I swiveled in my seat to look at her. “What kind of punishment?”
“I’ll yell at her,” Crash said softly, “and throw things around.”
Basically, they’d put on a show for whoever was listening. Clever.
Feish pulled out a chair and carefully lowered herself into it, her bulbous eyes blinking rapidly. “Boss was caught sleeping two years ago, and they spelled him to stay asleep and inked him. They forced him to sign a contract too, threatened my life if he didn’t. No one else would have dared. His magic is dulled right because of their hold on him.”
Suddenly her fierce protectiveness of her boss made even more sense. He’d given up his freedom to save her. Karissa’s words about the Unseelie flowed through my brain.
I whipped around to face Crash. “Let me guess, they gave you the mark of a crescent moon?” He leaned back in his chair and gave me a slow nod.
Karissa had said it was a sign of Unseelie, the bad fae. Had she told me that so that I’d distrust Crash if I saw it on his neck, not realizing that it was a mark of slavery to the O’Seans, and had nothing to do with being Unseelie? I was guessing the answer was yes.
Setting me in direct opposition with Crash. “Would you have killed me if you could have back there? Because of whatever magical hold they have on you?”
Another jaw tick. “I was holding back the best I could. But yes, they want you dead now that they know you were the one who stopped Hattie. Even though they still got what they want.”
Did that mean the ceremony that had cost Eric’s cousin his life had let through the demon Hattie had wished to summon? Had the demon been wreaking havoc in New Orleans all this time? Now that would make for some seriously shitty irony.
“Won’t help if they figure out you killed Sean O’Sean,” Suzy said, ever helpful.
Crash’s head whipped around to look at her, then back to me. “Pardon, what?”
“Old news. Kinda,” I muttered. It seemed like weeks since Suzy and I’d been fired, since we’d been down in the enslaved quarters. Since Sean O’Sean had attacked me.
A string of curse words floated past my gritted teeth as I realized how close I’d come to dying when I’d gone up against Crash. Of course, I’d felt invincible with Karissa’s magic floating through me.
“Boss. How did she beat you?” Feish asked.
I put my hand up like I was sitting in school. “Karissa kissed me. I was full of—” I lifted both hands up, wiggling them.
“Youth,” Eric said. “Vitality. Strength.”
I waved a hand at him. “What he said.”
Feish was frowning. “Boss, Karissa’s magic does not hurt you. It wouldn’t have worked on you that way.”
Crash stared hard at me, his blue and gold eyes sweeping over me. “Because it wasn’t just her magic. Some of it was from Breena.”
Gran puffed away in a quick movement that I did not miss even as his words sank into my mind. Not just Karissa’s magic.
Hadn’t Officer Jon’s friend told me I was something different? That I didn’t look like I was human? What the hell was happening to me?
“GRAN!” I twisted about, but she was gone. Sort of.
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Her voice was faint, but I still heard it and I followed the echo.
I was up and out of my seat, running for the stairs, forgetting that there were maybe more important things to deal with than my potentially questionable heritage. Except that my heritage (parentage?) could potentially help or hurt me in this particular situation.
I skidded to a stop in my bedroom, shocked at how fast I’d gotten there after the day I’d had.
But maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked if there really was something inhuman inside of me. Something that was waking up?
Why would it come out now, though? Why not when I was younger and training with Gran and Officer Jon? Why not . . . any time in the last twenty years when I could have used a shot of confidence? When I could have used a little magic to put Alan in his place?
Gran paced inside my old bedroom. “I didn’t know it would be like this, Bree. I really didn’t. I was doing my best to protect you from those who would attempt to use you.”
“Spill it, Gran, who knocked boots with someone in the shadow world?” My parents had died in a car accident when I was barely ten. Another wave of intuition passed over me.
“My parents. It wasn’t a car accident, was it?”
Her lips trembled. “No, I don’t think it was, but I’ve never been able to prove it. Jon could never find anything.”
