“These witches were powerful in tru-craft,” I said. “What or who could’ve killed them? And how?”

  “Like I said, there’s not much information. Just stories.”

  “You have a doctorate in supernatural mythology and the occult.” I hated that I sounded like I was accusing him of something. Still, I didn’t want some supercharged baddie taking me out, and I definitely didn’t want my son to become collateral damage. It wasn’t his fault his mother was an anomaly. Hell, it wasn’t my fault either.

  “So far, the magic hasn’t manifested. This could be a grimoire glitch,” Keir said hopefully. “You might only have one element, and if that’s the case, it doesn’t matter what happened to that coven.”

  I arched my brow and met his gaze. “Doesn’t matter? They were people.”

  “If they existed,” he reminded me. “As of now, they are unsubstantiated stories.”

  “Up until last month, I’d thought magic, gnomes, imps, rock trolls, and gargoyles were fictional. That didn’t make them less real before I knew.”

  “Iris,” he said softly. “You haven’t had the spark for ignis-craft since your grimoire produced the symbol. Your Earth magic started right away, right?”

  He wasn’t wrong. “Yes,” I agreed. “But…” I turned my gaze to the dude sitting on my porch bench. “…then what is he doing here?”

  Keir looked at Zev. “That’s a good question.”

  Zev smiled up at us. “Is it my turn to talk now?”

  Chapter 5

  We moved the conversation into the house. My house was on a three-quarter acre lot. Not so small that the neighbors were up my ass, but not so large that they might not overhear talk of magic and stuff.

  I didn’t offer Zev a drink since the cold water was turned off, and I’d poured the last of my lemonade out for Marigold. I wanted to talk to Keir about the boiling tap, but not in front of the strange guest.

  “So, why are you here, Zev?” Keir asked.

  The man flicked his fingers in the air. “The Iron Grove has requested my help with the witch.”

  “The witch has a name,” I said. “Which you know, because you used it very casually when you were trying to get into my house earlier.”

  “My dear, Iris,” the man replied. “If I had been trying to get into your house, I would have gotten into your house. Something as trivial as a locked door couldn’t have kept me out.”

  “Okay.” I glanced at Keir, then returned my gaze to Zev. “Now that we’ve established that, can you get down to business.”

  “Happy to,” Zev said. He stood up, and I stepped back. It was an automatic reaction. While the guy was handsome, as my sister had so aptly pointed out, his presence made me uneasy.

  “Can’t you tell me from over there?”

  “I am sorry, sahira, but I must approach you. The Iron Grove has hired me to test your potential for Fire. To do that, I must be in contact with you.”

  “What does sahira mean?”

  “Witch,” Keir said blandly.

  “Close enough,” Zev agreed. “Now, may I approach?”

  I cast a questioning look Keir’s way. “How can Zev know if I have Fire in me or not?”

  “He’s an ifrit,” Keir said.

  “Like the summoned monster from Final Fantasy?” The video game had been one of my son’s favorites, and I’d played it with him the summer before his freshman year. I studied Zev for a moment, trying to see the giant fire monster.

  “If you’re waiting for me to grow horns and breathe out flames,” he said. “I will happily oblige.”

  I waved my hand quickly. “No, no. Not necessary. At least not in the house. I have insurance if the place burns down, but I’m not sure it covers supernatural events.”

  Zev cracked a smile. “I’m a fire djinn. The summoned monster in Final Fantasy is like me, not the other way around. And frankly, the makers of the video game got a lot wrong.” He crossed his arms over his chest again, reminding me of the genie from Aladdin.

  “Do you grant wishes?” I asked.

  He bared his teeth in a smile that made me blanch. “Do you want me to grant your wishes?”

  Keir put his hand on my arm. “Best not to make any djinn wishes. Especially with an ifrit. They will always find a way to take more than they give.”

  Zev waved his hand with a flourish in Keir’s direction. “My friend is right. A smart person doesn’t trade favors with my kind. However, I will promise you one wish, no strings attached, if you allow me to do the work the Iron Grove has so generously paid me for.”

