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After we’re showered andchanged, Oliver and I head out into the frigid winter wind. Icy air blasts me in the face, and it’s so distracting that I don’t recognize the sensation of the hairs on my neck standing up for what it is. It’s not until I’ve wrapped my scarf around my neck an extra time that I realize the off-kilter feeling has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with someone meaning me harm. I grab Oliver’s coat sleeve. “Oliver—”
I don’t get to warn him. Some sort of fireball blasts toward him from across the small parking lot. Oliver only has a split second to raise a shield. He manages to block the fire from burning him, but the impact of the blast slams him backward into the wall of the warehouse. He hits his head and falls to the ground, out cold.
“Oliver!” I scramble to his side, but the second I fall to my knees in front of him, an invisible force pulls me away from him. I’m dragged backward across the parking lot until I come to a stop at the feet of our attacker. He’s tall with dark hair and dark, angry eyes. “Stay,” he commands. He waves his hand and the tingle of magic coats me, weighing me down until I’m pinned to the ground and I can’t move at all.
My power instantly rises up. I open my mouth to command the man to stop, but before I can get the word out, he yells, “Silence!” and another magic spell covers me, stealing the voice from my lungs like I’m the freaking little mermaid to his sea witch. I try to unleash my power anyway, but without my voice it doesn’t take hold of him. I’m trapped.
The man smirks when he realizes his spell worked. “Not so tough now, are you, little siren?”
I wish I could say I give him a mental middle finger and think up some sarcastic quip that I’d tell him if I could speak, but sadly, I’m too busy panicking. The man is right: Without my power I’m useless.
Oliver groans, sending my heart rate up another notch. He’s awake, but he’s regained the sorcerer’s attention. A cruel smile crosses the man’s face. “Wait right there for me, sweetheart. I’ve just got to kill your boyfriend real quick, and then we can go.”
I thought I was panicked before, but now I’m downright frantic. I try to scream and struggle against the spell holding me captive, but it’s no use. I can’t fight the magic. Tears stream down my face. All I can do is watch, hope, and pray.Get up, Oliver!
Oliver shakes his head and looks around. Awareness hits him, and he leaps to his feet. His eyes meet mine for a split second before the stranger attacks him with another fireball. Oliver’s ready for him this time. The fireball hits Oliver’s shield and fizzes out, like it was nothing more than a firecracker that didn’t explode.
The man stops walking and straightens his shoulders. I can’t see his face, but I can hear the intrigue in his voice when he says, “So the rumors are true. You’re using magic again.”
The man is taunting Oliver, but Oliver ignores it and climbs to his feet, never taking his eyes off the stranger. When Oliver speaks, I hardly recognize his voice it’s so cold. “What do you want, Mitchell?”
Okay, so, not a stranger, then.
“How about a rematch?” Mitchell says.
Again, he’s trying to get a rise out of Oliver, but Oliver is almost as calm as Illren gets when he’s about to start killing people. It’s scary to see my sweet Oliver this way. “You know you won’t beat me. You never could.”
“You haven’t used your magic in years. I’ve learned a few things since then. You’re out of practice, untrained.”
“I know enough,” Oliver says calmly.
I gulp. Oliver doesn’t look ruffled, but I can’t help wondering if Mitchell is right. Oliver hasn’t used his magic since he was fifteen. At least, not offensively. Will he be able to fight this man?
“I’m going to enjoy kicking your ass,” Mitchell says. “And then maybe I’ll enjoy your sweet girlfriend for a while before I take her to my employer. She really is a hot little piece of ass, isn’t she?”
I should be afraid of his threat, but instead I smirk to myself. If Oliver needed any motivation to use his magic, Mitchell’s just given it to him. The stupid man probably just signed his own death warrant.
Oliver moves so quickly, I don’t even see exactly what he does, but there’s a burst of red light, and Mitchell goes flying across the parking lot. Mitchell seems to use the air around him to catch his fall. He’s holding his stomach and gasping for breath, but he lands on his feet. “Is that all you’ve got, Harrington?” he shouts. He charges Oliver, throwing fireball after fireball against Oliver’s shield. “All that power you supposedly have, and you don’t use it. It’s pathetic! You’re a disgrace to sorcerers everywhere!”
Oliver holds his hand out, and Mitchell slams up against an invisible wall. Oliver wastes no time waiting for the man to catch his balance. He sends two lightning bolts from his hands at Mitchell. I’ve seen him use this trick before. It’s the same thing he did to the two human men that attacked me when we were kids. If Oliver’s having a hard time using it again, he’s not showing it. The blasts charred the human men beyond recognition. Mitchell must be wearing some kind of protection spells, or Oliver isn’t hitting him as hard as he did those men, because Mitchell slams to his knees and screams in pain, but he’s not being burned to a crisp.
Oliver drops the spell and walks up to Mitchell. The man is bleeding from his nose and ears and can barely hold himself up on his hands and knees. “What the hell was that?” he croaks.
“Something I learned I could do the day I stopped using my magic. You’re lucky you’re not dead. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control it. Release Nora from your spells, or I’ll hit you again.”
Mitchell glares up at him and lifts his hand as if to throw another spell, but he suddenly starts to choke. The blood drains from his face, and he reaches for his neck as if trying pull away the invisible force blocking his air. I grin at the sight. It figures my geeky boyfriend would know how to go all Darth Vader on the guy.
“The thing about having as much power as I do,” Oliver says casually, as if he’s having a pleasant conversation with a friend, “is that I don’t really need a lot of training. The magic just sort of does what I want it to. Now, release Nora from your spells, or I’ll release her by killing you.”
The guy is blue in the face. He must believe Oliver’s death threat because he nods frantically. Oliver lets him squirm a second or two, then releases him. Mitchell falls forward on his hands and knees, gasping and coughing. Once he can breathe, he climbs to his feet, waves a hand my direction, and rasps, “I release you.”
The magic immediately falls away from me, and I’m on my feet in an instant, racing to Oliver. Oliver pushes me behind him, blocking me from Mitchell.
As if he hasn’t been beaten enough, Mitchell once again tries to lift his hands to cast a spell, but Oliver beats him to the punch, casting some sort of spell that wraps a glowing rope of magic around Mitchell’s wrists like a pair of handcuffs.
Mitchell gasps. His hands are cuffed together, but he raises both and tries to fling spells at Oliver. When it doesn’t work, he glares at Oliver. “What did you do to my magic?”
“Suppressed it. Cut you off from it.”
