Southern Karma Read online

  “I’ll make some lunch,” Axel said.

  He whipped up grilled cheese sandwiches in no time. Paige only ate one. I expected her to eat at least two, but I guess Betty had stuffed Paige so full at breakfast that she was sated for a few hours.

  I stared at the golden bread on my plate. I lifted a slice to my mouth, but I didn’t have an appetite. Like none.

  “I’m scared,” I blurted out.

  Axel and Paige turned to me.

  “This…this whole thing is my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid and insisted we get that time watch so Rufus couldn’t steal it, we would be fine. Seriously fine. But I had to have things my way, and now we’re living in a perpetual Groundhog Day.”

  “It would’ve happened anyhow,” Axel said between chews.

  “What?”

  He pointed his sandwich at me. “Once Mythica realized Rufus had the fake time watch, she would’ve searched out the real one in the Vault. She would’ve gotten hold of it one way or another. You did the right thing by having it on you.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  He licked butter from his thumb. Boy, was it sexy to see his full lips wrap over his thumb and simply suck it off. My stomach quivered. Wait! What was I thinking? The town was in deep doo-doo, and I was fantasizing about Axel. I needed to get myself straight.

  “No, I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. It would’ve happened anyway. Or something like it. Mythica didn’t have altruistic plans for the time watch. But it is what it is, and we move on. We fix it. What I’m more concerned about is this gorgon who’s turning people to stone. We need to be careful. Someone knows that we’re trying to fix the barrier, and they don’t want us to do that. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He clapped his hands. “So. We fix the time watch and then find the murderer. Those are the priorities. Got it?”

  I swallowed. “Got it.”

  Axel smiled at Paige. “How’s your sandwich?”

  “Great.”

  I ate a few bites. Then Axel took us to the cellar, where his wizard workshop was. Steel shelves lined the walls, and all sorts of objects were painstakingly placed about.

  “Is that the griffin feather from Amulet’s workshop?”

  Suspended from the ceiling was a beautiful brown feather about the size of a preschooler.

  Axel nodded. “Yep, and we’re going to use it. Some of it.”

  “What if you ruin it?”

  He gritted his teeth. “It has to be used.”

  I slid my fingers down the silky surface. “I hate to see it mutilated.”

  “It’s a feather. It’ll be okay.” He clapped his hands. “We need Hugo.”

  I called the dragon, and he bounded down the stairs. Axel placed the broken time watch minus the emerald in the center of a stone table.

  “From what I’ve read, this is how it needs to go. We need a dragon’s flame to heat the metal; then Pepper, you and I must work to put the watch together.”

  “How?” I said.

  “Our powers will meld. You’ll touch me, and we’ll join. Paige, this is why we need you. You have to start the spark that opens our minds to one another.”

  Whoa. This was like a new age retreat where everyone ran around naked and talked about free love. “I’m sorry. Wait. Open our minds?”

  Axel nodded patiently. “Yes. Our magic has to fuse for this to work. It may sound scary, but it’s what must happen.”

  Panic kicked up a tornado in my gut. Meld our minds? “Does that mean we’ll be able to read each other’s thoughts?”

  “Yep.” Axel winked. “So any dirty thoughts you have about me, I’ll know.”

  It wasn’t that. It was all my insecurities that I didn’t want him to know. He didn’t need to know that I was afraid he’d dump me after a certain amount of time, or that sometimes I forgot to brush my teeth before bedtime and woke up with dragon breath. These were not things he needed to discover about me for a very, very long while. If ever.

  I voted on never.

  Axel wrapped his hand around my neck. He stared at me. His fingers were flames licking my skin. His gaze speared my heart to my spine. My breath staggered in my throat.

  “Pepper, I’m as scared as you, but we have to do this. There’s no choice.”

  “I’m not scared. Not scared. No way. The last thing I am is scared. I am an open book. Hear that? Open book. Seriously. I’m like the Bible. Just open me and all the words spill out.”

