by Tami Lund
She tossed the diapers into one of the suitcases and jerked her back to him while she dug through the closet, presumably for clothing and other essentials for herself and Sadie. Whatever happened tonight, he doubted they would return to this place. He was getting Sadie and Petra as far from Delilah and her spells as he could—as fast as he could.
But he couldn’t take her mute frostiness any longer. “Why are you so pissed about this? You honestly think we can take on this woman by ourselves?”
Petra flung her arms into the air. “All you’ve done is reinforce that I’m a complete failure.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She began ticking off her fingers as she spoke. “First, I get passed over for reeve. Then, I nearly kill my best friend’s sister. Hell, and my best friend, if you want to get technical about it. Then, I get myself knocked up without having taken a mate first. Now, I can’t complete the assignment Gabe sent me on a year ago.”
Her chest heaved as she glared at him. And then she flipped her pointer finger into the air. “Oh, and let’s not forget I managed to get my daughter kidnapped by a crazy dragon who knows how to perform witchcraft.”
“First of all, you didn’t get her kidnapped.” He stabbed at her shoulder. “Stop blaming yourself for everything, Petra. The only thing you listed that might have been within your control was nearly killing Talia’s sister. And since I don’t know the full story, I’m guessing even that wasn’t entirely on you.”
“Trust me, it was.”
“How? What did you do?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. Noah resisted pulling her into a hug to offer her the comfort she clearly needed; she’d just push him away.
“Before Talia brought Ruby to the colony and told Gabe she was his, I still kind of held out hope that I could become reeve some day. He had been so determined not to take a mate before he fell for Talia, which meant, theoretically, that he’d never have an heir, either. But then he decided to declare Ruby his heir, and I sort of panicked.”
“How so?”
“I figured out Ruby’s biological father was a Rojo dragon. I let him know Jasmine had taken his daughter to our colony. The guy didn’t give a shit about Ruby from a fatherly perspective, but you know how dragons are. None of us like our possessions taken away from us, and that’s exactly how he saw both Ruby and Jasmine. I figured he’d go to Detroit and convince Jasmine to bring her daughter back here to New Orleans. Instead, he beat her unconscious, went after Ruby, and nearly killed Talia in the process.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that you made a bad decision, but that dragon attacking Jasmine and Talia wasn’t your fault. You didn’t tell him to do it. He did it all on his own. You had no way of knowing how he’d react. And I’d wager if you had, you never would have told him about Ruby in the first place.” He canted his head. “Do you balance all this self-blame with self-appreciation for all the good things in your life?”
She snorted.
“Your glass really is half full sometimes, you know.”
She glanced at her phone. “We need to go.”
“Gabe’s on his way here. We need to wait.”
She started shaking her head before he finished speaking. “No way. If we show up with a bunch of dragons in tow, she’ll hurt Sadie.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know she won’t. I’m not willing to take that chance.”
“Petra, I really don’t want to go meet that lady in the middle of the night without backup. It’s too dangerous.”
“She has our daughter!”
“I know, but—”
A rapid tap, tap, tap cut off whatever he intended to say. After tossing a furious glare at Petra, he stormed into the living room and flung open the door without thinking.
And came face-to-face with the gargoyle who had followed them from the antique shop. The dark-skinned man had closely cropped hair and a thin black mustache and goatee, wore a pair of cotton pants and a gray ribbed tank top, and while he was obviously in human form, his body was thick and sharply defined, as if he hadn’t quite been able to shake off the stone.
Noah tried to slam the door closed, but the strong-as-stone man pressed his hand to the wood and kept it from moving.
“I am not your enemy,” the gargoyle said in a heavily accented voice. He sounded French with a dose of southern. Creole.
Noah waited for him to provide more information.
“I am, however, under oath and cannot speak ill of my employer.”
“Delilah,” Noah guessed.
“Yes.”
“So why are you here?”
The gargoyle inclined his head once. “You were right earlier when you guessed that we have exceptional hearing. And your woman is right that you cannot show up to the plantation with other dragons. You must go alone.”
“I’m not—”
Noah cut her off. “We’re supposed to trust you? You just said you work for the woman who kidnapped our daughter.”
“She is my employer, yes. But it is not my choice. If you go to that plantation and learn the secrets she keeps there, perhaps you can free me.”
Well, if that wasn’t cryptic as all hell…
“Time to go,” Petra said. She was standing just over his shoulder with two suitcases perched on either side of her legs, a keychain dangling from her fingers.
“What about Gabe?” Noah asked.
“Gabe is your reeve,” the gargoyle said. How the hell did he know that?
“Yes.”
“I will wait here. I will tell him what I can. And I will protect the human woman.”
