Keeper of the Lost (Resurrecting Magic Book 2) Read online

  Keeper of the Lost

  Resurrecting Magic - Book Two

  Keary Taylor

  Contents

  Also by Keary Taylor

  Connect With Keary Online

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Don’t miss the next book!

  Also by Keary Taylor

  Connect With Keary Online

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 Keary Taylor

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  First Edition: June 2020

  Cover art by Orina Kafe

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Taylor, Keary, 1987-

  Keeper of the Lost (Resurrecting Magic): a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Keary Taylor

  THE RESURRECTING MAGIC SERIES

  Rise of the Mage

  THE BLOOD DESCENDANTS UNIVERSE

  House of Royals Saga

  Garden of Thorns Trilogy

  Crown of Death Saga

  THE FALL OF ANGELS TRILOGY

  THE NERON RISING SAGA

  THE EDEN TRILOGY

  THE McCAIN SAGA

  WHAT I DIDN’T SAY

  Also by T.L. Keary (thriller/suspense pen name)

  THREE HEART ECHO

  OUR LAST CONFESSION

  SKIN AND BONE

  To view all of Keary’s books, click HERE.

  Connect With Keary Online

  Facebook

  Instagram

  Goodreads

  Website

  Keep up to date on everything Keary Taylor. Sign up for The Keary Post mailing list HERE.

  Chapter One

  I didn’t know how he did it. Nathaniel was so calm and forgiving. Even when his ribs were still only half healed. Even when he still bore a black eye and stitches in his left cheek. Even when he had nearly drowned partly at the hands of the very man asking for our help.

  How could he just forgive Borden?

  But if he could forgive Borden, what right did I have not to?

  It didn’t mean I trusted him, though. The second Borden stepped foot through the door of the solarium, I turned and walked to the jar of change Nathaniel kept on his shelf. I reached inside and grabbed the first coin my fingers wrapped around. I raised the nickel in my fist to my lips and spoke truth to it.

  “I’ve never hated anyone until David Sinclair,” I said the first thing that came to my mind.

  Borden looked over at me, a slight look of confusion on his face. But Nathaniel just looked at me, nodding in agreement the moment he realized what I was doing.

  I crossed back to Borden, holding his gray eyes. I wanted to read all of his truths right off his skin, written in blood. But this was the next best thing.

  “Here,” I said, extending the bewitched coin to him. Still uncertain, his brows knitted together, he held his hand out, and he took the coin from me.

  “You aren’t the descendant of Scottish royalty,” I said, immediately launching into the test.

  “Yes, I am,” he said. And the moment the words came out of his mouth, his look of confusion deepened further.

  “Your family is incredibly poor,” I said next.

  “Not at all,” he corrected. He looked more bewildered by the moment. He might have had other words he wanted to say, but they changed right on his tongue, to nothing but the truth.

  “Have you ever tried to kill anyone?” Nathaniel asked, looking up at Borden from beneath dark eyes and long lashes.

  Borden’s eyes slid over to meet Nathaniel’s. “Yes,” he answered honestly.

  My jaw clenched tight, my teeth grinding together as I crossed my arms over my chest. My stomach was full of knotted snakes. Their venom filled me up, poisoned me from the inside.

  But we had to know.

  “Do you really hate the Society Boys?” I asked.

  “Every second with them,” Borden said, and even though I knew he couldn’t lie to me, I could tell he meant it just by the look in his eyes.

  “Do you mean it, that you are only with them because they make you angry?” Nathaniel asked, walking to my side. We stood in nearly identical positions.

  “Yes, they’re awful people.” Borden’s eyes flicked from mine to Nathaniel’s and then back to mine. “What…what’s going on? Why do I feel like this? Why can’t I say what I’m thinking?”

  “Because I gave you a Coin of Compulsion,” I said, feeling a small smile curling on my lips. I felt smug. Like this was some tiny shred of revenge for all of the horrible things he’d been a part of. “You can’t say anything that isn’t the absolute truth.”

  “Would you ever reveal our secrets?” Nathaniel asked, because really, that was the most important matter. Everything hinged on it.

  “I don’t think so,” and that I knew, was an honest reply.

  I glared darkly at Borden for a good thirty seconds, debating. What did it help us to let him in on anything? To teach him? He might say he hated the Society Boys, but he’d still been with them on numerous occasions of torturing Nathaniel. His hands weren’t clean of the night Nathaniel was nearly drowned by them.

  “What else do you know how to do?” I asked. Because at this point, the only benefit I could see to helping him, was if he could help us in return.

