by Vivian Wood
“Rhys?” Echo asked, her chest heaving as she tried to control her breathing.
“I don’t…” Rhys paused, uncertain how to phrase it. “I don’t want to take advantage of you. We’ve only just met.”
Echo looked up at him with such confusion, it nearly killed him. Rhys stepped back and took her hand, pulling her over to the bed.
“Sit with me,” he encouraged her.
A deep flush of embarrassment was spreading over her face and neck already, so when she pulled away, Rhys wasn’t terribly surprised.
“I… I have to go,” Echo said, turning away.
“You can’t,” Rhys said, his pleasure fading. “You’re not safe. That’s why you’re here, remember?”
“You can’t keep me here,” she said, shooting him an aggravated look.
Words of disagreement were on the tip of Rhys’s tongue, but he held them in. He might be able to keep her here, but he wouldn’t.
“I only want you to be safe,” he said instead. “There’s a lot you don’t understand yet. The man who had you kidnapped, Pere Mal… He’s dangerous, Echo.”
His words must have been the wrong ones, because Echo frowned.
“Safety is relative,” she told him flatly. “There’s no reason for this Pere Mal guy to want me. I don’t even live in the Kith world. I just… I can’t stay here. And honestly, I don’t even know why you care. We don’t know each other.”
And though Rhys wanted to argue, he couldn’t. She was right about the last part, and he wasn’t quite ready to throw the mate situation in her face. She’d already dealt with a lot today.
“Echo—” he started, trying to figure out what to say, but she was already heading for the door.
Rhys waited a full minute, trying to calm himself before he chased after her, not wanting to truly scare her off. By the time he made it to the landing, she was on the stairs. Before he made it to the ground floor, the front door closed with a slam.
When he stepped outside, Echo was gone.
6
Chapter Six
Echo
Echo scuttled to the end of the block opposite the Manor and turned back, biting her lip. The Manor itself was heavily warded enough that it was indistinguishable from the street, blending in with the other buildings in a way that simply diverted the onlooker’s attention. It was a clever spell, well cast enough that Echo couldn’t quite look at the Manor though she’d only just left.
She watched the spot she assumed the Manor to be in guiltily, waiting for the inevitable. Rhys emerged a minute later, looking around with a bewildered expression. Echo had thrown on a cloaking spell of her own, one of the very few spells she knew by heart, and though Rhys might feel her presence nearby, he wouldn’t be able to lay eyes on her.
She watched him with no little bemusement as he stalked out onto the street, cutting through a gaggle of young women who stopped in the middle of the road to gawp at him. Echo couldn’t blame them one bit.
Rhys was six and a half feet of pure muscle, his brown hair kept short, his reddish beard perfectly trimmed. He still wore his black tactical gear, though he’d stripped off the heavy bulletproof vest he’d worn earlier. The clothes clung to him in just the right places, showcasing his muscular back and lean hips. Echo hadn’t checked out Rhys’s ass yet, but she was willing to bet it was as glorious as the rest of him.
The best part was that he didn’t even bat an eyelash at the pack of younger, thinner women who were staring at him, making no effort whatsoever to hide their interest. Rhys was single-minded…
….and only a dozen yards away now, thanks to Echo taking so much time to drool over him. Echo winced and bolted, guilt wracking her once more. Surely once she got further away Rhys would turn back and leave well enough alone. They had some kind of connection, sure. The chemistry Echo had felt between herself and him had been out of this world, like nothing she’d ever experienced.
In a funny way, it reminded her a little of the way Echo’s mother had long ago described meeting Echo’s father.
Love at first sight. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we just had to have each other, Echo’s mother had explained with a laugh and a blush. At the time, four year old Echo had just pretended to gag, though her interest in her mysterious father was vast.
Shaking the memory of her mother away, Echo realized that she needed to decide where she was going instead of just wandering around and making herself a big fat easy target for the man who’d kidnapped her before.
