Cursed (The Spellbound Series, #2)

15 | Freaks of Nature

A/N: Pause for a moment and vote for this chapter. Thanks!

Chapter 15 – Freaks of Nature

Melissa held her arms out beside her, her feet feeling around for stability underneath her as the ground tremored slightly, and let out an earthy growl. As the rumbling drew to a close, she glanced between Landon and Hayley, and though the pseudo-earthquake and the entranced gaze the two now shared was more than enough confirmation, she still felt compelled to voice to the question that clawed at her throat. "You two are bound?"

Landon, who still had his hands clasped to the sides of his head, seemed too flustered to answer. Hayley, however, eventually noticed that a question had been posed. "Looks like it, yeah," she eventually mumbled. Her expression was fairly muted, but Melissa could see that a light now flickered in her blue eyes. "God, this is so weird."

"But... is that even possible?" Melissa's voice was almost a whisper. She hadn't been a witch her whole life like everyone else in the room, but even she had a pretty solid idea of the parameters of bound magic. The way the Blake Brothers had described it to her the day they'd told her about witchcraft, the way she'd experienced it every moment since she'd met Cameron... It had always felt like something so sacred and beautiful that you shared with one person, and no-one else.

"'Every witch in existence is bound to one other,' is what you told me," she said, her eyes on Anson as she recalled his words the day he'd told her she and his brother were connected. "How can Landon be bound to two witches?"

"As far as I know – as far as any mystical witch knows - it's only ever one, even after one of them dies," he replied, looking utterly perplexed. He threw up his hands. "Then again, considering that Landon could sense that he and Sam were bound while Sam was still a dark witch, I think we should throw the two-and-a-half-millennia's worth of magical norm out the window when these two are involved."

"I'm sorry." It was Hayley, whose eyebrows were knitted together. "But what are you people on about?"

"What we're on about is that my blue-eyed brother over there already has a bound witch," Cameron explained, and accompanied it with a gesture of his hand to one of the couches in the living room, which had been pressed up against the wall. "Sam."

"Sam!" Melissa exclaimed after she had followed Cameron's hand, and seen her friend lying unconscious. She rushed to the couch, her hands trembling with panic as she knelt at his side. She had been shocked when Anson broke the news to her, but it hadn't really hit home while they drove back to the Blake house. But now that she could see him, and could touch his face, her eyes stung and her insides twisted as she realized that he was really at death's door.

His closed eyelids, dry nostrils and cracked lips made no movement, and his hair had clumps of it missing. At his chest, his ammonite charm was no longer white, but a vile dark green. His body had reduced to protruding bones, and his skin was pale and flaky, and cold to the touch. It was as though he was falling apart, and yet somehow he seemed peaceful in his dead silence. Melissa's throat was dry as she spoke. "Anson said this is some kind of curse?"

"A withering curse, yeah," Landon muttered in reply, though he sounded distracted. Melissa looked over her shoulder and saw him, his eyes still at the door. "Who are these girls, and why are they here?"

"This is Hayley Rose, White Sapphire witch," Anson told him, without any gesture, though Melissa considered that Landon probably knew the girl's name without having to ask, the way she and Cameron had the night they'd met. "And next to her is Madeline, her sister, and resident siren."