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She woke with a jolt, her throat on fire, her head pounding. Had she heard a cry, a shout? Even as she fumbled to untangle herself from the throw, she heard a thud.
“Ross!” The room spun when she leaped up. Hissing out an oath, she raced to the bedroom, let out her own cry.
He was on the floor by the bed, convulsing. A pool of vomit, another of watery excrement, and she could see the blood in both.
“Oh God, God.” She ran to him, tried to turn him on his side—weren’t you supposed to do that? She didn’t know, not for sure. She grabbed his phone off the nightstand, hit nine-one-one.
“I need an ambulance. I need help. God.” She rattled off the address. “My husband, my husband. He’s having a seizure. He’s burning up, just burning up. He’s vomited. There’s blood in it.”
“Help’s on the way, ma’am.”
“Hurry. Please hurry.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jonah Vorhies, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic, smelled the soup cooking and turned off the burner before he and his partner, Patti Ann, rolled MacLeod out of the house and loaded him into the ambulance.
His partner jumped in the front, hit the sirens as he stayed in the back, working to stabilize the patient while the wife looked on.
And held on, Jonah thought. No hysterics. He could almost hear her willing her husband to wake up.
But Jonah knew death when he saw it. Sometimes he could feel it. He tried not to—it could get in the way of the work—tried to block out that knowing. Like, sometimes he knew that some guy who brushed by him on the street had cancer. Or some kid running by would fall off his bike that very afternoon and end up with a greenstick fracture of his right wrist.
Sometimes he even knew the kid’s name, his age, where he lived.
It could be that specific, so he’d made it a kind of game for a while. But it spooked him, so he stopped.
With MacLeod, the knowing came on fast and strong, wouldn’t let him block it out. Worse, this came with something new. A seeing. The seizure had stopped by the time he and Patti Ann had arrived but, as he worked and called out details for Patti Ann to radio in, Jonah could see the patient in bed, rolling over, vomiting on the floor. Calling for help before he fell out of bed and began to convulse.
He could see the wife rushing in, hear her voice as she cried out. He could hear it, see it all as if watching it on a big screen.
And he didn’t fucking like it.
When they rolled up to the ambulance bay, he did his best to turn off that screen, to do whatever he could to help save the life he knew was already gone.
He rattled off vitals, the details of symptoms, of emergency treatment given so far, as Dr. Rachel Hopman (he had a pretty serious crush on the doc) and her team double-timed the patient toward a treatment room.
Once there, he took the wife’s arm before she could push through those double doors. And released it as if burned because he’d seen she was dead, too.
She said, “Ross,” and put a hand on the door to push it open.
“Ma’am. Mrs. MacLeod, you need to stay out here. Dr. Hopman’s the best. She’s going to do everything she can do for your husband.”
And for you, pretty soon now, for you. But it won’t be enough.
“Ross. I need to—”
“How about you sit down? You want some coffee?”
“I—no.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “No, thanks. No. What’s wrong with him? What happened?”
“Dr. Hopman’s going to find out. Is there someone we can call for you?”
“Our son’s in London. He won’t be home for a couple of days. My daughter … But she’s pregnant, with twins. She shouldn’t be upset. This will upset her. My friend Marjorie.”
“Do you want me to call Marjorie?”
“I…” She looked down at the purse she clutched, the one she’d grabbed automatically, just as she’d grabbed her coat, yanked on shoes. “I have my phone.”
She took it out, then just stared at it.
Jonah stepped away, snagged a nurse. “Somebody needs to look after her.” He gestured toward Mrs. MacLeod. “Her husband’s in there, and it’s bad. I think she’s sick, too.”
“There’s a lot of sick going on around here, Jonah.”
“She’s running a fever. I can’t tell you how high.” He could: 101.3 and rising. “The patient’s running one. I have to get back on the roll.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll check on her. How bad?” she asked, lifting her chin toward the treatment room.
Against his will, Jonah saw inside, watched the woman he hadn’t worked up the guts to ask for a serious date look at the clock, and called it.
“Bad” was all he said, escaping before Rachel came out to tell the wife that her husband was dead.
* * *
Across the East River, in a loft in Chelsea, Lana Bingham cried out, soaring on the long, rolling orgasm. As cry slid to moan and moan to sigh, her fingers unclenched from the bedsheets, lifting so she could wrap her arms around Max as he came.
She sighed again, a woman replete and loose and content with her lover’s weight on her, his heart still drumming its mad beat against hers. She ran her fingers, lazily now, through his dark hair. He probably needed a trim, but she liked when it had some length, when she could twine the ends around her finger.
Six months since they’d moved in together, she thought, and it only got better.
In the quiet aftermath, she closed her eyes, sighed yet again.
Then cried out as something, something wild and wonderful, burst through her, in her, over her. Stronger than the orgasm, deeper, and with a ferocious mix of pleasure and shock she’d never be able to describe. Like light exploding, a lightning strike to her center, a flaming arrow to her heart that flashed through all of her. She all but felt her blood glow.
On her, still inside her, Max’s body jerked. She heard his breath catch even as, for an instant, he hardened again.
Then it all quieted, smoothed, s
oothed to no more than a glimmer behind her eyes until even that faded.
Max pushed up on his elbows, looked down at her in the light of a dozen flickering candles. “What was that?”
A little dazed yet, she blew out a long breath. “I don’t know. The world’s biggest postcoital aftershock?”
He laughed, lowered his head to brush his lips to hers. “I think we’re going to have to buy another bottle of that new wine we opened.”
“Let’s go for a case. Wow.” Under him she stretched, lifting her arms up and back. “I feel amazing.”
“And look the same. My pretty, pretty witch.”
Now she laughed. She knew—as he did—she was a dabbler at best. And was perfectly happy to stay one, to try her hand at little charms and candle rituals, to observe the holidays.
Since meeting Max Fallon at a winter solstice festival, and falling for him—hard—before Ostara, she’d made some attempt to work more seriously on the Craft.
But she didn’t have the spark and, to be honest, knew few who did. Most—try pretty much all—she knew or met at festivals, rituals, meetings, ranked as dabblers, just as she did. And some were just a little crazy by her gauge. Others were way too obsessed.
Some might even hit dangerous, if they actually had power.
Then, oh yes, then, there was Max.
He had that spark. Hadn’t he lit the bedroom candles with his breath—something that always aroused her? And if he really focused, he could levitate small things.
Once he’d floated a full cup of coffee across the kitchen and set it down right on the counter in front of her.
Amazing.
And he loved her. That was the kind of magick that mattered to Lana above all else.
He kissed her again, rolled off. And picked up an unlit candle.
Lana rolled her eyes, gave an exaggerated groan.
“You always do better when you’re relaxed.” He did a slow scan of her body. “You look relaxed.”
She lay comfortably naked, her arms behind her head, her long butterscotch hair spread over the pillow. Her bottom-heavy lips full, curved.
“If I were any more relaxed, I’d be unconscious.”
“So give it a try.” He took her hand, kissed her fingers. “Focus. The light’s in you.”
She wanted it to be, because he did. And because she hated disappointing him, she sat up, shook back her hair.
“Okay.”
Preparing herself, she closed her eyes, leveled her breathing. She tried, as he’d tried to teach her, to draw up the light he believed she held.
Oddly, she thought she felt something stir inside her and, surprised by it, opened her eyes, released a breath.
The wick shot light.
She gaped at it while he grinned.
“Look at you!” he said, with pride.
