Unearth (The Bound Ones Book 3) Read online

  “No, we are not wielders of magic,” Ayanna said, shaking her head. “Our powers are not based in magic.”

  Sam frowned, disappointed, and then cynical. “Well, I don’t know what that means, but if you’re not witches then you can’t help me.” And he turned around and went back to packing his suitcase.

  Lily stepped closer to him and asked in her sincere and sweet tone, “Help you with what?”

  He turned on her, apparently getting ready to tell her off, but then he looked at her sweet face and stopped short. He sighed and said, “I need help controlling my magic. I’ve gotten pretty good at it on my own in the past few years, but I need people who can teach me. Sure, there are witches all over this city, peddlers in voodoo and simple glamour magic, but I have learned all they have to teach me and it’s not enough. They don’t know what it’s like to have more power than you can control, they all just hunger for more. I’d gladly give my magic away if I could.”

  “We know exactly how you feel,” Phoenyx said. “Or at least I do.” Phoenyx held up her hand and ignited it, letting flames engulf it.

  Sam drew in a breath, stepping backward in surprise. Then he regained his composure, and smiled at Phoenyx with a twinkle of challenge in his eyes. “That’s a nice trick,” he said. “I can do it, too. Fligare.” His left hand caught fire as well.

  Phoenyx’s eyes widened. Her knowledge of witches was limited, but she didn’t know they could tamper with the elements. But obviously, if this witch was expected to perform a spell that would free the Shade King, he must be able to copy all the elements. She clenched her fist and snuffed out the fire.

  “Although, I don’t know how you did it without a spell,” Sam said, extinguishing his own flames. “I thought you said you weren’t a witch?”

  “I’m not,” Phoenyx said. “I can control fire and I can compel people by touching them. No spell needed.” So that was how magic worked.

  “Interesting,” Sam said, nodding. “But ultimately useless. The Four Corners have witches practiced in ancient magic. They said they will guide me if I come with them, as well as pay me a small fortune. Enough to get out of this dump.” He kicked at his bed with the back of his foot.

  “If it’s money you want, I will pay you double to walk away from them,” Ayanna said. She pulled out her phone. “Tell me how much they offered you and I’ll wire twice that to your account right now.”

  Sam laughed dryly, then shook his head. “That is a very tempting offer. But the truth is, I’d go with them even without the money. They can offer me something no one else can, something I have always wanted.”

  “And what’s that?” Lily asked, handing the orange feline over to him.

  He accepted the cat and scratched its head. “A family,” he answered softly. “Vincent told me that I am descended from the same line of witches as they are. They are my distant cousins, and they are willing to take me in under their wing, teach me to control my magic so I never hurt anyone again.”

  His last words struck Phoenyx, reminding her of how her own abilities had hurt someone she loved. She could see the regret on Sam’s face and she wondered what accident his powers had caused, wondered who he had hurt.

  He looked up out of his thoughts and put the cat down on the carpet. “So, thank you for coming and making my day even stranger, but I’m going with Vincent first thing in the morning.”

  “Sorry, man, but we can’t let you do that,” Sebastian said. “Now, Skylar!”

  Sam’s knees buckled beneath him, and his arms were pulled straight out and away from him by an invisible force. “What the hell!” he shouted.

  “Ayanna, make him forget about Vincent’s visit,” Sebastian instructed.

  Ayanna nodded and approached him. She put her hands up to his temples and closed her eyes as he struggled in front of her.

  “I don’t think so!” Sam spat. “Refate ismita kae!”

  And suddenly they were all flung violently out the front door and window, which both slammed shut after the group of them landed roughly on the ground outside.

  Phoenyx lifted herself up to sit, inspecting herself. The impact had left a few scratches on her arms and palms, which were already healing as she looked at them. Courtesy of the dagger’s magic. She turned around to see if her friends were alright.

  “What the heck just happened?” Sebastian asked, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.

