Demon Magic (Dragon's Gift: The Seeker #2)
Linsey Hall
Chapter One
Bank of Lake Laberge
Yukon Territory, Canada
“I think I’ve got it.” My magic finally sparked to life, a little ember shining inside my mind. Like a glowing orb, but so tiny and frail. I reached for it, envisioning myself with a hand outstretched to grasp it. The golden light of the magic warmed my fingertips.
So close. I reached harder, trying to control a power that was so new and unfamiliar. Honestly, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but the visualization trick felt like it was actually working.
“You’re doing well. The weather is turning,” Roarke said.
My gaze darted to him. We stood on the bank of a lake in northern Canada with the sun shining brightly on the water’s glass-smooth surface. Roarke stood closer to the shore, his dark gaze avid on the lake. For the hundredth time in the week since I’d met him, I was struck by how freaking handsome he was. You couldn’t tell from looking at him that he was the Warden of the Underworld, the bossman of everything on that whole side of life, but it was clear he was one powerful supernatural.
I still wasn’t sure what he was to me—we’d only kissed once and otherwise been as prickly as porcupines around each other—but he’d insisted on coming along while I practiced my new magic. He hadn’t left my side since he’d learned I was one super weird supernatural. A SuperWeird, as I’d started thinking of myself.
But he’d barely spoken to me in the last few days—and he clearly had stuff on his mind that he wasn’t sharing. Was it because I was a fugitive from his Underworld, and he was rethinking his promise not to force me to go back there?
I dragged my gaze from him. Now was not the time to be distracted by the fact that I had the hots for him. Especially since I had zero idea what we were to each other. He was helping me for now, so I’d take that at face value because I had bigger things on my plate. Like some seriously wiggly magic to try to control.
Raindrops sprinkled on my face. I grinned. The fair weather was turning foul, just as we’d hoped. My magic was working!
“Do you see it?” I squinted toward the lake, looking for the boat.
“Not yet. Keep going.”
I may have been responsible for the rain, the weather turning worse by the second, but I wasn’t a weather witch. Far from it.
I had a weird ability to bring the past back to life by weakening the barrier between the past and present. Problem was, I couldn’t control it. I’d only had the power for little more than a week, and all it had done was cause trouble.
So, we’d come up here, to the middle of nowhere in the mountains of the Yukon Territory, so that I could practice going back to one specific point in time. It wasn’t an important point in time, not to me at least, but it was more the specificity of it that mattered. We figured that being able to bring back the past from a specific moment was probably the most useful way to use my talent, so why not practice it? It was tough, but I’d always been a real toss-me-into-the-deep-end kind of girl.
“Come on,” I muttered as I reached for my magic, envisioning the small steamboat A.J. Goddard puffing toward us through the storm. I knocked on my head for good luck.
And this wasn’t just any storm. It was a storm from 1902.
In October of that fateful year, the little gold rush steamboat had encountered a storm on Lake Laberge and sunk to the bottom. It had happened only a hundred yards from shore. My goal was to bring that exact moment forward to the present, then send it back, returning everything to normal. It was the perfect tester, because there was no one to witness my forbidden magic out here in the middle of nowhere, yet the boat wrecked close enough to shore that I could see it happen, proving that I was learning to control my magic well enough to witness a specific moment in time.
It was genius, as long as I could actually do it.
Abruptly, the day turned dark. Rain pelted my face, and the wind picked up, roaring through the valley created by the rolling mountains. Waves kicked up on the lake, their tops glittering white in the dim light of the cloud-covered moon.
This was perfect shipwreck weather.
“Keep going,” Roarke encouraged. “You’re nearly there.”
My muscles trembled with the strain of controlling my magic. I envisioned the steamboat puffing toward us, smoke billowing from its stack. A ping of magical connection zipped through my veins.
Suddenly, the boat was there, real as day, though hard to see through the gloom. I could even feel a connection to it, like I was linked to the past with a string.
Jackpot!
I squinted against the pouring rain, my heart thudding as the waves crashed over the bow of the little boat. I couldn’t see the people yet, but they were on there. Five of them, if the newspapers were to be believed. I could feel a connection to them. To the scene that I had brought from the past.
But it was time to send them back.
Sweat prickled my cool skin as I reached for my magic, envisioning the historic scene disappearing back into the past.
Nothing happened. The wind continued to howl and the rain to pour. The boat struggled along as waves plowed into it. The smoke coming from the stack began to dissipate. They were losing their engines. This was it. Now that the boat had lost power, it would sink at any moment.
I sucked in a ragged breath and reached for my magic, but I couldn’t get hold of it. The visualization trick of grabbing the glowing ball didn’t work. I could feel my link to this scene from the past, like a wire stretched from me to the little boat. But I couldn’t manipulate my magic enough to break the connection.
My heart thundered as my power spiraled out of control.
Could we be stuck in the past? Did I bring it back permanently?
A harsh sob escaped my chest as I pushed myself. I could do this, damn it! But doubt crept in as the small steamboat continued to flounder in the waves.
If I couldn’t control my magic, how could I control anything at all? I was prophesied to be some kind of Guardian between the Underworld and this one, but I didn’t know what the heck that meant. And what good was I like this?
A sickening sense of failure spread in my chest like a sickness. Too familiar.
Any grip that I had on my magic vanished, snapped like a broken wire. Or like a wall had slammed down between me and my magic.
“It’s going down!” Roarke’s deep voice carried over the wind.
He was right. It was sinking. Waves had swamped the deck and were filling the hold with water. Two figures grappled at the bow, then leapt into the water.
“No!” I darted toward the shore.
They would drown. Three had died in this wreck, according to old newspapers. I didn’t want to let that happen again!
Right before I reached the water’s edge, I felt Roarke’s iron grip around my arm, jerking me to a halt.