The guy knew Rebecca was in the house? “He’s not going to trust you.” And neither should we…
The gargoyle inclined his head. “I would expect no less, if he is truly a competent leader.”
Petra picked up the suitcases and barreled her way through the two men. Noah swore under his breath and chased after her, snagging the bags from her grip. He heard the click of the door closing and glanced over his shoulder. The gargoyle was gone. He had no idea whether the guy had gone into the house or disappeared into the shadows. He needed to text Gabe, tell him to be on the lookout.
Petra led him to an older model, burgundy sedan. He popped the trunk and tossed the bags inside, and noted there was a car seat in the back—and a female dragon in the driver’s seat. Instead of pointlessly arguing with her over who should drive, he hurried around to the passenger side and hopped in.
She tossed her phone into his lap and shifted the gear into drive.
“Navigate,” she said. “Get us to our daughter as fast as possible.”
According to Google Maps, the journey would take one hour and seventeen minutes. Noah figured it would feel like a few lifetimes.
Here we go again.
As the lights of the city faded behind them and the dark and quiet stretched out endlessly before them, Noah swore he could feel his mother’s presence. All the scraped knees she’d kissed and made better. All the times she’d come to his defense when his older siblings picked on him. When she’d tutored him through seventh grade math. How she’d let him stand on a stool next to her while she prepared a meal. His grandfather had been the reeve’s personal chef before him, but his mother had been just as good a cook.
Shit, these thoughts were depressing, and frightening. His daughter might see the same fate as his mother. Not that Sadie was dying of cancer, but he had no idea how dangerous Delilah was, and at the moment, his biggest fear was that his child would see an untimely death—just like his mother had.
“I need a distraction,” he said out loud. “I need to quit thinking about it.”
“What?” Petra asked, quickly glancing his way before returning her focus to the road.
He cleared his throat. “Why did you want to be reeve?”
She squeezed the steering wheel, her knuckles turning white, as she clenched her jaw and stared straight ahead. She didn’t speak for so long
, he assumed she didn’t intend to answer him.
And then she said, “My home life sucked. My parents fought all the time, and I was stuck in the middle, too young to get out, to make any decisions for myself. Everyone in my family was like that, miserable, snapping at each other all the time, never getting along—everyone except Uncle Blake, who was our reeve. And somewhere along the way, I connected being reeve with having control over your own life.”
“That’s funny, considering I’ve heard Gabe complain about how being reeve took away all his freedoms.”
She lifted one shoulder, her focus still on the road stretched out before them. “But at least I wouldn’t be in a loveless relationship. At least I wouldn’t be in my parents’ home.”
“You’re not reeve, and you’ve accomplished those objectives.”
“Sort of. I mean, now that we have Sadie, I’m halfway to maintaining the circle of miserable households that my family can’t seem to break free of.”
Noah shook his head. “No, you aren’t. First of all, we aren’t miserable together.” He lifted his hand when she opened her mouth. “ And remember, we aren’t going to mate just because we have Sadie, so you’re off the hook.”
While his reassurance seemed to ease some of the tension in her shoulders, Noah’s nerves only grew more taut.
Was that really what he wanted?
Chapter 9
Why couldn’t they have dated for a while? Why couldn’t she have discovered what a great guy Noah was before they had a kid together? Before it became an obligation?
Because regardless of how wonderful he may seem, with Sadie in the picture, she couldn’t get past her own fear of turning into her parents.
Finally, after what felt like two lifetimes, she guided the car off the main street and down an unlit, two-lane road. The first in a row of perfectly matching, small wooden structures with rusted metal roofs came into view. Ancient, gnarled trees dripping with Spanish moss shaded what had once been the slave quarters for this old sugar plantation, the largest in the parish, back in its time.
She pushed aside the frustration over her current relationship status and focused on the most important thing in her life at the moment: finding their daughter.
“Ugh, I wish I could pump,” she said, massaging one of her hard-as-rock boobs even as her fear for Sadie’s safety ratcheted up about seventeen notches. Now that they were here, she could scarcely breathe through the sickly fear squeezing her heart.
While packing, she’d discovered the kidnappers had taken Sadie’s diaper bag and a couple of bottles from the fridge. It was possible that they truly had no intention of hurting her baby. Delilah only wanted her and Noah to get out of town.
They were dealing with humane abductors—which was good, right?
Noah was staring at her rather than watching the fascinating scenery slowly drifting by outside the windows. She averted her gaze back to the windshield. The moon was full tonight. Helpful, since there weren’t any streetlights out here.
A bayou came into view, and Petra pointed at a dilapidated brick structure she could just make out in the distance. “That’s the old sugar mill. That’s where we’re supposed to go.”
