by Jamie Magee
Jade scrunched her nose. “Yes, I was there. At the end, of course. Perhaps I could have been there sooner, but your Reveca likes to guard her Boneyard well.”
“You saw it coming? You didn’t think to pick up a phone?”
Jade sighed. “Adair needs to see faults and truths to understand them.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he growled.
“It means it was time for her to know who you are, and it was time for her to see the antiheroes about.”
“What’s Miriam’s stake in this? Is she not with you?”
Jade smiled. “I’m afraid not.”
“Brosia?”
Jade tilted her head. “In a round about way.”
“Would it fucking kill you to speak clearly once in your life?”
“I speak what I am allowed to say.”
“Who is your keeper? Who holds your words?”
“A greater power,” Jade admitted at length as her stare roved over him.
“Much was accomplished this night. Your child, however confused as she may be, is aware of you. You are strong. Your ex-lover made allies, and the past was brought forth to the future. Kairos is in play.”
Talon only knew of half of what she said. And he sure as hell didn’t know what Kairos was.
“Brosia said evil was coming. She wanted Adair and me home, to be out of its path. For Creator’s sake, if you know what it is, tell me so I can stop it.”
“There are many evils coming, and most can not be stopped, only weathered.”
“What was she speaking of?”
“Again, it could be one of many. She has agreed to far too many plots to gain your presence as her king.” Jade leaned forward. “The sacrifice she agreed for Adair to endure was by far the worst.”
Talon felt his gut rip open, dread seep through him. “What?”
Jade’s silent gaze told him she couldn’t say much. “You chose a man for her.”
“You told me who he would be.”
“Choices come as manifestations of our thoughts. As you all but raised Judge as a mortal boy, how often did you think he was a fine man, a warrior, that he had a good heart?”
Talon stayed silent. The answer was simple. Too many to recall.
“And what was your biggest regret when he became an immortal?”
Again, silence. He vaguely remembered, but it was along the lines of how sad it was his line would end with him. He would bravely serve with the Sons, but his blood would rest in only him.
“Judge has been told what must occur. Free will is at play. For both of them.”
“You called me here to tell me this? That there was nothing I could do but hope my random thoughts in the past have kept my daughter safe this day?”
She leaned forward. “On the contrary, I called you here to speak of Ambrosia.”
Talon lifted his lip in a snarl. The woman had put Adair in danger—she was an evil he was prepared to slay. Now that he was empowered again, not a breath from death, it actually seemed possible.
“Your charm is needed now,” Jade said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Jade stood and walked slowly to him. Her hand reached for his chest then slowly slid down. “Your words, your smile, the slightest attention, have the power to control her.” She lifted her brow. “That would be a good thing.”
“Manipulate her?”
Jade winked. “Call it what you will. I’m telling you all this time you thought she was an end. A death. She is more.”
“Not happening.”
“All wars, inevitably, are won by doing things we care not to do. Do you not need a great strength behind you for coming wars?”
“What do you know of it?”
“I know Ladies of death have many souls with endless knowledge. Beyond their keep, they are aware of weakness in greater powers.”
Talon tilted his head to the side. “You’re telling me to seduce her to keep Reveca, and her lover, alive in the war they have on the horizon.”
Jade lifted her finger to her lips and winked as if such things should not be spoken of.
“We can pretend you’re angry with Reveca and would by no means want her or her lover to survive, even though it is but a lie. However, even if it were true—the Sons are connected to her demise. And your daughter is connected to one of them. You daughter has felt something you haven’t in your long life.” Jade stepped back. “Her love for Judge makes them one. Even if she was in Ambrosia’s realm, Adair would perish the moment Judge did. Made of one.”
Fear stormed through him. “You called me here to tell me a war I already assumed was impossible now encompasses my daughter as a liability!”
“It always has.” Jade walked to the door and opened it. “I called you here to tell you to play nice with all the woman in your life.” She nodded outside. “I believe Adair is at her loft now. She might have a question or two for you. If not, Judge surely does.”
Talon pushed past her in a rage. He wasn’t ready for this conversation, one where he had no real answers.
Chapter Three
Adair’s heavy words, the ones that said Finley and Talley saw her and Judge coming, had lingered in the air the entire time Judge stitched her fingers. Twenty-two stitches in all.
He had put a splint along two of her fingers to keep her from bending them. The restriction was driving her mad.
All restrictions were driving her mad.
At the same time, Adair felt out of control, and she needed control. Something, anything she could control.
As soon as she was free from his careful hands, she went about her way as if this were any other night.
At first, she cleaned up the mess she and Gwinn had left days before when they left in a rush. While she was at it, she rearranged the closet that was now all but empty, making better use of the small space.
Then she tossed out the ruined food from her fridge. She’d pulled out a broom and a mop and was prepared to scrub until her thoughts were clear, but Judge took them both away from her, breaking them in half—not saying a word as he did so—then went back to his prowl by her front windows.
