anger coming off Rebecca and Evert.

I shook my head. “There’s nothing wrong here except that you ruined my night with Niall.”

“You don’t think there’s anything wrong here?” Rebecca grabbed my arm and dug in with strong fingers. “Oh, there is so much wrong right now.”

“Let go of me!” I was getting a distinct sense of déjà vu, only last time, Evert hadn’t been there. He and Rebecca each hooked an arm under one of my armpits, lifting me bodily and more or less carrying me in the direction of the exit.

“What is this? I’m perfectly capable of walking, if I wanted to leave. Which I do not!” I yelled over the music. Even with Niall gone, I wouldn’t have left on my own accord for some time. It felt too good in there with the swirl of emotions mixed in with the memories of Niall’s kiss. That kiss had felt perfect.

Like the rest of the club. Even though Niall was gone, I wanted to stay in the thump of the music and the press of the people. I wanted to dance by myself and just savor the feeling of the place around me as I stood in the heart of a crowd like that for possibly the first time in my life.

“I’m not leaving,” I said again, struggling to get away from them. “I’m an adult and I can stay in a club if I want. What is this? A kidnapping?”

“It’s a rescue, you little fool!” Rebecca snapped.

Even so, I struggled. Rebecca didn’t have the right to say where I could and couldn’t go. What I could and couldn’t do. If I wanted to stay in the club, in the middle of all that beautiful emotion, then I should be allowed to do it.

The bouncers moved in as we got close to the door. Apparently, they didn’t like seeing random women dragged out of their club against their will either. The protection of the bouncers would have been welcome under most other circumstances, but these guys were only human, and Evert…well, even before someone started putting power onto him in the form of those tattoos, I doubted that he’d been that.

“I can take care of myself!” I protested to Evert, giving him a slightly out-of-focus look. Okay, so maybe they were right about me being a little drunk with the feelings running through me.

“Obviously, you
can’t
take care of yourself,” Evert replied through gritted teeth.

I could see his tattoos glowing in the strobe lights of the club as he let go of me and stepped forward to aid our hasty exit. One of the bouncers seemed to sense the threat from Evert and swung a roundhouse punch that would have knocked any other man sprawling. His body a blur, Evert dodged it easily and brought his elbow around, dropping the other man to the floor with one clubbing blow. I got the feeling that even then, Evert hadn’t hit as hard as he could have. The other man was still breathing, for one thing.

“I am not a damsel in distress!” I complained to him and to Rebecca. They ignored me. Rebecca kept her grip on me, while Evert kept on, shifting his attention to the next opponent. Almost before I could blink, he was on the other man, kicking him hard enough to send him flying back into the crowd of dancers.

“Stop it!” I screamed and Rebecca dug her nails into my arm as she clung to me. She wasn’t going to let go, no matter what I did.

A man in the club shouted, “Fight! Fight!” and other men took up the chant. I could taste the sudden thread of fear that charged throughout the room like electricity snaking out from the source that was…me. Fear, panic…it would have taken so little for Evert to just reach out and explain rather than fighting, but apparently, shrugging off a blow from a chair to palm smash a third bouncer was simply easier for him.

A ripple of emotion went through the crowd, and I knew that it wouldn’t take much for me to get the whole crowd helping me. One little push of power, and Evert could have the whole room to fight at once. Even he couldn’t handle that many opponents, could he?

Then Rebecca slapped me, snapping me out of it. “We have to get her out of here, Evert,” she said. “Now, please.”

The hunter nodded, and in a flash, he was back at my side. Between the two of them, they nearly carried me outside, where a car was waiting with the engine running. Even amid the other drama, I couldn’t help a small thought about the price of petrol. Rebecca opened the door with her powers and jumped into the driver’s seat, while Evert all but threw me into the back of the car, clambering in after me and putting his arm around my shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “I wasn’t ready to leave! My life wasn’t in danger. You have a lot of explaining to do!” I pulled away from Evert’s embrace, but Rebecca had already flicked her fingers to lock the doors.

“Really?” I said, indignant. “We’re really going to play a kid’s game of lock-unlock?” I hoped not. I knew the spell, the same as I knew so many others, but they’d never worked for me. “Evert, get your hands off me.”

He didn’t, of course, buckling up my seatbelt as if I were a child. Meanwhile, Rebecca took off at the kind of speed that suggested she’d had training in getaway driving. The tires laid a layer of rubber on the wet pavement as she gunned the engine and we pulled away.

“Rebecca, your powers don’t scare me, but your driving does!” I cried out as the car veered around other cars and headed into the slick night with tires screeching. Then it occurred to me that I would never normally have said that. Okay, maybe they were right about me being drunk. “What’s wrong with you two? Have you gone stark, raving mad?”

After a block or two, Rebecca eased back on the gas pedal enough to glare at me in the rearview mirror. Instead of apologizing to me for her scary driving or the kidnapping, she said, “I thought we told you not to do anything stupid!”

“
Me
do something stupid? I wasn’t the one grabbing people out of clubs and using magic in public.”