“Just like it wasn’t a natural death for you?” My guts were churning. Who the hell was killing my family and why?
She closed her eyes. “I truthfully don’t remember my own death. I opened my eyes, and I was standing over my body. Whatever happened to me is gone from my mind.”
“I will find the people who killed you and my parents, but we’ll circle back to that. Gran, what the hell am I?” I took a step toward her and she sank to the bed. I had the urge to do the same. I wasn’t human.
“Your grandfather was fae.”
Her words like a slap to the face, I took a step back as my brain did the math. I was a quarter fae?
She looked at me. “I did the best I could to keep you hidden, and honestly, when you left Savannah and asked to be blocked from the shadow world, I figured it was the best way to keep you safe. As much as I hated for you to be gone, it meant there were no fae looking for you, no one wondering at your fast reflexes or your flashes of intuition. So long as you were blinded to the shadow world, no one was looking your way, no one was thinking about using you. Like Karissa would. Like Crash might.”
Gran’s hair swirled around her, buffeted by an unseen wind. “Your grandfather was fae, and your father was from the supernatural world too. I can’t remember what he was, Bree, and I’ve been trying!” She swung her arms above her head in obvious frustration. “But he was strong. And that strength, along with your grandfather’s bloodline, is what makes you who and what you are—unique in the shadow world. When you asked for the magic back, it came quietly that first night, but it has been growing ever since, and it will continue to grow.”
I blew out a slow breath. “So whatever magic I’ve got, I asked for it back, and just like that it’s here?”
Gran gave me a smile that was somehow both sad and proud. “You released yourself from my spell, Breena. You opened yourself up to your full potential by shedding the past that had shackled you. You had to want it.”
I didn’t think she just meant the spell. She meant Alan. She meant my lack of confidence in myself. She meant everything I’d lived up until this point. I straightened my back and gave her a nod. “Okay, Gran. Okay. All this is groovy—” Actually no, no it was not groovy, but I would deal with the mental fallout later. “—but we’ve got to figure out what exactly we’re doing with the quartz cross and that mark on Crash’s neck.”
Because I couldn’t give the cross to Karissa, no matter what I’d promised her. And I couldn’t give it to Crash, because he’d be forced to give it to O’Sean.
A knock on the front door snapped my head around.
I hurried down the stairs to the door just as Suzy rounded the corner, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. From the front hall I could just see Crash, sitting quietly at the table, his eyes the only thing that moved as they tracked me.
I grabbed the door and flung it open to see Officer Burke standing there, her fist raised to pound again. “Is that a knife?”
I looked at my right hand. “Shoot, yes it is. Cutting vegetables, and I ran for the door.” I tucked the knife into the sheath on my thigh, which might have slightly undermined my cover story.
Officer Burke gave me a tight smile. “I came by to tell you that Jon is doing okay. Or at least he’s stable and the doctors think he’ll pull through.”
I blew out a breath of relief. “I’m glad to hear that. Thank you for coming by to tell me, I appreciate it.” I swu
ng the door shut, but she put her foot in the doorway, stopping me.
“About your Gran’s death. I took a quick look into it after you left the station. When you’re ready, come on down, and we can discuss what I found.” She pulled her foot back and turned around. I opened the door and stared at her back.
“My parents were killed too. Thirty years ago,” I said softly. “In an apparent car accident that probably wasn’t. But it would be dangerous to look into it. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
Officer Burke paused, but didn’t look back at me as she spoke. “You know, the files from your parents’ accident might just end up with your grandmother’s files. Paperwork can get mixed up like that for people in the same family.”
“I see,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind. And thank you. Again.”
Officer Burke strode down the narrow walkway and let herself out the gate without ever looking my way again. I shut the door and leaned on it a moment, breathing in deep.
