“Logan!” I snapped. “It can’t be that fucking hard of a question. What happened when I was four and you were six?”
He stepped into me. “Your dreams haven’t told you?”
All my dreams had told me was how many positions this warlock could twist my body into, each more pleasurable than the last.“I remember falling in the rain. I remember you standing over me.” My words were short. Blunt.
“Do you remember the ceremo—?”
A scraping sound cut him off, and I spun to find a monster emerging from behind a huge tree.
For the first time, it wasn’t panic that held me immobile, it was anger. I’d almost had a real answer from Logan, I’d seenthat in his eyes, and here we were, interrupted again by someone else’s magic.
“Who the fuck are you?” I shouted, staring into the darkened spaces around the graves. “Come out and show yourself. Don’thide behind your beasts.”
The monster scraped closer, and I couldn’t miss how spiderlike this one was, but with far more legs than it should have, anda much larger body. For all its legs, though, it found it difficult to navigate the narrow paths, and I’d have laughed asit tripped if I weren’t so angry.
Even with a monster closing in, I was once again looking at Logan, and he hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “You’re a coward,”I continued, and I pointed my finger violently, even though there was no one in sight except Logan. “A fucking coward.”
As I pointed, another monster popped into view, this one appearing twenty feet away, and completely out of nowhere. It wasone of the single-eyed versions, with a huge bulbous body and tusks out of either side of its mouth.
“Another ridiculous creation,” I shouted into the night. “You’re a joke!”
My energy burned as I fought the urge to set it all on fire. I’d never been able to create my own fire, at least not in anyclasses, but the way I felt now, there was an inferno desperately seeking an exit from my power.
Another monster arrived, closer than the others, just behind Logan, who never even turned to stare at the alligator-headedbeast. He just continued to watch me closely, expressionless and unblinking. “Do you see them?” I snarled. “Tell me you seeor at least feel them with your spellcaster abilities? Who is doing this?”
Logan took a step closer to me, shaking his head, but not in a way that spoke of confusion. More as in he was confirming athought he’d already had. “I think it’s you, Precious.”
My next shout died off as I gasped. “Impossible.”
Logan had lost his mind and was trying to blame me. How the fuck would I be conjuring monsters? “I’ve not cast one spell sincewe entered the graveyard.” And there I went, jabbing my finger in his face again.
With each jab, another beast appeared until we were surrounded. Completely surrounded by monsters, and I was forced to acknowledgethat the only enemy I faced here tonight was... myself?
Letting my hand fall, my head spun as I tried to comprehend what I’d just learned.
All year I’d been the one calling the monsters. With my magic. With my energy.
And with no idea how to get rid of them, we were going to die. They did not hold any sentimental value toward the witch whocreated them. My ribs could attest to that.
With a curse, Logan stepped into me, his grip tight on my hips as he used air to shoot us above them. My brain wasfunctioning at the pace of a snail as I pieced the information together with new knowledge, like my desperate pull for energy when I’d been in the lake, and how that monster hadn’t quite been in this world until I caught a flash of it.
I could tie emotional upheaval to almost all the creatures’ appearances.
Logan landed us outside the graveyard and stepped in front of me. “Connect your power to mine,” he ground out.
My head still a mess, I moved on autopilot, pressing my hands to his spine. I’d never been the one to initiate our connection,but there was really nothing to it. Our power knew each other, intimately. More intimately than the witch and warlock containingit, and that said something considering my relationship with Logan.
Electricity sparked around Logan, zapping across my skin, and with the power of All Hallows’ rolling across the lands, I couldn’timagine anything in this world as powerful as Logan Kingston felt beneath my touch.
If our energies weren’t connected, I’d be dead, just from standing this close to him.
He didn’t release his magic for many long moments, and if he didn’t hurry, he would call everyone to us. This was a beaconof power in a school of magic. Everyone would want in on it.
Including the monsters, apparently, as they all came into view, scurrying, sliding, and raging toward us.
In a line, they almost looked like an army, charging into battle, most of them standing ten feet or taller, and filled withdark rage. “Use our energy, Paisley,” Logan said. “Send them away.”
A whimper escaped my lips, and true fear curdled in my stomach like old milk. “I—I don’t know h-how.”
