was hard to blame the girl. Torin was, if nothing else, quite the specimen.
Surprising herself, Kellyn actually laughed aloud as she watched a middle-aged woman frantically trying to swim out of a motel room. Fool woman thought she could take her eyes off an Eternal for a split second? Sheets of water poured through the shattered roof, spilling down on the Seekers even as Shea and Torin flashed away in a pillar of fire.
In an instant the Seekers were alone in a destroyed room, looking like nothing more than drowned rats.
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
Sighing, Kellyn told herself to end the spell, but she was caught. Like one of the idiot drivers who slowed down on a freeway to watch an accident, she couldn’t seem to look away. Those morons in Ohio had not only blown the whole setup, they’d alerted the witch and her Eternal to the fact that Seekers were after them.
“That’s what you get,” she chastised herself. “Allowing someone else to set the Seekers on their trail. You should have done it yourself, as always. But really,” she demanded, staring into the continuing mess of the failed operation in the mirror, “am I supposed to do everything?”
As she watched the magical rain, wind and fire stop and the beaten Seekers making their way home, she realized that this mess hadn’t been a complete waste. At least she knew for sure that Shea was becoming more proficient with her powers. Calling down the elements had been a brilliant maneuver.
But then, the little witch had used astral projection to spy on Kellyn, hadn’t she? Surprising, really. She hadn’t thought Shea had that much backbone. But all the better knowing that she did. Kellyn had no use for a weak-willed woman, witch or not. She wanted women of strength at her side when she took from the coven what never should have been theirs in the first place.
She stared down into the scrying glass, waved her hand across it to close the spell, then looked closely at her reflection. Staring into her own eyes, she thought she caught a spark of something unfamiliar.
Laughing, she shook it off and tossed the mirror aside. She reached for her glass and took a long sip of the cold gold-colored wine.
“It’s not all bad,” she said to the empty room. “Shea’s powers grow, her Eternal’s worried and now there’s no place for them to go but back to the beginning.”
“Concentrate.”
“I am.”
Shea shot Torin a dirty look, then refocused her concentration on the matter at hand. She’d been working on her magical abilities constantly for the last several days. Ever since they’d boarded the Queen Mary 2 to sail to Southampton, England.
Waving her hand in a graceful gesture, Shea sent a tall crystal vase across the room to stand on the pedestal table at the foot of the curving staircase to the second floor of their duplex suite. She set the vase down gently, using only the power of her magic, and smiled to herself at the control she’d gained.
Now if only she could relax a little.
After escaping the Ohio Seekers, Torin hadn’t bothered procuring a car. He’d simply drawn on his immense strength and flashed them, in a series of jumps, all the way to New York. They’d used magic to reserve a deluxe suite, then paid cash for the accommodations on the Queen Mary 2, leaving the very next day. Torin had sneaked Shea aboard without anyone seeing her.
England.
She used to dream about visiting Europe. About backpacking through the countryside. Seeing new things. Meeting new people. Now she was finally going to get there, but she’d be in hiding. Not to mention praying that Europe had enough of their own witches to worry about and wouldn’t have her picture posted everywhere she went.
She wished she could enjoy this trip. She’d never dreamed she would be traveling in such luxury. But as tense as she was, it hardly mattered. At any moment she half expected someone to burst through the cabin door, trying to kill her. Torin hadn’t eased his battle-ready ways either. Whether he believed them to be momentarily safe or not, he was on constant alert. And though she appreciated it, Shea would have given anything for the two of them to really be able to forget about the world for a while and just be together.
Well, when he wasn’t giving her orders, that is.
She glanced around at the amazing suite. Booking at the last minute and paying cash for their tickets, Torin had