Deny Me: A Paranormal Romance (Legends of the Ashwood Institute Book 2)

by Jayla Kane

  But that’s when I knew something was strange, and Raven began to pull away, further and further, until there was nothing between us any more…

  Nothing but the leash, apparently. The one that lead me here, to the edge, and let me dangle over the abyss before yanking me back.

  “Raven,” I said, and my voice was strange to my own ears. I sounded hollow. “Let me go first.” I walked up to her, looking over her head towards the crowd on the platform; most of the recent arrivals were leaving, heading out of our tiny town and back to wherever for the weekend. But there was one person sitting with his back to us on the bench… A tall guy, this big, strong looking man. Not the boy I realized I was looking for.

  The one who died five years ago.

  Raven watched my face, and I saw her mouth tighten as she agreed. I wasn’t worth speaking to, I guess, but it’s hard to deny a guy the right to a reunion with his dead brother. I stepped around her, up to the platform, and approached him from behind.

  His hair was black. It always was darker than mine—his skin, too, was almost the same, just a shade more copper to it. His shoulders were broad, as if he spent the last five years doing construction—when he turned his head, looking at the crowd gathered near the tracks, I stopped breathing.

  My brother, Tristan, in the flesh.

  A hand landed on my shoulder and before I could say anything he turned around and glanced up at me, his eyes sharpening when they landed on my face.

  “Jake?”

  The hand on my shoulder belonged to Leo, I realized, seeing him out of the corner of my eye; he was the cop I called when I needed to turn in Tanglewood, and a friendly acquaintance from town. I started to move towards Tristan and felt his fingers dig into my collarbone. My brother stood up and looked me in the eye.

  And then, over my shoulder. His gaze landed on Raven, and I’ll never forget the way his whole face fell—as if the earth had caved in beneath his feet, as if the mouth of hell were staring back at him. His voice was deep when he spoke. Tristan wasn’t a kid any more, and the grief etched on his face wasn’t childlike in any way.

  “I’m too late.”

  “Tell me about it, motherfucker,” I said, and then, I couldn’t help it.

  I started to laugh.

  Chapter Three

  Raven

  Something was wrong with Jake. It didn’t take more than a minute for me to notice, and then I wondered why it took me even that long—it wasn’t just the oddly detached way he was carrying himself, or the way he’d treated me after the sexual disaster back in the office. His face just looked… Wrong. As if he were two places at once, like he was slowly retreating somewhere behind his eyes and watching his life play out like it was on a screen. I’d seen him do it when we were kids and everybody died—the emotional pain was just too much, I think. I don’t think anyone could live through the death of both parents and the loss of their brother and then their best friend and stay… Normal. But he hadn’t—he’d become a monster. Before he locked his soul and morality away, though—and believe me, I wasn’t thrilled with that coping mechanism either—he’d done this. When it was just me, trying desperately to live with what happened to Tristan and falling back on my mother’s fairy tales as the only possible solution, holding Jake’s hand and knowing I couldn’t tell him the whole truth, he… He retreated, kind of. He was present, but not involved. A ghost, more than a person.

  He'd been silent the entire walk through town. We followed the pair of men side by side, like we were friends, almost. And now we were in this strange house, and he still hadn’t said a single word.

  I sat down next to him at the table and tried to concentrate on what Tristan was telling us, and when Jake didn’t shoot me a dirty look or a sarcastic comment or even raise his eyes, I knew we were in big trouble.

  “I tried to… Something stopped me from being able—”

  “Don’t,” Jake said suddenly, and he stopped studying the tabletop and watched his brother’s face for a second, then dropped them again. “I’m not interested.” The same words he said to me. I felt my chest tighten.

