Free Spellbound by Cate Tiernan

think it is?” he asked cryptically. He sat down on my bed again, and I had no idea how to answer him. “All right,” he said, “back to the candle. I believe that you saw something. Selene’s house has been spelled inside and out with ward-evil, confusion, barrier spells, you name it. A member of the council and I worked for hours after the fire, trying to seal the house and dispel the negative energy from it. Obviously we didn’t do enough.”
    “Do you think it’s Cal, or Selene, back inside?” I asked. Had that been Cal I saw in the window, Cal, so close?
    “I don’t know. I can’t see how they could get in, after everything we did. But I can’t dismiss the possibility. I’ll have to check into it.”
    Of course he would. He was a Seeker. I realized then that I hadn’t wanted to tell him in case it had been Cal I’d seen. Even after all that Cal had done, I didn’t want Hunter to be seeking him. A vision of David Redstone, weeping and writhing as his power left him, rose up in my mind. I couldn’t bear the thought of Cal suffering the same torment.
    Hunter’s face was serious and still. “Look,” he said, standing up and reaching into his backpack. “Let’s scry together, right now, joining our energy. Let’s just see what happens.” He took a purple silk bundle out of the backpack and unwrapped it. Inside was a large, dark, flattish stone. “This was my father’s lueg ,” he said, his voice expressionless. “Have you scryed with a stone before?”
    I shook my head. “Only with fire.”
    “Stones are as reliable as fire,” he told me, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Fire is harder to work with but offers more information. Come sit down.”
    I sat across from him, our knees touching, as if we were about to do tàth meànma . Leaning forward, I looked into the flat, polished face of the stone, feeling the familiar excitement of exploring something new in Wicca. My hair draped forward, brushing the stone. Quickly I gathered it at the base of my neck and with practiced gestures twisted it into a braid. I didn’t bother securing the end but let it hang behind me.
    “It seems like not too many girls have long hair anymore,” Hunter said absently. “They all have short, layery . . .” He motioned with his hands, unable to come up with the vocabulary to describe modern do’s.
    “I know,” I said. “I think about cutting it sometimes. But I hate fussing with a style. This way I never have to think about it.”
    “It’s beautiful,” Hunter said. “Don’t cut it.” Then he blinked and became businesslike, while I once again tried to get my bearings on the peaks and valleys of our interaction. “Right. Now, this is just the same as scrying with fire. You open yourself to the world, accept what knowledge the universe offers you, and try to not think: just be. Just like with fire.”
    “Got it,” I said, still processing the fact that Hunter liked my hair.
    “Good. Now, we’re looking for Cal or Selene,” Hunter said, his voice softening and fading.
    We leaned toward each other, our heads almost touching, our hands joined lightly on the lueg . It was like looking into a black pool in a woods, I thought. Like looking down a well. As my breathing shifted and slowed and my consciousness expanded gently into the space around me, the lueg began to seem like a hole in the universe, an opening into incomprehensible wonders, answers, possibilities.
    I could no longer feel anything physically: I was suspended in time, in space, and existed only because of my thoughts and my energy. I felt Hunter’s life force near mine, felt his warmth, his presence, his intelligence, and nothing startled me. Everything was fine.
    In the face of the stone I began to see swirls of gray mist, like striated clouds, and I released any expectations I’d had and simply watched to see what they would become. Then it was like watching a video or a moving photograph: I saw a person, walking toward me, as if