by Eden Butler
“Jani,” Mai said, her voice muffled against Freya’s shoulder as my friend helped her stand. When I reached her, I realized that her bottom lip had swollen, and the cut still bled.
“Here.” My twin didn’t fight me when I dug a balm out of my bag and dabbed a bit of it onto her lip.
“Wouldn’t it be faster to just work a charm on her?” Bane asked.
“It would, but Mai is a healer. They’re the hardest to treat.” I barely glanced at Bane when he grunted and met my sister’s worried eyes. “It’ll be gone in the morning.”
“Papa will still worry.” Mai adjusted herself onto a barstool as I rubbed more balm into her split lip. “And you know, with his heart… Damn, Jani I shouldn’t go home.”
“Don’t you have a house?” Bane asked, his frustration evident in that clipped tone. He glanced at Freya when she cleared her throat, but quickly looked back at me.
“Hey,” I told him, “this isn’t your business. None of it.”
Grunting, Bane glared at me, squaring his shoulders so that his shadow stretched over mine. “It is when I hire someone to do a job and they’re too distracted by family drama to do the work they’re being paid to do.”
That famous Grant temper was still in place, clearly. None of this was my fault, but that didn’t seem to matter to Bane. Aside from his uncle and cousins, he didn’t have much family to speak of—no siblings, no parents left alive—so I guessed all that isolation, especially when you’d been left to be raised by your wealthy distant family, had made him a little less understanding of familial bonds. Especially when it came to siblings. Still, I didn’t care about how rough his childhood was. That didn’t entitle him to be an asshole.
Freya took the balm from me and tended to Mai’s lip as I stepped in front of Bane. “I haven’t seen the first dime on this job, and besides, you’re the one stepping in and trying to take over. Trying to work out our problems, warding your property so I can’t even protect myself.”
Mouth dropping, that temper heightened, and his eyes went steely. “I was protecting you.”
“And did I ask you to do that?”
“Jani, it’s fine,” Mai said, but I kept my attention on the beast glaring down at me. “Bane’s right, I can go back to my house and…”
“Didn’t you tell me when I got here that you’d had the power cut off so Ronan would leave?” I interrupted, glancing at my sister.
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts. You can’t stay there with no electricity and you can’t stay with Papa with a busted lip.” Tilting my head, I crossed my arms. Bane would simply have to understand. “He’ll worry too much.”
“I’d offer my place,” Freya started, “but you know how crazy it is there.”
She wasn’t wrong. Freya still lived with her mother and five sisters. They were all close and would never move out of her family home at the center of town. It had been handed down for generations and one day it would be hers.
“It’s no problem, Frey,” I told her.
“Fine,” Bane said, voice loud, exasperated. “We’ll take your sister back with us. Lennon can watch over her while we search for the Elam.”
“Fine,” I mimicked him, not liking him doling out orders, but not willing to put Mai in a situation that was bad for her. “Then let’s go.”
I ignored his low oath of “Finally” and helped Mai off the stool, leading her and Freya out of the bar, not waiting for Bane to follow us.
Six
“Landon Lucas. Year Three. You let him touch your…”
“I do not recall that.” Freya’s face was red, a clear sign the witch was lying. She also took a three-second swig from the whiskey bottle rather than her usual two. Another indication that she was deflecting. “If you remember, Landon Lucas was touchy with everyone. Including Mai when…”
“Hollow-eyed wretch! You besmirch your family’s name!” That exaggerated coven insult earned a snort from my friend and the bottle, which I gladly took. It wasn’t the same quality that I generally used to fill my flask, but it did so remind me of the dozens of nights lying out on our roof with Freya and Mai, sneaking mortal wine and cigarettes Sam had bought for us.
“Well,” Freya amended, waving her hand to deflect. “In my defense he was pretty. And the pretty boys…”
“Are a load of shit!” Mai called from the bed before she turned over, already drunk and seeming ready to get more so before I pulled the half-empty glass from where she’d wedged it between her elbow and one of Bane’s luxurious guest pillows.