  “He used a spell to cast us out of his home,” Skylar replied. He picked his glasses up off the ground, and upon seeing that one of the lenses was broken, he muttered, “Fantastic.”

  “He really is powerful,” Ayanna said, helping Lily up.

  Sebastian stomped toward the door, then stopped awkwardly mid-step and groaned, “Ow!” He looked over his shoulder at them in confusion, sparking Phoenyx’s curiosity.

  “What is it Sebastian?” she asked, coming toward him.

  “I can’t get any closer,” he said. “There’s some sort of barrier here.” He raised his hand and slammed his fist forward into the air, and it bounced off an invisible wall in front of them.

  Phoenyx reached out to the same spot, and sure enough there was a force there that wouldn’t let her hand press any farther. She ran her hand down and sideways, but, pushing with all her meager strength, her hand could go no farther forward.

  “Skylar, can you push through it with your telekinesis?” Phoenyx asked.

  “It’s no use,” Skylar said, shaking his head as he fiddled with his glasses. “He’s already gone. He dashed out the back door, then used the same kind of shielding spell to cloak himself as he left. I can’t track where he went.” He put his glasses back on his face and looked up at them through one broken lens, then frowned at the poor vision quality.

  “What do we do now?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ayanna said. “This didn’t go anything like I had planned. I knew he would be powerful, and I really tried not to underestimate him, but he got the better of all of us.”

  “He said he was leaving with Vincent tomorrow morning,” Sebastian said. “We could go to the airport and try to catch them before they leave.”

  “There will be thousands of people at the airport,” Skylar retorted. “We have no idea what time they’re leaving or where they’re going. Waiting for them at the airport would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “It’s a pretty safe bet that they’re going to Prague, to the Four Corners Headquarters,” Sebastian said. “We could go back there and try again.”

  “But if they don’t go back to Prague, then that would be a waste of time, and we can’t afford to miss this guy again,” Skylar said.

  “Well, we’re not going to accomplish anything with you two arguing,” Phoenyx said. “Sam said that they weren’t leaving until tomorrow. It’s only about ten o’clock right now. Sam has to sleep somewhere tonight. There’s got to be a way we can figure out where he will go. Maybe ask his neighbors who his friends are?”

  “Wait!” Skylar said, as if just remembering something. “I saw something in his mind several times while he was talking. He kept thinking about a place he often goes, a meeting place for witches. I’m willing to bet he will go there.”

  A meeting place for witches? After their encounter with Sam, Phoenyx wasn’t at all confident about intruding on a place meant for people like him.

  “Great, a place full of people with powers like his,” Sebastian joked, voicing what she was thinking. “They won’t just magically shoot us out of the building, they’ll shoot us out of town.”

  “Well, it’s the only plan we have right now,” Ayanna said. “We have to try. Skylar, do you think you can lead us there with what you saw in his mind?”

  “I will certainly try,” Skylar said agreeably. “Just give me a few minutes with my smart phone and I’ll narrow it down as best I can.”

  “Are you sure this is the place?” Lily asked, looking timidly up at the neglected, rusty old warehouse that Skylar had led them to.


  It was in a questionable part of New Orleans, a neighborhood that appeared to have once been a production district in the Industrial Period but was now mostly abandoned. The warehouse was bordering the Mississippi River, its back to the water, and its other three sides were surrounded by a wide cement slab meant for parking and loading. There were a few cars parked here and there, but the entire area was so quiet they could have been standing in a ghost town. The way the air sizzled made Phoenyx very on edge, and the gray, overcast sky didn’t help to relax the goosebumps that were standing at attention on her arms.

  “I’m positive,” Skylar said with that matter-of-fact tone of his. “This looks exactly like the place I saw in Sam’s mind. From what I can gather from the internet and bits and pieces of Sam’s memories, this place was once a canning factory, but it got shut down during World War II and never reopened. The witching community of the town has since used it as a place of shelter. Here they can practice their craft and share their knowledge without fear of persecution.”