  “Uhm, no thanks.” Even if I wanted a wish granted, I’d been around long enough to know that there was no such thing as a no-strings-attached favor.

  Zev smiled, once again baring his teeth. “Will you allow me to test your Fire?” He gave Keir an imploring look. “I swear, my friend, I mean your woman no harm.”

  “Uhm, first of all,” I started, “I am no one’s woman.” Even if Keir and I turned into something intimately less temporary, I wasn’t anyone’s property. “And second, you need my permission, not his.”

  “I’m trying to get your permission to touch you for the test,” Zev said. “But Keir knows me, and you trust him. I’m taking a chance that he will know my heart and my mission. It’s to your benefit as well as the Iron Grove’s to know if you possess ignis-craft. The testing only takes a moment and requires minimal contact.”

  Keir nodded. “I don’t like that the druid high council is interfering without giving me a heads up, but Zev isn’t wrong. He was made from fire and magic. If you possess the spark, he’ll find it.”

  “Where?” I asked

  “Here is fine,” Zev said.

  I gave him a bland look. “Where do you have to touch me? Because my no-no places are off-limits.”

  Zev smirked. “Your no-no places, as you call them, are safe from my touch.” He rubbed his hands together, and his fingernails transformed into licking flames. When I glanced up, I saw his dark, red hair was ablaze, and his eyes were crimson again. “Fire comes from the belly.” He stepped toward me, and it took all my willpower to not run away. “Lift your shirt.”

  “He’s going to touch your stomach,” Keir said. His tone was decidedly uncomfortable. “That’s where ignis-craft originates.”

  “Is this going to hurt?”

  “It will not hurt, sahira,” Zev replied. “If you don’t have the spark, you’ll feel nothing but the warmth of my hand.”

  I sucked in a breath and lifted my shirt to my ribs. I stared in morbid fascination as Zev’s fiery fingertips made contact with my skin. The heat of his hands sunk into my gut.

  Energy surged inside me as if someone had shoved an air compressor hose down my throat and turned it on full blast. I could see Keir’s lips moving, but I couldn’t hear the words coming out of his mouth. His eyes were black, and his teeth had grown jagged and razor-sharp. In my estimation, a very bad sign. I tried to think, move, and react, but it was as if every molecule in my body had frozen in place. Including my lungs.

  “I can’t,” I rasped, unable to move air in or out. Instinctually, I reached out to the only defense I had left…Earth. Excruciating pain stabbed through me as I called upon the minerals in my bones to shape and form. Calcium, phosphorous, and magnesium reacted to my will. I called the minerals to my defense as my ribs became spikes that shot out of my skin and into the offending hand that felt like death itself.

  A hiss of pain followed a shout of relief as I sagged down onto the couch. Keir was there, his arms around me. “What did you do?” he accused.

  “I’m sorry, my friend,” Zev said. “I promised I wouldn’t harm her, but I never expected she would damage herself. This is her magic, not mine.” He sounded slightly awed and a little impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Stop talking,” Keir said, his voice a weird combination of guttural and his own. His hands were sliding against my stomach. “Bandages,” he shouted. “We need compression.”

  I blinked up and saw his jagged mouth of fangs. He was totally puca-ing out.

  I tried to give him a reassuring pat, but my arms felt heavy with fatigue. “I’m okay,” I whispered. The air had returned to my lungs, but they felt as if I’d inhaled a heavy dose of smoke.

  “Save your energy,” Keir chided. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I have?” My head fell forward, and my eyes widened. It was one thing to imagine my ribs as knives, but it was another thing to see it. The bones were jutting from either side of my abdomen in an arch that resembled a cage basket. My stomach was covered in my blood. So much blood. A black substance dripped from the pointy tips of the protrusions and created dark puddles in the red. As Zev handed Keir a dishtowel, I saw six gashes in the back of his hand, the wounds oozing the same black substance. His blood.

  “Gotcha,” I said sleepily. My eyelids were heavy and hard to keep open. I felt Keir pressing the towel against the base of the sharp protruding bones.