“She’ll be out in about ten minutes.”
“Bless her.” Freya inclined toward the bed, her smile thin as we both waited for Mai’s soft snores to start. She’d untwisted her braid and her thick, curly hair spilled out in a heavy auburn mass. “She always was a lightweight.”
“That’s the truth.” There were dark circles under my sister’s eyes and her already-thin face looked gaunt. Sam had promised he’d watch over her, but from the look of her, he’d done a piss-poor job. Her usually light brown skin was pale and ashen, and she hadn’t bothered to keep herself together, something that was well out of Mai’s norm. When she grumbled in her sleep, I caught Freya’s attention and nodded toward the door. “Come on. She’s out for the night.”
My friend followed me, navigating through the massive hallways of Bane’s large home with her hand on my arm and the bottle tucked in her grip.
“Are you drunk?” I whispered, not sure why I was.
Bane’s house was so large—a mammoth Acadian-style number that had to be well over ten-thousand square feet. He’d disappeared into his den after lowering the wards around his property at my insistence when we’d returned with Mai’s bag and a stash Freya had brought with her from Anderson’s Market. He claimed there was a lot of planning to do before the covens and dens made their arrivals.
“Madame, please,” she said, not hiding her laugh. “I am an officer of the mortal law. I can hold my liquor.”
“Uh huh. So that’s a yes.” I reached behind me, holding out a hand, and grinned when Freya grunted but still deposited the bottle of whiskey in my palm. “Some things never change.”
“Like you and Bane?”
I felt seventeen again, laughing with my friend, her wearing my sweater because, like when we were kids, she forgot hers, as we moved through the hallways and out onto the back deck that overlooked the lake.
“You are much misinformed, Officer Douglas.”
Freya’s chair scratched against the wood decking when she sat, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I spotted a hint of disappointment glinting in her eyes. “Then that’s sad.”
“Is this where you start recounting impossible fantasies that never made sense?”
The wind curled around us, disturbing a grouping of fallen leaves that gathered along the cold chimney at the center of the deck. The surround was made up of stacked river stone, gray with streaks of black running through it. The skin on my legs pebbled from the touch when I sat.
“It’s sad,” Freya started, stretching toward the stack of cut wood to hand me several pieces, “because I’m a witch with excellent vision and a keen sense of observation.”
“Meaning?” I didn’t watch her as I arranged the wood, not bothering with a lighter or matches to get the fire going. The incantation for fire was elemental, simple. Something I could no more forget than the sound of my name, since Bane had been the one to teach it to me the night we’d gotten ourselves lost in the forest.
“Meaning that I saw you both when we were kids, and he’d scare away anyone that so much as look at you even a little bit funny.” Freya moved to the other side of the chimney, watching me as the incantation caught and the wood ignited.
She wasn’t wrong. Since that storm, Bane seemed to make it his business to protect me. It had started in the forest, him seeing me safe, holding my hand, neither of us understanding what that flash of red light meant the tighter our fingers twisted together.
T
hen, two years later, I ran from Micah Allen and his stupid cousins, through the pecan grove north of the Grant’s territory. I wanted to hide, to scream, to forget that I was a girl, to forget that my body and magic stirred and broke inside me, that I could no longer twist hexes just because they were funny. I couldn’t give Micah lice with a snap of my fingers because he called me a loathsome mongrel bitch, even though the old coven insults were the worst, because they cut the deepest.
The stupid Allen boys—all gingers with too many freckles and lopsided ears—crowded around me among all the black-bark trees with pecans falling from the limbs like fat, leaking grapes rotted on the vine. Then, there was only the tree at my back and my feet slipping as I scrambled over fallen pecans.
“Maybe I should make those big eyes of yours look damn foolish with eyebrows that cover your forehead,” Micah said, wiggling his fingers over my face. “Or maybe you’d like a broken arm to match your twin’s.”