  “Jake, please… I have so much to tell you, and I—”

  “You’re a piece of shit,” Jake said, and there was none of his usual bark to it. The words were flat and bare. They landed with a thud, and Tristan sighed and leaned back in his chair before rubbing his temples with his fingers. Tris was different, now; he looked a hell of a lot older than twenty one, firstly, and if I hadn’t spent so much time with him when we were younger I might not have recognized him at all. A long scar snagged his dark skin beneath the inner corner of his right eye and skidded across his cheek, disappearing in his thick, black hair. His eyes were the same color as Jake’s, that iridescent sheen of gold over green and silver over brown, and he had the same nose and mouth, too. He was a little darker, no freckles, and had one of those dimples in his chin that made a man a movie star back in the age of Talkies. And he was big—bigger than Jake, which said a lot. Jake is huge, but Tristan probably weighed about two twenty and was almost as tall as Hunter. There was something about his build that told you he didn’t pack on all that muscle in a gym, either; both boys were athletes, back in the day, but Tristan hadn’t been a linebacker then. Now, he dwarfed the chair he sat in, his big hands like dinner plates on the small table we sat around. The man they’d called Leo was leaning against the doorway, watching us, and when it looked like Tristan wasn’t able to talk, he pulled up a chair and sat down with the three of us.

  Leo—a man I knew as Officer Gardener and never had cause to speak to before—was apparently friends with Tristan. He sighed too, then tipped his chair back on its legs and looked Jake in the eye. “Your brother didn’t have a choice. He was advised to never come back, but here he is.”

  “Advised by who?” Leo gave me a sharp look, then locked eyes with Tristan.

  “Raven Keller,” Tristan said in an empty voice, answering a question Leo hadn’t bothered to ask out loud, then carried his gaze over to me. “And I’m going to guess Jake gave you that hickie—”

  “Fuck you,” I snapped, and he sighed again.

  “I’m not trying to be an asshole,” Tristan said, and his eyes were genuinely sad. “I thought you weren’t speaking—Leo told me—”

  “Everybody in town knew you hated each other,” Leo snapped, cutting in as Tristan raked his hands through his hair and leaned back from the table, staring at nothing. “Hated. So what the hell is this?”

  “It’s exactly what I told you would happen,” Tristan suddenly growled, and Leo rapped the table with his knuckles, neither of them looking at the other. The air filled with anxious energy, with bitterness, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Jake didn’t move.

  “I wasn’t the one who told you not to come,” Leo said, and Tristan abruptly stood up and stalked over to the wall, the tension in the room growing so thick you could practically see it. It was enough to make Jake wake up a little bit, and he leaned back in his chair and watched his brother before his eyes ticked back to Leo.

  “No, you weren’t, but she said—”

  “I’m not her, I haven’t told her you’re here,” Leo said, defensive, and by then I’d had enough. All three men stared at me when I spoke, dark eyes flashing.

  “Start from the beginning,” I told them, “now.” I pointed at Tristan, my voice hard. “Because I’ve spent the last five years thinking I killed you, you asshole, and Jake—” I wasn’t able to finish the sentence, but I didn’t need to; everyone froze, and then Tristan slowly walked back over to the table. “Please,” I said, but I didn’t say it for me. Jake was watching everything his brother did now, his eyes gleaming in the low light, that strange half-smile frozen on his face. I could barely stand to look at him. It reminded me too much of… Everything.

  It took a minute for Tristan to speak, and when he did, I realized he was taking it all the way back, to the very beginning. “I saw Lucas with your mom,” Tristan said quietly, meeting my eyes for a seco
nd before his darted off into nothing again. “And he… He said something vulgar—”

  “Yeah,” I snapped, my body flushing, “I remember. You can skip this part.”

  “No,” Tris said, his voice rough. “I can’t. He said… Something that implied he was sleeping with her, or had slept with her. And I couldn’t see her face, but I realized that she could have had something to do with the way they died--”

  “It was an accident,” Jake suddenly said, and Tristan glanced up at him, his nostrils flaring. Leo shifted in his chair, alert, and it made my nerves tingle. The energy in the room still crackled with tension.

  “Was it? Now, after everything you’ve seen, do you still believe in accidents?”

  “Tristan,” Leo said, a note of warning in his voice, but Jake cut him off with a laugh—if you could call it a laugh. It sounded like it came from the bottom of a well, a drowned man calling to us from his grave.

  “After everything I’ve seen? You mean the snow?”

  “What snow?” Leo stared at him, but Tristan pushed away from the table again and swore under his breath as he leaned against the wall, facing away from us.

