Lian/Roch (Bayou Heat) by Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright Page B

something.”
    He hesitated for less than a heartbeat before giving a sharp nod of his head.
    “Say the spell.”
    That wasn’t what Sage had been expecting.
    “Me?” She blinked in confusion. “I’m not Pantera.”
    “You have the magic,” he told her, his gaze boring into her with a fierce determination. “You’re the only one who does.”
    She stepped away, wrapping her arms around her waist.
    It was one thing to be asked to translate the scrolls. She had full faith in her abilities to decipher even the most obscure languages.
    But what did she know about magic?
    A big fat nothing.
    “What makes you think I can cast a spell?” she rasped.
    His huge body vibrated with the need to join the battle, but easily sensing her rising panic, he reached to grasp her upper arms in a light grip.
    “Do you remember the first time we met?”
    She licked her dry lips. “In the chat room?”
    “Yes, I sent a fellow Pantera a message in our private language. Imagine my shock when you managed to translate it.”
    The internet chat rooms she’d discovered after becoming an adjunct professor had proven to be a godsend.
    She might be too introverted to mix easily with people in public, but she’d been astonishingly capable of joining in the numerous debates and scholarly exchanges in the various rooms.
    “I thought it was a brainteaser,” she confessed, easily recalling the strange conversation that had popped up on her screen. It’d taken her several hours, but she’d eventually worked out the basic construct of the unknown words and sent a message back to Xavier in the same language. “But a talent for translations doesn’t equate to mystic abilities.”
    “No, but over the years I sent you more and more obscure texts, most of which were nothing but gibberish to me.”
    She arched her brows. “Were they Pantera texts?”
    He shook his head. “They’d been written by a Shaman.”
    “Oh.” Suddenly she realized that this man had been subtly testing her over the years. He’d suspected all along that there was more to her than just another scholar. “That’s why you had me brought here.”
    “I’d hoped you could decipher the scrolls. I didn’t know they were a spell,” he readily confessed, his fingers tightening on her arms. “Will you help?”
    What could she say? She didn’t know how or when it’d happened, but she knew with absolute clarity that Lian was now the most important thing in her world. She would give her life to protect him.
    “I’ll try.”
    “That’s all we can ask.” His eyes glowed with a lethal lust for blood as his cat broke free of its leash. “I have to go,” he growled, already shifting into a huge black puma before he was pouncing across the balcony and over the railing.
    Savagely squashing the need to follow behind Xavier, Sage instead turned to place her hand flat on the scrolls.
    This was how she could help.
    She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted.
    “Okay, Sage, you can do this,” she muttered. “Lian needs you.”
    Emptying her thoughts of everything except the hieroglyphs, she allowed the magic to flow through her blood and softly spoke the words that felt like fire on her lips.
    It took several minutes to complete the entire spell that was spread over five scrolls, but reaching the last glyph, she straightened from the table and sucked in a deep breath.
    She didn’t know what she’d expected.
    Lightning. Earthquakes.
    The sky falling.
    Instead, she smelled…fresh grass as a misty shape formed and floated out the French doors.
    Was that the goddess?
    With a shake of her head, Sage was headed toward the door. She’d done everything possible with the scrolls.
    Now she intended to be with Lian.
    They would face the danger together.
    * * *
    Lian snarled as he watched the tall man with a lean face and dark hair braided down his back raise his hand. Chayton, the one-time Shaman, was looking decidedly worse for wear with deep claw marks down one side of his face,