A Lying Witch by Odette C. Bell

Author:Odette C. Bell [Bell, Odette C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781370697731
Goodreads: 32852785
Publisher: Odette C. Bell
Published: 2016-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

It took Max a while to rustle up the medication, as he put it. I expected him to lug back some kind of first-aid kit. You know, with bandages, ointments – sensible kinds of things.

It’s not what I got. He came in, trailing mud over the carpet, a bunch of random plants in his arms.

I frowned so hard, my lips could have dropped off my face. “Ah, what is that stuff? Where’s the first-aid kit?”

“Here,” he said, lips curling into a shadow of a grin.

I narrowed my eyes and stared at him cautiously. “Have you been mucking about in the garden? Do you know how much pain I’m in? Plus, now I pause to think about it, shouldn’t I go to the hospital? These are definitely third-degree burns.”

Max arched an eyebrow. “They are relatively superficial, and once I’ve finished, you will heal quickly.”

“Once you’re finished?” My stomach gave a kick. It wasn’t the promise – it was the fact that he slowly walked towards me, got down on one knee, and arranged the muddy herbs at the base of a couch.

“Ah, what are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Unless you’re taking this opportunity to learn flower arrangement, then no, it isn’t obvious.”

He shot me that look – that one that told me he wasn’t amused. It brought entirely too much attention to that perfect, chiseled jaw. “Perhaps you should lie back,” he suggested.

My stomach kicked again. This time, it was a surprise it didn’t kick all the way out of my torso. “Why?” I gulped.

“The magic works easier when you’re horizontal,” he said, tone neutral, expression giving nothing away.

The magic works better when I’m horizontal? Oh boy.

Before my imagination could become too active, Max began chanting something. It was low, it was rumbling, and I couldn’t catch a word. His voice dipped in and out, almost as if he were in a car driving away from me only to turn and speed back.

He arranged the plants neatly all the way around the couch. Then, using the mud that was still trapped in the tracks of his boots, he dug two fingers into the tread, liberated some dirt, and started tracking it in a great big dirty circle around the couch.

“Hey, that’s going to be a nightmare to clean—” I began.

“Relax,” he commanded.

“What? This carpet is cream, and that mud—”

“Is less important than your hand. Now, for the first time in your life, Chi McLane, shut it.”

A surge of indignation climbed my throat, and yet, for some reason, I pressed my lips closed.

That’s when I started to hear it. The weirdest noise. It was kind of like a radio that had been switched to the wrong channel. Static, but static that half sounded like it was a crackling fire, too.

Once Max was done dirtying the carpet, he stopped, right in front of me.

“Close your eyes,” he commanded.

I complied. For like half a second. Then I blinked one of my eyes a fraction of the way open.

“Close your eyes,” he demanded once more.

“All right, all right.

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