Bombshell (Monstrous Ink #2)

Chapter 12

M y body was still buzzing from my night with Dallan as I stepped through the doors of the mayor’s mansion the next morning.

Between the sex and the magical breakthrough, I was practically floating as I greeted the housekeeper with a slightly feral smile.

I’d been struggling for weeks to try and tap into another element other than fire or earth. Alexander’s enthusiasm at my ability to finally do magic had started to fade and he kept mentioning that I was probably reaching my magical limit which was, in his words, disappointing .

I hated that fucking word.

But thanks to Dallan, it almost felt like I’d unlocked another facet to my magic… and to myself.

He’d called me his mate last night, and instead of it making me want to run screaming for the hills, I just felt excited.

Even when I brought up children the Cthulhu seemed ambivalent about it, soothing the worries that had built up in my head over being in a relationship with anyone let alone him .

Not only that, the roadblock I’d been running into with my magic was gone now like it had never existed in the first place. Even as I walked I could almost feel the water magic in the air in a way that I’d only ever been able to feel my earth magic.

My baby steps had now turned into toddler steps and I seemed to finally be making progress.

I was damn near on Cloud-9 as I rounded the corner, trying to figure out how I would reveal my new abilities to Alexander.

While it was tempting to dump a magical bucket of water over his head, it would definitely end with me writing out potion formulas on the blackboard until my fingers bled.

Then I thought about what Dallan said last night about becoming invisible.

I didn’t even know where to begin with doing something like that or how water users even achieved such a feat.

Stepping up to the library doors I mused over it as I stared at the old, ornate wood.

It stood to reason that because water was reflective, I could potentially use it to blend into my surroundings—but was that true invisibility? And how long could I even maintain something like that. A glamour was easy to maintain, but easy for most supernatural creatures to spot, but a spell of invisibility? It was supposed to be flawless and untraceable.

But the itch to try filled me even as I doubted my ability and I gave into it, opening the door to the library and calling as much water as I could to surround my body .

At first, pulling the water out of the air was no easy feat. Last night while we lay together, Dallan gently instructed me on how to do it, letting me practice until we were both tossing balls of water that we’d created to each other.

Frowning, I realized that there was no way I’d be able to tug enough moisture out of the surrounding air to cover my entire body, so that option was out.

Thinning the water out flat in front of me, I formed an almost shield-like structure. The complicated shaping made my arms and legs shake with the exerted effort and sweat began to form on my temples only to be wicked off by the pull of my magic to join the water in front of me.

I could still see through the plate of water, which didn’t feel right and as I walked further into the library, puzzling over how to create a mirror effect with it, I heard the sound of hushed voices coming from where my lessons with Alexander were usually held.

“I’m telling you she’s not ready, Arsenio,” Alexander’s voice rose just loud enough so that I could hear what he was saying.

I sucked in a sharp breath, realizing that I was about to waltz into a conversation that the two men inside definitely did not want me hearing.

There was a pause before Arsenio’s voice filled my ears. “Was that the door?”

Panic filled my chest and something about my sudden urgency not to be found shifted the water in front of me. Instead of floating in front of me like a shield, it slammed into me like a second skin, pushing me up against a nearby bookshelf right before Arsenio and Alexander hurried past me to check the door.

Am I invisible? I’ve got to be invisible. Holy shit, I thought to myself as Arsenio and Alexander stood a mere foot away from me, frowning at the closed library doors. Neither of them turned to look at me, telling me that whatever my magic had just done had been successful.

“It must have been one of the staff coming in to clean,” Alexander reassured Arsenio, though he still had a contemplative look on his face as he turned to the fae man who continued to glare at the door. “Euphemia isn’t ready for the sort of magic you need from her, Arsenio.”

Arsenio turned his sharp gaze to the other man. “Well, we don’t have much of a choice now do we? You said it yourself that her abilities have grown exponentially.”

“Yes, but she needs time to come into full potential. Short of zapping her repeatedly with the Ponderosa, I don’t know how she’s supposed to control the Source.”

The Source? It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone mention that term before. It didn’t ring a bell from any of the many, many magical artifact books that Alexander had forced me to read and memorize as a child.

“We don’t have the time to wait and see if she’s ready, Alexander. Figure it out. You’ve already wasted almost seventy years on this experiment and now the whole town is at risk. Either you find a new Guardian for the Source or I will. ”

Arsenio turned and swept out of the library, straightening the lapels of his designer suit as he went.