  “How interesting,” Ayanna said. “I have always heard rumors of the witches of New Orleans. I had no idea how they stayed under the radar of the public eye.”

  “What will we do when we find him?” Phoenyx asked, feeling vulnerable knowing that her compulsion was useless against Sam, and possibly all witches in general.

  “I think we kind of blew our chance at a peaceful treaty,” Sebastian said. “We can’t let him go with the Four Corners, no matter what. If it comes to it, we will have to use force to subdue him.”

  “In a place full of witches?” Phoenyx exclaimed. “That sounds promising.”

  “Everyone, just keep your guard up,” Ayanna advised. “Skylar can warn us if he hears whispers that we are in any danger, and we’ll do what we have to do to defend ourselves.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Lily said, a crease in her brow.

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Phoenyx said.

  “We all have to remember that, because of the dagger’s magic, we can’t really be hurt,” Lily said. “At least not permanently. Whatever harm anyone could do to us, we will heal and live on forever. The lives and well-being of others matter so much more than our own now. If we can avoid hurting anyone, we must do so at all costs.”

  A silence descended as Lily’s words sunk in, humbling and grounding all of them. She was right. Somehow, because they were now immortal, the lives of all others seemed so much more precious. The thought of hurting anyone had never sat well with Phoenyx, but now it seemed reckless and selfish, almost even an act of hubris. And Phoenyx was suddenly overcome with respect for Lily. Lily, who had only been reluctantly given immortality a day ago, had the wisdom of one who had lived with such a circumstance for a very long time.

  “Thank you for that, Lily,” Ayanna broke the silence. “I have been alive for thousands of years, and even I could use a reminder of just how much responsibility our fortitude gives us.” She smiled at Lily with humility. “Now, let’s check this place out.”

  The lot of them nodded and all headed for what appeared to be the entrance of the warehouse. They came to a tall sliding metal door. The group of them stood in front of it for a moment, examining it, before Sebastian took hold of the handle and pulled on it. The door skidded lazily open, screeching loudly to announce their entrance to anyone who might be inside. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard, sending a piercing shiver up Phoenyx’s spine straight to the base of her neck and making her cringe with embarrassment; there would be no unsupervised sleuthing for them now.

  Phoenyx peered inside, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the semi-darkness from the cloud-filtered sunlight of the world outside. The room beyond was a small square anteroom, and a plump older African American woman sat behind a small round table to the left of a door directly opposite the front door. The woman was wearing a colorful scarf around her head, and an equally colorful, yet not matching, dress. With her garments and the large golden hoops that adorned her ears, the woman reminded Phoenyx of a gypsy off the big screen, only Phoenyx knew that she was the wrong nationality for that.

  “You have come here seeking something,” the woman stated, shuffling a deck of cards in her hands.

  “Someone, actually,” Phoenyx answered for them, uncertain how to proceed.

  The woman nodded, cutting the deck to shuffle them again. “Admittance through that door is by invitation only,” she said without looking up at them.

  “Invitation?” Phoenyx asked.

  The woman gathered the deck together neatly in her hands and then laid them out on the table. “The cards will tell whether you’re invited or not. Draw a card.”

  Phoenyx looked questioningly behind her at each of her friends, then shrugged and looked down at the cards that were spread out face-down on the table in front of her. Tarot cards, she realized. Was this some sort of test to see if she was a witch? If this was a meeting place for witches, it would make sense for there to be a way of only letting witches in. And if so, she would undoubtedly pick the wrong card.

  She studied the cards closely, calling on some sense of intuition that she knew she didn’t have, and finally picked a card at random from the upper middle of the spread. She flipped it over for all to see. The image on the card’s face was of a man hanging upside-down by his ankle.

  “The Hanged Man,” the woman said, eyes narrow with scrutiny and intrigue. “Interesting… You may enter.”

  Phoenyx expected to be told to leave, so she was incredibly shocked to hear those three words. After a moment of staring dumbfounded at the woman, she stepped toward the door.

