Sunny was already in a state of panic when she realized the woman wasn’t afraid of the creatures—she was afraid of doing Fox’s bidding, but couldn’t do otherwise. Sunny looked on in horror when she realized what was happening.
Imelda had picked up the carving knife from the hostess trolley as she passed. It was raised in her hand. She moved forward, directed by the force of energy emitted from Fox’s palm.
Horrified, Sunny reacted, meaning to stop it.
Fox glared across the table at her, tearing Sunny’s emotions apart. Her strength left her.
Imelda plunged the knife into the beautiful creature’s neck, slaughtering it there and then, right in front of Sunny’s eyes. Unwillingly, and with superhuman strength, the servant had destroyed this special creature.
Devastated, Sunny realized her mistake. She wasn’t prepared for Fox’s reaction. She should’ve known he’d smite her efforts if they didn’t suit him. His tutorship would mean complete dominion, not negotiable. Would it even be possible to trick him? The very real prospect of failure loomed large in Sunny’s consciousness.
Meanwhile, the second panther growled and made ready to pounce onto the table. Sunny braced herself, withdrawing her former magic, reluctantly returning the creature to its previous form in order to prevent it a second grizzly and painful death, watching in dismay as the creature dissolved into a hide on the floor.
Fox reached for his champagne glass, watching Sunny with a calculating expression. Panicking, she struggled to remove herself from the cruelty he represented. All she could do was pretend it was a game.
She clapped her hands together in faux glee in order to break the moment, in order to distract him. But all she could think was: would he undo everything she tried to do? She wasn’t working hard enough, she told herself. She had to hide her magical efforts, distract him from her intentions, be as devious as him.
She hadn’t thought it through, that was the problem.
The servant woman Imelda was kneeling on the floor, wailing and crying over the panther she’d killed.
Sunny tried to reach out to comfort her, but Fox shifted the hand through which he’d been directing the woman, and Imelda collapsed to the floor and dissolved away, as if she’d never been there.
“I didn’t mean to cause an...issue.” Sunny tried to keep her tone light. An awkward silence followed. She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, you’re right, I was showing off.”
Fox shrugged. “Any preference for dessert?”
“Whatever you choose.” She wasn’t challenging him again, not just yet, not until she’d gathered herself and mentally drawn up a new game plan.
Moments later, she stared in horror as Imelda once more walked into the room, pushing her hostess trolley.
The body on the floor had gone.
Sunny looked at the woman, her heart aching. Whoever Imelda was, she was trapped in an endless cycle of servitude to a cruel and heartless monster.
And so will I be, Sunny realized, if I don’t sort this out quickly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Celeste crammed herself into Willow’s yellow Mini as soon as she got the call from Aveline.
“We should have gone with them,” Willow chastised from the driver’s seat.
“Just drive!” Celeste stared at the road ahead, and didn’t tell Willow off when she squandered a bit of magic on speed.
Moments later they climbed out of the car at Hollingswell Hall.
Outside the entrance, Aveline, Eben and Rowena were all trying to talk down an irate Cullen.
Cullen roared aloud and turned away from the three of them. When he caught sight of Celeste and Willow, he stomped over to them. “Gone!” he bellowed. “With him.”
Celeste glanced past him, at Eben. “Where did they go?”
“The Grey House,” Eben replied. “Sunny requested it. He offered her the world, but she kept him close by.”
Celeste nodded. It was a good start, and it showed Sunny really had thought it through and hadn’t been tempted. They were within reach. They could still help her. However, The Grey House would quickly become a fortress once they were inside.
Cullen turned away and set off toward town on foot.
Eben ran after him. “Get in my camper,” he called after Cullen, “we can drop you at the town.”
“You’ll ‘drop me’ nowhere,” Cullen retorted. “I’ll walk to The Grey House.”
Celeste darted over and put her hand on Cullen’s arm, soothing him with a dose of her special magic. “Get in the van, Cullen, it’ll be quicker.”
Cullen glared at them. “I must witness Nathaniel’s wrongdoings so I can avenge them.”
“Shall we allow it?” Celeste asked Eben.
“He can get in the van,” Eben replied, “if his wrists remain bound behind his back.”
Cullen reluctantly agreed.
Rowena and Aveline helped Eben tie him up.
Cullen growled and cursed and wrestled with his restraints, bellowing with frustration.
Eben clamped his hand over Cullen’s mouth.
Cullen continued to wrestle and Eben glanced Celeste’s way, seeking permission to restrain him by magic.
She nodded. Cullen was a total liability, but it would delay them to put him under a strong enough spell to keep him safe and out of harm’s way. “Quickly, get in the van. We can’t afford to waste any more time, we need to get out there.”
They all headed for the van and piled in, with Cullen sitting on the floor in the back of the camper surrounded by the others.
Eben put his foot on the floor, racing along the roads and up the hill to Fox’s manor house.
Willow followed in her Mini.
Celeste tried to reason with Cullen along the way, but he refused to stay behind in the town.
“You must let her sort this, Cullen,” Celeste said as they rattled along the roads at supernatural speed.
He went silent, but the look in his eyes remained unsettling.
