1. Jaiyana

CHAPTER ONE

JAIYANA

" C ome on! You've got this, Jay," Chad shouted, his low voice blending in with the light rap music filling the weight room.

I dug my shoulder blades into the padded bench press, focusing on Chad's baby blues above me.

His gaze flicked down to my breasts. "Great form, girl. Go, go!"

I rolled the silver bar resting in my powder pink wrapped grip before lowering two hundred and ten pounds. When the bar hovered above my nipples, I grunted and heaved, pushing it back up one slow inch at a time. My thighs tensed, and every muscle in my body strained. Halfway up, my arms shook, and the bar hovered.

I was stuck. I couldn't go up more, but I refused to drop the weight or use my magic to cheat. An invisible ribbon of raw energy danced along my bare left arm. Which was weird but not as pressing as the weight I was moments from crushing myself under.

Pressing - because you're on a bench press. Hilarious.

Maybe this is not the time to talk to yourself.

Chad stuck two fingers of each of his hands under the bar, just shy of touching it. "Keep moving, push girl, you've got this!"

His words ripped me back to the moment. Instead of thinking, I let out a strangled yell and forced every one of my mortal muscles, well, mostly mortal, to push. My stomach flexed, and my left butt cheek cramped, but the bar climbed the last few inches before Chad took the weight off me.

"Nice," Chad said, guiding the bar back onto the rack.

I rolled to a seated position. Strands of my long black hair stuck uncomfortably to my shoulders and back, but they didn't distract me from the perfect burn across my chest and arms.

"I didn't have it, you helped." I messaged the side of my ass to release the cramp, trying to remember what part of the chest connected directly to the gluteus maximus.

"That was all you." Chad clapped his hands together.

I pursed my lips. Physically maybe, but if he hadn't encouraged me, would I have dropped the bar?

Another wide swath of raw magic, which didn't come from me, danced along my arm, changing my focus from myself to the world around me. Lifting my hand, I twirled the ribbon between my fingers. It trembled, the vibration so fast it almost made the invisible magic solid.

My heart skipped a beat. Something was wrong with the Ley Lines. I hadn't been called to fix one of them in a hundred years. A shiver of inappropriate excitement hummed in my gut. If the Ley Line was reaching out to me, something was seriously wrong—but it also gave me purpose.

You desperately need that, Jay.

Shut up.

"Your wrists, okay?" Chad asked, oblivious to the magic entwining my fingers, just like everyone else around here.

I shook the ribbon off my fingers. "Yeah."

My blond, exceptionally built, but mortal gym friend bobbed his head. "You're scowling." He flexed his arms before lifting a forty-five-pound plate off the rack.

"Probably." I schooled my face. "Sorry, I just got called into work."

"Oh." He slowed his motions. "I didn't hear your phone go off."

I pointed at my wrist, forgetting I wasn't wearing my smartwatch, but the lie was already tumbling out of my mouth. "Buzzed while I was mid-lift. I owe you a spot. You here Thursday?"

"Yeah." Chad either didn't look or didn't care enough to call me out on my lie. "Derek just walked in. He'll spot me."

I let out a disappointed breath. There was always someone who could replace me.

I pushed to my feet and helped Chad rack the last of my weights.

"What do you do again?" he asked.

What do I do? Such a mortal question.

I chewed on my lower lip.

Although my first instinct was to say something vague and cryptic, I knew two things after spending three months working with Chad in the gym: A) he wasn't really interested, and B) he probably struggled with the directions to open his cereal box this morning.

I grinned at him. "I'm a plumber."

Chad raised an eyebrow. "Female plumber?"

"Aww, I didn't realize you knew I was a girl." I squeezed my arms together, accentuating my sports bra-crushed cleavage.

Chad let himself get an eyeful before focusing on my face. "You're just one of the bros here."

