Page 65 of Iced Out Mate

He stood on the porch, arms crossed over his chest. He wore a thick gray jacket with the hood thrown over his head. The watcher vines hung limply from the roof. We got out of the car, gravel crunching under our sneakers. Dylan and I both waved but I held an arm out for Dylan to slow down as we approached.

“I want to test something,” I said. I grabbed the bracelet out of my pocket—felt like touching poison ivy—and tossed it at the vines.

They instantly snatched it out of the air. More vines started to come down from the porch, wrapping around the bracelet, pulling it up.

“So that’s what triggered them,” Dylan said. He shook his head. He looked slightly uncomfortable with hands stuffed into the pocket of his pants, his shoulders stiff and rigid. I didn’t blame him after he saw what those things did to me.

Hunter disabled the watcher vines which had them go limp and drop the bracelet. He picked it up as if he were grabbing a venomous snake. “I take it this is what you want to talk about?” He looked between Dyl and me.

“It is.”

He nodded and turned to enter his house, muttering, “Follow me,” over his shoulder, a whiff of garlic trailing behind him. I reached for Dylan’s hand. He took it, fingers locking with mine.

We walked through the hanging vines and entered Hunter’s home. “Sit, sit.” Hunter shrugged his jacket off and hung it on an already full rack next to the door. It smelled like moss and freshly turned soil inside. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t exactly inviting either.

We went to his couch, pretty much in the exact same spots as last time. Hunter offered us some wine, but we declined. I had to stay sharp tonight. He excused himself, but instead of coming back with a drink, he returned with a stone bowl overflowing with water. He gently placed the bowl down on the center of the coffee table and then sat across from us. The water inside the bowl was almost fluorescent blue. I wasn’t sure if it was how the inside of the bowl had been painted or if the water was really that blue.

“Tell me, what’s going on?”

And so Dylan and I worked together to tell the story of what had happened since the last time we’d been here. About the dove, and the bracelet, and the suspicions about Macie. I pulled out the threatening letter that had been left with the dove. Hunter took it and read it, his face remaining stern and stoic. He didn’t seem like a man who was often shaken. He also looked like he had been letting his beard and hair grow since the last time I’d seen him. He placed the letter on his lap and reached up, unpinning the loose bun and letting his long brown hair fall down near his shoulders.

“So,” I asked, exhausted but hopeful. “Can you help us figure this out?”

He stroked his beard, thinking, before the corner of his lip twitched into a smile. “Yes, I think I can. I think you’ve given me enough to scry and see if Macie really is linked to all of this.”

“Scrying?” Dylan asked.

Hunter nodded. He ran his finger around the stone bowl. “Matter, energy, water, it’s all recycled. This water here has touched corners of the world we’d never see in our lifetimes. With a little bit of mana manipulation—the energy druids can naturally tap into—we can get a reflection to show an image of who or what it is that we seek.” Hunter dipped his fingers into the unnaturally blue water. Ripples slowly rolled away from his touch, bouncing off the smooth gray stone bowl. “It takes coaxing to get the image clear, and with your suspicions, we can direct the mana toward a certain person. If it’s a link, then we’ll see their reflection in here, showing us where they currently are.”

I held my breath as I watched Hunter work. He removed his dripping fingers and grabbed the bracelet off the table. He said something under his breath and for the quickest of moments there was a bright green light shining underneath his palm, flashing upward.

He placed the bracelet in the bowl. The water fizzed and bubbled as if we’d dropped some kind of chemical solvent to cause the reaction.

“And now the letter.”

He picked it up from his lap and held a corner of it over a burning candle. It caught and started to burn. He placed the letter on the surface of the water. The fire briefly spread outward, as if the water had been oil this entire time. It vanished once it reached the edges of the bowl. The letter sank to the bottom, the ink swirling off. There was a figure forming.

“Look inside. Who do you see?”

Dyl placed a reassuring hand on my leg. I put my hand over his. I didn’t want to be right. I couldn’t imagine being right. I braced myself.

Leaned forward. Looked in the bowl.

Saw eyes I recognized.

Sucked in a sharp breath. I closed my eyes and shook my head, unable to rationalize this. All this time. It had been her?

Dylan knew just by my reaction alone. He dropped his head and cursed under his breath. He rubbed my leg, trying to reassure me. But this—fucking hell. It broke me. My best friend’s sister was threatening to kill my fated mate. How could I reconcile that with who I knew her to be?

“And this is certain? She’s the one who wrote this letter?” I asked.

Hunter nodded his head solemnly. “And who cursed the bracelet. It appears she’s a druid who’s working with black magic. A defiler. That’s grounds for imprisonment, or worse.”

“Worse?” Dylan asked.

“The Druidic Council doesn’t take kindly to people working with death energies. It can corrupt not just the user but the people around them, if they do it for long enough. It’s like a poison that spreads. So if there’s a druid that’s found to be using it, depending on what they’ve done and for how long, they can either be jailed on Razor Island or they can be numbed.” Hunter’s skin blanched at that last one. “No druid ever wants their connection to mana severed. It turns them into lifeless husks. I don’t know which fate is worse.”

It was as if I’d been dunked into an ice bath. Shock and fear chilled my bones. As horrible as she had made my life these past few years, I still felt a need to try and figure out a way to fix this before she was sentenced to a life of misery. Not only had I known her since she was a kid, but I also didn’t want to do anything that would inflict more pain and trauma on Emmy’s life. He’d suffered so much loss already. Could I talk to her? Make her admit to it all and just stop? Promise that she’d stopped working with black magic as well?