The Trouble With Spells

  “For me, too,” I replied, casting my gaze down to the floor, feeling an awful wave of despair wash over me.

  “We have to make a pact, right here, right now, that we won’t let things get out of hand, no matter what,” he said firmly.

  I nodded my head unable to bring my gaze back up to him, feeling like I was losing him all over again.

  “What does that entail, though?” I asked softly, and a tear slipped from one of my eyes to trail down my face. “Can I still kiss you or touch you even? How far away do I need to stay?”

  “Portia, you’re my wife. You can do all those things. I want you to. We just have to make sure that things don’t progress to the next level.” He lifted my chin and looked into my eyes.

  I looked at him mournfully for a moment, and then suddenly I had a thought pop into my head.

  “Hey! Couldn’t you just use your healer’s magic to check me and see if I’m pregnant? I mean if I am, then there’s no point in being abstinent, right? What’s done is done.”

  He pondered about this for a moment.

  “I could try, I guess,” he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know if it’ll work that way since being pregnant isn’t something that needs to be healed, but I could give it a shot.”

  He knelt down in front of me, placing his hands over my stomach, and I felt the warmth as the white light flowed from him and into me. He moved his hands, slowly and gently over my body as he listened carefully.

  Finally, he stood, grabbing both of my hands.

  “I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary, Portia,” he said, staring deeply into my eyes. “Either you aren’t pregnant, or I can’t detect it. It would be extremely early in the pregnancy right now, so I just don’t know.”

  I nodded my head in defeat.

  “So abstinence it is,” I said flatly, even though I knew not being pregnant was the best thing for us right now.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  He held me tightly for a long time as we both contemplated our future. We probably would have stood that way forever, not wanting to let go, but my stomach chose that moment to begin growling loudly.

  He laughed then, a little, and the sound broke the tension of the moment we had been sharing.

  “Shall we eat this food we have?” he asked me while he looked over at it questioningly.

  “I’m afraid to,” I answered honestly, eyeing it distastefully as well. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about that,” he said, leading me over to the table.

  He waved both of his hands over the tray slowly, back and forth. I began to notice little droplets that lifted up off the food, floating into the air until he could actually catch them with his hand.

  He carried the vile liquid into the bathroom sink, dropping it in the basin and washing his hands.

  “Now I think you should try it as well,” he suggested to me. “Just to make sure we got everything.”

  I followed his instructions and did the same as he had. Nothing else came to the surface.

  “Let’s eat,” he said with a smile, reverting to his ever impeccable manners and holding out a chair politely for me to sit down in.

  “I’m still afraid,” I said nervously, sliding into the seat.

  “Well, if we don’t eat, we’ll die, and I’m not ready to go that route just yet. Are you?” he replied, and he scooted his chair over next to me so he could hold my hand.

  I shook my head in denial. He was right.

  He picked up a fork and dug right in, and I forced myself to do the same, not wanting him to think I was a coward.

  The food was actually delicious, and I found myself even wanting seconds after my first helping. I hadn’t realized how hungry I really was.

  When we were finished, we both went over to lie on the bed together. I placed my head in the crook of his arm with one arm draped lazily over his waist.

  “So what do you want to do tonight?” he asked with a soft laugh while he ran his hand up and down my arm.

  “Talk?” I responded, feeling sure it was probably the safest venue for us to take right now.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking!” He smiled, albeit jokingly, but I could still hear the hint of sadness in his voice. “What do you want to talk about?

  “Whatever you want is fine with me,” I said, wanting only to hear his voice floating comfortably beside me.

  He thought about this for a moment.

  “How about you tell me what you were thinking the first time you ever laid eyes on me,” he finally said.

  “That’s easy,” I said, smiling at the memories while they graced my mind once again. “My first thought was that I had just seen the most handsome person who’d ever stepped foot on this planet.”

  “And the second?” he asked, laughing.

  “The next thought was pure depression, because I knew he would never even notice that I existed,” I replied, remembering how crestfallen I had been.

  “Look how wrong you were.” He smiled widely.

  Chapter 12

  Vance paced the small room like a caged animal, and I could feel the tension rolling off him in waves.

  We had been here for a very long time. Days, weeks, months, I didn’t really know. We had no way to gauge the time or whether it was day or night. Occasionally, meals would arrive for us on what we assumed was a somewhat regular schedule.

  Vance had tried to attack when the door was opened again, but it had activated the shield, bouncing his magic harmfully around the room before it dissipated. He never tried again after that.

  We hadn’t seen Krista anymore, though Vance asked if he could see her regularly. No one would ever respond to his inquiry. In fact, no one spoke to us at all if possible. We hadn’t even seen Douglas and Fiona again. Our only contact was with Colin and Darcy when they delivered the things we needed.