Pere Mal, she thought, turning the name over in her mind. It did sound familiar, though she wasn’t sure why. An even bigger mystery was why someone would want to abduct her, of all people. She didn’t associate with many Kith, didn’t spend time in their world except to visit The Market once a week for her herbs. Hell, she went out of her way to dampen her psychic abilities, block out her powers so that she could keep her head down and live a normal life.
Sighing, she realized that she’d gone on autopilot, let herself start walking toward her home in Mid-City. If this Pere Mal guy was looking for her, her house and her work would be the first two places he looked. She circled back, avoiding the Manor altogether, and headed back toward The Market. She’d chained up her baby blue cruiser bicycle near the entrance she’d used earlier, and if she was going to go where she needed to go, she didn’t want to be on foot.
After she hopped on her bike, she headed in the opposite direction of the French Quarter, pedaling toward her Aunt Ella’s house in the St. Roch neighborhood. Tee-Elle, as Mz. Ella Orren was affectionately known to everyone she met, would have some answers to Echo’s questions.
There was also every possibility that a fresh batch of the city’s best praline cookies and pecan pies would be cooling in Tee-Elle’s kitchen right about now. Echo checked her watch and grinned; it was four-thirty, prime pastry time at her aunt’s house.
Tee-Elle wasn’t Echo’s relative by blood, but she and Echo’s mother had grown up together. As a wild white girl and a dorky black girl whose families split a duplex shotgun house in the upper Ninth Ward, Tee-Elle Orren and Cadence Caballero were joined at the hip.
Tee-Elle had taken Echo into her home after Echo’s parents had both passed within six short months of one another. Tee-Elle was Echo’s guardian and substitute mother from age six on. Twenty years later, she was still the first name on Echo’s admittedly short list of friends and family.
Echo climbed off her bike on the sidewalk in front of Tee-Elle’s whimsically decorated, neon green bungalow. Carrying her bike up to the front porch, she chained it to the railing. Tee-Elle might be a neighborhood legend, but an unattended bike in this neighborhood would vanish quickly — no cloaking spell necessary.
Echo raised her hand to knock on Tee-Elle’s door, her lips quirking up at the hand-painted sign that read, New Orleans — Proud To Swim Home. A little Hurricane Katrina joke popular with locals, though it’d been ten years since the storm had taken Tee-Elle’s previous home. Nothing could keep the woman down, and nothing could keep her out of her beloved neighborhood, either.
Before Echo’s knuckles could rap the battered aluminum front door, it swung open. Tee-Elle beamed out at her, giving a delighted cackle at the sight of her beloved niece.
“Giiiiiiiiiiirl!” Tee-Elle crowed. “It’s about time you got your butt up in my house. You musta smelt them pralines, huh?”
Echo laughed and hugged Tee-Elle, finding her aunt’s good cheer infectious.
“You know it,” Echo said, slipping into Tee-Elle’s familiar patterns of speech. “I haven’t had one of your pralines in a good long while.”
Tee-Elle turned and led her into the house, and Echo’s grin widened when she saw that she was wrapped in a rainbow-colored robe with a wild zebra print all over it. The woman didn’t so much wear clothes as swaddle herself in bolts of fabric, and she often wrapped her long, thin gray braids in a clashing piece of cloth, giving her a rather eclectic and eccentric appearance.
Tee-Elle went str
aight to the fridge, and Echo was shocked to see that her aunt had a brand new, enormous double-door refrigerator. The appliance looked monstrous in the old-fashioned kitchen, and looked especially huge next to the woman herself, who stood at 4’10” on a good day.
“Tee,” Echo said, wrinkling her nose. “What is that?”
Tee-Elle pulled out a carton of whole milk, Echo’s childhood favorite, and set it on the table with a wink.
“Don’t you worry. Tee-Elle’s doin’ real good with her business, miss lady,” Tee-Elle told Echo.
Echo eyed the fridge and wondered how many pecan pies it took to buy such a thing. Not that it was her business, but the whole family was insatiably nosy.
“I can get my own glass,” Echo told Tee-Elle, who huffed and shooed Echo into a chair.
Echo repressed a giggle when her aunt had to use a step stool to get two glasses down from the wall cabinet.