Silence reigned as Alexander stood staring at the library doors for a long time before he finally let out a deep sigh. “Euphemia, I know you’re hiding somewhere.”

I sucked in a shocked breath and my little shield fell away revealing me to the man who blinked at me with surprise.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

One of his dark brows lifted and he shot me an incredulous look. “You’re my daughter and I felt your magic as you came in through the doors. I see you’ve mastered water magic finally. Good, that’s good.”

Then, as if it were any other day and I hadn’t just shown him the new magic I’d been struggling with for weeks, he turned and headed back into the depths of the library. “Come along, Euphemia, there’s lots to do.”

I hurried to catch up with him, pulling my messenger bag higher on my shoulder as I began pelting questions at him. “Why were you two talking about me? What’s a Guardian? What is the Source?”

“You should not have been eavesdropping,” Alexander scolded, ignoring my questions entirely. “Had Arsenio felt your magic the way I could, he would have ejected you from the mansion completely. ”

I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest as we came to our usual study area. “Then how would he get me to be whatever this Guardian thing is?”

“You are not going to be the Guardian, Effie, not ever ,” Alexander said so vehemently that I nearly flinched back away from him. There was more emotion on his face than I’d ever seen before as we stared at each other.

It was also one of the first times he’d ever called me by my nickname. When I’d come to live with him and told him the nickname that the sisters had given me, he’d outright refused to call me anything other than Euphemia, stating that that was the name he and my mother had given me and that was what he would use.

“Arsenio seems to think differently,” I pointed out stubbornly. “So why won’t you at least tell me what it is so that I can tell you what I am or am not going to be.”

Alexander sighed with frustration before glancing around the library, and clearly thinking about his earlier mistake of not securing the room before having a private conversation. “But not here.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, he began to chant in long, meandering Latin. The spell was easily recognizable: Alexander was casting a transportation spell on the both of us.

The world around me melted away and we were suddenly standing on a very familiar cliff.

In front of us stood a massive Ponderosa pine tree. The tree stood alone on the edge of the cliff and unlike the surrounding trees, this tree was pale. The bark of the trunk was bone white, like all of the color had been leached out of it, and what should have been dark green leaves were more of a pale silver.

It also absolutely oozed magic.

This was the conduit of magic for the North Coast coven and was the site of the worst night of my life. Everyone called it the White Ponderosa, but I called it the only tree that had ever disliked me.

‘The tree won’t even give her magic,’ the memory of one of the coven members shouting those words filled my mind as I stared balefully up at the tree.

Fifty years ago, a seventeen year old me had been standing in a similar spot waiting for my turn to commune with the magic that was my heritage—or supposed to be any way.

As the leader’s daughter I was supposed to go last and everyone had whispered all week about whether the tree would accept me.

On one hand, why wouldn’t it? It was a tree and I was a tree, or half a tree anyway.

But on the other hand I was also the biggest embarrassment the coven had seen for nearly a century. Untalented and useless.

When I’d touched the tree then, nothing had happened. I was rejected completely. An outsider in my coven, not even being able to access the most basic conduit of magic that we had.

Four weeks later, right after I turned eighteen, I ran away from home and eventually found my way to Dallan and the rest was history .

A sour feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. “Why are we here?” I asked Alexander as he reached out and pressed his palm to the trunk of the tree.

A warm glow flowed around his fingers and up his arm. When I was learning about coven conduits, everyone described it like recharging a magical battery, allowing the witch or wizard to do things that were beyond their usual capability.

“You asked me what the Source was,” Alexander said once the light finally faded.

“And the White Ponderosa is it?” I was completely confused. While the White Ponderosa was certainly powerful—it allowed Alexander’s coven to be one of the most powerful on this side of the United States—the way Arsenio talked about the Source made me think that it was even bigger than the tree in front of us.

“No, but like our conduit, the Source is a reservoir of some of the most potent magic that this world has to offer.”

As he spoke, the wind picked up around us and I could feel that same sizzle of magic that I’d felt last night standing on the patio at the country club. It tugged at my clothes and hair. It almost felt like it was trying to pull me in the direction of the magic, right off of the edge of the cliff.

Alexander’s dark blue eyes were on me as I frowned. “You felt that, right?”