Silent or not, she understood the message—deal with this shit. He’d said it before. She could remember that now. After the rocky way they became a couple, there weren’t many fights, but the ones they had always encompassed her organizing something that didn’t need to be and his looming in silence until they both briefly exploded then moved on with life.
It wasn’t going to be that simple this time.
Any one of the elements she was dealing with would be difficult on its own. This was enough to warrant a psychotic break.
And he wasn’t helping matters. Looking delicious as he did his pace-slash-loom thing. She didn’t understand what was up with her hormones or why her body had been hyper sensitive since she awoke, but it was driving her mad. At the same time, it was the only distraction she had from the hell of her life at the moment.
Not being allowed to clean left Adair with few options. She wasn’t ready to face the warring emotions she saw in his eyes, the ones that ranged from rage and anger to pain and disbelief.
She had to calm down before she could deal with it.
In an attempt to do so, she lit every spelled candle she had, all of the ones that helped her relax when the wars with Jade had become too much. When her grief was raw, the unexplainable gaping hole in her heart ached.
After a few long moments, she noticed Judge breathing in the rich aromas, though it didn’t seem to do much with his mood.
She pulled out her spell books. The ones she favored and used the most were at the Boneyard with all her things. The ones before her, though, had spells to help center the soul and clear dark energy.
She was sure there was a spell in one of the books to accelerate healing as well, and she was aiming to be healed. Her stitches ached and the bandages got in her way more than anything.
Judge kept to his prowl before her window. A time
or two he stood so still in the shadows and watched her that she had to wonder if over the years she was wide-awake and never saw him.
A shiver raced down her back.
Within her next breath, he was at her side, a hoodie in hand.
If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that when they were together before, he hid his immortal strengths. He wasn’t trying to any longer. Watching him both terrified and entranced her.
He had compartmentalized his life in the past, kept her in one hand and his Club in another. When they got too close, and the danger was too treacherous, he put her on a shelf. For her own good, of course. No matter what argument she gave him, he would never see it any other way.
It was black and white to him—the mortal girl needed to be safe.
Adair was anything but black and white today, and unquestionably he had recognized as much across the dramas of this night alone.
She was in his world, from the sound of it, she was deeper, because she was not created or transformed—she was born of the supernatural element, with powers that had yet to fully emerge.
She looked up at him from under her thick lashes. “I’m not cold.”
He lifted his fair brow as if to ask, why the fuck are you shivering, then?
Grudgingly, she took the lightweight hoodie and slid it on. Maybe she was cold, because when he walked back to his favorite shadow, she felt the icy sting of his absence.
“You’re not gonna talk about it?” he asked once she settled back in to mediating on her spell. It was working; the pain in her fingertips was not nearly as bad.
“Talley is not close,” she responded, flicking her stare up to him and finding him staring down at the alley behind her loft. She knew he wasn’t looking at King. If the boy was still out there, he was on the roof or somewhere high, watching from a dark shadow.
Judge glanced at her hands. “You don’t know that anymore.”
Her tone carried a bit of a bite, one she wanted to underline the fact she was not a helpless mortal. “My hands were only one sign. I could always sense him coming.”
“And what did you sense?” he asked in his classic condescending tone.
“Dread.”
Judge halted and looked at her as if her feeling such things sliced him in half.
This moment, like several before it, made her wonder what he saw when he looked into Talley tonight. She was too frantic at the time, worried about the pair of them to pick up anything. But she could read Judge, and she knew whatever it was had added to the distant look in Judge’s gaze, a look he always had when he was trying to work out a vision that made little sense but was sure to have a massive impact.
In all the haze of what had happened, with the impossible revelations—she was worried about Judge.
He was strung too tight.
Their nearly sweet words as he repaired her fingers, or hell, the fact that she had woken up next to him this night, had done nothing to take the edge from him.
She want ed to believe it was because they were only a few hours removed from the last moment they saw Talley, from the moment she figured out Talon was her father, and what happened before that, but Adair’s gut was telling her it was more.
It told her even with all this around him, Judge was in the past. For the first time since he lost his family, he knew where the murderer was, and he was in this city. Judge could be face-to-face with him in under an hour if he chose to be.
~
As Judge stared at Adair, he fought not to agree with her on the notion that, yes, Talley was full of dread. Judge had seen it inside of him. Talley knew what he was capable of and he knew he would not be able to stop the evil inside of him from trying once more. In his mind, Judge was still trying to work out the message he was sure Talley gave him. It was one that would make any man weak in his knees and think twice.
Instead of embarking on the Talley discussion Adair was dead set on once again, he tried to get her to talk about tonight.
Any of it.
He wanted to know why.
Why after she had moaned his name—then woke and called out another—she decided to crawl into Talon’s lap. Why she and another witch tried to kill him. Treason wasn’t even the right word for what she had done tonight. It was too weak, too common.
