When he said that word, her eyes widened in surprise.
“That’s right, Darcy. I know all about it. I know that he had the box and you brought it here to give to Douglas and Fiona, using it to get into their good graces. I know that they intend to use it in the circle of stones next week during the eclipse. I also know they’re desperately looking for me at this very moment so they’ll have the vessel they need to complete the ritual. So what I need from you is the location of the box so I can keep this abomination from happening.” He looked straight into her glowing eyes.
“Why do you think I’d tell you anything?” she asked. “You’ve made it perfectly clear that you intend to ruin my life. If you get that box away from Douglas and Fiona, I’d have nowhere to go. They’d kill me for telling.”
“And I’ll kill you if you don’t,” he threatened her in a soft voice that belied his meaning.
“You’ll kill me if I do,” she stated flatly.
“Well, I can’t just let you live to stir up more trouble now, can I?” he asked. “I let you go once before, and now look at all of us. Here we are stuck in this dungeon trying to fix all the problems that you’ve put into motion. What would you have me do?”
“Let me leave,” she pleaded with him. “I’ll go get the box and bring it to you. You can do whatever you need to with it. I promise I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again.”
“There’s only one problem with that scenario,” Vance complained with a shake of his head.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t trust you. I know that as soon as I let you go you’ll run straight to my grandparents and let them know where we are,” he stated.
She shook her head violently.
“I wouldn’t! I promise!” she pleaded with him.
Vance laughed at her again.
“It’s never going to happen, Darcy, so don’t bother trying. Just tell me where the box is,” he said. “Your fate is going to be the same either way you go, so what do you care? They’ll kill you or I will. Even if I let you go, they would never believe you didn’t tell us anything. Face it, you’re dead.” He shrugged his shoulders in defeat and stepped away from the glass, turning to leave.
“Wait!” she called out in desperation. “Don’t leave yet.”
Vance halted but didn’t turn around.
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” she spat out after waiting for him to acknowledge her.
He turned and walked back to the glass, and I could feel a self assurance that rolled through him when he realized his interrogation tactics might be working with her.
“Lay out your deal then,” he said matter-of-factly, acting as though he were truly interested in any proposition she might offer.
“I’ll tell you where the box is if you let me stay here, with you,” she answered, looking straight into his eyes.
Vance gave her an incredulous stare.
“What the heck would I do with you?” he asked completely amazed by her suggestion.
“I could be … your mistress,” she offered, and she slid a quick glance over toward me.
“Excuse me?” Vance answered in shock, his eyes widening dramatically, and I could see she had thrown him completely off his game with the suggestion. “You’re joking, right?”
“No. I’m very good at what I do. You’re a young virile man who could easily handle two women,” she said with a shrug as though this were no big deal.
I was off the cot and at the glass in one stride.
“You stay away from him!” I said, lifting my finger up to the barrier, anger flushing through me at her ludicrous proposition.
Vance reached out and pulled my hand back down.
“I’ve got this, Portia,” he said, and he turned back to the glass with a completely calm demeanor. “Darcy, there’s nothing you could possibly do, or say, that would ever induce me to even consider such an arrangement, with you or anyone else. Why would I trade in absolute perfection for a whore like you?” His eyebrow quirked up in question, and his face went completely dead of any emotion.
Darcy was instantly out of her crouch, screaming, and she hurtled herself at the glass once more, only to be shocked and sent flying once again.
“Come on, Portia. We’re done here,” Vance said, and he grabbed me by the elbow, turning me around so we could leave.
“Wait!” Darcy called to him again, but we kept walking. “Wait! Please! I don’t know where it is!”
He stopped this time, letting go of my arm and turned to stride back to the glass.
“What?” he asked harshly.
The tears rolled down her face in earnest now.
“I don’t know where the box is. That was part of the deal when I brought it to them. They got to keep it and I could stay as long as I didn’t ask about it, tell anyone about it, or try to find where they’d put it. They said they’d kill me if I did,” she sobbed.
Vance considered these things for a moment, and I could see how hard he was clenching his hands. He ground his teeth together before he spoke to her again.
“Well, you’ve just sealed your fate with them then, haven’t you?” he said accusingly.
“What do you mean?” she asked, wiping a tear away with the back of her hand.
“You just told us about it. That’s a breach of contract with Douglas and Fiona. You just signed your own death warrant, I believe. I guess I can send you back to them now.”
He grabbed my hand and led me out of the magical illusion. She screamed at the top of her lungs behind us, begging us to not send her back.
Her cries echoed through the tunnels while we made our way through the twisting labyrinth to the stone steps that lifted us up out of the bowels of the earth and to the magically secured door.
Vance unlocked it and strode down the hall to the sitting room where we found the rest of the family.
“What’s going on?” Dad asked hopping to his feet when we entered the room, noticing our concerned expressions immediately.
“Darcy is awake,” Vance informed him.