  “This,” Borden said, bringing his hands up, sparking the electricity between his hands. “It’s all I know how to do. When I’m angry it happens. I first discovered it when I was just twelve. I burned the entire pool house down. I nearly killed a few people who made me angry over the years. But I’ve got a good grip on it now. I just…have to be angry to tap into it.”

  Nathaniel and I looked at each other, mulling it over, thinking.

  “An electrical affinity?” Nathaniel mused.

  I shrugged. “It must be. Paper. Earth. Electricity.”

  “I…I think I’ve caused lightning storms before, too,” Borden continued. “When I’m the angriest I’ve ever been. There’s always been a storm. Rain, dark clouds. But mostly lightning. A lot of it.”

  A little tick of fear jumped into my heart at that. Lightning, storms. That sounded powerful. Far beyond anything Nathaniel or I could do. That sounded dangerous.

  Nathaniel could control paper.

  I could lift rocks and dirt and turn things into gold sometimes.

  Borden could cause entire lightning storms.

  That alone felt overwhelming. Too big. Too dangerous.

  “What do you remember?” Nathaniel asked, moving on with a bravery I wasn’t sure I had. “From that night at the beach?”

  Borden’s eyes immediately fell to the floor. He looked ashamed. He stepped to the side, sinking d
own onto the leather couch. “David was in a rage,” Borden said. “One look at Margot, and it was like he turned into this… animal who needed to mark his territory and destroy anything within the vicinity.”

  My fingers dug into my own arm as they curled in rage. I felt my fingernails digging into my skin. My stomach turned over and I swear everything gained a red hue.

  Borden looked up at us but didn’t quite meet our eyes. “He convinced us all to take Nathaniel out to the ocean and tell him to piss off. Leave Margot to David or pay the price.”

  Instantly, I was back on that beach, watching as they hit Nathaniel, over and over, as they pushed his face beneath the waves.

  I was screaming, my throat raw.

  “And then Margot was there,” Borden said as his eyes rose to meet mine. “And one second we were standing in the water, and the next, I was flying through the air, knowing I was going to die out in the dark ocean, and all I could see was you, there in that red dress, your hands held out, a scream ripping from your lungs. And we were all tossed out to sea.”

  He shouldn’t remember. I’d gone into his room. I’d gone into David’s room, and James’ and Howard’s and Gerald’s and Donald’s. I’d altered their memories. I’d made them forget.

  But it hadn’t worked on Borden.

  “I nearly drowned,” Borden said. “And I could feel the storm collecting and I knew it was because of me. I knew the lightning was going to come next, and if I didn’t keep it in check, I’d electrocute all of us in the water.”

  The breath hitched in my throat as I recalled the storm that was forming that night. The skies were black, and the wind had picked up wickedly, blowing snow in every direction.

  I had felt it that night, the threat of electricity.

  That had been Borden?

  “I swam out and knew somehow I had to stop it all. The Boys. You.” His eyes burned as he looked at me. And I didn’t want to feel it, but I started to. A connection to this man. “But the second we started across the sand again, you unleashed…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it was. But then it was just dark. And I woke up in the hospital.”

  I still didn’t know what I’d done out there on the beach. Sending them out into the ocean was a simple matter of telekinesis, though I’d never controlled a human body like that before. But I didn’t know what the embers were that had shot out from my hands. They erupted from me, and immediately all five boys were unconscious.

  “And then the Boys were telling this ridiculous story about drugs and they were fighting about who’d given them to us.” Borden shook his head. “It didn’t make any sense. We hadn’t taken anything. And not a single one of them remembered you being there, Margot.”

  Nathaniel and I looked at each other and several long seconds ticked by.

  “Why do they remember that night completely different from how I do?” Borden said. “Why am I the only one who saw you there?”

  I took a deep breath, holding Nathaniel’s eyes. And it was all there. Nathaniel’s acceptance. His forgiveness. His readiness to move on with the future.

  So, I let out a slow breath. And I looked back at Borden.

  “Because I altered their memories,” I said. My heart was beating fast. My palms were slick with nervous sweat. “I made them forget I was ever there. I made them think they took drugs which knocked them out. You weren’t supposed to remember it. None of it. But apparently that kind of magic doesn’t work on other mages.”

  He just looked at me for several long moments. One beat. Two. “Mage.”

  He said the word simply. Just once. As if testing that it was real and solid.

  I didn’t say anything. Because there was a threshold here.

  But Nathaniel stepped forward, his hands sliding into the pockets of his slacks.

  “In 1597, a man with the name Stewart was killed for being a witch,” Nathaniel said, pulling the fact out of his brain as easily as if he were reading it out of a book right in front of him. “It’s in your blood. In Margot’s. Mine. We,” he said with a nod, indicating him and me, “might not have adopted the term witch. But as it seems, you’re a mage. Just like us.”