With my eyes closed, I let the problems at hand fill my mind in the hopes that the puzzle pieces would click together. Crash was under the sway of O’Sean. Karissa was working for O’Sean. O’Sean wanted to do bad, although unspecified things to Savannah. I had someone shooting at me and Eric, most likely a henchman of O’Sean’s. Everyone in the Hollows Group was under an enchantment set by O’Sean Senior.
“Eammon wanted me to work for Karissa,” I breathed out the words and took a step back, turning to the kitchen. Crash was watching me, his eyes unreadable.
I cleared my throat, not entirely sure who I could fully trust, but knowing who would tell me the truth if not always as expected. “Feish, is there a way to take the mark off Crash, freeing him?”
“Your grandmother could have done it. It needs to be a spell caster with great power,” Feish said softly.
I grimaced, already knowing that there was one spell caster we could ask. Whether she’d help, I wasn’t sure. “Crap. Okay. And once you’re free of that mark, you don’t have to do what they want?”
“I’ve already asked Missy to remove the mark. She refused,” Crash said. “‘Just penance for a lifetime of sin and debauchery’ were, I believe, the exact words she used.”
My lips curled up. Suddenly their interaction at the auction made much more sense. He’d asked her, and she’d refused, but I wondered if it was because she wasn’t strong enough. Knowing her, she would have wanted Crash to owe her a favor.
“Yeah, that sounds like her. If I manage to free you from it, will you promise to help me stop O’Sean?”
Crash gave me a nod. “You have my word that if you free me of this mark, I am yours.”
Feish sucked in a not-so-silent gasp. I chose to ignore the potential innuendo in his wording, because it was Crash. Besides, I’d already come to the conclusion that he was not for me. No matter how hot he was.
“Crash, I need you to go outside a moment while my team discusses what we’re going to do.” I locked eyes with him. “Because for all we know, O’Sean can control you even now. Maybe he can even track you.”
“Like he tracked me,” Suzy said.
I thought Crash would get all stupid manly on me, that he’d scoff and say he was stronger than that. But he stood up and went to the door, his eyes finding mine for just a moment before he left. “That is smart. You decide how to move forward, and I will trust you to tell me my part.”
And then he was out of the kitchen and the front door was clicking shut behind him. I could all too easily imagine him sitting on the front step. Waiting.
“Holy crap, the heat between you two is going to light my panties on fire,” Suzy said. “I mean, he’s so damn comfortable in his skin, he’s not only letting you lead, but letting you boss him around? Hot. That’s hot.”
“Stop that.” I waved a hand at her, choosing to ignore what she was saying rather than digest it. “Here’s the thing. We have the quartz fairy cross. And I want to hide it in a place no one will ever think to look.” I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing. Suzy, Feish, and Eric leaned over my shoulder. “We’ll need Robert’s help. Eric, I’ll need you here, at the house. Suzy, you’ll bring Missy to meet us at the Hollows. Feish, you go to Karissa.” I sketched out my idea on the paper, lest anyone was listening, and Eric clapped me on the shoulder.
“That is an excellent plan. Very twisty.”
I smiled up at him. “That’s the idea. Confuse the shit out of everyone else.” Hopefully not my team, though.
With the plan laid out, all we had to do was wait for midnight to roll around.
And for me? It was time to ask Gran the really hard questions.
20
“Gran.” I sat on my bed in my room, in a house that wasn’t mine, trying to tease information out of a ghost who sometimes couldn’t remember the most important details. “Can we trust Missy?”
Gran paced the room from door to window and back again. Night had fallen, but we were waiting for closer to midnight to kick our plan into action. Which meant we had some time to prepare and I had time to talk to Gran about some of the things that were tugging at me.
“Missy and I were not friends, you have to understand that,” Gran said softly. “We—along with Hattie—were guardians of Savannah. Three kinds of abilities, tied together by our oath to protect the city. I know Missy went out of her way to hurt you when I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t blind to it.”
“And you let her?” I couldn’t help the pain in my voice. That my gran would have knowingly allowed someone to hurt me when I was just a child was unfathomable to me.