I didn’t want a broken arm like Mai’s. It was her and my folks and even my stupid brother Samedi that came to my mind just then—not how Micah and his cousins were stepping closer. She should have never tried skating backward off the dock...and suddenly, for some reason that made no sense to me at all, I thought of Bane Iles and his glowering frown and the stupid way he bullied anyone who spoke poorly to me. It was Bane who was in my thoughts as one fat Allen cousin grabbed my arm and pulled my hands behind my back so I could not hex Micah.
And just as suddenly, and with the same lack of reason or sense, in the fussing and confusion and me kicking and cursing, there Bane stood, in the grove, towering over Micah and all his dumpy cousins.
He was just a kid, like the rest of us, but even at twelve Bane was scary. His temper was something that had gotten him into a lot of trouble with his uncle. And he was big for his age and getting still bigger. He could threaten anyone with a sharp glare of his silver eyes.
“Leave.” It was all he said, all he needed to say, and just like that, as Micah and his cousins ran away and Bane stared down at me like I was a bother, I knew I had a protector.
I never knew why.
I never cared why, but at ten and twelve and other formidable ages, I’d acquired a bodyguard—one that seemed to know when I was afraid or worried, or whenever I wouldn’t admit that I needed help.
One that I could never quite remember speaking to for more than a minute.
One that my papa said it was best not to be too friendly with.
A boy that watched when he wasn’t asked.
Freya laughed at me, snapping her fingers in my face to get me out of the memory that had taken my attention. “And,” she continued, “I saw you tonight bickering with the man. There was the same crackle of energy humming in the air that there’s always been, Jani.” She reached for one of the dried leaves, tearing at the edges. “That sort of chemistry doesn’t just disappear, even with time. It might get forgotten. It might get ignored, but it doesn’t ever really go away.”
“I don’t really care about anything but the way you feel against me.”
I blinked, desperate to shake away his voice and how that last time together before I left still haunted me. It was the one and only time we’d touched each other. What stung worse was he had no memory of it at all. Freya’s assertion didn’t help. Neither did being in his home, being around him.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her, watching the flames rise higher and higher up the chimney. “I’ll keep it buried.”
“Jani…”
“No, Frey…” The smell of woodsmoke was the only comfort I’d taken from this place. It was the only thing that settled my nerves since being back home. “Buried is where it should all stay.”
“But being around him has to be…” She went silent when I glanced at her, hoping the look was warning enough that I didn’t want to get into this. Not here. Not now. “Okay. I get it.” Freya leaned forward, threading her fingers together as she turned toward me. “It’s a shitty situation and being here, doing this job has to be a gut punch.” I could only manage a quick nod, one that my friend seemed to accept before she went on. “So, here’s what I propose…”
“If this has something to do with you and Landon Damn Lucas…”
Her laugh was loud, infectious. “Nah, he moved away years ago. Probably bald with a dad bod by now and not the hot-dad bod kind either.” She sat up, rubbing her hands on her jeans. “I’m going to go back to town and grab a few things from my place and give Ivy a call.” She lifted her hand when I shot my eyebrows up, not sure what the point of contacting the chief of police would be. “I have vacation time due me and I don’t want you out there on your own. I’m going with you.”
Something warm and light moved inside my chest. Nothing of the kind had set off inside me for years. Not since I’d left this place. Freya watched me. Her eyes unblinking. Her hands flat and still against her thighs, like she waited for me to say something that would allow her to release a breath. It had been a long time since anyone depended on me for more than just a piece of promo art or to find something they’d misplaced. But Freya seemed to depend on me now. She watched and waited, and as she did, I realized I might be waiting too. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“Frey, I’d…love it if you came along.”
“Really?” She stretched her mouth wide with a smile, then moved her lips further apart when I nodded. “Good. Okay, great.” She stood, bouncing a little on her feet. “Okay. Sweet. I’m gonna go.”
“I should drive you. You’re drunker than me.”
