by Eva Chase
Anything magical, he meant, without knowing exactly what he meant. I sucked in a breath, considering.
Master Cortland understood magic—studying it and teaching its theory and techniques was his trade. But like all witching men, he’d only been a witness to it, never the caster. His wife and consort had passed on a few years ago. Regularly warding the house to prevent entry wasn’t remotely practical for someone who couldn’t adjust those wards if they happened to want to let someone in from time to time.
Even we didn’t ward the estate like that, only rooms like Celestine’s office that she felt needed special protection. Too much hassle to constantly manage a barrier like that when there wasn’t any real need.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But it’s not like regular locks will just open because we want them to either.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if that kiss with Derek had lit up my spark? I could have used a little magic right now. Of course, the thought of kissing him again to try—and possibly being reminded all over again of the affection that didn’t exist between us—made my stomach clench. This expedition wouldn’t just be an attempt to reveal my stepmother’s treachery, but his as well.
“I’m sure I can look up—” Ky started.
A twig snapped in the woods nearby. I flinched, spinning around. There was no reason for anyone to come out this way, but if one of the staff had randomly taken a stroll deep into the woods at just this time…
I started to motion the guys back behind the boulder. Then I caught a glimpse of the approaching figure through the trees, and my hand dropped to my side. My pulse hiccupped, but not out of panic.
Damon halted at the edge of the clearing. “So here we are,” he said in a cool tone. His hands were dug tight in the pockets of his leather jacket and his eyes stayed narrowed when he glanced around our gathering. “I figured I might as well see the place again just once.”
His posture was guarded from shoulders to feet, but I couldn’t help smiling. “I’m glad you came.”
He shrugged, keeping his distance from us, and scuffed his sneaker against the mossy stones. Kyler eyed him for a moment as if waiting to see if Damon would say anything else. When the other guy didn’t, he launched back into planning.
“Like I was saying, there have to be ways to break in without actually breaking in. I can find instructions for anything online. Look up some lock-picking videos, do a little practice at home, and we’re good to go.” He waggled his fingers with a grin.
Seth frowned. “I know you’re the master researcher, Ky, but do we really want to stake our lack of criminal records on you learning how to become an expert lock-picker in a couple of days?”
“Why focus on the lock?” Jin said breezily. “There might be a window we can open. He might not even lock the doors in the first place. Most people in town don’t.”
“No, I’m pretty sure Mr. Cortland would,” I said. “Especially if he’s gone for ten days.” He might not want to overdo the security, but he didn’t want just anyone wandering in there either. “I guess there could be—”
“For fuck’s sake,” Damon broke in, rolling his eyes. “You guys are hopeless. I can pick a lock. Does that solve everything?”
We all stared at him. Another smile tugged at my lips, but I didn’t give in to it in case looking too eager would scare him off. “It does if you’re going to come with us,” I said.
Damon sighed. He bowed his head, the jagged line of his dark brown hair falling to shadow his eyes. “I guess I’m in, then,” he muttered. But he looked up at me through that shadow right after, as if he wanted my smile after all.
Chapter Thirteen
Seth
Well, that’s the whole house,” my brother said, sounding frustrated. “I can’t think of anything we didn’t check.” He stood in the center of James Cortland’s dining room, hands on his hips, light brown hair askew from bending to peer behind cabinets and under side tables. Right now he was glowering at the antique maple buffet as if he could force it to give up some secret through sheer force of will.
Given the strength of Kyler’s will when he put his mind to something, maybe he wasn’t totally wrong to try.
Jin replaced the painting he’d glanced behind with a careful thump against the wall. “There’s still the grounds,” he pointed out. The old Victorian house had a yard about as big as one of the town blocks. Nothing on the same scope as Rose’s estate, but a sizeable property.
“I don’t think we should go wandering around out there,” I said. “People drive by here going to and from town all the time. There’s too much chance we’d be seen.”
“And what the hell are the chances this geezer buried his evidence in the garden or something?” Damon said, his lips curling disdainfully as he took one last look around the room. “He’d probably be too afraid of getting dirt under his fingernails.”
The house was incredibly well kept. I’d seen a pretty wide range of homes during the renovation projects I’d worked on with my dad, but I couldn’t remember any other building I’d been in with the furniture so orderly, not a speck of dust anywhere, not even a spot of mildew in the bathroom. Even though the place had been shut up tight, the air wasn’t stuffy, just dry and faintly bready-smelling.
Rose’s hand had come to rest on the top of the maple table, which was just as solid and polished as the buffet. Her expression was distant. She was trying to think of something we might have missed, I guessed. She’d been counting on us finding something here. Something that could either reassure her or confirm her stepmother’s intentions.
My only memory of Rose’s stepmom was the day she’d barged in on our little gathering in the woods, years and years ago. The flash in the woman’s eyes that had looked almost electric. The sharp clamp of the air around my body when I’d tried to reach for Rose. I hadn’t been able to move, not a finger, not my mouth to shout, until after the woman had already dragged Rose away.
