Free Spun by Sorcery by Barbara Bretton Page A

love. And if none of that had happened, he wouldn’t be balanced on the knife’s edge between worlds right now.
    Janice knelt down next to Luke and moved her hands over his chest and along his neck. She splayed her fingers over his face, speaking softly in a language I would never know. Luke lay there motionless. His face was no longer red and mottled; the ghastly pallor of human death was washing the redness away.
    I held his hand in mine, grateful for the warmth. His pulse was weak but it was still there.
    I had seen Janice work miracles. Her healing powers were strong. If anyone could turn this around, she could. But I was still terrified.
    “He’s human, Janice,” I said. “Have you ever worked on a full-blooded mortal before?”
    “Not to this extent,” she said, “but right now I’m all he has.”
    “What if he’s in some kind of shock?” I said to her. “Maybe we should take him to a hospital.” I watched Grey’s Anatomy.
    “Shock!” Janice sounded elated. “That’s it. . . .” Her hands were a blur as they swept patterns over his body. Her voice rose and fell with the strange words.
    “Come on,” I whispered. “Come on!”
    Janice’s eyes fluttered closed. Her lips moved but I couldn’t hear the words any longer. She had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow, deep into the heart of her knowledge and magick.
    “What the hell are you doing?” Luke sprang to a sitting position and glared at Janice. The pallor, the harsh breathing, the swollen eyes—all gone. He was big, healthy, and pissed off.
    “A simple thank-you would be plenty,” she snapped, glaring back at him.
    “Janice just saved your life, you idiot.” I was laughing and crying simultaneously as I threw my arms around him.
    He leaned slightly away and looked into my eyes. “I’m serious: what happened?”
    “Your eyes . . . you lost your—” I frowned. “You don’t remember?”
    He didn’t. The episode was a total blank to him.
    “Remember what?” he asked.
    I filled him in on the details.
    “Shit,” he said. “Are you kidding me?”
    We all knew the question was rhetorical.
    He stood up and brushed dirt off his jeans. His color had returned to normal. Even I had trouble believing the last few minutes had been anything but some kind of crazy dream.
    “Don’t move,” I said. “I should have done this hours ago.”
    I conjured up a simple but effective protective charm then doubled it for good measure.
    “Thanks,” Luke said. “Does that make me catproof?”
    Janice and I exchanged looks. He still didn’t understand that cats lived above the rules of law and magick.
    I reached for the handle on the driver’s-side door.
    Luke frowned. “Isn’t the guy supposed to open the car door?”
    “No offense,” I said to Luke, “but so far you’ve driven us over an embankment and gone temporarily blind.”
    “You hate driving,” he reminded me.
    “Yes,” I agreed, “but it turns out I hate crashing even more.”
    “I’m a damn good driver.”
    “Not today you’re not.”
    “You’re blaming me because you have a lousy car with no snow tires and no four-wheel drive?”
    “I’m not blaming anyone, Luke, but I’m still driving.” Okay, so maybe I did blame him but not in an ugly sort of way. We’d been up for over twenty-four hours. We’d engaged in a fierce battle with Isadora, lost my hometown, pushed our way through a blizzard, crashed through a guardrail and plunged twenty feet to almost certain death, then topped off the fun with temporary blindness.
    He was only human and humans had their physical limits. It wouldn’t be long before I reached my limits, too, but the magick side of my lineage would carry me through a little longer.
    I was still new to the whole male-female dance. Sometimes I could be a little too direct. I loved him. I didn’t want to hurt him. “You understand, right? We’re going to be busy when we reach Salem. You could catch a nap or something.”
    I watched as his jaw worked