  Nathaniel crossed to his desk, where he grabbed the glamoured book on telekinesis. He laid it on the coffee table in front of Borden, with the book open to the middle. “Can you read any of it?” he asked.

  Borden sat forward, his eyes casting down at the book. He took a few seconds and shook his head. “No.”

  I walked closer, so I could see. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see the words when they changed. “Touch it.”

  Borden looked at me with uncertainty. I just nodded at the book again.

  So, he looked back down. And cautiously, he reached forward, and touched two of his fingertips to the edge of the book.

  “What…what kind of cheap trick is this?” Borden said, removing his hand. He touched it again, taking his hand back and forward.

  “You can read it?” I asked.

  Borden touched the pages again and left his hand there. He was silent for a solid ten seconds, and I watched as his eyes tracked side to side, reading.

  “Yes,” he answered in awe.

  And I looked back up at Nathaniel, meeting his gaze.

  And we knew. There wasn’t any question.

  Borden Stewart, one of the richest boys in school, the descendant of royalty, tormenting member of the Society Boys, was one of us.

  Borden Stewart was a fellow mage.

  Borden couldn’t lie. He told us that he didn’t think he would ever reveal our secrets. It wasn’t a promise, which actually made me feel okay. He didn’t know anything yet, so how could he promise?

  So, we told him history. Nathaniel told him about the witch hunts that had happened throughout history. He told Borden about Mare McGregor, about the other mages who were killed. He told Borden about how magic seemed to disappear right around 1700. How we hadn’t found any other mages in the time that we’d discovered what we could do.

  Nathaniel left my mother out of it, and I was grateful for that.

  Over the course of nearly an hour, Nathaniel gave Borden a lesson in our history.

  I was simply amazed as I listened to him. He would make an amazing teacher. He would be an incredible history professor, just like my father. He was calm and smart and interesting.

  I knew every detail he was recounting, but even I listened with rapt interest.

  The sun was sinking behind the horizon when Nathaniel came to the end of his history lesson. As the temperatures dipped, I pushed two more logs into the small fireplace. It was a beast we had to constantly feed. Considering Nathaniel lived in a room made of glass, there was no insulation factor.

  I grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “So, what comes next?” Borden asked when Nathaniel was finished with his lesson. “I’ve seen some of the things you can do, Margot. And I didn’t know before today that you were one too, Nathaniel. I might have gone along with the Boys and been a prick, but I still knew you were one of the smartest guys at this school. I can only imagine what you know. When can I start learning?”

  I stepped forward, keeping my eyes fixed on his. “That’s more than enough for today,” I said, our eyes locking. “I assume you’ll understand when we say we’re going to take this slow. It’s going to take more than a few words to earn our trust. This is a big deal. Our ancestors were killed. Neither of us is going to put our lives on the line for you.”

  Borden looked from me to Nathaniel. He mulled my words over for a moment, contemplating.

  “What do I need to do to prove myself trustworthy?” he asked. And he sounded sincere.

  Nathaniel’s silence told me he was letting me take the lead on this part. Which I had absolutely no problem with. “Cut all ties with the Society Boys. The semester is about to start back up in a few days. That will be the test. If you don’t go running to the Boys and you can prove you’re not going to turn on us, w
e’ll start slow.”

  Borden stood, and keeping his eyes fixed on me, he nodded. “I can do that.”

  He couldn’t lie.

  So I nodded, too. “I guess we’ll see you in a few days, then.”

  He crossed the solarium, headed for the door.

  “Borden,” Nathaniel stopped him. He looked back, his expression open. “It takes about twenty-four hours for the effect of the coin to wear off. Be careful with your interactions.”

  Borden nodded. “Thanks for the heads up.”

  And without any other words, he opened the door and walked out.

  My eyes turned to Nathaniel and we stood there looking at each other for several silent moments as we were both overwhelmed by our thoughts.

  “There’s another one of us,” Nathaniel said first.

  “I can’t believe it’s him,” I said immediately after. “A Society Boy.” I made a noise of disgust and shook my head.

  “I think we can trust him,” Nathaniel said. He stood with his hands resting on the back of the couch. “I know he’s done some terrible things, but he seems genuine.”

  I glared at him, my arms folded over my chest. “I think your ability to forgive might be one of your biggest faults.”

  He just chuckled at me and shook his head. He crossed the room to me, his hands going to my hips. He looked down at me from his towering height. “If forgiveness is a fault, I think we’re going to be okay in this life, Margot.”

  He smiled and leaned in closer, quickly snatching a kiss.