Don't Touch My Men - Helen Scott Page 0,19

sounds?

I could feel a different energy flowing through me than I ever had before, and when I pulled on it, I didn’t get the searing pain I had gotten when I tried to use my own magic. This didn’t feel like mine. My magic was a wildfire, a tornado, and a tsunami all rolled into one, with me stuck at the center of it, wrangling it to my bidding.

The energy I felt now was different. It was a cold and almost damp feeling, like walking through the fog on a misty autumn morning. It coated my skin, but wasn’t unpleasant, and since I usually felt warm when I used magic, this was a nice change.

Just feeling magic again was a relief. The bands on my wrists and ankles had been keeping my own locked up. My only problem was that I didn’t know who this magic belonged to. What if I was accidentally tapping in to the Horseman’s magic? If my guys were there, I knew I’d be able to talk to them about it, reason it out, and once I had their opinions as well, I could make an informed guess before doing anything reckless.

It was just me though.

Recklessness was bound to happen.

Especially when I let the magic gather in me before forcing it out down my arm and through my fingertips. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Didn’t even have a guess. But I also didn’t want to wait around and find out at an inopportune moment.

I stood between two rows of headstones and could feel the magic surrounding me growing stronger. When the greenish light exploded from my fingers, it raced to the ground in front of me, weaving between the blades of grass and worming its way into the dirt, until I felt something shift. Not literally, the ground still looked exactly as it had a second ago, but now there was a spirit standing above it.

The spirit of a fucking minotaur.

They were extremely rare and well known for their tempers and bloody rampages. This one, however, was looking around like a lost child, even though he was a good two feet taller than I was and that wasn’t counting the giant horns that curled up off his head.

“Where am I?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly.

“Uhh… I think I accidentally summoned you somehow. Sorry about that.” I smiled and did an awkward wave.

“Who are you?” he asked, still looking around with an expression I felt in my soul, because I was sure I’d had it on my own face not so long ago. He was taking everything in like he hadn’t seen our world in forever.

“I’m Mary. I want you to know that I didn’t kill you, and I know nothing about you. This was purely accidental.”

“But you’re a witch?” he asked, raising a bushy eyebrow at me.

“I am.”

“How do you accidentally summon a spirit?”

“Using magic that’s not really mine.” I smiled, but it was weak. The truth was I had no idea what I was doing. “Not that I stole it or anything. I just felt it and tried to use it and it worked.”

“It could have killed you if you didn’t know what you were playing with.” He sounded surprised that I would take such a risk.

“Ah, I’m hard to kill. Plus, in my current situation, causing some destruction wouldn’t have made me sad.”

He nodded sagely. I’d expected the wrathful bull, but instead, it seemed I was dealing with a very reasonable man who knew a little about magic.

“Do you remember how you died?”

He shook his head. “I know I’m dead, I remember being…somewhere, and I know I’m not supposed to be here, but that’s about it. I can feel this place though.” A shiver ran over his large form. “Death and destruction play here. Evil lives here.”

“You don’t know how right you are,” I replied quietly.

His dark eyes dipped to meet mine, concern pinching his almost oversized features. “What do you mean?”

“The Headless Horseman, the Dullahan, has been imprisoning supernaturals here and intends to destroy the human world once he has enough of us to remake the world the way he wants.” I raised my arms and showed him the glowing bands.

A menacing growl left the minotaur’s lips, and I had to force myself not to take a step back. He wasn’t growling at me, I knew that, but still. The man was terrifying. “The Dullahan has been terrorizing people since before even I was born. And from the