Legacy & Spellbound Read Free Page B

soft, almost girlish face and her thin body. She had that coltish appearance many girls had in their early teenage years. Holly also had trouble believing Sasha had actually been married to Michael Deveraux. She was so nice.
    â€œWe were attacked,” Holly said to Joel as she sat down on the settee. Her jeans were damp from the snow, and her boots were completely soaked through. “Did you see the falcons?”
    â€œAye.” His shy smile returned. “I did a spell, tried to keep you cloaked.”
    â€œIt worked,” Tommy told him as he sat beside Holly and accepted a cup of tea from Joel. “Thank you. For the tea, too.”
    â€œNow what?” Holly asked. She was exhausted, but she was also totally wired. She lived in a constant state of tension; it was as if fleeing for her life was the only reality she had ever known, and being a girl back in San Francisco with a job at the horse stable and parentswho fought a lot was some strange dream she had borrowed, for a time, from someone else.
    I wonder if I’ll ever be able to relax again? And even if I weren’t in danger, would I remember what it’s like to not monitor every situation, looking over my shoulder, sleeping lightly and not for long?
    Holly sipped her tea and wondered those things. From the expressions on the faces of the others, their thoughts were similar.
    Amanda glanced up at her and through the steam of her tea murmured, “Blessed be, Holly.”
    There’s nothing blessed about this situation,
Holly thought angrily. But she gave her cousin what she wanted, which was a smile—which reached nowhere near Holly’s protected, frozen heart.
    Nicole: London Headquarters, the Supreme Coven, December
    The “honeymoon suite” at the headquarters of the Supreme Coven was decorated in nightmares.
    Nicole sat with her back against a headboard carved with grotesque, misshapen human figures— imps—worshiping the Horned God, who had been carved in the center standing atop a pile of human skulls.
Lovely.
The hangings draped from the ebony canopy bed were bright crimson, sporting the leering face of Pan, forest god of lust.
    At the sound of the opening door, she had bolted upright and pulled her knees to her chest, murmuring a warding spell. A gossamer rectangle of blue formed around the doorway.
    James Moore, Nicole’s bridegroom, chuckled as he walked through the rectangle and made a casual gesture with his left hand. The rectangle popped like a soap balloon, and the remnants winked back into the void from which Nicole had summoned them.
    â€œIt’ll take more than that to keep me away from you,” he laughingly told her. “Just accept it, Nicki. Your magic is no match for ours. You might as well put yourself in thrall to me willingly, because on Yule, I’m going to force you into it if you’re not with me already.”
    He had bleached his hair white, and was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. His left ear was pierced, and a black loop of metal hung there.
    â€œI don’t know why you want to bother,” she said sullenly.
    His smile stretched across his face. “Because you’re hot.”
    â€œYou make me sick.”
    He laughed. “No. I don’t.” He took off his jacket, dropped it carelessly to the floor, and walked toward the bed. “Do I, Mrs. Moore?”
    I will not cry,
Nicole admonished herself.
I won’t do anything. I’ll just sit here… .
    James approached her stealthily, jaguar to prey. She clenched her fists around her knees and clamped her mouth shut so that she wouldn’t scream.
    â€œI know what you did to me,” he informed her as he reached down and pulled his T-shirt over his chest. “When we captured you, you put a glamour on me. I knew even then that you did it. It backfired, didn’t it, Nicki? You didn’t think I would actually marry you. You just thought I’d