He glanced over his shoulder at her with a subtle wince. “I did it again, didn’t I?” he mumbled.
“Yes.” She gripped the edge of the bed and bit her lip hard to keep from leaping into his arms or saying more. A physical pain lurched her heart, but she didn’t know if such a gesture would help or make things worse. She wanted to tell him it hurt, to open herself to him through their connection, but his shield was like cold glass. Damn, he could be so hard to figure out. She thought the bond would make it easier over time… She stared at the floor.
“Isabelle and Lars…” He stuffed his hands in his jean pockets and rolled his eyes up at the plaster ceiling. “I made a fatal mistake.” Looking down at his feet now he continued, “I thought I knew what I was doing. I was wrong,” he whispered.
“What happened?” Loti eased herself up, careful not to make a sound.
Wolf turned around, but didn’t meet her gaze right away. Loti shifted one bent knee to the bed. Her legs and belly ached with the need to go to him, but she refused the urge. Her hand trembled as she tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. When Wolf finally looked up, Loti caught her breath at the blood pooling in the corners of his eyes.
“It was my fault Isabelle was murdered.” Wolf didn’t wipe at the blood that dripped down his face. Loti inched forward. “I thought I could handle Lars—the dybbuk. I was very wrong.”
And she hopped off the bed, unable to contain herself any longer. She threaded her arms under his and pressed her cheek to his chest, but he was a block of granite, his arms stiff by his side.
“Wolf,” Loti whispered.
He shoved her away and she stumbled backward. “I don’t want your pity.”
Loti’s eyes flashed with resentment as she recovered and took a step towards him. “I am not pitying you.” Her hands curled into fists as she spoke low through her teeth. “I would never.” Swallowing the lump in her throat, she spit out, “Don’t you dare to this to me, again.” The lump slid heavily into her solar plexus. “Don’t shut down and turn your self-loathing inside out and onto me.”
Wolf did nothing—absolutely nothing. Loti thought a blood vessel popped in her eyeball.
“Enough!” She stomped by Wolf and into the bathroom, slamming the door.
She was through catering to his self-imposed isolation for one day. Why was it so damn hard for him to let her in? She leaned her forehead against the door and cried herself limp. Sagging against the door, she waited for him to knock for several minutes. When he didn’t, she splayed both hands against the door and heaved herself upright.
She yanked the ponytail holder out of her hair and threw it without thinking. Pausing, she turned back around and snapped the slide lock into place. She stuck out her tongue and gave an obscene hand gesture, before twisting the shower handles too hard. Water blasted from five different directions in the glass shower stall. Brass pipework crisscrossed evenly up and down the glass and at pivotal intersections a shower head stuck out. She held her fingers under the main shower, while fiddling with the levers until the temperature was right.
The ball of lead lodged in her solar plexus plopped into her stomach, where it festered until she thought she was going to throw up. What am I doing wrong? Why does he shut down like that? She slid the thin straps of her nightgown down her arms and stepped out of the puddle of sheer cotton and into the shower. The water sprayed in soothing pulses as Loti closed her eyes and bowed her head.
I deserve the kind of love I give. I deserve the kind of compassion I give. When she opened her eyes, she couldn’t tell the difference between the tears and the water. Exasperated with herself and Wolf, she grabbed the tiny shampoo bottle and scrubbed at her head with too much vigor.
“Loti.” A woman’s quiet voice filled the shower.
She froze, recognizing it from her dream. A vein throbbed in her neck as suds ran down her face and she revolved in slow motion. Isabelle’s spectral form greeted her through a film of fog.
“She’s in danger.”
Loti blinked and rubbed the soap from her stinging eyes. “Isabelle?” She swiped at the glass and clasped the brass pipes. “Who’s in danger?”
Isabelle scanned the room as if looking for someone. Seeming not quite satisfied no one was there, she approached the shower like she was ready to dart away. Her face loomed large behind the steamed glass. “Please help her.”
“Who? You have to tell me who or I can’t help.”