  Vance had used our spare time to coach me in learning to channel some of my powers more efficiently which helped the flow seem a little easier to me though I still didn’t feel like it was a natural thing to me. Try as I might, magic was just not the first thing I fell back on in any given situation. I often became discouraged when he would set up little tests for me to magically respond to. More often than not I responded with a completely human reaction, being momentarily stunned or dumbfounded until I realized he was trying to illicit a magical response from me. To his credit, he never lost patience with me and always encouraged me.

  He had also used the opportunity to try to test out some of his new powers. Even though he knew he had acquired all of Damien’s magic, he didn’t necessarily know what those powers were since they weren’t natural to him. He had to just try things and see if he could do them. He had discovered that there was now an electrical element to his magic that hadn’t been there before. He could send out sharp bursts and shocks of electricity. He began practicing things with it. This course of action had occasionally led to disastrous situations, though, since he wasn’t well in control of these new-found abilities yet.

  On one occasion, when experimenting with some new energy forces, he accidentally blew up our bed while I was sitting on it. I wasn’t hurt, thankfully, since only the bed frame and not the mattress was destroyed, but he had determined in that moment there would no longer be testing of powers until we were safely escaped from this place.

  By this time we had resorted almost exclusively to talking. We had talked to each other until we had nothing left to talk about. That proved to be a dangerous thing for us, as our long-term, self-proclaimed abstinence would become unbearable and we would then resort to kissing.

  This is what led to our current situation. We had been involved in a pretty heated exchange that was very hard for either of us to stop. With an amazing bout of restraint, Vance had finally sprung up from the bed and I could feel the emotions about to boil over inside him.

  I stayed where I was, not interrupting him. I knew he needed to vent some steam some
how, and if pacing the floor was helping him, then so be it. I also knew if I went to comfort him it would be disastrous for us both. One touch would send us spiraling over the edge of the cliff we were so precariously dangling from now.

  Leaning up against the wall, I pulled my knees up under my chin, laying my head on them and wrapping my arms around my legs. I let my eyes drift over Vance’s anxiously moving form.

  He had worked out every day we had been stuck in here. Push ups, sit ups, and any other exercise he could invent by using objects in the room. I knew it was one of the main ways he burned off his frustrations. The side effect of it, however, had been that his already perfectly sleek body had become even more so.

  This, of course, made my mouth water for him even more. I couldn’t resist gliding my hands over those perfectly sculpted muscles, touching that wonderful physique over and over again. Even now, just watching him move was making my heart race even faster with desire for him.

  “Portia!” he growled sharply under his breath. “You have got to start thinking about something else! This isn’t helping!”

  “Sorry,” I muttered quietly, and I shut my eyes to his image in front of me, trying desperately to move my thoughts on to a different subject.

  My attention was instantly averted when we both heard the lock in the door slide, signaling that someone was about to enter.

  Vance was over to the door in two strides, waiting for the unsuspecting person. He lifted his hand, ready to attack whoever was about to enter.

  To our surprise, Fiona stepped into the room, causing him to hesitate a second.

  “I wouldn’t do it,” she said when she looked at his raised hand. “It would result in Portia getting hurt.”

  He glared at her violently before he lowered his hand, just as Douglas stepped in behind her.

  Fiona turned toward me then.

  “Hello, Portia. How are you feeling?” she asked, almost sounding like she really cared.

  I didn’t say anything but did feel a moment of surprise since she had never seemed too concerned about me before.

  Fiona walked over to where I was sitting on the bed and thrust her hand up against my stomach. She started pushing around in a hard deep motion.

  “What are you doing?” I asked angrily, trying to push her hand away from my body.

  “Don’t touch her!” Vance spoke, and he moved toward us threateningly.

  Fiona stepped away from me, not even looking at Vance, and she and Douglas disappeared outside the door, sliding the lock behind them.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, looking at Vance to see the same perplexed look on his face that was on mine.

  He shook his head while he stared at me.

  This time we heard the metal plate on the door open. We turned to see Douglas standing behind the barred opening.

  “Fiona informs me that Portia is not with child,” he said with a disapproving look on his face.

  “And?” Vance asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “You haven’t been sleeping with her,” Douglas stated flatly.

  “Oh, I’ve been sleeping with her,” Vance replied sardonically. “It just so happens that is all I’ve been doing.”

  “I admit. I am surprised,” Douglas said. “I didn’t think you would be able to resist her this long.”

  Vance moved forward, stepping closer to toward the door, a menacing look flashing over his face.

  “When it comes to my wife, I’ll do anything it takes to protect her.” He glared at Douglas, his sultry voice sounding low and deadly.

  “Well, you might want to consider this then,” Douglas answered. “We have been very kind. There is nothing preventing us from taking you out of here and performing a demon conversion on you. That would guarantee that you would have relations with your wife.”

  “There’s only one problem with that,” Vance replied, not backing down an inch at the threat. “If you convert me, the chances are that I’d kill her before I’d get around to being intimate with her.”

  Douglas paused for a moment as if considering this, before shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

  “I guess we’ll have to go with plan B then,” he said turning to gesture toward something unseen.