  “You have to release the magic, Iris,” he said softly. “You have to. I can’t stop the bleeding until you do.”

  My eyes rolled back as I tried to tap into Earth again, but my energy was spent. “I can’t.”

  “Oh for the love of—” I heard the familiar harsh voice of Linda. “Arsh mit Ohren. Move your hands.”

  A sharp snap and a crack followed by a deep pain made me scream. Then Linda had one of the bones in her hand and was throwing it away.

  “No!” I shouted as she grabbed another bone and broke it off with quick precision. The pain brought on a surge of adrenaline, giving me the energy to try and fight her off. But Keir and Zev held me down as Linda finished the other four bones off.

  “Come, Dschinn. The wounds require closing before she loses more blood.” Her cold, little fingers were stroking my flaming hot cheeks, and her tone was gentle. “Stupid, Kleinkind. This is going to hurt.”

  I screamed again as fire from Zev’s fingers sealed the open gashes.

  “She needs rest now,” I heard Linda say. “She must sleep and heal.”

  “I’m not leaving her.” Keir pulled me closer. “I won’t.”

  “Of course not,” Linda told him. “Take her to her room. Wash her wounds, then get her to bed.”

  “What can I do?” Zev asked.

  In her most annoyed tone, Linda said, “There is a mop and bucket in the hall closet. You can clean up this mess before her son comes home.”

  The pain had become tolerable as Keir lifted me in his arms. I glanced at my little Gnomie-Wan-Kenobi and nodded my thanks. But there was one last thing that I needed to say before Keir absconded with me.

  “When he’s done mopping the floor,” I pointed a wan finger at Zev, “I want him gone.” And I hoped that the “far, far away from me” was implied.

  Chapter 6

  The pain wasn’t nearly as intense as it had been when the ifrit had seared the rib wounds shut with his flaming fingers. Surprisingly, it felt like a bad toothache. That same throbbing sensation I’d had when a molar had abscessed was very similar to the pulsing pain I felt in my abdomen. Was I bleeding out on the inside? Was the loss of blood dulling the full force of the agony I should’ve experienced?

  Keir carried me into the master bathroom and gently laid me down in my old-fashioned claw foot tub. There was a shower that I generally used, but the tub was nice when I wanted to soak and read for pleasure.

  “Am I dying?” I asked as he turned on the water. The cold shocked me, and I tensed.

  “Sorry,” he said as the water slowly warmed up. “I should have started the water first.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” My voice sounded weak even to my own ears.

  “You’re not dying,” Keir said. “I put you in the tub so you wouldn’t get blood all over your bedroom.”

  My guy wasn’t just handsome. He was also smart. “Good thinking.”

  “Should someone call an ambulance?” I heard Lu ask from out of my eye line. She must have returned after Marigold dropped her off. “Or, at the very least, a healer?”

  Keir shook his head. “She’s already healing.” He lifted my shirt and splashed some water over the wounds.

  I glanced down. The water had turned pink with my blood, but the burned wounds were already scabbing over. “How? How is that possible?”

  He stroked my hair out of my face with his wet hand. “I think the same way your magic protected you from Zev’s probing. It’s now reversing the damage.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Iris. Why would you use your own bones as a weapon?”

  “She used her own bones?” Lu walked over to the towel closet near the toilet and took out a washcloth. She handed it to Keir.

  “Yes,” he said, taking them. “They shot out of her abdomen like daggers and stabbed Zev’s hand.”

  Lu studied me for a moment. “I can’t believe you went all Wolverine on Zev.” She whistled. “I’m impressed.”

  “Wolverine?” Keir said. “Like the animal?”

  I got the reference to the Marvel character that had dominated the big screen for years thanks to Hugh Jackman, and I wondered if Keir had been living under a rock. “The bones didn’t shoot from my hands.” I still felt weak, but the ache eased with every passing second. “Even so, it’s not something I want to do again if I can help it.” The way Linda had snapped off the bones with ease told me that I wasn’t as indestructible as Wolverine. The experience had weakened me to the point of passing out. If Zev had been a real enemy, as soon as he’d recovered from my non-lethal jabs, he would have easily killed me.