Unsurprisingly, when they reached their destination, the twenty feet high gates were locked.
“Okay, everybody, it’s going to take all our power to get inside.”
Forming a chain, they wrapped their hands around the bars on the gates and pooled their joint efforts, all of them vibrating with the energy it took to open the gates. Eventually, they clicked open.
Once inside the grounds, Celeste instructed them. “Scatter in pairs, surround the building. We have to be ready to deflect his shield. He’ll want to trap Sunny inside.”
She waved to Eben, gesturing him closer. “Stay with me. Secure Cullen in the van first, though. He means well but he can’t be trusted.”
She waited for Eben to return.
As he walked back from the van, the van started rocking and jolting.
Creeping through the foliage, Celeste peered in the dining room windows. Luck was on their side. She’d been rightly drawn to this spot. She spotted Sunny as she weaved energy around Fox’s form, who was in his seat at the opposite end of the table to her, eating.
Celeste felt uncomfortable. She and Fox had sat at that table many times, shared meals, discussed magic and eternity, making plans to unite forces.
“You never give up, do you, Fox?” she muttered under her breath.
Frantically, she craned her neck and tried to see what Sunny was doing. Making magic, by the looks of her. Surely she couldn’t mean to go over to his side? Not after everything they told her and taught her.
She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Cullen, who was peering out the door of the van, which he appeared to have booted open despite his restraints, glaring at the building as if he could take it apart stone by stone with his bare hands. He loved Sunny every bit as much as she loved him. And Sunny wasn’t going over to Fox. She had a plan. She loved Cullen too much to give up on what they had.
Celeste looked back indoors.
“I can’t believe it.” She stared into the scene and the dining room beyond. Two black panther
s roamed freely around the dining room, but it wasn’t them that’d caught her attention. “It’s Imelda!”
Willow came quickly to her side. Craning her neck, she tried to see beyond the foliage masking the window. “Imelda?”
“It’s her, it’s really her.”
Imelda was a local, and a close friend of Hanna, Sunny’s grandmother. Imelda had disappeared years ago. She often visited family in Dorset, and when she didn’t return one time, word was sent she’d settled with her cousins. Clearly, it was a lie.
Willow looked over Celeste’s shoulder, taking in the scene. “But we thought...we thought she’d gone to Dorset.”
Celeste’s fury built. “Fox had her up here all this time.”
“Why didn’t we know?” Willow looked aghast.
Celeste felt it too. They thought they knew when he was around and what he was up to. They’d been wrong. Who else had he sucked into his world, never to return?
“Why Imelda?”
“I have no idea.” Celeste shrugged. “No wait, I do recall he mentioned her once. Said she made a good tiramisu.”
“Seriously? He’s kept her caged up in his fortress because she makes a good tiramisu?”
Celeste frowned. “There must be more to it. Why would he want to keep Imelda close?”
“It must be serious, the reason why.”
“We really need to get them out. Alive,” Celeste added. “Both of them.” She paused. “Sunny will surely sense Imelda’s a friendly local, trapped there.”
Willow shook her head. “Yes, but I still can’t help wishing Sunny hadn’t gone in there.”
“She had to though, didn’t she?” Celeste could see it now. “If his guard ever goes down, it’s here, in his family homestead. She wants to make her move on his turf.”
“Dangerous.” Willow gave her a chastising look.
Eben approached them. “I had a talk with Cullen, had to. He was kicking the shit out of my camper van. Says he knows Sunny has to deal with it, but he can’t just sit around waiting.”
Celeste and Willow looked at each other.
“I suppose we need all the help we can get,” Willow offered.
“He didn’t bring that bloody sword of his, did he?” Celeste asked, remembering the display he’d put on for Sunny’s family.
“No.”
“In that case, watch him, but let him free.”
Eben nodded and headed off.
Celeste looked back through the window and stared momentarily at Fox. In the space of a heartbeat, she craved him.
She blinked and sent the thought on its way, then watched in horror as Sunny appeared to look down at a sheet of paper on the table. “Oh no, he’s already given her the contract.”
It explained the bars appearing on the windows. Once a recipient read the contract, they were committed. Such was Fox’s law. He operated under devious and wicked manipulations.
She put her hands against the glass, staring at Sunny.
She had to let Sunny know they were there, and would aid her.
Sunny glanced her way, and nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sunny had requested an intimate dinner date.
This was not an intimate dinner date.
Surprisingly, the dessert was quite edible, which was kind of disappointing. It was an Italian confection served in a fancy glass parfait dish straight from the 1970s. She’d expected it to be alive and served on an alligator carcass, or something equally showman-like—and he accused her of showing off? Pfft.
The dessert was delicious though, and she actually managed to eat a bit of it. The glass dishes reminded her of a set her grandma had owned. She made a mental note to check in the sideboard, in case any had gone missing. She wouldn’t put it past this weirdo to pilfer for fun, and there was the Versailles chandelier to account for.