Isabelle jerked back. “He’s here. I have to go.” Her eyes flared wide like a cartoon character’s. “Promise me you won’t let her die.” Isabelle’s voice shrieked as she began to fade away.
“Promise me!” She screamed, her voice piercing Loti’s skull like a harpy’s screech.
“I promise!” Loti screamed back, clutching her head and screwing her eyes shut.
Chapter Sixteen
The bathroom door shattered into splinters.
“What is it?” Wolf yanked the shower door open and stepped in, clothes and all. “What’s wrong?” He grasped her arms.
“Isabelle.” Loti’s eyes wide, she put her hands on his chest where the wet cotton clung to him. “She was just here.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes and looked around the steamy bathroom. “As in a vision?”
Loti’s teeth chattered despite the hot water drenching them both. “A ghost. She told me to help her. To not let her die.”
Wolf ground his teeth, his jaw flexing. “She died shortly after the first incident with Lars. They were on assignment together to find a young woman and bring her back here.” He turned off the shower and stepped out, pulling Loti by the hand. She followed him in a daze. He grabbed a fluffy white towel from the art deco rack on the wall and toweled her off.
Loti’s heart tripped fast as a dizzy foreboding flooded her veins. Wolf and the bathroom shimmied and tilted sideways as an image of a young woman with thick brown braids piled artfully on her head filled her vision. The girl’s eyes were wide with terror and shock as the redheaded man from Loti’s dream reached for her.
“Lars killed her.” Loti’s breath came in short, hard gasps.
She doubled over, gripping her knees as the image flipped and Lars’s blotchy face, his eyes rolling in their sockets like a mad cow, came at her. Loti screamed as his hands crushed her neck, her vision cartwheeling into rainbows crystalizing and melting over and over.
Soft blackness muffled a frantic voice she knew, but couldn’t name. She wondered, Why is he doing this? What have I done? The fear fell away until she was in a soundless stillness. She jerked like she sometimes did when she was almost asleep, but when she opened her eyes, Wolf was shaking her.
“Loti, snap out of it.” He smacked her face and faster than a mere human should have been able to she smacked him right back. Surprised by the force of it, he snatched her wrists before she could hit him again. “Loti!”
She struggled for a few seconds before reality came back to her. “He killed her, Wolf.” Hysteria edged her voice. “He choked that poor girl to death. She didn’t even know why, Wolf. She didn’t know who he was or what she could have done.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes and eased his grip. She threw her arms around him and sobbed into his neck. “Why did he do that, Wolf?” She drew a ragged breath. “She didn’t know why. She’d never seen him ever before and what could she have done?”
“Loti, calm down, love.” He whispered it into her soapy hair as he held her close, running a gentle hand over her back. “You must be tapping into some cosmic memory. I don’t know how else to explain this. You are sensing something that happened far from here, for one, and something you should have no connection to. This must be some new ability.” Although his words were practical, his tone was soothing, like one might use with a grieving person. He rested his cheek on the crown of her head and brushed the wet strands from her face. “Unless,” he hesitated.
“What?” She choked on the word. He squeezed tighter.
“I’m sorry.” He closed his e
yes and rubbed his cheek back and forth over her hair. “Unless you’re tapping into my memories and connections, now. Without me having to guide you or open them to you.”
Loti drug her face from his chest. Her neck was stiff and her head heavy. “Were you there when Lars killed her?”
Wolf swallowed. “No, I wasn’t. I showed up too late to save her. She was already dead when I found them.” He looked up at the ceiling and blew out a breath. “Lars was possessed and the dybbuk wouldn’t leave his body. He was too strong and I was afraid he’d do more damage if I let him go. I had to kill him.”
A fat bloody tear ran down the side of his nose. “He seemed to get stronger with every blow. I didn’t know how long I could hold him off and I didn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths if I didn’t stop him. There’s only two ways to displace a dybbuk. A witch’s spell or kill the host.”