  Axel lips twitched into a sort of Ryan Gosling embarrassed smile. I think I fell a little bit more in love with him.

  Wait. What?

  There’s no falling in love when the world is collapsing. When we’re stuck in time and it’s never-ending Halloween. No. There will be none of that nonsense.

  None. So don’t even go there.

  “If that’s settled,” Axel said, “Paige, I need you over here.”

  The young girl moved closer.

  “Touch both of our hands—when I say to—and open us to each other.”

  It was Greek to me, but Paige nodded in understanding.

  Axel flashed a smile. “Pepper, I need you to get Hugo to breathe on the metal so I can put it back together.”

  “But it’ll be hot. Where are your gloves?”

  He grimaced. “I can handle it. It’s the werewolf in me.”

  I shot him a concerned look.

  “Trust me. It’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” I said.

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Then let’s do this.”

  And please, please don’t let me think anything embarrassing.

  “Pepper, you coax Hugo.”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the dragon. Hugo, I need you to make fire.

  Hugo cocked his head like a dog trying to decipher something.

  Over here. On the table. Fire.

  Hugo padded over. For half a second I didn’t know if he’d do it, but then he opened his mouth and a stream of flame shot out, covering the broken pieces of the watch.

  Axel looked at Paige. “Now.”

  Paige's hand gripped my arm. A jumble of thoughts and feelings invaded my head.

  “Relax,” she said to me.

  How could I relax? I was generally a very wound-up person. Well, not all the time but sometimes.

  I exhaled a deep breath and did my best to not think about all the things I didn’t want anyone to know. At the recesses of my mind I could feel Paige gently pushing, trying to get me to open.

  It was like accepting a Facebook friend request. You know, sometimes they’re not real accounts, and sometimes people are trying to connect because they’re friends of friends. Kind of like they’re third cousins twice removed but for some reason want to invade your life—I mean, be part of it.

  Anyway, Paige prodded me. I exhaled, trying to relax. I exhaled again, felt my shoulders sink and started to hear something—Axel. I could hear him talking in my head.

  Relax, Pepper. You can do it.

  Okay, so maybe he’d only have access to the thoughts I wanted him to know. Not the deep dark things. Or at least thoughts I deemed to be deep and dark.

  I released another shot of air, and his voice came through louder.

  That’s right. Just let me in. Let our power touch. Let me touch your mind.

  I looked into his blue eyes. Axel’s gaze wrapped me in concrete. My stomach quivered. All I had to do was let this man in. Didn’t I trust him?

  Yes, I trusted him. I could do it. I could let him in.

  I shook out my head and felt my hair tumble across my shoulders. I could sense that Axel was right behind a wall. All I had to do was destroy the barrier with my mind and he would be there.

  The wall started crumbling like stale bread. Axel’s consciousness touched mine. My mind was a blossoming flower tilted toward his sun. The wedge between us dissolved. I could feel it. I could feel our mind’s touch. It was like being caught in a whirlwind.

&n
bsp; My eyes flared as his power coursed through my veins. We were so close. Axel extended a hand toward the time watch. His fingers were about to touch it.

  I glanced away and looked at a small marble on another table. It was clear glass. I don’t know why it captured my attention. As I stared at it, the marble clouded until it was opaque.

  I sucked air. My brow furrowed. My heart quickened. I broke the spell tethering me to Axel and crossed to the marble. I picked it up. It weighed twice what it should have. The surface was porous, hard and gray, very gray.

  “What?” Axel said in frustration. He raked hair slick with sweat from his face.

  “This,” I whispered. The horror of what I’d done hit me. “This marble. It was glass. Now it’s stone.” I pressed my fingers to my temple. “All I did was look at it, Axel. That’s all.”

  His brow tightened in confusion.

  Paige spoke quietly. “She has the power of the gorgon.”

  My stomach crashed to the floor. “What?”

  She slowly nodded. “You have the gorgon’s power.”

  Everything collapsed. The world tilted and tipped. It was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  My immediate emotions of dread and panic were quickly replaced with anger.

