Tonya nodded. “I was staking out Ruth to find out more information about the disappearances of her brother and the others. I knew she wasn’t telling me the truth. Then, in the bathroom at the pub….” She blushed when she thought of how she had tried to deceive Magna to get information.
“I remember you. You asked me questions about places I didn’t know about,” Magna calmly replied.
“Yeah. When you went to leave I saw a reflection of you in the mirror. Your skin—it was different,” Tonya murmured.
Tonya unconsciously raised a hand to her throat. She ran her fingers along the slender column as she remembered what she had seen that day in the pub. She looked at Magna’s throat, hissed out a soft breath when the witch’s image shimmered for a brief moment as if a film had been removed from between them.
“You have—” Tonya started to say.
Magna nodded and smiled. “Scales. They are not true scales, but they act the same way,” she explained.
“How—how do—did—you do that?” Tonya asked.
“I used a glamour spell. It allows me to move among your people without appearing different,” Magna explained.
“I could have used that a few times over the years,” Tonya replied with a choked laugh.
“Okay, so who have you told, and what have you told them?” Gabe demanded.
Tonya’s attention moved from Magna to Gabe. His anger and worry was palpable as he laid his hand on Magna’s shoulder. Magna gently covered his hand with hers. Tonya glanced at Kane. He had been silently watching her throughout the conversation, his expression guarded.
“No one but you.” She turned to face Gabe. “I need to know what happened to Ruth Hallbrook and Agent Tanaka? Are they okay?” she asked.
“There was a slight problem, but I can tell you that Ruth is fine. She is very happy on the Isle of the Giants,” she said.
“Giants—right. That’s good—that she’s happy. I think I actually knew… something… about her being with Giants. Mike said… ugh, there was a lot going on while I was there, and the spell that brought me back is making my brain feel a little scrambled. Honestly though, it’s a lot better than I felt the first couple of weeks in the Seven Kingdoms. Cornelia Fae said it was because the spell that brought me there had become tainted. I felt like I had the flu from hell,” Tonya muttered, rubbing her temple.
Magna’s expression was sympathetic. “I’m not sure what you may have been told so some of this may be repetitive. If it is, I apologize. As you probably know, my world is in a different dimension. It is made up of the seven Kingdoms, each with a different ruler and each possessing a unique gift from the Goddess who created our world. My mother is from the Isle of Magic. My father is from the Isle of the Sea Serpent. I was born with both the ability to do magic and to live under the sea,” Magna explained.
Tonya nodded and sat forward. “Which is why they call you the Sea Witch,” she added.
Magna’s expression grew troubled, and her eyes were filled with a haunted emotion that made Tonya reach out to her. She laid her hand over Magna’s.
“While true, my name came not from the combination of my birth but from the terrible things I did to the Kingdoms,” Magna softly replied.
“Honey, you don’t have to tell Tonya anything. In fact, the less she knows the better,” Gabe said, squatting down beside Magna.
“She already knows enough to hurt us if she wanted to, and I don’t think she does. We might as well answer her questions,” Magna gently responded.
“She happens to be listening to you, you do know that right?” Tonya pointed out before continuing, “and the answer is no, I don’t want to hurt any of you, and I—I won’t tell. Hell, no one would believe me if I did. I just want—need—to know everything you can tell me.”
Magna nodded in agreement. “I will show you what happened in the beginning. Take this. When you are ready, turn the shell over. I will be there with you,” Magna said as she reached up and removed the necklace from around her neck.
Tonya took the shell and held it in the palm of her hand. She frowned as she looked down at the iridescent colors reflected on the ivory-colored surface. She turned the shell over. Her strangled gasp mixed with the lapping of waves and the sound of the wind blowing in the palm trees.
“Your body is still in Kane’s office, but your mind is locked in my memories,” Magna explained as she walked across the sand and stood next to Tonya. Magna moved her arm in a sweeping motion. “This cove was a special place to my cousin, Orion, our friend, Kapian, and me. We loved coming here.”
Tonya watched and listened as Magna shared what had happened to her. She itched to write it all down, but she wouldn’t, even though her mind was absorbing every detail. Her heart ached for the young, innocent girl who had been forced to do horrible, unimaginably evil things.
Tonya lifted a trembling hand to her forehead when the scene around her faded and she found herself back in Kane’s office. Three sets of eyes stared at her, waiting for her to respond. She drew in a deep breath and slowly released it.
Magna wryly smiled. “Do you have any more questions?”
“You said—you said that Ruth is alright—that she is happy. How do you know?” she asked.
“Because some asshole giant put golden collars on the three of us, threatened to kill us, took us back to the Seven Kingdoms, and made Magna use her magic to fix things,” Gabe growled.
“Gabe,” Kane said with a brief shake of his head.
Magna chuckled and shot Kane an amused look. “That pretty much sums up what happened,” she replied.
“Oh. I guess I’m lucky I got back after you did. Mike said I needed to return before anything else happened, but this is good that you weren’t still in the Seven Kingdoms, and… we could have just missed each other! Because all of us were… traveling between worlds,” Tonya murmured.
“When portals are involved, time can fluctuate. There can be variations from a few days to a few months, possibly even years, if the spell that is used does not compensate for the differences in a day between our worlds. It is possible that your return happened before Mike and Marina visited the Isle of the Giants to see Ruth,” Magna explained.
“Wait, so he knows now that she’s fine, but he didn’t when I left him an hour ago because time moves differently—sometimes—depending on the portal?”
Magna nodded, and Tonya laughed. “All of this is giving me a seriously intense migraine,” she confessed, rubbing her temples.
“Well, it’s a good thing that you’re in a clinic. I have some medication that should help,” Kane responded as he opened the desk drawer beside him.
“I can help as well,” Magna said, leaning forward and lifting her hand.
Tonya hissed when the pain was pulled out of her head. She blinked when Magna sat back. When Gabe chuckled and stood up, she realized her mouth was hanging open.
“Looks like you need to work on your game, Kane,” Gabe jested.
“Yeah?! Well, lucky for me, I don’t have to since Magna agreed that she wouldn’t use her magic outside of the house, if possible,” Kane retorted.
Magna looked at Kane with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “I hardly think it was necessary to let Tonya suffer until your medications worked since she already knows about me, magic, and the Seven Kingdoms,” she reasoned.