She stared down at the dessert and wondered if she would’ve been disappointed in the viscount too, if she’d really wanted to court his attentions. Good looking, yes. Austerely charming, maybe. But she found him a repulsive individual, despite his efforts to impress and his apparent power. How on earth Celeste had fallen for him amazed her. Perhaps it depended which century you met him in. Then again, her grandmother had apparently taken against him, so maybe it was a genetic thing, an innate reaction she’d inherited—like so much else. And Fox had to keep people here by force, that much was clear.
Didn’t say much for his hospitality now, did it?
Somehow the notion gave her strength. Cullen, her man, was worth fighting the very concept of time itself to keep by her side.
Now that was true love.
Fox pushed his parfait dish away, apparently pleased with the odd meal. Maybe he’d been different, Sunny thought, before he went to the dark side. It must have been horrible for Celeste to witness, if she loved him. She shuddered.
She’d felt Celeste’s presence nearby for several minutes, spooling strength to her, but right then she couldn’t concentrate on it. She hadn’t yet signed the contract, and he’d expect her to. The rest of the bars she’d been worried about would slide into place, one by one, every time she read a line.
She glanced at the window, where the steel bar looked so solid and real. A movement caught her eye.
She looked back at Fox.
Members of the coven were out there, trying to help.
Maybe Cullen too. Her heart missed a beat, her hopes lifting.
Even though she wanted to deal with him herself, she couldn’t help being touched.
Risking another glance, she caught sight of a hand at the bar on the window, then another. They were trying to break Fox’s shield.
She snapped her attention back to Fox, determined to keep him from noticing what was going on outside.
“May I go over and look at your painting?” She nodded her head at the one and only painting in the room, on the far wall behind her chair. It had caught her eye but she couldn’t see it clearly without getting closer.
“Of course.” He rose to his feet and gestured for her to follow, at ease showing off his possessions once more.
I may regret this, Sunny realized, approaching the painting. She figured it might be some dire representation of his feats on the killing fields. It wasn’t. It was a surreal landscape, seemingly a depiction of Raven’s Landing as seen from above, at a distance. It was quite primitive in style and the landscape was flat and uniform green, populated here and there with figures.
As she got closer she realized they were mostly women, although there were two male figures. The images were mere outlines, shadowy female forms in profile. Only three of them seemed more defined. One was male, a handsome young lad who was painted in detail but his face remained featureless. The second was a woman, gothic in appearance, slim and elegant with long black hair. The other one that drew her gaze the most was a woman standing by the shore, and familiar to Sunny. It was a likeness of Celeste, looking back over her shoulder, at the viewer. The image of her somber eyes chilled Sunny.
“I painted this one myself,” Fox commented.
She nodded, and scanned the rest of the people in the image. She didn’t recognize them from their profiles, and Celeste was the only one looking back. Was this his equivalent of a little black book, she wondered, feeling quite ill at the thought of Celeste’s lingering glance backward, as painted by the man himself. “Why did you paint Celeste that way?”
“She’s always looking back, with regret. She made a mistake, leaving, and she knows it. I do hope you won’t be painted that way, Sunny.”
She looked at the painting again, assessing the implications. Could the other men and women be failed apprentices, the depth of their delineation representing the time spent with him?
He stood by, apparently waiting for her verdict on his masterpiece.
“It’s a vivid work, and clearly Raven’s Landing.”
Fox preened.
“It would benefit from a smidge of forest, or evidence of the meadows,” she quickl
y added.
A thought turned over in her mind. “You’re not big on nature, are you, Fox?”
“Women’s nonsense.” His smile tightened.
Aha! Now she was getting somewhere.
No wonder he came across as such a weirdo. Even she knew nature was at the very core of those who were magical. If he despised nature, he was effectively an aberration amongst magical folk. It represented a chink in his armor, she realized, and clung to the revelation.
Now she’d seen a chink, she felt stronger.
As long as she kept him from sensing the coven, she’d carry on chipping away at him. Maybe he already knew they were there outside and was enjoying an audience. Maybe he’d set his hell hounds on them. She couldn’t risk the resources to figure it out for sure. All she could do right then was keep his attention on her. “Maybe I can inspire you to add more detail?”
She put out her hands, palms facing up, and channeled her emotions about nature, forming an image of trees and meadow flowers in the palm of her hands.
Fox glanced at her image with disdain. “You seem intent on flexing your magical muscles.”
“The novelty, I guess.” Sunny shrugged, allowed the image to dissolve, and followed when he walked back to the table, attempting to block his view of the window as she did so. There was, however, no longer any sign of life, and the bar seemed to be propped at a slight angle.
He gestured at the table, where the parchment still rested. “Sign the contract.”
There was no way she was even picking it up, let alone signing it. She opted for a different strategy. “Why do you feel you have to trap people here? Especially when they come willingly?”
He flinched. It was barely tangible, but it happened. His lips twitched and his eyes flickered.
Oh yes, she’d touched a raw nerve there. He didn’t like the fact she’d figured his game. It gave her strength and she had the urge to do battle. So she didn’t leave it there. She pressed on. “I just don’t get it. I came here willingly. Why the steel bars? It’s hardly going to make me feel relaxed and content enough to learn from you now, is it?”
A Coven of Her own Page 22