I saluted him with my middle finger and turned toward the exit. Another ribbon of magic snaked its way up my spandex shorts and vibrated around my thigh. A sense of urgency prickled my skin. I plucked my duffle bag off the wall and rushed out of the building. I practically ran to my topless jeep, parked all the way in the back, wishing I hadn't read a stupid article on how healthier people parked further away from their destination to get extra movement in their bodies.

I was an immortal enchantress who roamed this world before parking was even a thing. Twenty extra steps didn't do anything for me.

"Fucking Internet," I swore.

I swung into the driver's seat and tossed my gym bag behind me. It clanked against something metal, and I winced, trying to remember what it could've landed on. Climbing gear, a first aid kit, extra gas, blankets… I think the blankets were covering a kettlebell, maybe? Or did I leave a cauldron back there?

The ribbon shot up my shirt, between my breasts, and tingled around my neck.

"I get it. You need help right now. I'm moving as fast as I can." I punched the start button on my jeep and pulled out of the lot.

The ribbon of magic guided me to the west. I pointed my car in that direction, driving down the empty highway, forever grateful I didn't have a meaningless mortal job tying me down.

Are you, though? It could give you purpose. Help you make friends. Give you something to do.

Just stop.

I scowled. I really needed to stop talking to myself.

My car gained speed, and the magic ribbon calmed. Bracing the steering wheel against my knees, I felt behind me for my water. The jeep swerved a few times but mostly stayed in the correct lane. After finding my fancy bottle, I pressed a button on the lid, releasing a grainy brown protein powder into the liquid, and violently shook the thing.

God, I loved food, but if I wanted to keep growing my mortal muscles, the least I could do was feed them correctly. I'd searched heaven and earth for a protein powder that didn't taste like ass. Flat root beer float was the best I could get.

With my car speeding down the highway, I opened my third eye. A ball of pure power, only other supernaturals could see, peeled open in the center of my forehead. Magic of every type overlaid the world in a swirls of lines and textures. Unlike the creatures inhabiting earth, the Ley Lines hadn't changed in the thousand years I'd been alive. They crossed the earth's surface, in various sizes and strengths, like a network of colored cables managed by a teenager building his first computer. That is to say, completely random patterns with the most used bits covered in something sticky no one wanted to talk about.

I took a drag on my protein drink, imagining my muscles doubling in size.

It doesn't work like that.

Let a girl dream!

I picked Graeagle in Northern California as my home for the last few months because…well…I wasn't really sure. But it was far away from my old life and something new. I needed a break from the endless repetition of existence, something completely different.

It's been months now, and you're still depressed.

You are.

My gut twisted.

"No, Jay." I met my gaze in the rear-view mirror. The grid of power crisscrossing my vision made my honey skin glow almost purple. My rich green eyes swam with gold flecks opposite the crystal white eye of churning power in the center of my forehead. "A thousand years old, powerful beyond imagination, you speak at least twenty languages. You're not a ball of sad! The age of the Internet makes everyone feel lost."

I lifted my protein shake to my lips, and something silver flashed in my peripheral vision. Everyone says there's this moment of calm, where you know something bad's about to happen, but you can't do anything about it.

Yeah, I didn't have that moment.

The silver grill of a semi-truck slammed into the passenger side of my jeep, and my body crashed into the driver's side door. Pain bloomed up my arm and down my side. Protection spells I'd long forgotten about burst to life, shielding me, before crumbling under the g-force of a spinning vehicle at ninety miles an hour. I flew into the steering wheel, my leg catching on something. Pain laced through my ankle as my body twisted the wrong way, with my foot keeping me trapped in the shrinking tin can. Bone splintered, and shooting pain lit up every nerve ending before the ankle went numb. My head cracked against something hard. Whatever magical shielding I had, dropped. Stars filled my vision.

The sound of my breaking bones and the crushing metal car became indistinguishable. The spinning suddenly stopped. I dropped, hitting the ground, or my car--I didn't even know--with a hard thud. The ribbon of magic buzzed around my neck one last time before the world faded to dark.