A chill ran over her skin. Had he been looking for her? If so, how had he found her? And why?
She realized she knew next to nothing about the man sitting beside her. Matching his tone with her own coldness, she replied, “How can you possibly know what does or does not suit me?”
“I came to apologize.” He leaned his elbows on the bar. “When I cast a spell of finding, I didn’t sense any witches of significant Power in Atlanta, which was one of the reasons why I moved here. If I had known you were here, I would never have intruded into your territory. Now that I’m here, I’m hoping you and I can come to some agreement about coexisting in the same city.”
Spell of finding… What the fuck?
Witch.
The word reverberated in her head, drowning out the music and the sounds of nearby conversation. Carefully, she set her glass of scotch on the bar, reached for her purse, and began to slide off her stool.
“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about,” she enunciated to the calm, sane-looking lunatic who sat beside her. “You have me confused with someone else. Please excuse me.”
Swiveling with a speed that took her by surprise, he stared at her as if she were the lunatic. The dark slants of his eyebrows rose, and he began to smile, making him look more dangerous than ever.
“You have no idea?” he repeated. “You. Have. No. Idea.”
“Okay, nice talking to you.” She backed away. “You have a good night now.”
He said something swift and unintelligible. The words were strange, perhaps in some foreign language, and the sound sizzled through the air like broiling steak.
A shimmering, transparent barrier sprang up around her and Josiah, separating them from the rest of the bar. All other sounds cut off, and suddenly it was so silent she could hear her own quickened breathing. She stared around her, wild-eyed.
He had created it. She knew he had. She could sense the connection between the strange words and the barrier, and how it had all originated from him.
How could she feel that? How had he created it? Would it hurt her if she touched it? Was she trapped here, unable to leave?
With a smile, Josiah walked up until he stood very close, inside her personal space. The light hit his eyes just right, making them flare with lambent color. Shaking, she stared up at him. His body heat warmed her chilled skin.
Watching her intently, he put his hand on her forearm and slid long fingers down to her hand. Calluses rasped her skin. He closed his hand carefully around hers and lifted it. She tensed to resist yet didn’t.
He took their combined hands and pushed them gently through the barrier. She flinched as her skin came into contact with it. It felt slightly cold, almost like a soap bubble. She stared as their hands passed through harmlessly.
“There’s no reason to be afraid. It won’t hurt you.” His tone had lowered, to either accommodate their proximity or the intense silence that enfolded them. “It’s a privacy spell. You’re the only one here with the ability to see or sense it. Nobody else is paying any attention to us, and now they can’t hear a word we say to each other.”
“How did you do that?” But she already knew. He had cast the spell with those strange-sounding words.
“I can show you, if you like, but not if you run away.”
She only realized he was still touching her when he slid his hand back up her arm, grasped her elbow, and urged her back to the bar.
“Sit and drink your scotch, although we should be opening a bottle of champagne. It’s not every day one runs into an awakening witch.”
Chapter Three
Josiah watched Molly Sullivan’s beautiful, dazed face in fascination. She really hadn’t had any idea about what was happening to her or what she was capable of.
“You mean me.” Molly seemed barely able to articulate as she slid back onto the barstool. “You can’t be serious. This can’t be happening.”
“I’m deadly serious, and of course it’s happening.” He sat on the stool beside her again and swiveled to face her. “Some part of you has to know I’m telling the truth.”
Casting another glance at the shimmering barrier, she held herself rigid. Her expression was unpredictable, as if she might bolt at any minute. He couldn’t tell if she was panicking, but she probably was.
An unpleasant thought occurred to him. Those with magic abilities tended to congregate in magic-tolerant areas, such as close to the heart of the Elder Races demesnes, which existed overlaid with human geography. There were seven demesnes in the United States alone and many others scattered across the globe.
If they didn’t live close to an Elder Races demesne, they often chose to live close to the crossover passageways that had been created when time and space buckled during the earth’s formation. The crossover passageways led to magic-intense Other lands, where time moved differently, modern combustible technologies didn’t work, and the sun shone with a different light.
But the magic-intolerant, or those who had xenophobic tendencies, tended to congregate in other areas, away from the demesnes and crossover passageways. The United States had seen a backlash of opinion against the Elder Races or anyone with magical talent, and Atlanta wasn’t an area known for tolerance.
By far, most of the city’s demographic was made up of plain old nonmagical humanity, and the area’s voting majority was not pro-magic. Molly was going to live a miserable life if she couldn’t come to terms with what she was experiencing.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
Her widened gaze flew back to his.
“Something is happening to you.” He leaned forward. “Maybe it was started by the trauma from your husband’s betrayal, or maybe it’s been happening over the past several months. Inexplicable occurrences… things like car breakdowns or power outages. You might be having strange dreams or seeing visions of things that can’t possibly exist. Am I right?”
Her blank expression fractured, and her lips trembled. She whispered, “It’s been a couple of months now.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. She was turning out to be surprise upon surprise, all of it entirely unwelcome.
After a moment, he told her, “When you broke that vase on Thursday, I thought you were venting your rage in a way that wouldn’t hurt anybody. It never occurred to me that you had no idea what you were capable of or what you’d done.” He couldn’t stand to look at her devastated face any longer, so he pressed the tumbler of scotch into her hands.
She blew out an unsteady breath and accepted it. In a quick move, she tossed back the rest of the drink. “I felt it,” she confessed hoarsely. “I saw sparks at the edges of my vision, and I knew something had shot out of my body. And then the vase shattered.”
“Yes.” He nodded. Obeying an impulse he didn’t stop to define, he touched her warm, soft skin, rubbing the sensitive spot at her inner elbow with his thumb. “That was you. There isn’t one in a hundred thousand people like you. Not one in a million, possibly ten million. You hold an incredibly rare Power, and you’re just now coming into it.”
Carefully, she pulled away to run her fingers through her hair. “But this doesn’t make any sense,” she muttered. “We don’t have witches in my family history, or any mention of magic whatsoever. We’re just your ordinary, garden-variety humans.”