I hesitated before nodding. “I did, but I just figured it’s another magic user reaching out for company. ”

It wouldn’t be the first time a lonely witch, wizard, or other magic user put out feelers into Port Haven to see if anyone was friendly. Most of us weren’t.

“Does that magic feel like any witch or wizard you’ve ever felt, Euphemia?” Alexander asked dryly as he turned in the direction of the call. “No, that is the Source and its calling for a new Guardian.”

Letting my eyes flutter shut, another wave of cries filled the edges of my consciousness so vehemently that I nearly turned my feet in the direction of it and began walking. Instead, I shook the feeling away and focused on Alexander. “Why?”

“That’s a more complicated question and in order to help you understand why, I have to tell you where the Source came from and what it does for this town.”

Alexander waved a hand in the air and images began to flash before my eyes. “The Source is fae magic, Euphemia, as old as the Earth as we know it. It was formed as the core protection of Avalon—”

“The homeland of the fae.”

Alexander looked a bit annoyed at having been interrupted, but he nodded anyway. “Yes, the homeland of the fae before a civil war drove them from the shores of their homes and into the land of mortals. During this time, the Source which protected Avalon from the outside world was stolen and was missing for several millennia until nearly eight hundred years ago when it was found by Arsenio here in Port Haven—though it wasn’t known as Port Haven then. Arsenio eventually settled here and helped the humans coming from the east build this place from the ground up and the Source created a barrier that protects this land from anyone wishing to harm its inhabitants.”

“A barrier,” I realized as I glanced up and squinted. High up in the sky the magical membrane that was woven into the very air above the bay shimmered in the overcast sunlight. “I thought you and the rest of the coven kept up the barrier.”

“That is what we wished for the town to believe, but no its the Source that maintains Port Haven’s safety.”

“Why not tell the people about it? Shouldn’t they know?”

He scoffed at that, sounding far too much like me when I did the same thing. “People and power don’t mix, Euphemia. If it were to get out that Port Haven was home to one of the most powerful, most ancient magics in this world there would be a bloodbath that no flimsy Accords or human government could even try to prevent. No, it’s better if it stays hidden.”

“So why is it coming up now? Why does it need a Guardian?”

And why does Arsenio want it to be me? I asked the last question silently to myself.

“It doesn’t need a Guardian per say … but it prefers one and the one it has had for almost two hundred years is approaching his time to leave this Earthly plane.”

I frowned. “You speak as if this Source is alive…”

Alexander shrugged. “I speak about it the way Arsenio speaks about it. I’ve never actually been near it. Only Arsenio and the Guardian have ever interacted with the Source. ”

Even as he spoke my mind wandered off to all of the weird things happening around the bay over the past few months. “Does the Guardian dying have anything to do with the weird weather?”

Alexander’s eyes shifted away from mine, giving me my answer.

“And you’ve just let people panic for nothing when you can fix it?”

I thought about how stressed Dallan was about the change in the currents and the early spring. Arsenio was supposed to be the mayor of Port Haven but none of us had heard a peep about the odd climate from him. No, instead the man had spent most of his evenings wining and dining his rich friends, leaving the supernatural creatures that didn’t meet his standards to deal with it all on their own.

Alexander threw his hands up in frustration. “We are trying to fix it. By finding a new Guardian before the current one dies and the Source wreaks havoc on not just Port Haven, but the rest of the world.”

“Then why don’t you do it? You’re one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Can’t you become the new Guardian?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

“It’s not that simple. The current Guardian is a druid and a powerful one at that. Druids are more connected with the earth than any witch or wizard could ever hope to be and because the Source is of the earth, it will reject anyone that doesn’t live up to its standards. ”

As he spoke, I started to make a connection between his words and the ones that Arsenio had thrown at him earlier in the library.

You’ve already wasted almost seventy years on this experiment .

“And because you couldn’t find someone who lived up to its standards…” I began slowly, my pulse roaring in my ears. “You decided to create one.”

I’d always wondered what possessed my father to seek out a tree nymph and try to create a child with her.

When I was little I’d had romantic notions about it—star-crossed lovers and all that—but now that all came crumbling down around me as Alexander stared at me dispassionately as the puzzle pieces fell into place.

