THE HOPI MASK (Boundless Magick Book 2)

CHAPTER ONE

“PUNCH BUGGY BLUE!” Patrick crowed from beside me in the back seat of our Ford Escort. He drove his fist into my right biceps.

Though my seatbelt held me tight, I still lurched sideways into the car door, my head thumping against the window. “C’mon!”

He’d startled me out of a dream. At least, I thought it was a dream. The last thing I remembered after closing my eyes was the unmistakable sense of being called to by a means beyond sound or words. Then I’d been flying—not on a broom but with arms outstretched—soaring over the Arizona desert plains with the same unstoppable pull I usually felt during my astral travels: fast, weightless, and rarely gentle upon return.

A heavy fog wrapped around my head, making me wonder whether I had been astral traveling instead of dreaming. I still had trouble differentiating between a sudden astral return and being jolted out of a deep sleep by an outside force.

The pain radiating through my arm cut my deliberation short. My focus shifted to the fist-sized bruise blooming beneath my skin—another souvenir of Patrick forgetting how strong he was. It merged with all the others he’d given me since we’d left Rhode Island, some aching down to the bone.

“Such fun!” Mom flashed me an amused grin in the rearview mirror.

Why should she care if Patrick misjudged his own strength and left me bruised and aching during his ridiculous travel game? She was safe in the passenger seat beside Gramps, who was far too busy crooning along to Frank Sinatra to intervene on my behalf.

“How many is that?” Mom asked brightly.

I rolled my eyes and droned, “Seventy. Three.” The same number of times she’d congratulated herself on coordinating our cross-country drive.

We were on our way to Northeastern Arizona to visit Patrick’s parents, who lived on the First Mesa of the Hopi reservation. I loved the idea of travel—maps, cultures, places far from home—but I’d never wanted to be going anywhere less than I did at that moment. Mom had labeled our little holiday a special gift for Patrick for saving me from the Dragon King’s Enchanted Fire on Christmas morning. The Dragon King’s blood had barely dried on my hands, and I still hadn’t fully recovered from nearly burning to death from the effects of his black magic. Yet Mom had yanked me out of the Block Island Medical Center before my scheduled release so we could “share in Patrick’s joy” as he reconnected with his Native American roots. Patrick had asked us to take this trip with him many times, but Mom had always said her responsibilities at Stone Manor didn’t allow her the time. Funny how quickly that had changed once my return to Adehya was staring her in the face.

Another Volkswagen Beetle zoomed by, this one yellow. Patrick’s fist came hurtling at me. I jerked my hands up to block it.

Wham! It was like catching a cannonball bare-handed.

“Shit, Patrick,” I grunted, shaking out the sting.

“Watch it,” Mom warned. She liked my foul mouth about as much as she liked Aldred, her former flame and my father. He’d been ringing her cell phone since the moment we’d left Block Island. He’d granted me only Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to spend with my family in the contemporary world. This was after he’d acquired my promise to return to the sixteenth-century Kingdom of Adehya, my Wiccan home, before the clock struck midnight on December twenty-sixth.

That was two days ago.

I think what really bothered Aldred was that he didn’t have a clue where Mom was taking me—yet. He would eventually pinpoint our location. A powerful warlock with a nasty penchant for meddling in my personal business, he was known to employ the Empire’s intrusive magical devices to monitor my every move. Judging by his increasing desperation to speak with Mom and uncover my whereabouts, his methods weren’t yielding him the desired results.

“Punch buggy red—with a black top!” Patrick called out. His fist powered into my battered arm, and the pain rippled through my entire body. Even my teeth ached.

“Dammit!” I hissed.

Mom swung around to face me. “Abigail Stone, keep cursing, and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I asked, arching boldly forward. Despite the Council’s offer to reinstate her powers after I’d accidentally, and illegally, recovered mine, she maintained she wanted nothing to do with Wicca, mostly because of Aldred. She’d sworn she was perfectly happy milling around Block Island, managing our family’s inn, far away from anything otherworldly.

Her eyes narrowed at me in a way that warned, magic or no magic, she was still my mother, and I was still a minor. She had the power to make our impromptu holiday as miserable for me as she liked. No doubt she would make good on her unspoken threat if I didn’t smarten up and behave.