  Great. Just what I needed. To have uncontrollable gorgon power. There was one person in town who knew about this—Rufus Mayes. He’d almost admitted it back at the police department. That sucker knew what was going on. It was time for him to fess up.

  ELEVEN

  I called Mint and Licky to take Paige back to Betty’s. They arrived a few minutes later. I wanted to talk to Axel alone. Mainly because I felt raw, scraped clean on the inside.

  I sat on his couch, a blanket thrown over my shoulders. My knees were drawn up to my chest, but that didn’t stop Axel from cupping my hands in his.

  “Tell me what happened,” he prodded. The flare of concern in his eyes made my heart twist.

  “I was opening up to you when this marble caught my attention. I stared at it, and then the sucker turned to stone. Freaking stone, Axel. I have no idea how it happened. That’s the worst part. I don’t know how I did it. It could happen again.” I closed my eyes tight. “I don’t want to look at you. What if making eye contact causes me to turn you to stone?”

  The more I said it, the more I vomited my fears, the more my anger started to swell. I mean, I hadn’t asked for this, and I didn’t want it. I wasn’t going to be victim to whatever stupid curse that gorgon had placed on me.

  Axel’s hand slid over my cheek. The rough callouses soothed me, brought me back from the edge.

  I couldn’t keep the bite from my tone. “Rufus knows something about this.”

  “Whatever it is,” Axel said soothingly, “we will get through this. I don’t know if us working together flared the power or if it’s latent. I don’t know how it works. But what I do know is that you’re in trouble. Pepper, I will do whatever I can to fix this.”

  I took his hand and held it to my chest. “I know you will.”

  He tipped his head down. The hard glint in his eyes took me by surprise. “No, you don’t. You say that, but in the end you think it’ll be you against the world.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes. You do.” His jaw clenched. For some reason this conversation was irritating him. I was the one with the stupid power, and he was annoyed. What the heckabaloo was that about?

  I slapped my thighs. “Okay, Axel. I give up. I say I know you care about me, and you tell me I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you think I’ll abandon you. You think that I’ll stick around for a little while, but when I’ve sucked you dry, I’m done.” A bright flame rose in his gaze. “Let me tell you one thing. I’m not about to be done with you. Not anytime soon. So let’s get that out of the way.”

  Heat flushed my cheeks. We’d never done anything more than kiss, but Axel was revealing a well of emotion I wasn’t ready for.

  “I care about you,” he said. “I’ll do what I have to.” He rose, took my hand and pulled me to my feet. He did it with such command that my breath hitched.

  My chest was pressed flat to him. Axel smoothed hair from my face and hooked a finger under my chin, tilting my face to his. “You rock me to my core, Pepper Dunn. I haven’t—I’ve never felt this way about a woman. I would go to hell just to steal the devil’s pitchfork in order to prove what you mean to me.”

  I cocked my head. “That’s so tempting,” I teased.

  “Come here,” he growled, and his lips met mine with such fierceness that I felt it in my bones. They fizzled and popped. My nerve endings sizzled, and life force flowed through me in a way that left very little room for doubt.

  There was still doubt. But you know, I’m me. One heart mutilation makes a girl shy to experience it again.

  When we came up for air, Axel squeezed my hand. “Now. Let’s go see about Rufus.”

  We drove to the police station. It was getting to be later in the afternoon, but you couldn’t tell from the darkness outside.

  “The sooner we get things fixed, the better,” Axel said.

  Garrick Young was nowhere to be found when we entered the building. There were several officers, each toting in what appeared to be drunken revelers.

  “Why don’t you come in here and sleep it off for a while,” one of the officers said.

  My jaw dropped when I realized the officer was pulling in Betty Craple and her new best friend, Wilma.

  “You let me go right now, Shuler,” Betty snapped. “We’re not drunk. We’re trying to fix the shields. For goodness’ sake, two more people were just murdered. You need to be out there finding them and not worried about a couple of old ladies.”