“At first I went to visit the tree nymphs to try and understand their magic. Tree nymphs have some of the most potent, ancient magic in the known universe—the closest thing to the Source I could think of at the time,” Alexander began, his blue eyes far away as he now told his part of this fucked up story. “I met Elowyn there and she was supposed to be my liaison so I didn’t end up pissing off her sisters and accidentally get myself absorbed into a tree.”

I rolled my eyes at that. Tree nymphs didn’t have the ability to absorb anything, it was just a myth that they perpetuated to keep people out of their groves.

“Elowyn actually suggested the idea of creating a child that would be the very best of both races—one almost built to become the new Guardian of the source. ”

“So because she suggested it you decided to play god?”

I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that all of the pain and all of the hurt that I experienced stemmed from the need to create the perfect Guardian.

Alexander looked almost offended by my words and he shook his head. “I loved your mother, Euphemia. At the core of our decision to try to have you was the desire to have a child.”

“And see where that got you? A dead wife and a useless daughter.” The words were harsh but after hearing them my entire life it finally felt good to be the one to use them to hurt someone else now.

And hurt they did. Alexander flinched back away from me as if I’d swung at him, his lips pulling down into a deep frown. “You are not useless.”

“Yeah? Tell that to your coven who treated me like a freak my whole life—no, you know what? Tell it to this fucking tree that rejected me because I’m not a good enough witch to charge myself like a damn battery on it.” I pointed at the White Ponderosa accusingly, my face feeling hot and itchy with anger.

“That’s because your magic had not matured yet. In all of my calculations never did I think that because you are a halfling that your magic might develop differently,” Alexander explained, reaching out for my hand which I yanked out of his grasp. He huffed an exasperated sigh. “ Euphemia , just let me show you what I mean before you get any angrier with me.”

He reached for my hand again, more slowly this time, and when I didn’t try to pull away he grabbed it and brought it to the trunk of the White Ponderosa before whispering the spell that was supposed to trigger the conduit.

Nothing happened.

The sour feeling in my gut intensified as I stared at the rough bark. “See? Nothing. Still a failure.”

“Use your magic,” Alexander urged. “The kind that you’ve been learning—the kind without spoken spells.”

I wanted to pull my hand away and leave him on this stupid cliff. To go back to the Wharf where my real family was waiting for me and let them soothe the raw, reopened wounds of my past and forget all about Alexander and the Source.

But instead I let my eyes drift shut and imagined my magic in my mind’s eye, the core of it glowing a soft green as always.

The bark underneath my fingertips began to warm up and the core began to swell and grow, filling me up. It replaced the energy I’d exerted to make myself invisible earlier as if I’d never used my magic at all.

I’d never felt anything quite like it.

“Euphemia,” Alexander’s voice broke through my reverie and I opened my eyes to find the bark of the White Ponderosa glowing underneath my hands. “Congratulations, you are officially a fully fledged witch.”

An emotion that I couldn’t quite pin down welled up in my throat as I pulled my hand away from the tree.

It wasn’t quite happiness—no that was too simple of an emotion for how I was feeling. It wasn’t only sadness either as I found myself smiling despite the twinge of negative emotions filling my chest.

The best way I could describe it was a bittersweet guilt. Everything that I felt was wrong with me was seemingly fixed now—that night that the White Ponderosa had ignored me was now overwritten, but I still felt bad for that young girl who stood in front of the entire coven and showed them just how much she didn’t fit in amongst their ranks.

“I’ve always been a fully fledged witch,” I told him, stepping away from him. “But that doesn’t mean I want to be Arsenio’s Guardian either.”

“And I don’t want you to be.” Alexander glanced around as if the trees had ears to listen in to our conversation before he lowered his voice. “Euphemia, I don’t know how much I trust Arsen—”

My phone began to ring, cutting him off.

Digging through my bag, I pulled my phone out and saw Dallan’s sleeping face pop onto the screen.

That was odd. He never called me when I was supposed to be at the mayor’s mansion for lessons.

I hit the answer button, ignoring Alexander’s irritated expression as I spoke. “Dallan? Is everything okay?”

“Lass? Are you at the mansion right now?”

I frowned. “No… why?”

“I need you to grab Alexander and get there ASAP, We’re headed there right now.” There was a barely concealed panic in Dallan’s voice as he spoke.

“Dallan, what’s going on?”

“There’s something wrong with Daphne.”