  “The snow,” Jake said, and before I could stop myself I interrupted him, unable to stand another observation about my romantic life.

  “There was snow, in the office,” I told them. “Came right out of the ceiling—makes no fucking sense. If I hadn’t seen it with someone else, I’d probably hospitalize myself.” Not that Jake made such a great witness at the moment.

  “How did you—”

  “I told you,” Tris said, whirling on Leo and grabbing him by the lapels so fast none of us knew what was happening until Leo was already hanging in the air. Tristan dragged him upright, his teeth bared as he growled into the cop’s face. “I knew—”

  “They haven’t spoken in four fucking years,” Leo snapped, yanking free. He landed on the ground with a thud, his face turning a mottled shade of red. “Get a hold of yourself, goddamnit. How the hell was I—”

  “Because I told you! I told you,” Tris growled, and the pain in his voice was undeniable. He swung towards us next, pointing at me. “When did you start sleeping together?”

  “I told you to fuck—”

  “Last week,” Jake said, and I reddened in spite of myself before sitting up straighter and staring Tristan and Leo in the eye.

  “We slept together.” I glared at Jake this time too. “Past tense. Never going to happen again.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tristan said, and I didn’t understand, for the first time, the devastation in his voice—it was way out of proportion with the deed itself. “It only takes once—”

  “He said snow,” Leo said, and I didn’t miss the placating tone. “They saw snow, out of thin air. Right?” He glanced back at us, his eyes still darting towards Tristan; I didn’t blame him. A minute ago it looked like Tris was going to throw him through the wall.

  “Right,” I said, Jake silently watching us all. His eyes snapped to me when I spoke, then went back to the tabletop for a long moment before he looked up at his brother again.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing that startling,” Jake said quietly, then tilted his head in a way that used to make my blood run cold and for the first time actually reassured me. Maybe he was coming back to himself. “Why?”

  Nothing that startling… Did he mean…

  “Because two descendants of the Ashwood coven can’t have sex,” Leo said haltingly, “without… Consequences.”

  “Like snow,” Jake said, and rolled his eyes. I felt my whole body unclench at the sight of the familiar gesture. “Hell of a consequence for—”

  “Did you say coven?” It took a second to hit me; I was so distracted by my relief.

  “Yes,” Leo said solemnly. “The Ashwood Society is really just a coven. And you—both of you—are descendants of two of the founding families, the Kellers and the Warfields.”

  “And we fuck, and what? Magic happens?” Jake raised an eyebrow suggestively and I fought the urge to groan; “come on, Raven,” he said, not missing my sour expression, “don’t deny our—”

  “So what you’re saying is… We’re witches? And when we have sex with each other, we start making it snow?” And can read peoples’ minds? I stared at Leo and waited for an answer, hoping it would make sense of the question I couldn’t quite bring myself to voice out loud yet.

  “Basically,” Leo said, nodding. “Sex between magical dynasties is discouraged—”

  “Holy shit,” Jake said, and laughed out loud. “Did you just say magical dynasties?”

  “Listen, Jacob,” Tristan said, and only the desperation in his voice could have shut his brother up. “Please.”

  “All descendants have… Gifts,” Leo said carefully, watching our faces. He glanced at Tristan, and when the big man walked over to lean against the wall, away from us, he sank back into his chair. “They all have a natural proclivity towards Binding—towards magic,” he told us, and I listened to every word, thinking of more and more questions for each one that came out of his mouth. “Some can make it snow, for example, or rain, or they can guide a card dealer towards a favorable hand or have uncommon luck at fishing. All kinds of things, even without any training. If you are a direct descendant who is trained to use your gift properly, you have much more pronounced skills—you don’t predict a flurry with eerie accuracy, for example; you call in a blizzard. Got it?” I nodded. “But when two descendants from the Ashwood coven Bind their bodies,” he said, the emphasis noticeable, “it somehow deepens the magic. Multiplies it. Makes you dangerous,” Leo said, and sighed, his eyes swinging back over to Tristan, “and that makes other dynasties pay a little more attention.”