Loti’s crying subsided into trembling breaths. She studied Wolf’s face, felt his shields dissolving. A suffocating thickness seeped into her chest, weighing her down. Regret and sorrow laced with anger and frustration billowed through her like an ash cloud down the side of a volcano.
“Gabriel was so stubborn. Refused to understand what was going on. He wasn’t stupid.” The strands of muscle stood out in his neck and he convulsively gripped her back. “I would have said he was being deliberately obtuse.” Wolf dropped his arms. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
Loti shook her head, keeping her arms around him. “No, darling. Not at all.” She ran her hand up and down his side. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”
Wolf grabbed her and kissed her with a desperate fierceness. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He said it over and over into her mouth, her ear, her throat. And she felt the warm blood on his cheek as he rubbed it over hers.
“She told me to help her, Wolf. ‘Please help her,’ Isabelle said. ‘Promise me you won’t let her die.’” Loti clutched Wolf tighter. “Who did she mean?”
* * *
Rachel ran an agitated hand over the kitchen table, spinning around at Katie’s footsteps on the hardwood. “Nan, you’re up.” The corners of her mouth turned down as she registered Katie’s bed head and wrinkled clothes.
“Yes, dear.” Katie smiled as she reached for the French press and a white coffee mug. Pouring the coffee, she spoke over her shoulder, “How’d you sleep?”
Rachel bunched her forehead and pulled out a kitchen chair. “Okay, I guess.” She sat down and sipped her cold coffee that didn’t settle well in her twisted gut. “Did you sleep in your clothes, Nan?”
“You need to let yourself sleep, darling.” Katie added a splash of real cream and a small spoonful of sugar to her coffee and stirred with a clink. Sipping, she nodded in appreciation and joined Rachel at the table.
“This is not something we can change or go around. It is something we must move through.”
Katie Brown’s well-worn face was the most beautiful thing in Rachel’s world. Her faded eyes were the exact hazy, weathered blue of Blue Ridge summer skies. Her skin, although paper-thin and wrinkled now, was still warmly soft and even-toned. Rachel realized with a jolt that she was probably looking at herself in forty-five years. Rachel looked down at her black coffee with a stutter of uncertainty in her heart.
“We can only do our best, answer well. There is nothing else we need to do.” Katie leaned on her elbows, the coffee cup with the raised fleur de lis balanced between her elegant fingers.
Rachel jerked her head up and shoved her chair away from the table. “Really, Nan? This is insane. How can you just sit back and take it? You did nothing wrong.”
She jolted up and stormed across the sunny kitchen to the bay window. She squinted against the morning light, furious with the beautiful day and herself. Obviously, her Nan wasn’t taking it well, but Rachel didn’t know what to do. Nan had always been the strong one. She had always carried herself with a steady grace that Rachel didn’t think she would ever be capable of.
“Rachel, darling…” Katie set her cup down and followed her granddaughter with sorrow-filled eyes. “Whether I did anything wrong is not for us to decide. The truth is all we can offer. And the judgment is not ours.”
A cold realization gripped the back of Rachel’s throat. She turned incredulous eyes to her Nan. “Nanny, you think you need to be judged, don’t you?” Her arms dropped to her sides as if sapped of strength. “You think you missed something or should have done something, don’t you?” She slugged through thick dread back to her grandmother.
Katie met her gaze with the same gentle smile she used when teaching Rachel to make hollandaise sauce. “We make the best choices we can with the information we have.” She turned her face away for a moment, and when she looked back a hollowness filled her eyes. “In hind sight, I wish I had done more. And I will live with that burden for the rest of my life.”
Rachel’s mouth hung open as the world tilted on its axis. “Nan, what could you have done? You had no idea what Patrick was doing, who he was doing it for.” She fell into the chair she had left askew and slouched.
Katie sipped her coffee with trembling hands. “I didn’t know, but I should have.” She rose from her seat with a wobble and dumped her half-drank coffee into the sink. “Let’s get ready. We have a long day ahead of us.”
