Women of the Otherworld 10.5 - Counterfeit Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

audience, then barreled down on Savannah. Halfway there, she stopped dead, frozen in place.
     
    “Binding spell.” Savannah glanced at Ethan. “I suppose that’s illegal?”
     
    Ethan looked over at his brother—it was a fighting call, not an administrative one. Tommy just shrugged helplessly.
     
    “Don’t get many witches in here, do you?” Savannah said. “Not ones who know their own magic well enough to cast a binding spell, at least. Still, I’d make it illegal. Otherwise, I could just run over and knock her down, which would be terribly unfair.”
     
    She released the spell. Caught off guard, Mel toppled. Savannah launched a fireball, whipping it toward Mel’s head, making the other woman shriek and duck.
     
    “Damn,” Savannah said. “She screams like a girl. Who’d have thought? Witch magic again. Fireball. Minor burns only—no worse than an energy bolt, which is legal. Well, unless you cast them like this.”
     
    Savannah whipped an energy bolt at her opponent. It hit the top rope and snapped it, both ends sizzling and jumping like a live wire, onlookers scrambling out of the way.
     
    “Deadly,” Savannah said. “ Which is why I’ll stick to the basic version. ”
     
    She turned on Mel, who gamely leapt up, fingers out to cast an energy bolt of her own.
     
    “Knockback,” Savannah said.
     
    Her cast sent Mel to the mat.
     
    “Fireball.”
     
    Savannah singed the ends of Mel’s spiky hair, then sent the fireball whipping around her, locking her in place as effectively as any binding spell.
     
    “Minor energy bolt.”
     
    Sparks flew from her fingers, and hit Mel like an electric shock.
     
    “And, just because it makes a cool special effect: fog.”
     
    She enveloped Mel in silvery mist, but her lips kept moving, and from within the fog, Mel gave an agonized shriek. She crawled out, coughing and sputtering, then collapsed on the mat.
     
    Savannah won.

 

Black Magic Woman
     
    As Savannah retreated to her corner, I whispered. “What did you use?”
     
    “Energy bolt,” she said.
     
    “After that, I mean. The last spell.”
     
    “Fog?” When I shook my head, she shrugged. “That’s the last one I used.”
     
    It wasn’t. And I knew by looking at her face that I wouldn’t get the answer I wanted.
     
    Savannah has a secret stash of dark magic spells. She thinks Lucas and I don’t know about them. We do. We know dark magic is in her blood. We trust her to use the spells with care. But she still won’t admit it.
     
    Elena says it’s like when Savannah started having sex. She’d lie about spending the night at a friend’s place and hide her stash of condoms. Lucas and I knew what she was doing, and we knew she was responsible enough to handle it. The subterfuge made us feel like we hadn’t raised her properly, if she thought she had to hide it from us.
     
    I suppose she thought it might change our opinion of her. Or that she’d be subjected to “discussions” she didn’t need. I’m not sure using dark magic is quite the same, but I suppose the basic analogy fits. I only hope that someday she’ll trust me enough to talk about it.
     
    The main thing was that Mel wasn’t seriously injured. Just seriously pissed off. She was still shouting for a rematch when Tommy hustled her out of the gym. No one paid any attention. All eyes were on Savannah as people crowded around, congratulating her, trying to talk to her, trying to set up matches.
     
    She heard none of it. She was on the phone, lost in a call.
     
    A few minutes ago, after taking the towel from me, she’d asked if I’d placed a bet.
     
    “No, but Adam did.”
     
    “Betting against me? The bastard.”
     
    “Do you seriously think he’d bet against you?” I lifted her iPhone. “He even had me record the match, though I don’t think we should tell the Gallantes that. Definitely against house rules.”
     
    She’d snatched the phone and called him, and left me fielding her congratulations