Read Online The Problem with Promises by Leigh Evans - Free Book Online Page B

ward. Thus, he, Cordelia, and the fat one had done a survey along the edges of the cliff running along the ridge of his family’s property followed by a precarious duckwalk along the thin crumbling precipice that bordered the parameters of the cemetery—I’m thinking that was Trowbridge’s punishment for the witch’s general insolence—and then finally across my family’s land and down our path all the way to the small pebble-strewn beach.
    Natasha had made a big deal of using her walking stick to sketch a line in the earth.
    Show-off.
    The skinny one—“Aleezahbet”—had chosen not to walk beside them, opting instead to parallel their progress around the property. Strangely enough, of the two witches, she looked more engaged with the whole see-me-cast-a-spell process. Her mouth was moving, and her gaze seemed distant.
    As the foursome had slowly inched past my porch, I asked innocently, “What’s she doing?” Mostly because I wanted to poke Natasha with a bear stick. She would have been far happier if I’d truly gone inside the house.
    The woman needed to learn to live with disappointment.
    Natasha had said, “The leylines are a web beneath the soil. She’s searching for the strongest ones.”
    Ah, yes. The infamous leylines.
    A tad grittily, Natasha had elaborated. “As Elizabeth follows them, she becomes a satellite tower, beaming the coven’s power up through this plane on the earth. I, in turn, feed from her power. We are all connected.”
    Hogwash.
    Trowbridge had given her his own searing glance of disbelief. “I’ve got limited patience for this shit. This ward better be functioning—”
    “It will be.”
    “I want a demonstration of that before you leave this place.”
    “You shall,” the older witch had said, looking straight into his blue eyes.
    My mate’s nostrils had flared.
    He could have scent-tested for a lie all he wanted. This woman was the mixologist of fibs. She knew exactly how to layer truth with falsehood, wicked ounce by ounce, so that all you saw was a seemingly innocuous cocktail. Smelled right. Tasted right. Felt bad in the belly.
    I may have just given my first Tear to a bunch of no-good charlatans.
    That insight in itself should have been enough to make me want to hit the maple syrup. But what really added to my misery was the fact that Fae-me was on high alert. Magic was being stirred, and she was acutely interested. Alive and speculating. Assessing things I could not understand with eyes far keener than mine. I could sense her working out a problem, as if it was string in her hand into which she kept tying and untying the same knot.
    Was it me? Or did the air feel tighter? Thinner in oxygen?
    I pulled out Merry, and cupped her in my cold hand to borrow a bit of her heat. My amulet let out a measure of energy that instantly made me feel warmer, but she didn’t make me feel calmer, the way Trowbridge did. Even when things were bad, having him in the same room made me feel … safer.
    I got up, dusted off the pine slivers from my jeans, and headed for the lookout point to check on the ward status. Down by the pond, forward progress seemed stalled. The four of them were by the water’s edge, examining the little creek that fed into the pond. Cordelia’s mouth was a thin grim line, her arms folded. Their voices carried well over the water.
    Natasha said, “This creek wasn’t here last time.”
    “It’s always been here,” said Trowbridge flatly.
    She scowled at it, then shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t seal a ward over a stream. It doesn’t matter if it’s only two feet deep. Magic won’t settle over moving water.”
    “So I’ll get a couple of two-by-fours. Lay them flat over the stream,” said Trowbridge.
    “It can’t be processed wood,” she said, shaking her head side to side. “It will interfere with the—”
    “Hocus-pocus,” said Cordelia sourly.
    Natasha’s jowls shook as she pursed her lips. “Our talent.”
    Then she pointed