“Alright now,” Tee-Elle said, setting the glasses on the table and sitting down opposite Echo. “Let’s get down to it. Something’s goin’ on with you. I can see it here, and here.”
Tee-Elle waved her hand over two spots on Echo’s aura, giving Echo an expectant look. Before Echo could speak, the woman gasped and hopped up.
“I forgot the derned pralines, baby,” Tee-Elle chided herself as she grabbed a plate of fresh pecan cookies from the stove. “I’d lose my head if it wasn’t glued on.”
Echo laughed and accepted a cookie, giving a soft mewl of happiness as she bit into it. Sticky-sweet caramel-pecan goodness melted on her tongue, and it took her several moments and a big gulp of milk before she could get down to business.
“Okay. I have some, uh… Kith questions,” Echo said, keeping her eyes trained on her cookie as she spoke instead of looking at her aunt.
Tee-Elle was quiet for a few seconds, her surprise clear as day.
“Well, sure, baby. Anything you want to know, you know that,” Tee-Elle said once she’d recovered. “You never really wanted to talk about it before, is all.”
Echo bit her lip, knowing that her aunt was being polite. Echo hadn’t ever wanted to hear about magic in any aspect, going so far as to refuse to discuss her own parents. Only in the last couple of years had Echo grown willing to tolerate the subjects of her parents, and even then she only listened, never engaged.
“Aunt Ella, don’t be mad, but I think I’m in some trouble,” Echo confessed, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know what I did, though!”
Tee-Elle’s expression darkened instantly, and she reached out to take Echo’s hand.
“Tell me,” she said sternly. “Don’t leave nothin’ out, you hear?”
Echo nodded and recounted her day, leaving out only the intensity of her attraction to Rhys.
“I don’t know anything about the Guardians. I didn’t even know they were real. And I swear I don’t know any Pere Mal,” Echo concluded.
Since Tee-Elle seemed to go a shade more pale with every repetition of the name, Echo just took a breath and let her aunt ask her questions.
“You still taking that Witch’s Cloak and them other herbs like I told you?” Tee-Elle asked.
“Normally, yeah. I couldn’t get them today, obviously.”
“I was wonderin’ why I could see so much color all around you,” Tee-Elle said, eyeing Echo’s aura once more. “And this over here, this pink and red… this is brand new. Your man Rhys must be real special, huh?”
Echo went red, though she was far too old for embarrassment over crushes. Frankly, Tee-Elle was the biggest flirt on the planet and the last person to discourage Echo from spending time with a handsome man. Still, Echo wasn’t able to really talk about her earlier experience with Rhys. She felt a bit as though she didn’t have the right words to explain any of it. Considering that Echo had an English Literature degree from Loyola University, not having the right words for anything was almost unthinkable.
“He’s special, yes,” Echo agreed.
“Well, you come to the right place at least. You know I got this place warded so good, the devil himself couldn’t get in here without my say-so,” Tee-Ella said, crossing her arms. “About this thing with… the Pere… I’m gonna make some calls, get some gossip straight from Le Marché Gris.”
Tee-Elle was well-connected in The Gray Market since she sometimes rented a stall there to sell her pastries and some special gris-gris when she came upon the right ingredients. Though Tee-Elle had never studied enough to become a Voodoo priestess in her own right, she was very powerful and deeply connected to her beliefs and the spiritual community.
“Ain’t nobody gon’ mess with my girl,” Tee-Elle assured Echo, patting her hand. “Go on in the parlor and watch you some Jeopardy like you like, baby. Let me make some calls.”
“Thanks, Tee,” Echo said.
She grabbed one more praline and her glass of milk and left her aunt to it. In ten minutes’ time, Echo was stretched out on Tee-Elle’s faded blue sofa, her eyelids growing heavy as a post-praline nap beckoned. She might have fallen asleep for a few minutes, but when Echo awoke Jeopardy was still playing. She stirred and yawned, wondering why she’d woken up. She was still dog-tired, nowhere near refreshed enough to want to get up.
