known better. As I’d grown I’d learned to control myself and to honor another’s privacy. But I couldn’t do it at all now. “Obviously the charm stops me from doing that. Erna told me you were the one who’d put Dean in thrall. Could she be confused?”
“Where would Earth plane beings get thrall stones?” Charlotte asked. “Do you guys spend a lot of time on the Hell plane?”
“No,” my mother said with a sigh. “The reason we found out about Dean’s stone was Erna took two stones out of my husband’s heads. They were placed there by the wizard Myrddin, who also goes by the name Merlin.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes, he’s legendary on several planes. I could understand where he would get the stone and know how to use it.”
I stood and started to pace in front of the fire because my frustration was growing. “We don’t have to go there. I know my mother didn’t do this. Neither did my dads or Kelsey. I was just wondering if Erna was confused. She seemed to think Momma isn’t who she says she is and she’s trying to use me. That’s not true.”
“My darling, I know this is hard on you.” Marcus’s eyes were steady on me. “It’s a horrible thing to be betrayed by someone you trusted, but it’s my experience that when someone of ill intention accuses others, they are usually guilty of the very crimes they speak of.”
“How would she use me? My power is bound,” I replied.
“I’d like to examine the charm.” Charlotte’s gaze was on my neck.
“She won’t take it off.” Marcus looked grimly Charlotte’s way. “She doesn’t even like it to be off in her fantasies.”
“I can’t take it off.” They didn’t understand. “It can only come off if my human body dies.”
“It didn’t come off when you drowned,” Marcus pointed out.
“I wasn’t really dead.” It wasn’t like I’d seen a light or a doorway. I’d passed out. That was all.
“And how did you get a human body? I know of very few ways to truly transform something from its natural state.” Charlotte had been studying me since the moment Marcus and I returned to camp. The only time I hadn’t felt her eyes on me were when she’d stepped away to talk to her husband and Adam, likely getting updated on what had happened.
“Yes, I’d like to understand that magic,” my mother said.
“Erna used blood magic to bind me.” I didn’t remember the incantations. I had been far too busy concentrating on making it work, on putting all my will into making it so I couldn’t hurt anyone again.
“Or she put on a show and let you bind yourself,” Marcus countered. “Summer, I believe that if you choose, that collar will fall off your body.”
“You think she’s holding the spell together herself?” Dean asked.
Marcus sighed. “I don’t think there’s a spell at all that can hold my Summer. But she can hold herself back.”
“I don’t think she holds herself back nearly enough,” a deep voice said, and I realized Taggart was leaning against a large tree at the edge of the fire’s illumination. He had a sonic weapon slung over one muscular shoulder. “I think if she held back, we would be almost to Tír na nÓg by now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” My mom looked the mercenary’s way.
“It means those bikes were in tip-top shape, and I’m supposed to believe that all four of them had their electrical systems fried at once?” Taggart swaggered in, standing beside his wife.
Mom held up a hand. “Uh, I happen to know that the witch can fry a system and fast. If I hadn’t taken vamp blood for the last fifteen or so years, I would have stayed as dead as those bikes.”
Taggart didn’t look convinced. “It’s too coincidental. I get that the witch had likely been following the group and that’s how she found us. But I saw what she did to you. The power she used blew you back. She would have had to use even more power to stop us. It’s simple physics. There should have been a hard-core reactive motion. We should have been flung off those bikes, or they should have swung around. I stayed in control. The only thing that happened was the bikes went dead and there was a little inertia. One minute we were going. The next we were stopped. It was kind of like magic.”