  “Which is what?” Vance asked suspiciously.

  “That if you won’t sleep with your wife, then we’ll get someone else who will,” he said with a grin.

  Brian Fitzgerald’s face appeared in the doorway with a smile.

  “It would be my pleasure, uncle,” he said, his grin widening, and he looked lustfully over at me.

  Vance moved and was at the door faster than anything I had ever seen in my life, anger rolling through him.

  “You stay away from her!” he growled, reaching through the bars to grab Brian around the neck. “So help me I’ll kill you right here if you even so much as look at her again!”

  I could see his hand begin to heat up to the violent red color it did when he had melted the doorknob at Damien’s penthouse when he had come to rescue me.

  Brian began choking violently, and Douglas grabbed his shoulders to force him back out of Vance’s reach.

  “Do you hear me?” Vance was still yelling through the door. “If you even speak her name, you’re dead!”

  Douglas stepped back up toward the opening, being careful to stay at arms length, out of Vance’s grasp.

  “If you don’t do what we’ve asked, then this is what will happen, no matter what you threaten,” he stated flatly.

  Vance threw a fireball at both of them then, causing them to dive to the side before some unseen person slammed the metal plate shut once again, forcing him to yank his arm back inside before they locked it firmly in place.

  He was shaking with rage when he turned to face me, crossing to me instantly and grabbing me into his arms.

  “I’ll never let them take you!” he said, crushing me to him, and I could actually feel him trembling. “Never, ever! I’d have to die first.”

  He kissed me roughly, then, hard and passionate, and I knew he was really afraid for me, us, him.

  “What do we do now?” I asked when I pushed back from him, breaking the kiss after a long moment.

  He pushed my hair back from my face and searched my gaze.

  “I don’t know, Portia. Of course I want to be with you in the way they’re demanding, but we just can’t,” he said. “We’re going to have to try to plan an escape somehow. I won’t let them give you to Brian.”

  His hands were shaky against my face. He was having a very hard time controlling his emotions.

  “I love you,” I said to him, wanting to ease his frustration somehow. “I’ll do whatever you feel is best for us.”

  He dropped his hands from my face then, moving to continue his pacing. Had the floor been carpeted, he would have worn a hole in it by now.

  “That’s the problem,” he answered me. “I have no idea what’s best for us.”

  The room was silent for a moment as we both contemplated our situation.

  “Vance? Do you think my parents might be here by now?” I asked. “I mean we’ve obviously been missing for some length of time. Surely someone has noticed by now that we’re gone.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about that,” he replied. “I’m certain if they were aware we’re missing then they’re probably here.”

  “How could they not be aware?” I asked, puzzled.

  “They could have demons impersonating us for all I know,” he replied with a slight shrug of one shoulder.

  I hadn’t thought of that. It was true. Damien had once sent a demon to Vance who was impersonating his mother. While shape shifting demons were very rare, it was definitely possible. Douglas and Fiona would be being very careful now to cover any loose ends.

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed. “They wouldn’t want anyone to come looking for us.”

  My heart sank when I realized that there was probably no one who knew we were even gone. We were all on our own.

>   “Don’t fret about it, baby,” he said, and he came back over to me, wrapping his arms around me again. “We’ll figure out something.”

  It was several days later when the door to the cell opened again and a whole host of people entered. Vance immediately jumped up, moving to stand in front of me.

  Douglas, Fiona, Colin, and Darcy along with a couple of other people we had never seen before came into the room.

  “We’re going to have a little celebration this evening,” Fiona said, with her hands primly folded in front of her.

  At precisely this moment Douglas grabbed Vance by the arm and Colin reached out, grabbing me. They quickly injected us both with some type of serum.

  “What the heck is this?” Vance yelled, and he roughly jerked his arm away from Douglas.

  “It won’t harm you, I promise,” Fiona said with a smile. “In fact, you might actually enjoy it.”

  Vance glared at her, growing even angrier.

  “What is it?” he asked, seething, his jaw clenched.

  “Don’t worry. It’s just a little something that will make you more compliant for the evening. We want you both to have a marvelous time.” She continued to smile unnervingly at us.

  I felt the first wave of dizziness wash over me then, and I reached out toward Vance to steady myself. I realized that he was experiencing the same thing, because I could suddenly feel his emotions wash over me.

  “We have to be extra careful tonight,” his words penetrated into my head through the quickly thickening haze.

  I only nodded at him, and I was suddenly unable to keep track of what I had been going to say in reply.

  “It’s starting to work,” Colin said to Fiona while they both stood there staring at us, and she nodded her head.

  “I don’t know if the two of you are aware of the date, but tonight is the Festival of Beltane,” Fiona continued.

  “What is that?” I heard Vance mumble as he shook his head, struggling to stay alert to everything.

  “Well, the festival itself celebrates the renewal of the earth and its fertility, and invites all to share. We’re going to be performing a fertility ritual on your lovely wife this evening,” she explained.