“Already? I expected her to be out for hours,” he said looking very surprised. “Let’s go talk to her.”
“I already have,” Vance replied, reaching out to grab my dad by the arm when he started to walk past him. “It’s no use, Sean. She doesn’t know where the box is. This is a dead end.”
Dad looked down to where Vance was still holding him by the arm. Vance released him then, letting his arm fall back to his side.
“How can you be sure?” Grandma asked. “It would be in her demon nature to lie.”
“They had a very long conversation,” I spoke up then. “Darcy tried all of her tricks before she confessed the truth. She knows that Douglas and Fiona will kill her if she goes back. Vance said he was going to send her to them. She’s down there freaking out now.”
“This is not good,” my dad said. “If she can’t tell us where the box is, we can’t stop the ritual.”
“Actually we can,” I replied. “If they don’t have Vance, the Awakening will do them no good. They have to have his blood in order for it to work. No one else has any white witch blood that they can assimilate.”
“You may be on to something, Portia,” my dad said as he nodded his head, shaking his finger toward me in agreement. “We need to get Vance as far away from here as possible.”
Vance shook his head.
“No. We still need to get the box and destroy it. Otherwise, they can just wait for the next time they can perform the ritual and we go through all this all over again. Portia and I would always be running, looking over our shoulders. I won’t live like that,” he said.
My dad looked frustrated.
“But it gives us more time to find the box,” he replied.
“They know that we know! We have the book. Do you think that box will ever come out of hiding into the open? No. It’ll only be out at the ritual. It’s the only possible chance we have of getting it,” Vance said in frustration.
“That may be,” my dad replied. “But you will not be the one doing the getting of it! You’re to stay as far away from that ritual as you can possibly be, do you understand me? I hate to pull rank on you, Vance, but I’m still the leader of this coven, and you’ll do as I say.”
I could feel the anger boiling inside Vance at these remarks.
“Fine,” was all he said in a deadly calm voice, and everyone else in the room silently watched the strained interaction.
He didn’t let go of my hand, and he led me out of the room behind him, heading back toward our bedroom upstairs.
I didn’t say anything while he towed me along, trying to give him some time to let his anger cool.
He pulled me into the room and closed the door softly behind me.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly to him.
He looked at me, his gaze traveling up and down the length of me, then he pulled me hard up against his body.
“Don’t talk,” he said while he threaded his fingers into my hair and proceeded to give me a smoldering kiss that matched his smoldering demeanor.
I just stood there, letting him release his pent-up energy into the kiss. It was rough and bruising against my tender lips, hard and demanding. He pushed up against me until I was taking steps backward under the pressure, not stopping until he finally had me up against a wall.
He ravaged my lips with an almost uncontrolled desperation. His fingers tightened in my hair, brusquely tilting my head backward to give him better access while he continued to punish me with his mouth. My necked arched under the pressure, and his mouth moved down my skin where he placed several nips in a none-too-delicate fashion.
I gasped at the assault, feeling both desire and worry over his handling of me. He had never been this way with me before. I began to tremble underneath him, both from excitement and nerves, and I lifted my hands to run over his muscled arms as they held me.
I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew he would never hurt me intentionally. I was just worried over how frustrated he had become with everything.
He finally released me, stepping away from me for several steps.
“Sorry,” he apologized with a hurt look on his face. “I don’t want to use you in this way. You mean everything to me, and I’m letting my emotions excuse my rough handling of you. Please forgive me, Portia.”
I walked back up to him and wrapped my arms around him.
“It’s okay, really,” I said, reaching up to kiss him on the lips, and he let his arms slide back around me. “I want to do this, Vance. Will you let me do this for you?”
He stared at me for a moment with several emotions warring on his face before he swallowed thickly and nodded his head.
This time I grabbed his face in my hands and delivered a scorching kiss back to him.
I heard a low sound emanate from his throat, and suddenly I found myself pressed back up against the wall once more.
Chapter 23
Vance had spent the next several days pacing the floor in the sitting room while he watched the monitor of the Cummingses’ driveway, waiting for any sign of life from the inside.
The tracker we had placed on their vehicle had shown that it had returned to the house without Darcy. It appeared that it hadn’t moved since.
Dad and Grandma had spent a lot of time down in the dungeons trying to see if they could get any information out of Darcy.
She refused to speak to anyone but Vance, and he refused to give her the time of day. Grandma had even begged him to please go try to talk to her again, but to no avail. He would not have anything more to do with her.
Relations between Vance and my dad had been particularly strained ever since Dad had ordered him to stand down. They both seemed to avoid each other on purpose now.
Vance and I had been eating meals in our room, rather than joining the rest of the family.
I understood why he was isolating himself. He was trying not to blow up at anybody. I was afraid it was only going to be a matter of time, though. His emotions were boiling just under the surface.
