The Spell Read Online Free Page B

bands she wore around her wrists. It was time for her to go.
    “Ten o’clock, girl,” Danny told her. “And it’s girls’ night only,” she reminded her. “Which means you’ll have to shake that green-eyed fiancé of yours.” This was neither the time nor the place to talk about dance club hopping. The very idea of it, to anyone witnessing the scene, would have been surreal.
    But these days, these slight moments they possessed together after their jobs were done were almost all the trio had. They had been far too busy lately. The world was going to shit.
    “Got it. See you then.” Charlie smiled a beautiful, weary smile. And then there was a red flash – and she was gone.
    Lily stood next, cradling the children. A human woman would have had trouble with their combined weight. But Lily wasn’t human. She glanced down, readjusted their weight so that it was more even, and then her gold gaze once more cut to Danny. “Something’s going on with you, Danny. You’ve got shadows under those stained glass eyes.”
    Danny didn’t say anything to that. Where would she start? The dreams? Or the two very dangerous alphas in the dreams? She should have seen this coming; she was a dormant, just like Lily and Charlie. She was tall and thin, like they were. Her eyes were stark and different, just like theirs. She was involved with the werewolves in some way – just as they had been. When she really thought about it, she was surprised the dreams hadn’t come sooner. There was so much she wanted to tell Lily.
    But there was no time. So, she just shrugged.
    “I’ve got a feeling about you, sweetie,” Lily told her, her shimmering eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “And when I get enough alcohol down your throat on Saturday, you’re damn well gonna tell me what it is, my friend.”
    At that, Danny smiled. Lily was probably right on that count. She was the seer, after all.
    “Gotta go.” Lily’s pearl began to shed a warm, white light. She hugged the sleeping children tighter to her, smiled one last time at Dannai, and then she too was gone.
    Danny stood alone in the clammy, damp warehouse that was beginning to smell of blood. It was a rusty kind of scent that joined the other stenches already prevalent in the would-be crime scene. In the stretching silence, the sound of something dripping somewhere once more reached Danny’s ears. Car horns honked at each other in the distance. The mattress at her feet reeked of urine.
    Suddenly Danny felt very tired indeed.
    But it was her job, as always, to get rid of the evidence. It was left to her to clean the slate so that the victims could go on with their lives without questions from the authorities.
    With what strength she could marshal, Dannai walked toward the fallen body of the man who had planned unspeakable things – and she closed her eyes once more. Again, the bile threatened. Again, she tamped it down and focused.
    Pure
, she thought.
New. Be clean….
    She raised her arms at her sides and light began to gather in her palms. It was a green light, reminiscent of a freshly mowed lawn or the flash one sees on the horizon before the sun goes down. It was this glowing jade newness that spread from her out-stretched hands and into the moldy darkness of the warehouse beyond. It touched upon the mattress, and as it passed over, the bed lightened to a bright white, its dank stench lifting until it smelled of nothing but cotton and coils and preservant.
    The green light continued, racing along the ground like an emerald flash flood, cleansing everything in its path. The blood disappeared, the evidence vanished. And when the bleaching light reached the body that Charlie had left behind, it leapt over the fallen form, enveloping it tightly.
    Dannai grimaced with the effort it took to do away with something so large that was once alive. But she managed, if barely.
    And a few seconds later, the green light receded, racing back into Danny’s body with a rush and an exhaled breath.
    The