* * *
Rachel and Katie sat side by side at the table in the large meeting room of the AWA headquarters. It had been a quiet drive to the suburbs of D.C.; Katie sat in silence while Rachel drove, and Heather and David murmured in the back seat. The rest of the coven followed in a funeral-like caravan.
They now sat behind Katie and Rachel in a long line of folding chairs, shuffling for things in pockets and purses. The large hall echoed with hushed conversations and footfalls as the national representatives settled themselves. The room was filled to capacity and Rachel wished it was carpeted like the smaller room they had met in two days ago. She wished Loti would answer her texts.
Did she and Wolf even know what was going on? Her temples throbbed and Rachel held her head in her hands, groaning. Of course Loti wasn’t answering her texts. It was daytime. It still dumbfounded her that Loti had so quickly synced her sleep habits to Wolf’s. It usually took a long time for a bond to progress to this point, but then again, this was not a normal bond. What the hell is up with that, anyway? Rachel puffed out a breath at her muddled thoughts.
The side door opened and she looked up as the board members filed in. They stepped up onto the dais and took their seats at the long podium with a solemn air. Rachel sucked in her breath and sat up straight. Katie squeezed her hand and the two women looked at each other, both sets of eyes uncertain.
David laid a gentle hand on Rachel’s shoulder and she forced a smile. Richard cleared his throat and fumbled with the fedora in his lap. Katie reached back and patted his arm until Richard turned his hand over and her fingers circled around his. He lifted their hands and kissed Katie’s fingers, her face softening into a deep affection.
“This meeting of the American Witches Association will come to order.”
Rachel’s stomach tied itself into a sick knot as the Chair rapped his gavel and Augustus presented a summary of Theresa’s “concerns”, as he called them.
“Theresa Miller alleges that she witnessed Patrick Lynch having a discussion with a young witch named Mark Surley shortly after she was initiated into the coven.” Augustus looked up from the paper he was reading from, pushing his reading glasses to the tip of his nose. “This is the same Mark Surley that went missing a month before Patrick died.”
He pushed his reading glasses back with one finger as he returned his gaze to the paper. “She stipulates that on several occasions she witnessed the two talking, once in the Breezewood Cafeteria at Clarke University where Mr. Surley appeared to be upset. Another time she was arriving at Mr. Lynch’s office and witnessed Mr. Surley leaving Mr. Lynch’s office hastily.”
He continued to read from the board’s report as Rachel st
ole a glance at the woman sitting with the rest of the coven. Rachel bit the inside of her cheek to keep from shrieking, “Why” at the woman. The word bounced around the inside of her skull like it was looking for a way out.
“She went to Member Katie Brown to discuss her concern that something wasn’t right about these repeated interludes, and Member Brown assured her she would look into it. When Ms. Miller hadn’t heard anything regarding the matter in several weeks, she approached Member Brown again, asking specifically if she had followed up on it. Member Brown assured her that she had spoken with Patrick and that Mark Surley was a graduate student of his and they were working on a project together.” Augustus cleared his throat and pushed his reading glasses back up his nose.
“When Mark Surley disappeared, Ms. Miller stipulates that she, again, approached Member Brown with her concerns, that something didn’t seem right about Mr. Lynch’s interactions with the now missing graduate student. She reports that Member Brown was agitated with her, but told her she was looking into it.”
Augustus cleared his throat and sipped water from the half-empty glass on the podium in front of him. He set it down and continued, “Several weeks passed before the incidents reported by Member Brown regarding Mr. Lynch took place. When her concerns regarding Mark Surley were not brought before the investigating committee appointed by this board, Ms. Miller composed the letter that has brought us here today.”
Rachel sat in shocked silence. She glanced at Theresa who was sitting at the far end of the row of folding chairs, her chin tilted up; her eyes unwavering from Augustus Sheirling. Her ankles were primly crossed and her feet tucked under her chair, but her fingers twisted the white handkerchief in her hands.
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