Entangled (Spellbound #1)

Chapter 6

The dim room was making Raj sleepy. Adrian's voice in the main chamber brought it all back into focus.

"Just relax, Mrs. Court, and give me your hands."

Adrian, or Hedrick, as he went by these days, was barely visible through the narrow gap between the velvet curtain and the doorway leading into the back room where Raj was crouched on a low stool. On the other side of the curtain, the dark chamber was lit with dripping candles. Adrian sat in front of his client at a round table covered in a midnight-blue tablecloth. The setting looked better suited to a psychic reading than a healing session.

Luckily Raj could see in the dark. If only he could absorb an entire book with the touch of his palm instead of flipping through a tome on the art and magic of healing terminal diseases.

Adrian had told Raj he'd be fixing a migraine, not a brain tumor.

He shouldn't have been surprised when the shady warlock pulled a fast one on him. There was a reason the coven had stripped Adrian of his powers. The man couldn't be trusted. Adrian did, however, pay cash under the table to those who accepted employment working for the famed Hedrick the Healer. Basically, Raj was doing Adrian's work for him.

Before losing his powers, he'd called himself Adrian the Avenger, and it was his business of avenging that had cost him his powers.

Adrian Hedrick Montez.

Rumor had it he started out in his early youth as Montez the Magician before going on the whole avenger kick. Rumor also had it that Adrian's body wasn't his own. The body one chose for themselves said a lot about a person. Adrian's was about twenty-two years old, tall and muscular with thick brown hair.

"Now I'm going to blindfold you, my dear. Do not be alarmed. The eye has a tendency to want to open and I need to ensure they stay closed while I take a look inside your brain."

As Adrian tied the blindfold over Mrs. Court's eyes, Raj silently slipped into the chamber and took the seat Adrian had vacated. Mrs. Court's aura crackled. That's what had tipped Raj off about a serious illness to begin with. Without the curtain blocking his view of her, he saw that Mrs. Court transmitted a distinct white.

"Now I'm going to put my hands on your head." Adrian's voice would be coming from behind Mrs. Court, but Raj supposed that added to the illusion of his powers.

Raj reached forward. Mrs. Court's tight curls felt crusty under his palms. The woman must have used half a canister of aerosol. Raj leaned forward and lined his eyes with Mrs. Court's covered eyes. He closed his.

There were bright horizontal lines running across his mind. They were faint and brilliant all at once. Raj worked his fingers through Mrs. Court's curls. He applied his finger pads to her scalp like suctions. The lines moved up like a ripple in the wake of a disturbance.

Raj searched the lines, scrolling through them like text on a machine. But he'd reached the end and seen nothing. He started backwards, slower. Everything looked the same. For all he knew, he was looking at the same static and fuzz he'd see if he were sitting alone with his eyes closed.

This was crazy.

Raj had once tried to make his sister well and she'd only had a common cold. Plus it'd been his sister—he'd had every motivation to heal her. If he'd had the ability to, he would have transferred the cold to himself instead.

Raj spread his fingers wider, as though they were little antennas and all he needed was to pick up the tumor's signal. But now he couldn't move the image up or down. He was stuck inside a static void.

At least Adrian was keeping quiet. Raj swore if he heard the man say, "I think I see something" or "Interesting" he'd take his speech from him.

Perhaps not the best idea. Powers or not, Adrian was not a forgiving man. Raj would just have to shoot him a look. But he couldn't even make out Adrian's breath.