She heard a sound, a very soft scratch. Frowning, Echo sat up and tried to shake off a little of her stupor. She heard it again, sort of like a tree branch brushing the aluminum front door. Only the front door was open, the metal mesh screen door keeping the bugs out. That, and the fact that there were no trees in Tee-Elle’s front yard.
Echo’s pulse picked up as she got up and walked over to the screen door. A dark figure loomed in the doorway, making her jump and gasp, her hand flying to her chest. In the next moment, the figure turned to face her, and Echo released a great gust of breath.
“Antoine! You scared the daylights out of me!” Echo scolded her cousin. Tall, light-skinned, and handsome, Antoine was a perfect representation of every man in Tee-Elle’s family. Tee-Elle’s nephew twice removed, Antoine wasn’t usually around her house much, but Echo was glad to see him.
He stood on the porch and stared at her for a long moment, and Echo started to wonder if Antoine had started smoking a bunch of weed again. His usual broad smile and easy manner were gone, replaced by something Echo didn’t much like.
“Are you going to come in or not?” Echo asked, giving him a skeptical glance.
“Come in,” he repeated back to her. “Yeah, yeah.”
He wrenched the screen door open and shuffled inside with a limping gait, the motion so unfamiliar that Echo took a couple of steps back. Had something happened to Antoine since the last time she’d seen him, some kind of terrible accident? He was obviously totally out of sorts.
“Antoine, are you okay?” she asked, her heart beginning to really pound now.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. His chocolatey brown eyes were fever-bright as he moved closer, and Echo started to sense that something was truly wrong.
“Tee-Elle?” Echo called over her shoulder. “Tee, can you come here?”
Antoine froze, his expression warping to one of cartoonish fury.
“No Tee-Elle,” Antoine hissed, his words disjointed and odd-sounding. “You be sorry, witch.”
“What the hell, Antoine?” Echo said, growing more frightened with each passing second.
Antoine turned and pushed the screen door open again. His mouth opened in a silent scream, but no sound came out. Instead, a dark red stream of mist flowed from his mouth, snaking out and dispersing into the air. Echo gasped as she watched the red mist activate the warding spells on the house, tracing the intricate lines of each hex and charm. The red mist burned up the spells, creating bright sparks and smoke as it destroyed all of Tee-Elle’s handiwork.
“Oh shit,” Echo said, turning and running for the kitchen. “Tee-Elle!”
When she got into the kitchen, she was too late. A familiar-looking man in a suit was dragging Tee-Elle’s unconscious body out the back door. Echo screamed, realizing that
she had brought her attackers down on her own family. She ran after Tee-Elle, hoping she hadn’t just signed all their death warrants.
7
Chapter Seven
Rhys
“There. That’s it,” Gabriel said, pointing at a tiny blue house down the block.
Rhys had already locked in on the house, a simple task since there were about ten dark-suited guys battling several local witches and sorcerers on the front lawn and porch.
“Got it,” Rhys said, trying to ignore the fear pooling in his belly. Rhys was not accustomed to feeling outright fear, and the taste of it on his tongue was bitter as bile. “Looks like we’re late to the party.”
Gabriel looked up from the scrying mirror and blinked, trying to let his eyes focus on the present. Rhys left him in the dust to recover, Aeric only a step behind as he dashed toward the chaotic fight.
“I don’t see her,” Rhys muttered to Aeric, knowing that the other Guardian’s sharp hearing would pick up Rhys’s quiet words.
“Here she comes,” Aeric said, jerking his head toward the front door of the house.
Echo flew out of the house, only to be caught by a wickedly handsome blond stranger. The man caught her by the arm and pulled her close. Echo’s frightened yelp made Rhys feel like he’d been kicked in the stomach.
As he got closer, Rhys’s pulse throttled for an entirely different reason. The man holding onto Echo was indeed inhumanly attractive, and he had a faint pink tint to his skin.
“Shit, he’s an incubus,” Rhys said.
Rhys and Aeric both clashed with suited henchmen in the front yard, and Rhys fought distractedly as he kept an eye on Echo. The Guardians always tried to avoid fatalities wherever possible, but if Echo was hurt in any way Rhys wouldn’t hesitate to dispatch any number of idiots to get to her.
