Dark Magick By: Cate Tiernan
Sweep # 4
Hours later her guilt makes her return to the cliff where Hunter had fallen in to see if he somehow landed on a cliff and was still alive. While there was no sign of Hunter, she does run into Sky. Sky asks her what happened and says that she can no longer feel Hunter's presence. Sky tries using magick to force Morgan to tell her what happened, but Morgan walls off her mind. She heads to Cal's to check on him and gets intercepted by Selene who hugs her and thanks her for saving Cal's life. Cal is asleep, healing from the ordeal, so Morgan leaves.
She decides to take a trip up to Practical Magick because it has always felt like a safe space for her. While there she tells Alyce about scrying and finding Belwicket's tools. Alyce says that she needs to bind the tools to herself so others cannot easily use them and they will be stronger for her. She copy's down the spell Morgan needs and tells her that she should do it as soon as possible. Morgan does as she was instructed later that night, imbuing the tools with her magick and binding them to her. After hiding the other tools, Morgan starts to read Maeve's BOS, but is using the athame to read along. She starts to see glowing on the page and discovers hidden entries in the BOS that are only visible using the athame. She soon reads about her mother meeting a witch named Ciaran and falling in love with him. She reads how her mother feels pulled toward Ciaran and starts to believe he is her múirn beatha dán. Morgan feels betrayed because Angus was her birth father and they had been dating when her mother met Ciaran.
When Morgan arrives at school the next day, Selene is waiting for her in the parking lot. She eagerly asks Morgan about Belwicket's tools and offers to show her how to use them and even share her power with them. When Morgan tells Selene that she has already bound the tools to her, Selene seems displeased and says that they can always do a spell to unbind them. Morgan feels possessive of the tools and doesn't know if she wants them unbound. That night Morgan does a scrying circle to try out her new tools, and the fire shows her two possible futures for herself. In the first vision she is a haggard old crone in a cave, but she is immensely powerful and doing major magick. This vision scares her as much as it entices her. The next vision shows her older but beautiful and pregnant, walking through a field happy and calm. The visions flicker back and forth causing Morgan to panic and pull herself from them.
At Cal's house he admits that he lied to her about not knowing what clan he was from. He tells her that his line is from a traditional practicing Woodbane clan unlike Belwicket. He shows her the Woodbane athame birthmark he bares so similar to her own, and tells her that they hide their clan because they don't believe in the councils’ rules about interfering in the lives of humans. He then takes her to a secret room out in the pool-house that he calls his sanctuary or his seómar. This room is small with only a tiny window near the roof and it’s filled with hundreds of candles and sigils covering every inch of the walls. As they sat, Morgan began to find the chaos of the room uncomfortable and claustrophobic. As Cal started talking about them making magick in it, Morgan felt the need to leave and made an excuse that she needed to go home. When Cal calls her later, he tells her that some of his mother’s Woodbane friends want to meet her. For some reason this statement fills her with fear and the need to run. Having a panic attack, Morgan ignores Cal's insistence that she meet with his mother’s friends and hangs up on him, grabbing her keys she flees to where she feels the most safe; Practical magic.
Due to Thanksgiving, Practical Magick was closed, but David opens the door and allows her inside anyway. As she walks to the back room, she stops cold when she sees Hunter sitting at the small table. She asks him how he is alive, and he says Sky found him in the river and pulled him out. The start to argue in circles about who did what, getting nowhere until David steps in and tells them that even though they are afraid, they need to trust each other to face what is coming. Morgan decides the only way she can trust Hunter is if they connect minds and see each other’s truths. As she touches him, sparks and energy flow through her body but she continues. Morgan learns that Hunter was telling the truth about being a seeker for the council and that he was sent to investigate Cal and Selene for misuse of magick. She could feel Hunter searching her mind for any involvement in dark magick and finding none. She also feels Hunters relief when he discovers that she and Cal had not yet been intimate, and flushes with embarrassment and confusion. The mind meld she did with Hunter was far deeper that the one she had done with Cal. They learned each other’s pasts and present and found a level of trust.