Grudgingly withdrawing from her, I slumped in my seat and scooted as far away from Patrick as I could. The space between us seemed to shrink with every passing mile. His six-foot-four-inch frame shifted, and his thighs pressed outward, pinning me to the door.

Unreal.

“Look, a trucker!” Patrick exclaimed as an eighteen-wheeler roared past our elfin Escort. With a downward tug of his arm, he signaled for the driver to honk his horn.

An earsplitting MERRRMP! blared.

Patrick whooped at the sound.

At twenty-two, Patrick was anything but a typical guy. That was what endeared him to me. He had Down syndrome, which preserved a sense of joy and wonder in him that never dulled, no matter how old he got. He was also clairvoyant, the sole grandson of his tribe’s late medicine woman—a true Hopi. More importantly, he was the most loyal and trustworthy soul I’d ever known, my nearest and dearest friend.

My family unofficially adopted him six years ago, after his parents left Block Island to return to their native home. While Patrick adored them, he couldn’t bear to leave the only home he’d ever known, or the only real friend he’d ever had—me—behind. That was when Gramps proposed that we take him in.

The Robertsons were too proud to accept Gramps’ charity, so he offered Patrick a job as our stablehand, allowing him to earn his keep and a small income. He’d promised the Robertsons that Patrick would be well looked after and gain some independence by living in a cozy suite in the rear of Stone Manor Stables. The Robertsons accepted Gramps’ conditions, and Patrick had lived with us ever since, occasionally jetting off to Arizona to visit his parents. Until now, he’d always made the journey alone.

“This is the best vacation ever!” Patrick’s attempt at a fist pump caught me in the chin.

“Seriously?” I massaged my latest injury. “Mom, why did we have to take the Escort?” I whined. “The Cadillac would have been way more comfortable.”

“The Escort is a stick shift, remember?” she said. “Grams can’t drive stick. She needs a car when she visits the mainland, which is why we left her the Cadillac.”

I scoffed a laugh. The idea of Grams cruising the mainland in a boat-sized luxury vehicle was as preposterous as me parading around in a dress. Neither happened unless we were forced. Thankfully, those occasions were few and far between. As sure as I was a tomboy, Grams was a homebody. Ever since the Council had barred my family from practicing magic seventeen years ago, she’d stayed put. She didn’t care for ordinary means of travel. Neither did I, now that I’d experienced the ease of passing from place to place with the simple turn of an Enchanted Key. To me, traveling by magical means was far more agreeable than puttering along potholed roads inside a vehicle built for contortionists, with a door handle stuck in my side.

The glove compartment groaned and swelled. Mom groaned with it. Nikolas had transformed the Escort’s dashboard storage space into a magical letterbox—the compromise he’d demanded before allowing Mom to take me, his girlfriend and the one he’d sworn to protect, to an undisclosed location against Aldred’s wishes.

Mom fetched the latest dashboard delivery. “Yet another love poem.” She passed the message over her shoulder to me. “I can tell because it’s in Spanish.”

Knowing how she disapproved of him, Nikolas had penned his most revealing letters to me in his native language, enchanting them so that only a Seer like me could interpret them. His messages weren’t inappropriate by any stretch, but they were awfully deep for a couple who’d just begun dating. Mom didn’t know that Nikolas and I had spent the past six months quietly devoted to one another while betrothed to others. Moreover, she hadn’t a clue that our forbidden romance had been the driving force behind the Oracle of the Dragon King. Had she known, Nikolas would have been off limits to me, and I would have been under lock and key in a tower somewhere no one, not even Aldred, could reach me.

That I temporarily had to settle for Nikolas’ written sentiments instead of his adoring touch had transformed my normally upbeat, agreeable self into a one-hundred-and-four-pound heap of sour grapes. Nikolas and I had finally gotten together, only for my mother to drive a twenty-five-hundred-mile wedge between us.

I unfolded his message and sighed softly as I read it over.

My love,

Every hour we are apart reminds me how long I have known you—and how carefully I have loved you in silence. I once told myself it was enough to stand near you, to guard you, to want nothing in return. Now that I have you, even the very thought of distance feels unbearable.

