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Sealed With a Curse(37)

By:Cecy Robson


Taran gripped my arm. “Girl, I don’t know. He sure as hell looks dead to me.”

I ignored Taran and Misha. God, it creeped me out just looking at him. “Emme,” I urged, “pull him out with your force.”

Emme once told me she could feel everything she moved with her mind, as if it brushed against her hands. The way she swooned at my request told me she had no desire to touch a potentially redeceased body with gaping organs. Still, she gave it the old college try.

I wiped my sweaty palms against my blanket and reviewed the steps for mouth-to-mouth in my head. Sweet Jesus, please let him be okay.

Emme gathered her courage, ambled to the end, took a deep breath, and…nothing. For thirty long seconds, nothing happened. Misha’s head didn’t so much as bob out of the water.

“Damn it, Emme,” Taran urged. “Hurry up before we have a damn vegetable with fangs on our hands!”

Emme whimpered, her face turning purple from the strain. “I’m trying, but something heavy is pulling him down.”

A strange feeling of dread numbed me down to my toes. “Get help,” I said to Shayna.

She sprinted, screaming for Misha’s vampires while my eyes searched the dock for something to haul Misha out. Diving in remained out of the question. My sisters couldn’t swim, and I could manage a pathetic doggy paddle at best.

My rising anxiety threatened to unleash my tigress when I spotted one of those pole thingies used to maneuver boats into the dock. I used the metal hook at the end and tangled it around Misha’s hair with as much finesse as a frat boy on ice skates after a wild Saturday night. “Go, Emme. Go!”

With a collective grunt, Emme and I yanked with everything we had…only to land on our butts, sweating, panting, and Misha-less.

My eyes crossed as I stared at the huge knot of Misha’s hair at the end of my stick.

Shit.

I scrambled to the edge, completely out of ideas. A single bubble formed from Misha’s mouth. And that’s when I panicked. I flipped the pole and poked him hard in the head, between his shoulder blades, on his stomach, anywhere I could reach, desperate to move him.

“Why are you poking the master?” one of Misha’s bodyguards asked. The lot of them scowled like I’d rammed the damn stick up his nose.

I pointed wildly into the water. “He’s stuck. We need to get him out!”

Misha’s other guard, Tim, narrowed his eyes like he wanted nothing more than to bowl with my decapitated head. “Haven’t any of you learned to harness the power of the lake?” Our blank expressions answered for us. He rolled his eyes. “Just leave the master to his business and try not to get in the way.” He left and followed the others back to the house, not bothering to glance back.

I wanted to pounce on him and slap him upside the head—for not helping Misha and for being a monstrous prick. But then the water around Misha stirred and another bubble appeared, this time by his foot. A third bubble formed, followed by another, and another. To my horrendous shock, the water beneath Misha’s feet rapidly simmered until a full boil concealed his entire body.

What the hell?

“Son of a bitch!” Taran screamed. “We’re outta here.”

Soft thuds fell upon the grass as my sisters hauled ass across the lawn. Their Scooby-Doo-ish steps dwindled to a halt when Shayna hollered, “Celia’s not coming!”

My sisters bounded back in a frenzy and tried to lug me away. But I refused to move, hypnotized by the rippling magic cocooning Misha. The severity of the moment should have made me heed my sisters’ shouts of warning, and yet even my tigress remained glued there with curiosity. Tahoe wouldn’t just cook Misha like a lobster. Some deeply hidden secret was being unlocked within the lake. And this master vampire possessed the key.

I basked in the surging glory of the lake’s magic, ignoring Emme’s plea to run. My sisters’ tugging became more urgent, but what happened next halted their frantic efforts. A beautiful golden glow spawned in the center of the whirlpool of bubbles, igniting fireworks inside the lake. Thousands of light blue sparkles shimmered across the surface before erupting in a spray of light against our skin. I jumped, expecting to be scorched. Except the bizarre magic didn’t harm. Instead it fell upon me like warm water from a soothing shower, refreshing my skin and hair and eliminating my fatigue.

My sisters giggled uncontrollably as if tickled. I didn’t share their reaction. Mostly I just relished the soft caress against my muscles, massaging my remaining weariness away.

A loud creaking snapped me out of my mellow haze, just as gentle fingertips swept along my jawline. I jerked away from the touch in time to see Misha surface, the water slicking his long hair behind his head like a drape.