  “A lot more,” Tristan snarled, getting up and leaning against the counter again. He didn’t look at us, instead staring down at the floor beneath his feet. Shadows seemed to crawl out of the woodwork and linger around him, making the room seem darker where ever he stood.

  “So I’m dangerous now?” Jake laughed again, startling the two men. I was getting scared for him; this was almost worse, in a way, than his retreat. He was going straight into monster mode. “And Raven, well…” He gave me a pointed look. “She’s always been pretty fucking dangerous, let’s all just own that—”

  “Me?” I stopped myself from reaching across the table and slapping his arm; I couldn’t even tell if he was making a joke. “And believe me, this isn’t a sudden change with you, buddy. You’ve always been—”

  “Enough,” Leo barked, and Jake gave him a sly grin; I felt my whole body unclench when I saw it. He was coming around, definitely. “What else has happened since you… Since you were together?”

  “Well it’s only been—”

  “People can hear what I’m thinking,” I said bluntly, and that shut Jake up. He blinked and looked down at his hands where they rested on the table top. “Jake could, anyway. Does that have anything to do with the fact that I’m his Sineater?”

  “What did you say?” Leo and Tristan both turned and stared at me. The room went completely still, the tension that crackled in the air suddenly rocketing through the stratosphere. Tristan’s eyes were so dilated they looked like new moons.

  “I said Jake could hear what I’m thinking.” And I could hear his thoughts too… But only when we were together, in the heat of the moment.

  “Did you sign the book?” Tristan snarled the question at his brother. Jake locked eyes with him and slowly stood up to lean on his hands, flattened on the tabletop, tilting his head in that dangerously feline way as he stared at Tristan from across the room.

  “Why? Is that another thing you forgot to tell me not to do in the last five years?” Jake stood up to his full height; even though Tristan was bigger, Jake had never been afraid of a fight. Never. It was one of his worst characteristics, and right now he practically bristled with menace; I felt my hands start shaking and twisted them together, willing my heartrate to slow down.

&
nbsp; “Jake,” I started, but a word blasted into my brain, so hard and fast it gave me a headache immediately.

  No. He was telling me to back off. Telling me to sit down, to leave it. It felt like he’d slapped me; I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips.

  He was telling me he wanted to fight, and he’d taken my strength in one blow.

  “You owe my Sineater an apology, actually,” Jake said, and I recognized his tone instantly. Where-ever he’d gone, that distant place where he wasn’t quite present in his own body, he had now returned in full force to his second mode of coping with disaster: calculated cruelty. “Quite a mean trick you pulled on her,” Jake said, and there was a low whine from the floor beneath us, as if something heavy were sliding across it. Leo jumped up from the table, his eyes wide. “Do you know she thought she killed you? And because she had to hide it from me—and I get it, honestly, although it makes me hate her—we didn’t talk for—what was it, Raven?” He spun towards me, and the low whine under our feet began to get louder, a groaning, churning sound, as if the very earth were moving.

  “Jake.” Tristan’s voice was hard, the shadows ebbing around him.

  “Four years—almost five, really,” Jake said, turning back towards him. He rolled his head on his neck like a boxer and grinned at his brother. “And the whole time, I got to stay locked up in the house with Lucas and Mina. They even sent Morgan away to some prep school in New Hampshire—I barely see him. Just us three.” Jake cracked his knuckles. I scrambled back from the table, feeling it begin to shake under my hands, as if an earthquake were beginning to rumble through the floor; my chair almost fell over as I stood up and ran towards the wall, wondering if I should go outside. Leo looked terrified, the whites of his eyes showing bold and bright against the dark, his mouth firm. Somehow, I knew it was Jake—he was doing this. Somehow. The house began to jerk and sway, and I whimpered in fear, crouching against the wall; I wasn’t sure I could make it out the door now—should I crawl under the table? I could feel Jake, now that my headache was dissipating; that thread that linked us, that never frayed or snapped no matter how much we wished it might, held strong. Wrath. Pain. Hatred. “Do you have any idea,” Jake said, and the sarcasm was gone from his voice as he stalked around the table, towards his brother, “what I did to her?”