“Nah, Bane’s got a million people to give me a lift.” She pulled out her cell, moving her thumb across the screen. “I come out here a few times a month to keep him updated on stuff Ivy asks about so I know a few of the guys.” Freya moved her cell back into her pocket, curling my sweater tighter around her as she clapped her hands together. “Alright. Give me a couple of hours and then I’ll be back.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Despite the distance I tended to keep from everyone in my life, I didn’t stop her when she grabbed me as though she was overcome with excitement and gave me a tight hug. “This will be great…like old times. And don’t worry about…you know.” She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder, toward Bane’s house. “I’ve got your back. Always, Jani.”
“Thanks.”
I waved her off, laughing at her smile, how wide it stayed when she jogged back into the house and disappeared into the dark den. Freya hadn’t changed much. She’d always been ready for an adventure, and she’d never let me down when I needed her. Of course she’d be there now.
It was my friend and the dozens of stupid stunts we’d pulled as kids that I thought about as I watched the fire, staring at the orange and white play of light as it ate away at the wood. My senses were dulled only slightly by the whiskey, but I still detected the presence of someone’s signature as they walked near the deck. Straightening my back, I kept my fingers curled into a fist. There was no one I recognized in that heartbeat or the approaching scent and so I stood, moving my fingers as though I stretched them, readying a hex that would protect me from any threat that came my way.
But as the noise of steps moved closer and the creak of wood hit my ears, the heartbeat quickened and the signature, though faint, and mildly unfamiliar, became clearer.
“Jani?” the man said, holding up his hand, a small surrender I guessed he made when he glanced down at my lifting hand, ready to level a curse at him. “It’s me! Malak!”
Impossible. Utterly impossible.
He paused long enough for me to tilt my head, my gaze sharp, examining as he took two small steps toward me. The eyes were the same, still round and light, like crystal and aquamarine all at once, but where the boy had worn a round face with dull features and a heart-shaped mouth, the man standing before me was completely changed. The bones of his face were angular, the chubbiness completely vanished, and the sharpness of chin and jaw were so pronounced and exaggerated I could have sworn he’d picked up a ke
en glamour skill, something that wizards weren’t ever particularly good at.
“I swear, Jani,” he said, two more steps slipping away, “it really is me. Malak Grant. Bane’s cousin.”
“That just…doesn’t seem right,” I admitted, dropping my hands to my side. “The last I saw of Malak, he was tripping over his untied shoe laces in the school gym trying to make it up the rope hanging from the ceiling.”
“I did manage it…year four.” The smile. That too was the same, though it was also exaggerated and more pronounced. “And by then there was no baby fat or unlaced shoes to keep me down.” He took tentative steps closer, bringing his face and features nearer to the firelight, and I relaxed, then released a small exhale when I spotted the only flaw on that beautiful face: a gash that ran from the bottom of his jaw, across his neck to disappear beneath his shirt. He lowered his gaze, following my distracted attention and his smile shifted down.
“I’m sorry,” I tried, feeling stupid for staring.
“It’s fine. Everyone looks at it.” Malak adjusted his collar to cover most of the scar. “Kind of hard not to.” He sat next to me on the fire surround, warming his hands as he passed glances between the flames and my face, lingering a bit more on the latter. “Man. Janiver Benoit.”
Not wanting to pry about the scar, I jumped on his change in attitude. “Why do Grant wizards use my full name?”
“Do we?” he asked, bringing that sweet smile back to cut the tension. “I take it my cousin does it too?” He shrugged at my nod, dismissing the answer. “Maybe because we’re both a little awed by you.” He was so unlike most higher coven wizards. Malak was always free with his compliments.
“Now I know you’re related.”
“Why’s that?” Malak’s smile shifted again, like he expected the small tease before I spoke it.
“Because you shovel as much bullshit as he does.”
His laugh was deep, heavy, and sounded like an old curse you were compelled to obey, but it didn’t last long before he spoke. He almost made me forget he consorted with the likes of Ethan Rivers, Cari’s brother. “Well, that might be true, but I’ve never once heard Bane shovel shit to flirt with any witch.”