It hadn’t helped matters when Dad had entered the dungeon this morning to find that Darcy had committed suicide sometime during the night.
He blamed Vance completely for it, saying if he had just gone down there and reassured her, this would have never happened.
Vance had turned and very calmly told him that the world was now a better place without Darcy in it, as far as he was concerned, before he left the room.
This had made my dad very angry, and he had shouted down the hall after him, something about Vance being an ungrateful hothead.
Grandma had finally pulled Dad over into a corner to try and talk him down. I had gone after Vance, and everyone else had been walking on eggshells around the two of them ever since.
We were currently in our bedroom. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed watching him as he paced on the floor. I was beginning to think he was going to wear a hole in the carpet.
“Things just aren’t making sense, Portia,” he said. “The eclipse is tonight. We should’ve seen some type of preparations going on by now. No one has been in or out of that place since we took Darcy. Where’s the rest of the coven? Which circle is the right one? Where do we go from here?”
There was a knock at the door, and Shelly entered the room, her face alight with excitement.
“Vance, your grandparents just left the estate in their vehicle. They had a driver and another woman with them. It was your mom. I’m sure of it. She looked just like the demon you destroyed before that you thought was her.”
Vance was out the door and down the hall before I could even get off the bed. I ran down the hallway after him, clattering down the stairs and around the corner into the sitting room.
Dad was rewinding the monitor, showing Vance the image.
“That’s my mom,” he said. “We need to go after her.”
“We will. The tracker on the car is working well. Let’s get everyone into the cars so we can follow them,” Dad said calmly.
“What if they’re going somewhere far away?” Shelly asked. “Should we take our clothes?”
I could hear Vance literally growl in frustration under his breath.
“We’ll just buy new clothes wherever we end up,” he said through gritted teeth, and he dragged me toward the doorway.
“Hang on,” Dad said to him, and I could feel that it took every ounce of Vance’s self control to stop without screaming at everyone at the top of his lungs. “Shelly, you and Brad stay here and help Stacey gather up everyone’s things just in case we need them. Mom and I will go on ahead with Vance and Portia to track the vehicle. We’ll call you and let you know where we’re going.”
Shelly nodded her head in reply, and Dad leaned over to give Mom a peck on the cheek.
“Be careful,” Mom said softly to him.
“We will,” he said, with a lingering touch against her face before he went out the door.
“Finally,” Vance muttered in irritation into my head. “They could be halfway to the United States by now.”
“Try to stay calm, babe,” I said back to him, knowing he was very frustrated. “We’ll find her.”
The four of us hurried to the car, quickly climbing inside, Dad and Grandma up front and Vance and I in the back.
Grandma was the driver, while Dad watched his device and navigated which way to go. We soon found ourselves heading out onto open highway.
My dad called my mom and told her it did indeed look like we would be heading out for a longer trip and to bring everything. He gave her our directions thus far and told her he would call her again when he knew more.
Vance was holding my hand, but he was clenching it so hard that I felt like my fingers were going to fall off. I finally had to ask him to let go.
“Sorry,” he said, and I placed his hand in my lap, trying to massage some of the tension out of it.
He was completely tied up in knots, both inside and out.
I finally
just gave up and laid my head on his shoulder, linking my arm through his.
His eyes never left the road as he stared straight ahead, watching for any sign of the vehicle ahead of us.
I knew Dad was keeping us out of line of sight on purpose. He didn’t want Douglas and Fiona to know we were following them.
We had traveled for quite a while when we finally came into an area known as Aberdeenshire. We tailed the vehicle into the town of Inverurie. We were just inside the city limits when Dad suddenly lost the signal to the car.
“No!” he said, and he hit the monitor on the side with his hand. “No! No! No! Not now! Come back!”
Vance sat white-knuckled for a moment, then threw his hands up in disgust and flopped back against the seat in defeat.
Dad had Grandma drive to the last location we had receive a signal from, but there was no sign of the vehicle anywhere.
“Now what do we do?” I asked my dad, feeling my own frustration at the situation mingling with Vance’s.
“I guess we’ll check into a hotel and see if they ever pop back up on the monitor. I’m sorry, Vance,” he said with true regret written all over his face. “I don’t know what happened.”
“It isn’t your fault. Hopefully this was their final destination also,” he said, completely dejected, and I could tell by his voice that he didn’t think that was very likely.
We checked into four of the rooms at the Kintore Arms Hotel which was the closest place to where we had lost the signal.
Dad got a hold of the others who were well on their way here and gave them the final information.
The hotel was old and small, but under the current circumstances it worked for our needs.
Vance and I went straight to our room and plopped onto the bed, flicking on the television for a diversion from our anxious thoughts.
It was late afternoon now. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I felt myself losing energy quickly.
“Do you want to try to find someplace to eat?” I asked, and right on cue my stomach growled a little too loudly.
The Trouble With Spells Page 23
