CHAPTER ONE SABELLE RION HEARD DEATH whisper, felt its breath on the back of her neck. Bram, it called. Come with me. She clutched her brother’s hand, trying desperately to keep him anchored in this mortal plain. Since becoming a fully transitioned witch at twenty-four, she’d had the ability to touch others and make them feel whatever she wished. In the last sixty years, she’d perfected the skill. Very few were immune to her gift. But she had no idea if Bram could feel the positive healing vibrations she now sent his way. If so, they weren’t improving his condition. Damn the black smoke surrounding her brother, slowly smothering his life and, she worried, his magic. And damn Mathias for attacking Bram with it! Fighting back angry tears, she clenched her fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms. Just yesterday, they’d tangled with the evil wizard who had escaped after hundreds of years of exile. Last night, Conrad the healer and her aunt Millie had examined Bram. Neither knew what the deadly smoke was, exactly what damage it caused … or how to eradicate it. They only knew it was draining the life of the person she loved most in this world. “Can I come in?” Sabelle looked over her shoulder as Lucan, her brother’s best friend, entered the room. Following Mathias’s abduction of his mate, Anka,