I carry you with me—in every breath, every thought, every moment I am forced to pretend restraint still comes easily. I ache for the sound of your voice, for the warmth of your touch, and for the simple certainty of being allowed to love you without fear.

Until we are together again, I hold fast to you. To us. To the truth that I have waited years to claim—that you are mine, and I am yours, whatever the world demands of us next.

Love always,

Nikolas

Patrick, who was more into romance than most girls I knew, sighed with me. His gift of clairvoyance had also allowed him to interpret Nikolas’ message. Unlike my mother, Patrick knew everything about my budding romance with Nikolas. I’d confided in him every detail, with his promise never to repeat any of it to another living soul, particularly to my mother.

“Do you think he’ll propose soon, Abs?”

“Over my dead body,” Mom growled, answering for me. She’d marked Nikolas as her enemy the day that I’d broken my bind and he’d summoned me back to my Wiccan home on Aldred’s orders. Mom had no choice but to let me go or face the horrifying consequences—the Wiccan Council’s call for my death. She hated not being in control. Especially where Aldred was concerned.

What further fueled her contempt for Nikolas was the revelation that he’d spent years monitoring me on contemporary Block Island, using his shapeshifting skills to disguise himself, yet she’d been none the wiser. Usually, few secrets got past her. The truth, it seemed, always found her. Unless magic was involved. Then the truth only surfaced when it had no other option.

I shrugged in reply to Patrick’s question. “Eventually he’ll propose when he feels the time is right, but you know as well as he does that I’m not in any rush.”

I’d only gotten a taste of what it felt like to be someone’s girlfriend by choice, rather than by royal obligation. On my initial arrival in Adehya, Aldred had paired me with Drake Williams, the emperor’s nephew, at Drake’s request. While Drake had fallen for me, I’d only been able to offer him a deep affection in return. After that, everything unraveled. He stole the gods’ powers to morph into the Dragon King and conquer the universe. Then he dosed me with an Enslavement Potion to force me to love him.

Nikolas would never resort to such an outrageous method to secure my affections. Nor would he need to. He was the love of my life, not by duty, but by choice; yet I still had too much to explore in the way of freely loving a man of my choosing before even contemplating marriage. This despite the fact that our kind was expected to marry young. I wasn’t just a witch, but Wiccan royalty, a princess. Nikolas was a prince and the new heir to Adehya’s throne. He was also three years older than me, which came with its own quiet pressure to settle down. I could only hope he wouldn’t let that pressure become mine as well.

Mom was about to shut the glove compartment when it coughed up another letter. I leaned forward, eagerly anticipating another deliciously lovesick verse from my sweetheart, when she made a terrible retching sound, like glass whirling in a blender.

Gramps broke from his whistling rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” to ask, “What is it, Angel?”

Twelve straight hours of listening to Frank Sinatra’s Ultimate Sinatra Collection, and I could honestly say that his music was making me ill. Unfortunately, Mom and Gramps had decided that whoever was driving got to select the ear candy. Since I rarely left Block Island for the mainland due to my loathing of water travel, and because Adehya was rooted in the sixteenth century, I didn’t need a license. Therefore, the driving perks weren’t mine to enjoy. Mom had chosen Empowered Love Radio as her means of entertainment. The station churned out endless hours of mind-numbing lectures on “The Law of Attraction in Action: Recovery of Narcissistic Abuse,” and “The Definition of Sacrifice.”

Need I say more of my suffering?

“Aldred has uncovered our letterbox address,” Mom grumbled. “He sent me an urgent message.”

She opened the letter and froze.

“Mom?” I poked my head between the driver and passenger seats to get a better view of the letter. Aldred’s penmanship had left a lot to be desired. I could make out the beginning chicken-scratch letters that read, I must speak with you about— The letter was creased in the middle from having been folded in half, making the contents look like random drivel. Still, his last words were clear as day, slicing through me the same way I’d sliced through the Dragon King with the diamond dagger that had killed him and set the cosmos free.

They’re alive.

Mom crumpled up the note.

© 2015 Lowvee Cole. All rights reserved. 

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