  “I don’t know,” Lu said. “With a bit of practice, you could really turn that skill into something lethal.”

  “For yourself,” Keir said to me as he cast an angry glare at his sister.

  Lu raised her hands. “Just an idea.”

  “A terrible one,” Keir added.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I have no intention of porcupining my bones again.”

  “That’s a reference I understand,” he said with a soft chuckle.

  I patted his cheek. “We’re going to have to have a movie night marathon. Soon.”

  He smiled, but his eyes were tight with worry. “It’s a date.”

  Lu snorted. “You’re going to hate X-men.”

  Keir gripped my hand. “Don’t listen to my sister. She’s full of shit. If you love the X-men, I’m sure I will too.”

  His observation elicited a laugh from his sister. She looked me over again. “You’re starting to pink up. That’s good. It means your blood volume is returning to normal.”

  As the water in the tub raised over my hips, I remembered the boiling water in the kitchen sink. I drew my fingers across the surface. It was tepid. “I think there might have been an event,” I said, using Keir’s terminology, “at my house a little while ago. Right before Zev showed up.” I glanced back at the door where Lu was standing. “The cold water in my kitchen sink came out scalding hot. I turned off the tap. It must’ve righted itself since the bathtub water hasn’t turned me to soup.”

  Keir’s gaze narrowed, and his brow furrowed as he quickly turned the water off. “I think I better talk to Zev.”

  “Do you think he’s the reason your waterfall pool and my cold-water tap were boiling?”

  “He is an ifrit. A fire djinn. Though, honestly, it doesn’t sound like something he’d do.” He tapped his chin. “If he does know what’s going on, it will save me a trip up north to Lake Superior.”

  “To see the sea hag?” I asked.

  “Sea witch,” Keir corrected.

  Lu scowled at the mention of the creature. “She had it right the first time.”

  The druid warrior’s reaction, once again, told me she had a massive bug up her butt about the sea witch. It was a story I wanted to hear at a later time.

  Keir simply nodded. “Zev is probably a better resource. More reliable. He doesn’t always tell the truth, but he never lies.”

  I was relieved he was sticking around. I’d gotten used to seeing Keir every day, and I would’ve missed him. “How long have you known him? Zev?” I asked.

  “Keir and I used to go on diplomatic missions with our father when we were young. We’ve met all kinds of colorful characters,” Lu said.

  “Like I was born a prognosticator and Lu a warrior, our father had been born a bard.”

  “He sang folk songs?” The only bards I knew about were the kind in medieval movies and books. The ones who went from town-to-town entertaining folks as they delivered tales of the land.

  Lu choked on a laugh. “Dad couldn’t carry a tune if his life had depended on it.”

  Keir’s smile as he stared off in memory was both fond and sad. The way they both talked about the man, I suspected he’d passed away.

  “He was born with the ability to weave poems that could influence the outcome of a situation. His calling had been that of a peacemaker, and he’d been sent on missions by the Iron Grove when there were conflicts in the world of the paranormal,” Keir told me. “As Lu said, he would take us on these missions. I once watched him broker a truce between a group of hippocamps and a group of selkies who had been warring over the same sea cove.”

  “What in the hell is a hippocamp?”

  His smile widened, easing the lines around his cloudy-gray eyes. “Hippocamps are giant seahorses with wings who can control small areas of weather.”

  “That sounds dangerous but very cool.” I felt stronger now, so I sat up in the tub, acutely aware that I was still fully dressed and soaked to my underwear. “Can I get out of the bath now?”

  Keir ran his hands over my wounds. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms against my abdomen. After a few moments passed then he opened his eyes. The look of consternation worried me.

  “Is it bad?” I asked.

  He shook his head and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “You can tell me if I survive this, right? One of my futures has to end with me not reverse impaling myself to death.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then shook his head again. “I don’t see anything.”

 

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