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How did Secret manage to get out so many good one-liners without being hit in the meantime? This was unfair.
His fist was about to pounce on me again, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Memere move past the wrestling bodies until she was roughly in the middle of all of us. Without saying a single word, she lifted her cane and brought it crashing down to the ground in one swift movement.
A clap louder than thunder shook the trees and made waves dance over the water. The boat bobbed like it was on rough seas.
Every single person who had been on their feet went flying.
Dark Hair went ten feet through the air and landed in the water with a loud splash. Hollers and screams filled the hair as the men were tossed about like ragdolls in a hurricane. Santiago was lifted up, but Wilder, who’d been on the ground, managed to drag him back to the earth before he was thrown into the nearby trees.
As the debris settled, I got to my feet and took in what was left.
All of the men who had attacked us were now writhing on the ground, groaning, or out cold entirely. There was no one left to fight. Wilder had a smear of blood near his eye, but I couldn’t tell if it was his or someone else’s. If it was his, the wound had already healed enough I couldn’t make it out.
Santiago, surprisingly, didn’t look too much the worse for wear after going hand-to-hand with a pack of feral werewolves. Maybe he was tougher than I gave him credit for.
“Damn,” he whispered in an awed tone. “She didn’t even say anything.”
I wiped my dirty hands off on my equally dirty jeans. “She doesn’t have to. She casts through pure intention.” Memere could simply think a spell at someone, no magical words required, and she could make it happen.
In a lot of ways that level of magic was probably a hundred times harder to control than anything Santiago or I were capable of—or would ever be capable of—because she needed to be able to make sure she didn’t turn every passing thought into an action.
If it were me I’d be making cars vanish every other day because I didn’t like where they had parked, or accidentally changing peoples hair and makeup choices for them simply by thinking, oh no girl, why didn’t anyone stop you before you left the house.
To be totally honest, no woman in her twenties needed the power to cast spells using only her mind, and no man needed that power ever.
I tapped the side of the boat. “We’re going to want to get out of here before they get up.”
“Are we just leaving them?” Santiago asked.
I couldn’t t
ell if he was hoping I’d take them to a hospital or finish them off. Either way, it wasn’t happening. They’d made their beds the minute they decided to attack us. But I also wasn’t going to run around snapping necks.
“Do you want to kill them?” I asked him.
He said nothing, which was its own kind of concerning. I think a very real part of him was considering whether or not he actually did want to kill them.
Santiago was darker than I gave him credit for. There was a reason Cain went to this guy when dirty deeds needed doing.
He and I locked eyes across the distance and for a long-held breath neither one of us said anything or moved an inch. I wasn’t going to tell him to off these guys, but he was obviously waiting for something. My permission? I had no idea.
“Let’s go,” I said finally, my voice low and serious.
I helped Memere into the boat, and she sat calmly at the front. Wilder offered me a hand, which I took, and he and Santiago climbed in behind me.
We could have walked back to Memere’s tree in less time than the boat ride took, but we weren’t going back to the tree. For one thing, I had no intention of helping Santiago find her home. He’d be back here every damn week pestering her for something new. And I also wasn’t sure if we were being watched by other members of the feral pack.
We navigated the waters slow and quiet until we found the place where Wilder and I had pulled our own boat ashore the day before. We left Santiago to his boat, and I made sure Memere was safely on dry land. She stood in the boggy peat and gave me a soft smile that had a foreboding sense of sadness to it.
“Can I send them back?” I asked her, referring to the spirits. “Without dying?”
She turned her palms up and shrugged. “The only one who knows that is you.”
Santiago stared at her in amazement, and I suspect he had believed she either couldn’t speak or never would.
“But I don’t know.”
Memere lifted one foot and pushed my boat off the shore, sending Wilder and I floating out into the brackish bayou water.