  Officer Shuler’s cheeks crimsoned. He was a round-faced man who looked more cowboy than crime fighter in his large-brimmed fedora, leather vest and duster.

  “So you pulling your pants down and mooning half the town was because you were trying to fix the shields,” Shuler said.

  “That’s how you do it,” Wilma said. “You have to be naked.”

  “Well, be naked somewhere else.”

  Axel looked at me. I raked my fingers through my hair. “I. Just. Can’t.”

  He guided me over to Rufus. That horrible Rufus had a smug smirk on his face that I wanted to slap right off.

  If there hadn’t been bars between us, I just might have.

  I pressed my shoulder against the cell. “I can turn things to stone.”

  “Sounds like talent,” he said.

  “Cut the crap, Mayes,” Axel said. “What do you know about it?”

  “Not much. Sounds like you’ve got a gorgon virus.”

  I reached through the bars and grabbed Rufus’s collar. “You know what’s going on. Don’t lie to me. Something happened. When the three of us touched, I felt something. You know what it is. Tell me.”

  Rufus coughed and sputtered. “Let me go.”

  It was against my better judgment, but I opened my hand. Rufus pulled away and flipped up the cape collar. Yes, he was still dressed like Count Chocula.

  He smoothed his black hair. “Mythica ensured I would help her get the time watch by spelling me with some of her powers. If I didn’t help, I’d be stuck with the ability to turn things to stone for the rest of my life.”

  Axel folded his arms. “Sounds like your kind of paradise.”

  Rufus nodded enthusiastically. “You’d think so, but not quite. Not when I didn’t know how to control it or how to make it work effectively. Let’s face it, the last thing I needed was to be in an intimate situation with my paramour, undergo an intense emotional surge and turn her into stone. Do you know how horrible that would’ve been?”

  I waited a beat. “Sure. Horrible. Actually I don’t know which is worse—you having the power or you being intimate with a woman. Both make me want to puke.”

  “I am human, Pepper.”

  “That’s up for debate.”

  Axel tipped his hea
d at an intimidating angle. “Let’s focus on the situation. Rufus, do you know how to fix this?”

  “Perhaps.” He scratched his chin. “There may be a spell that can clean you, but there’s a catch.”

  “Of course,” I said. “This couldn’t be easy.”

  Rufus smirked. “You need me. You have to have the person you inherited the spell from in order to cleanse you.”

  “What about Mythica?” Axel said.

  Rufus’s grip tightened on the bars. He licked his lips as if he could taste freedom in the air. “You don’t need Mythica. But me, you do.”

  I eyed him to see if I could detect a hint of lie behind his words. “What will happen to the powers?”

  “They disappear. Poof! Just like that, they’re gone.” He paused, glanced from me to Axel. “But you need me.”

  I nibbled my bottom lip and stared at Axel. He gave a slight nod. “Let’s find Garrick. See what’s going on.”

  We didn’t have to look far. Garrick Young strode in a few seconds later holding a couple of school-aged boys by the scruff of their necks.

  “Sit down there and wait for your parents. They won’t be happy to hear you were trying to set the haunted house spiders loose throughout town.”

  He made sure the boys had their butts in the seats and walked to a phone. Before he reached it, his gaze settled on us.

  “Reign, this is a nightmare. How’s fixing the time watch going?”

  “Slow,” he said. “We’ve run into a complication. We need Rufus to help us.”

  Garrick shifted his weight. “No can do. I’ve got so many folks screaming at me about his presence here—yes, it’s gotten out—that I’ve got to move him down to the cave prison.”

  Below Magnolia Cove existed a series of caves that doubled as a prison. I didn’t know how it worked as I’d never before been to see them. But I knew that once folks entered, they never returned.

  My hopes evaporated. “The prison that witches go to and never come back from?”

  Garrick tipped his hat. “That’s the one.”

  TWELVE

  Axel flexed his shoulders. “Garrick, we’ve got to have Rufus. Pepper’s been cursed with some sort of ability to turn objects into stone.”