My stomach clenched. We hadn’t been able to do anything for Rose back then. We had to come through now.
“I guess we’re done then,” Rose said finally. “It makes sense, if he’s involved in anything shady, that he might not keep any evidence even in private.” But her brow was still knit. She’d expected more than this. “The longer we’re here, the more chance we’ll get caught. We’d better get going.”
We slunk through the shadowed rooms to the back door. Damon had, true to his word, disengaged the lock on it with just a couple of metal rods. At the time Jin had made a joking comment about new skills he’d developed, and Damon had retorted with a glare and a mutter about how some people had to make the best of bad options, and no one had said anything more about it after that.
Now Damon strode out first, hardly pausing to check that the road outside was clear. Jin squeezed Rose’s shoulder and said in a jaunty tone, “More mysteries still to uncover. But they don’t stand a chance with the bunch of us on the case, do they?”
I couldn’t help noticing the flush that had crept into Rose’s cheeks at his touch.
My brother gave both her and me a playful salute. “I’ll keep at it on the data side of things. See you soon.”
They slipped out. Rose brushed her hand through her hair as we waited for them to disappear down the road. We’d figured it was less noticeable if we didn’t all cross the yard in a pack. But now I had no one to distract me from her.
She tested the lock to make sure it would engage when we shut the door behind us. “He’ll come in the front anyway,” she said, as if to herself as much as me. “We left everything else the way it was. Even if the lock doesn’t quite catch, he’ll probably just figure he didn’t set it properly before he left.”
“It looks to me like the door will lock just fine,” I said. After all the buildings I’d worked on in the last five years, I should at least be able to comment on that factor with certainty.
Rose glanced up at me. The sun was getting low outside, and in the dimming light her dark green eyes looked al
most as black as her hair. A soft, liquid black that I could almost see the worries behind. God, this close to her I could smell her too, a delicate freshness that made me think of spring lilacs.
Before I knew it, the words were tumbling out. “You go on ahead. I want to stay and do one last sweep of the place. I’ll make sure it’s locked up when I leave.”
Rose blinked, startled. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll feel better knowing we covered everything twice.”
She nodded with a grateful smile that almost unknotted my stomach all on its own. Then one corner of her mouth quirked higher. I had the urge to brush my thumb over that dimple.
I had the urge to do a hell of a lot more than that, if I was being completely honest.
“Are you still glad I’m back?” she said. Her tone was lightly teasing, but something in her gaze told me she wasn’t just kidding around. “Now that I’m getting you into all sorts of potential trouble?”
I did touch her then. There was nothing in the universe that could have stopped my hand from rising to rest on her waist, just for a moment. To revel in the warmth of her skin seeping through the fabric of her shirt. “Not a single regret,” I said. “You need me, I’m here.”
The heat between us rose by a few degrees as we looked at each other. I made myself drop my hand. Rose stepped back with a breath that sounded slightly shaky.
“I’d better let you get to it,” she said. “Stay safe. If you think you need to get out of here, just go.”
“Of course,” I said.
When she was gone, I stood for a moment in the back hall, getting my bearings. What the hell was I even doing?
A good question. One I asked myself way too much these days. I didn’t really want to be here, in a house we’d broken in to. I didn’t really want to be most of the places I found myself most days. Construction wasn’t exactly my calling; it was just the easiest way to make ends meet. Because I had no idea what else I’d be better off doing.
I was sure of one thing, though. Even if this situation was crazy, even if I never said a word to her about how I felt, I’d do anything to protect Rose. That had always been true, and somehow the eleven years she’d been gone hadn’t shaken my instinctive devotion one bit. One solid thing I could hang my hat on.
So here I was.
I moved back through the house slowly, methodically, as if I were here to inspect its construction for flaws, not searching for hidden evidence. Everything looked the same and as innocuous as it had the first time. I slunk through the upstairs rooms, suppressing my discomfort as I edged around the guy’s bed. Even if he were scheming with Rose’s stepmother, walking around in some stranger’s bedroom was more intrusive than I’d ever have wanted to get.
I found nothing there anyway. I headed downstairs again, ready to give up. But as I came into the front hall, my gaze slid over the wood paneling along the side of the staircase—and paused.
The spacing of those slats in the middle didn’t totally make sense, did it? I stepped closer, running my fingers over the panels. The slats were set almost as if to support a hinge. But why would there be a hinge here unless…
I crouched down and pressed the oddly sized panel hard. It clicked and swung open to reveal a narrow compartment on the other side. A few books with cracked leather covers lay in a stack there, a newer-looking notebook on top of them. Holding my breath, I picked up the notebook. I had to squint to make out the words.
The pages were filled with starkly neat handwriting that matched the house’s impeccable interior. Something about pests in the back garden, something about the weather, something about a boat. The notations around those subjects didn’t make much sense to me—arm positions and degrees and “direction of flow”—but they didn’t seem to have anything to do with Rose’s worries, so I kept skimming on. The dates in the top right corners were from before Rose had returned anyway.