Once apart, Hunter was in disbelief that she was able to do a "táth meanma", saying only witches with years of training should be able to do them. Hunter tells Morgan that the sigils that they had placed on her house were sigils of protection, and that he believes Cal and Selene are using her for her power and Woodbane heritage. Sky enters through a back door and freaks out when she sees Morgan sitting with Hunter. She screams that if another witch hadn't seen what she had done and sent her a witch message telling her where to find Hunter, that he would be dead right now. Morgan is furious with Sky for letting her believe Hunter was dead, and yells back that she had sent the message. Sky doesn't believe her because she says she isn't strong enough, but Hunter speaks up saying that she is and that they had just done a táth meanma. Morgan tells them that her and Cal have done a táth meanma also and that it proves that they are not evil. Hunter causes doubt in her resolve when he asks her who led the mind meld and how deep it went. Cal had led it and they had only touched the surface, nothing like what she and Hunter had done.
Once home Morgan called Cal and told him about Hunter being alive and how it was a weight off her shoulders. Cal seemed angry at the news and even angrier that she was happy about it, so she forwent telling him about the mind meld they had done. He was also upset because she blew off the offer to meet his mother’s friends. Feeling the fear again at the mention of the people, she apologized and said they could talk more tomorrow. Morgan’s feelings about Hunter confuse her, when they were alone Hunter didn't seem so bad, but with Cal, Hunter seems like the worst person on the planet. Hunter comes to her house later that night to re-draw the protection sigils around her house and his presence causes odd feelings within her. They talk for a while out in the cold, and when Morgan shivers, Hunter immediately puts his arms around her and rubs her back to warm her up. She has a moment of awe before she remembers who he is and steps back. They look at each other and Hunter grabs her chin and leans in to kiss her. A car door slams before he does, breaking the moment and she pushes a shocked Hunter back.
The next day, wanting to get away from all the stress in her life, Morgan takes her tools out to a clearing by the river. She sheds all items including Cal's pendant and dons her mother’s robe. In her circle she sees visions or her maternal ancestors passing the tools down from generation to generation until a vision of her mother hands them to her. Her vision self then turns and hands them to a tall girl with hazel eyes; her future daughter whom she will call Moira. She releases the power from her circle to the goddess, and when she opens her eyes, she finds Sky waiting. Sky doesn't believe Morgan has only been studying Wicca for 3 months, and claims that she is the most powerful witch that she has ever met. She tells Morgan that she wishes that she could scry so that Morgan could see the truth about Cal and Selene. Morgan says she can scry with fire and they end up doing a táth meanma and scrying circle together. During the circle they see a vision of the present where Cal and Selene are with others and they are discussing her. They say that she was Cals assignment and is his responsibility to bring into the fold, and he responds saying she will come.
Reeling from the circle, Morgan decides to get Cal's side of the story, but before she confronts him, she hides her mother’s tools under Bree's house knowing no one would think to look for them with her enemy. Cal sends her a witch message to meet him at the cemetery where they held their circle on Samhain. She flat out asks Cal if Selene is trying to hurt her and if they are in a Woodbane coven trying to destroy non-woodbane witches. Cal gets upset and tells her that they are múirn beatha dán's and that she needs to trust him. It isn't until she says out loud that they are not that she realizes that it's true. In an effort to distract him she tells him she knows that he slept with Bree and he finally admits that it did happen once, the news breaking Morgan's heart. Cal says that she was his assignment but he fell in love with her anyway and that they could both leave his mother’s coven after helping her with one last spell. Cal asks her to go meet with his mother and tell her she doesn't want any part of their coven; she refuses and ends their relationship. Cal binds her with a spell and throws her into her own car. While bound, she sends witch messages to anyone she can think of begging for help and telling them Cal has her. Cal brings her to his pool-house sanctuary and puts her inside. He finally notices that the pendant he gave her is gone and gets angry saying she never loved him and hits her with a ball of black energy knocking her unconscious.
When she awakens, she is still locked in Cal's seómar and without his pendant, she can feel the dark energy he has used inside. She makes a circle out of her tears and blood and meditates to try and get the door open, but as it opens a crack smoke comes in as well as voices. She hears Selene asking what Cal is doing and he claims he is solving the problem. The smoke in the room causes her to lose her concentration and the door snaps shut. Cal was burning her alive, just like her mother. The voices disappear and Morgan is huddled on the floor struggling to breathe when she hears familiar voices screaming her name. Bree and Robbie are outside the burning pool-house looking for her, she screams as loud as she can that she is inside and they tell her to move away from the wall. Bree then takes Morgan's car and rams the wall making a hole Morgan can escape through.
***************