The Spirit Seducer

Chapter 5

Layla turned her face away. There wasn't a good answer, no way to offer comfort.

I stood, strode toward the door. "I'll go home. Coyote will go back there to look for me. I'll trade myself for her." Hell, I'd walk all the way home if that's what it took.

"You will not. Absolutely not."

A strange pressure jolted against my skull, twisting my thoughts.

"What are you doing?" I gasped.

"I'm just telling you that you shouldn't go home. This is the best place for you."

I wouldn't go home. Layla was right. But . . . I wanted to . . . There was a reason I needed to be at my house. My thoughts were sluggish. More pressure pummeled at my head, further slowing my brain.

"Stop," I said, my voice feeble.

"Just sit down, E. Relax."

I collapsed into the nearest chair.

This—whatever Layla was doing to my head—felt invasive. Powerful.

Like magic.

I didn't want her in my head. My hands balled into fists as I forced my shaking limbs back up. I hated that I'd sat down when she told me to, just like a sweet little lap dog. Well, I wasn't sweet, and I wasn't her pet.

That new place that had sizzled to life during my skirmish with Coyote bubbled over. Layla stepped back, fear filling her eyes. My necklace hummed with a faint vibration I was beginning to recognize as the spirits stirring.

"You need to stop whatever's going on up there." Layla tapped her temple, her voice rising at the end to a squeak. "You're letting Coyote know where you are. Turn it off!"

"Not until you stop using magic on me," I grunted.

"Okay," Layla said. She held up both hands. "No magic. Calm down, Echo." Layla's power pressed against mine, and my head pulsed in hot waves.

I tried to steady my breathing, regulate my thoughts. It was like wrangling a tiger back into a too-small cage. Sweat beaded across my forehead and upper lip, the back of my neck.

The deep yoga breaths only helped so much. The thing inside me quivered with need. It wanted out. It wanted to attack.

Layla continued to talk to me, her voice now much more soothing, but the words just as powerful against my overheated mind.

How could I not have noticed the pressure she exerted on me before?

I had noticed. Many times. I just hadn't understood what was causing the earthquakes inside my skull. It wasn't just my mom's magic I'd been fighting. I'd fought Layla's, too.

My mom said I'd always had migraines. I was eleven when the headaches hit with regularity. I'd talked my mom into tai chi classes. I'd studied the moves in one of the library books I brought home, after Layla had begun talking about the class she was in.

In the tai chi class, I hadn't learned much more than the basic forms, which was too bad. Tai chi, like many of the martial arts, was supposed to help with control—something I'd always craved. Instead, I learned just how cruel preteen girls could be.

I'd been teased relentlessly about my petite frame—I was multiple inches shorter than the next girl. One, who was also eleven, towered over me by at least eight inches.

"You're a sad little echo," the girls used to laugh as they surrounded me, spinning. I'd fisted my hands and blinked back tears. "A sad little echo no one ever wanted," they'd say. How they knew I didn't have a father, I never knew, but I hated them for their comments.