About halfway through, I hit on the last pages with any writing. The top of one of them said CH – binding. The date was from just a couple weeks ago.
CH. Celestine Hallowell?
My heart thumped faster. I pulled out my phone. In the dim light I wasn’t sure the camera would capture all of the light strokes of the pen, so I started typing up everything Cortland had written. A vine. A dagger. A backwards stream of water to channel “the flow.” Something about “the consort harmony.”
I still had no idea what he might be planning. I just hoped it’d mean something to Rose when I sent it to her.
Chapter Fourteen
Rose
My sharp inhale cut through the quiet in my bedroom. I almost dropped my prepaid phone. But instead I kept staring at it, tensed where I’d sat on the floor to retrieve it from under the bookcase. My gaze scanned the words Seth had written a second time.
CH and binding—these notes had to be on the same matter Master Cortland had been talking to my stepmother about. What were the chances he’d been investigating bindings in some other way that related to those initials?
The rest of the remarks Seth had related word-for-word were vague. Brainstorming, I guessed. A vine split and retied. A dagger brought to bear? If water is streamed backward it may channel the flow against the tide. The consort harmony—an alteration. Reversing polarities? Tangle one and then the other.
Mixed in were little asides in brackets like as per HV and consult YSN for confirmation. Books or fellow academics he was gathering information from, presumably. I had no idea how to decipher those. But the fragments of a picture were enough.
My stepmother wanted a binding. A binding that had to do with my consort ceremony, unless she had some secret daughter who just happened to be undergoing that partnering at the exact same time. Something to do with reversing it or turning the connection against itself? What did that even mean?
“Rose?” Philomena ventured. She settled into the armchair beside me and peered down at my hunched form. “What’s the matter?”
The enormity of the situation clogged my throat. It was real now. It was utterly real. “My consorting,” I said. “Celestine isn’t just meddling with my marriage using money—she’s trying to change the actual ceremony somehow.”
Not a chance it was to my benefit, either. Even if I’d been inclined to give my stepmother the benefit of the doubt, which I wasn’t, daggers were only used to aid focus in more complicated magicking that involved severing or separation—or outright violence. None of which were factors anyone would welcome at a consorting.
“I’ve always said she’s the worst kind of witch,” Phil said. “So what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.” All I had was Seth’s second-hand report. He’d left the notebook behind in Master Cortland’s house—as he should have. Who knew what chaos would result if my former tutor discovered a book like that missing?
But if I understood what Celestine was trying to accomplish better, I might be able to interrupt her magicking. I pushed myself to my feet. “I think I’d better start asking some more questions.”
Meredith had been out back when I’d returned to the house, checking the new planting in the gardens. I darted to the stairs and down, my gut still twisted tight.
“Rose!”
My father’s voice carried from the doorway of the front living room. I stopped halfway down the hall and turned. He was smiling when our eyes met, but his expression fell as he walked closer to me.
“Is everything all right, lamb? You look upset. And you were running off in quite the hurry.”
My lips parted and then pressed shut again. An ache formed at the base of my throat. I wanted to tell him. Wanted to see his hazel eyes fill with affectionate concern, wanted to hear his warm baritone tell me he’d see that the problem was solved.
When it’d been just the two of us in our family, no matter how busy he’d gotten with his work, I’d been able to turn to Dad for anything. The nights when the boys had been home and Meredith off-duty, he’d been my whole world. Reading stories t
o me in the library. Sneaking down to the kitchen with me to grab that last slice of pie to share.
But Celestine had started to worm her way into our lives when I was ten, and nothing had been quite the same since.
Whatever he saw in her, he cared about her enough to have promised her his loyalty. Anything else, anything she wasn’t involved in, I could have trusted he’d be on my side. But this?
I needed enough proof to make him sure, beyond any doubt. I needed there to be no way for Dad to argue that I was simply making unfair assumptions. When I had that, he’d have my back completely. I just didn’t have it yet.
I swallowed hard and forced a smile. “Everything’s fine. I just remembered a message I forgot to pass on to Meredith. A little distracted with everything going on, you know.”
Dad chuckled. “Of course. Well, you’d better hurry and find her then.”
To my relief, I found Meredith in the gardens where I’d expected. She was scowling at a couple of newly planted lemon trees at the end of a bed of flowers. “These were meant to go on the other side,” she said as I came over to join her. “Well, the boys will just have to dig them up and move them over tomorrow.”
Evening was falling—the gardening staff had gone home for the night. I pitched my voice low so no one could hear from an open window. “Meredith, there’s something else I need to ask you about.”
She turned to me, her pale eyebrows rising. “Go ahead, Rose.”
With the number of strange questions I was coming to our estate manager with, she was going to start wondering if I’d developed some sort of psychosis. I wavered and decided I was better off playing along with that idea.
I clasped my hands in front of me. “I just—I guess it’s nerves. With the consorting so close. I can’t help worrying about things that seem silly. There isn’t any way that the ceremony can be… adjusted, to, I don’t know, change the outcome somehow, or hurt someone…”