Adair being Talon’s daughter and all the other circumstances would keep her safe from any lash back, he’d make sure of it. Reveca would have to kill him first if she wanted retaliation. He doubted she did, he doubted Talon did. Until he had more than doubt, he wasn’t taking her back to the Boneyard.
He’d ignored the text from Thrash. Not responding to your VP was never a wise move, but right now it was what Judge was doing. If they wanted to find them badly enough, they would.
Even if he and Adair chose to ignore the Talon topic until it blew up in their face, they could still speak of what her fire spell had revealed. How had they both seen the same vision? And how in the fuck were they supposed to stop it? What did it have to do with her? Anything?
“Are we going to talk about any of this?” he asked again, his blue eyes pinning her to where she sat.
“I didn’t cheat.”
He arched a brow, surprised she went with this direction. A sharp, pissed breath left him. She kept doing this to him, tossing him into a land mine and pushing him to ask questions he didn’t want to or face realizations he didn’t need.
If he said he saw her straddling Talon, she could easily say she didn’t cheat because there was no them, and never would be—or worse, she’d point out every time that Miriam bitch had pulled a fast one on him and he had abused her mouth, literally.
Against his better judgment he spoke. “Tell me what happened. Did he ask you there?” It was another truth he didn’t want to know. One that would break Judge beyond the point of repair, Talon hadn’t admitted nor denied any claim on Adair, so for all Judge knew he was in a bit of shock now, too.
Adair clearly noticed the measured breaths he was taking, how when they tried to “talk,” it only made him tenser.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked thinking that might help. Tea was helping her. The spelled herbs had made her feel all but numb.
The blunt in her hand was only capitalizing on the effect.
“No, I don’t want any fucking tea!” He sucked in sharp breath, regretting his tone. “I want to understand,” he admitted in a calmer one. “How did you stand there and get every memory back—basically get thrust back in time to where we were one—and then end up in his swamp house with that whore?”
Adair looked over him slowly, drawing in a long slow hit, because she needed it to get through his response to her ready-to-go counter question. “How did you leave me in that room and walk into the lounge and eye fuck some blond moments after I figured out who I was—what was stolen from me?”
“Do what?” he questioned, wondering what exactly was in the tea she was sipping and the blunt that was calling his name.
“I saw you, in the lounge, all of you. Some blond was all but giving you a strip tease.” Before he could rebut, she spoke. “I went outside, got some air, and tried to find a direction. Then Miriam showed up. We talked.”
“Miriam was the blond,” he spouted as he stepped forward and took the blunt from her.
Her blank stare told him to explain, and she waited patiently for him to do so as smoke snaked from his lips.
“I didn’t go into the lounge when I left you, I went to the bay so—so you wouldn’t see how pissed I was.”
“About what? My memory?” she asked with an arched brow, nodding for him to take another hit; there was more than one calming element in the herbs he was inhaling.
It took him a second, but he spoke again. “You not remembering the...the night Finley died was a blessing and a curse. It took you from me, but I told myself it stopped the pain.” His stare slowly moved over her. “I found out tonight that the pain was so bad your own mind would have blocked it anyway.” He grimaced. “It’s not
easy to know I was too late to save you. I’ll never get over it.”
Adair moved her head side to side knowing she was right. He wasn’t here. He was in the past and jonesing for a kill.
Judge cleared his throat. “Gwinn texted Thames and told us Miriam was in illusion form—she was the blond. She started a fight with some other guys then vanished in the middle of it. Next I saw her, she was with you. Now you tell me what the fuck she said to you to make you do something that fucking crazy.”
Ignoring his prior refusal, Adair stood and poured him tea. She poured it into his very own mug, one she had never once drank out of and had stared at for years with an odd question in her gaze. Now she knew why. It was his. Only his.
She didn’t speak until he took a sip. “Sit,” she said, taking the blunt from him and putting it out in the ashtray on the table.
Reluctantly, he did, at the very edge of the chair by the window. He could still see out and see her.
“It was the vision,” she began. “It’s haunted me. I didn’t know Talon was a Phoenix until I woke up. Miriam had told me why he was weak, and without knowing it, she made sense of words that had haunted me. The flaming bird will turn to ash. Survival lurks blindly in the mind. Surrender brings forth the victory, which is lost.”
Judge’s brow tensed in contemplation.
“I was sure if I was able to help him Zen, then he’d find this illusive strength.”
Judge’s gaze drifted to the window. He took in a long sip of the tea, wincing with the heat of it. “Did you ask him why he wasn’t resting?”
“No. I knew.”
“Really?” He wasn’t buying that she did. He didn’t even know. For the past week he and the other guys had tossed every girl they could at him, told him to rest. He refused.
With marked hesitation, Adair answered, “Reveca tossed him aside, started hooking up with King. Talon was starving. She was killing him slowly, and he was letting her. You can’t have that kind of power rushed into you for ages and then lose it.”
Judge sipped from his mug and thought over his words carefully. “Do you know why Reveca is with King?”
