Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,99

prove to anyone.”

She glared at me and stayed stubbornly silent. The healing spell pulsed. She jerked and shook as the various wounds healed.

Finally, Tom released her arm and stepped back. Red magic swirled in the air between them, then dissipated. Panting, Lucy hunched over in the chair, face pale and lips bloodless. She shuddered hard.

“The bucket’s on your right,” Tom said, crossing his arms. “If you miss it, you clean up your own mess.”

“Screw…you,” Lucy said raggedly. She straightened with difficulty and glared up at him. “Ass…asshole.”

“Guardian,” he said, mimicking her tone.

She lurched to her feet and staggered to the other side of the kitchen. She leaned against the counter and breathed deeply. “You’re up,” she told me.

I gingerly placed the cat-dragon on the counter. “Stay here, please,” I told her. “I’ll be fine.”

Violet magic flared in her emerald eyes.

Tom stared. “What is she?”

“Just a very smart cat. I wouldn’t mess with her, though.” I sat in the chair and rested my arms on the armrests as Lucy had done.

Tom studied me. “Your aura is strange, and your magic is even stranger. What have you been messing with to make your own magic unusable?”

“I tried to learn Latin and mispronounced something. Damn near killed me and screwed my magic all up.”

“I hate it when that happens.” He contemplated his bloody fingertips, then glanced at me. “You keep that dark magic to yourself and we’ll be fine.”

“It’s a deal.” I gripped the chair.

He painted two runes on my forearm with his own blood. One was the same rune he’d painted on Lucy; the other, a spell I didn’t recognize. “What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m going to try to heal your magic, just to see if I can. If it works, you can tip me.”

“I have no idea if that will work,” I said, startled that he’d offered.

He shrugged. “It’s a challenge. I get bored healing bites and sword wounds and so forth. Might as well try something new once in a while.”

“I can understand that.” I considered his offer. I very much wanted to use my own magic here and not the sorcerer power. I was relatively certain I could re-tune my magic using the spell crystals in my cuffs. If not, I could definitely do it once I was back home. “Okay, see what you can do,” I told him finally.

I caught Malcolm’s eye. He read my expression and joined Lucy by the sink, ready to intervene if Tom got any funny ideas.

Tom’s hand closed on my forearm. “Lock that dark magic down,” he warned me.

I couldn’t blame him for being concerned. If he’d known it was a sorcerer’s black magic, not just dark magic I might have gotten mixed with my own, he probably would have told me to get the hell out of his house and burned the chair for good measure. But then again, who knew if sorcerers were the same in this world.

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Ready.”

His blood magic rose again. I’d been on the receiving end of many healing spells in my lifetime. Every one of them had hurt—some so badly I’d vomited, passed out, or even wished for death, albeit briefly. But they’d all been familiar magic, and familiar magic was something I understood and could withstand.

Tom’s magic, like this world, was not like my own. When the healing spell rolled through me, it was like a tidal wave of broken glass and white-hot needles, and it caused the dreaded healing-spell effect trifecta: I screamed, threw up, and passed out.

I woke up on the kitchen floor, hurting all over and full of someone else’s magic.

Not someone else’s magic, I realized. My own magic, partially tuned to the Broken World. The sensation was incredibly unsettling, like my body was out of tune with itself, but more in sync with the world around me. I groaned.

“You awake?” Lucy asked from somewhere to my left. “Get up, then. We gotta hit the road.”

“Give her a freaking minute,” Malcolm snapped. “Healing spells suck, and he messed with her magic too. That’s like a whole-body root canal.”

I opened my eyes and found myself staring into the bright green eyes of my cat-dragon, who was standing on my chest, her nose an inch from mine.

Tom crouched next to me. “You good? Or are you going to throw up again?”

“Good thing I don’t feel like shit, or your comments would really be annoying.” I carefully picked up the cat and sat up. The room tilted hazily, then settled itself.