“No, of course not! In private I put her in her place more than once. She was behind me in strength, but not by much. Hattie was the weakest of the three of us, but even so she was not weak.” Gran sighed heavily. “I ignored Missy’s behavior because she was in her own way trying to waken your powers. Pain . . . sudden and sharp pain can crack open abilities. It is how many of us in the shadow world were trained. I was much softer with you.”
Just like that, Missy being a shit to me made more sense. Even so . . . “But she didn’t like me.”
“No, she didn’t. She’s always known you have the potential to be stronger than her.”
I scooped up my bag, which I’d set on the bed, and pulled out Gran’s book. “And this? Someone was trying to steal it, you saw that. Missy wants it. Could it have been her?”
Gran sat beside me and settled her hand on the red leather-bound book. “Perhaps, but she hates humans, and Alan is very human. No, I think someone else wants it. There are spells within spells in this book. Pages that aren’t what they seem.”
I didn’t even fight the eyeroll. “Of course there are. Jaysus lordy, Gran! Can you at least tell me which pages?”
“No, I can’t,” she said, “and not because I’m dead. My memory was struck from me—by myself—so I couldn’t pass on that information under duress. But know that there are spells in here”—she stroked the cover—“that can’t be found anywhere else.”
“I need Missy to remove whatever spell O’Sean put on the Hollows Group, and to remove that mark on Crash.”
“She can’t do either,” Gran said.
Hope fled me like a balloon deflating, right down to the raspberry my lips made. “Well, fuck.”
“Watch your mouth.” Gran snapped her fingers in my face and I sighed again. No matter how old I was, Gran would always be Gran, and the F-bomb was just one word she didn’t tolerate well.
“There is a way to release them all, but it is dangerous. And they must all be in very close proximity.” She told me how to make sure the spells were removed from everyone.
Gran was not wrong. Not only was it dangerous, but the very thought of it made my stomach roll. Even so, I adjusted the plan I’d been making. I’d learned not to question her wisdom.
I hurried downstairs to the front door and opened it. Crash was sitting there, staring out at the garden. He turned at the sound of the door opening. “Would you come and talk to G
ran with me?” I asked.
He stood and followed me inside without a word.
All the way up to my room, where Gran waited quietly.
“Are you planning to have one last toss before the fight?” Gran asked. “That’s a good idea. I’ll leave you to it.”
“GRAN!” Okay, so apparently I could still be embarrassed by my dead grandmother. “Crash,” I turned to him, deliberately putting my back to my gran. He was grinning, though. Of course he was.
“I think she’s right, one last toss.” He winked and I lifted both eyebrows.
“I think not.” Even if my libido was screaming at me to ride him like a pony. “I’m not interested in competing for your attention with women less than half my age and with tits that defy gravity. Can you get O’Sean to the Hollows by midnight? Tell him we have the cross there.”
Crash shook his head. “Wait—”
“Can you get O’Sean there?” I asked again. I didn’t want to repeat the rest, my ego was bruised enough as it was.
“Yes, I can get him there, but the two girls—”
I pointed at the door. “You said you’d listen to me, so go. Get O’Sean to the Hollows just after midnight.”
Crash’s eyes narrowed. “We’re going to finish this discussion later.”
I shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, we’ve already finished it.”
I expected him to spin around, to stomp off in a huff, because the man I’d lived with for twenty years would do just that. Then again, Himself didn’t have the confidence to own his actions.
Not so much with Crash. He stepped into me, tipped my face up with one hand and placed the softest of kisses on my lips, sending little bolts of energy across my skin, right through to my belly. I might have gasped. Gran might have sighed.
“We are far from done,” he said, his words tingling all the way through me. “But I’ll let it go for now.”
Then he did turn and left me standing there in my room, my legs shaking from a simple kiss that should not have made me feel like that. I slumped to the bed. “Gran.”
Midlife Fairy Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 2 Page 22