  “But you all must pass to all be admitted,” the woman said, making Phoenyx stop midway through reaching for the doorknob. “Which of you is next?” She gathered up the cards and shuffled them again.

  “I’ll go,” Sebastian said, stepping up to the table.

  The woman nodded and spread the cards out once more. Sebastian glanced over the cards and flipped one over close to the bottom of the deck. Amazingly, the Hanged Man was facing them once again.

  “Very interesting, indeed,” the woman said, almost scowling at the card. She waved Sebastian off to the side and commenced shuffling again. “Who’s next?”

  Impossibly, Skylar, Lily and Ayanna all managed to draw the Hanged Man. Phoenyx had no idea what it meant, but the old woman was obviously intrigued by them now.

  “I have never seen such a thing,” the woman said. “Do you know what the Hanged Man represents?” She looked from one to the other of them for any sign of understanding, but they all shook their heads. “This card means that you are stuck. Often it can mean that one is cursed. But for a group of people to draw it one after the other… your destinies are intertwined. It is almost as if you are…bound to each other by some powerful magic.”

  Phoenyx couldn’t help but appreciate the irony in the woman’s choice of words. Phoenyx had never put much stock into this occult stuff. When her friends at school talked about using tarot cards or playing with Ouija boards, she always shrugged it off as nonsense, along with fortune tellers and astrology. But this particular card reading had hit the nail right on the head, for all of them.

  “So, can we go?” Sebastian asked the woman, offering no insight into her occult diagnosis.

  The woman frowned at them, then nodded and waved them toward the door. Regardless of the implications, the reading had been enough to gain them entrance to this unorthodox meeting place. Though none of them were witches, the cards must have detected the magic that bound them. And as for Ayanna, maybe she was some sort of witch, a witch whose magic was limited only to affecting the mind. Who could say?

  They opened the door and stepped into a large, open courtyard of sorts that spanned the majority of the warehouse’s interior. What Phoenyx was sure was once a sterile gray room filled with canning machines and assembly lines was now a magical mix between a lush garden and a lavishly furnished library. The center of the space was completely open, a l
arge square upon which the gray light of the outside world rained down from the open plate glass ceiling. Beautifully wrapped wrought-iron columns framed the open square and were covered in overgrown rose vines, whose vibrant crimson blooms were perfuming the area with their overwhelming sweetness. These vines accented everything, climbing up the sides of the book cases that lined the walls, hanging from the landing overhead, even twirling around the legs and backs of the wrought-iron benches and tables that sat here and there. From the looks of the warehouse on the outside, no one could imagine this place could look like this on the inside.

  On either side of this large gathering room, there were doors along the walls between the bookcases. Bedrooms, maybe? And above them was a landing that went all the way around the room, with doors lining the wall of the upper story as well.

  There were a few people lounging about this courtyard, reading in benches here and there. They looked young, younger than Phoenyx even, and for one or two of them, their clothes were tattered and stained. Are they runaways?

  “Welcome, friends,” called a voice from the second floor landing on the other side of the courtyard.

  Phoenyx looked up to see a young Milano man standing there, holding his arms out in a welcoming gesture. He skipped down a flight of stairs hidden in the corner and came toward them. Up close, he was handsome in a Bruno Mars sort of way, his coffee colored skin making his perfect teeth appear even whiter as he smiled at them. His casual street clothing did not match his commanding stride or his charismatic expression. It was clear that he was the leader here.

  “If you’re here for the festival, you’re a bit early,” he said, clapping his hands together. “But you’re welcome to any of our resources until then. I do love to meet new witches in our community. Marcucio Jones, at your service.” He reached out a hand to shake theirs in greeting.

  “Festival?” Phoenyx asked, accepting his hand.

  “Umm, no,” Ayanna said. “Actually we are looking for someone. A guy named Sam Chase. Is he here?”

  “Ah, Sam,” he said. “Yes, he was here a few hours ago, but he dashed out without a word. He will likely be back for the festival tonight. Are you friends of his?”