Magic to the Bone by Annie Bellet Read Free Book Online Page A

and try not to die. Life, on Hardcore mode , she thought with a twinge of bleak humor. No do-overs. No save files.
    Harper hung back at the edge of the woods, waiting with Alek while he tookin the silent scene. Just one SUV left. A few lights in the windows, though the bathroom window she had escaped out of, twice, was dark. She met Alek’s gaze and he gave a soft huffling grunt.
    They moved in a line, small red fox and giant white tiger, crossing the open ground between the woods and the house with low, quick strides. Alek held himself back for her, Harper knew, letting her stayon his tail, using his bulk to clear the snow. They were going to leave a hell of a trail, but it didn’t matter. There was no hiding they had been here now, not with a dead wolf behind them.
    She wondered if Ezee and Levi were all right, but immediately pushed that worry from her mind. They had their job to do and they would do it. The brothers would look out for each other, and Levi’s wolverinewas more than a match for a wolf, even a shifter wolf.
    Harper reached the edge of the house behind Alek. Still no noise, no movement. She smelled nothing out of the ordinary, but not many ordinary smells either. Snow, mud, Alek’s tiger scent. Fainter smell of wolf and human. And horse. Which was odd, because unicorns didn’t smell like horses exactly. Without waiting for Alek, Harper slid aroundthe side of the house. No one was on the porch. No sounds of movement from inside.
    Alek slunk out into the open ground by the paddock, his huge white form obscenely visible against the muddy, churned-up ground. Harper watched as he circled the house. He seemed like he was just asking to be shot at, but nobody tried.
    The house appeared abandoned. Alek snarled, moving back to Harper where shecrouched beside the porch.
    Okay , she admitted to herself. It’s maybe a trap . But there was still a unicorn. She could see the white body moving inside the paddock. She couldn’t see if it had a horn from here. She had to get closer.
    Ignoring Alek’s warning snarl, Harper ran for the paddock. She was almost to the fence, ready to duck beneath it, when she heard a woman yell out, “It’s a trap, stop!”

    Harper froze. It was a voice she recognized, a voice that she had started to despair of ever hearing again. Jade had returned.

“So I just have to click my heels together and think of home?” I looked at Ash with as much skepticism as I could muster given that I was a dragon, in a pocket of unreality, talking to another dragon. Still, teleportation seemed kind of dangerous to me.
    But… I wanted to be back with Alek and my friends. I wanted to know they were all right. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face Samir again. Iwasn’t sure I’d ever feel ready. I guess part of being a big damn hero is that you do things anyway, no matter how scared you feel.
    “Visualize a place you know well. It will be the quickest way back,” Ash said.
    We were standing in the open field by the cabin. I looked around and sighed. It would be so simple to stay, to put things off another week or two. Time wasn’t passing much outside here,or so Ash said. Would another week mean the difference between winning and losing? I had no way to know.
    “Everywhere I knew is gone,” I said. My shop was burned. The Henhouse B&B was burned. I had no idea if Alek had his trailer with him or where it would be. Had he left Wylde? If my friends were smart, they would have gotten the hell out of there. But no, the druid had said they were hidingout in the River of No Return wilderness. “If they are in the woods, how will I find them?” I vocalized my worries.
    “You could try going to a person and not a place, but it is less accurate.” Ash folded his arms across his chest, his red-flecked eyes fixed on my face.
    “Why can’t you just drop me off in Wylde?” I asked. He’d explained why he couldn’t come with me; that he had to stay in the Veiland become guardian to the cracked Seal