It was a skeleton of the building it once had been. The glass that had covered the arched windows had long ago broken and shattered; the wooden double doors were sagging and cracked, and there was no roof. With a wide berth of thick, tall, yellow weeds surrounding the structure, Petra had a hard time believing anyone was here right now, let alone in the past decade.
She parked the car and they both climbed out and met in front of the hood. Noah glanced at her. “Can you feel the magic?”
Petra shivered. Now that he mentioned it, the air did feel…different. More potent.
“Maybe this is where she practices her curses,” he suggested, and then he shook his head. “Come on, let’s get our daughter and get the hell out of here.”
He reached for her hand, twining their fingers, and she allowed herself a moment to relish the sensation, the closeness, the affection she could feel through the physical connection.
If only…
They waded through weeds and grass and overgrown shrubbery, the earth spongy under their shoes. Something scurried away to her left and then a moment later there was a gentle splash.
And then there was another splash, a much larger one. Perhaps a bayou where alligators lived hadn’t been that creature’s wisest choice.
Stepping up to one of the wide, arching windows, Petra glanced inside. Three-foot tall ferns blanketed the ground underneath scrub trees growing among decaying wooden beams and piles of broken brick. In the middle was a clearing, where an elderly woman sat in a rocking chair, humming to something she cradled in her arms.
A sleeping infant.
The woman had black- and white-streaked hair, a creased face, and wore a gold choker necklace similar to the one Delilah wore, with a green gem in the center.
A hand came down on Petra’s shoulder, squeezing for a moment before relaxing and remaining there. In the dim moonlight, relief was carved into Noah’s features.
He leaned closer, his breath tickling her ear, and Petra shivered.
“This place is surrounded by gargoyles,” he whispered.
She nodded and veered to the left, walking the perimeter of the decaying edifice, with Noah close behind her, until they came to a set of wooden doors with rounded tops. One door was barely attached to the structure by rusted hinges; the other simply rested against the bricks, leaving a gaping hole through which they entered, heading toward the lady in the rocking chair.
Petra cleared her throat and the elderly woman glanced up. The ghost of a smile graced her lips before she said, “Oh, hello. Are you the child’s parents?”
“Um, yes,” Petra said, moving closer, desire to have Sadie in her arms overriding any sense of concern that this was likely a trap. Noah moved with her, clearly not intending to leave her side, even if he thought she was crazy for putting them in danger like this.
“She’s lovely,” the older woman said. “Just lovely. Hardly fussed at all for me.” She sighed. “As if my desire for grandchildren wasn’t already almost too strong to bear. I really hate it when she does this to me.”
Petra inched closer. The woman made no move to run or hurt Sadie or do anything other than sit in that chair in the middle of these ruins and continue rocking.
“Who?” Petra asked.
The lady glanced down at the infant sleeping in her arms. “I suppose you want her back now.”
Petra wasn’t really concerned about the older woman’s personal issues, so long as she could have her daughter back. “Yes, please,” she practically breathed. She stretched out her arms as the woman swaddled Sadie more securely in her blanket, like she was about to hand over the baby.
But she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arm protectively around the child and said, “Will you take me with you?”
Petra pulled her hands back. “What?”
“I’m tired of being a prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” Petra repeated, glancing up at Noah. He shook his head.
A shadow fell across the ground, and Petra looked up at the sky in time to see the shape of a dragon swoop toward the ground. As furious as she was with Noah for bringing Gabe into this mess, she was willing to admit—if only to herself—that she was relieved, too, to have the backup.
Except it wasn’t Gabe who shifted into human form as the dragon touched the ground. It was a woman with dark, windblown hair that she swept away from her face before brushing her fingers over the gem at her throat and then smoothing the front of her dress.
“I do hate travelling like that,” Delilah said with a small shudder. She narrowed her eyes and wagged her finger at the elderly woman in the rocking chair.
“One job,” she said. “You had one job. Watch the damn kid until they came to retrieve it. Hand it over. Say nothing.”
“That’s actually three jobs,” the old lady qualified.
Delilah gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.
“What do you honestly expect?” the old lady asked. “I’m literally supposed to say nothing at all when they arrive? Not even a hello, how are you? Hope the drive wasn’t too long? Anything?”
Delilah rolled her eyes. “Greeting them and telling them I’m holding you prisoner are not even remotely the same thing.”
“Well, you are. And I’m sick of it, frankly.”
“I suppose you never should have taught me how to use magic.”
Petra glanced at Noah. What the hell?
“Wait,” Noah said, drawing the attention of the arguing women. “You taught her magic? What are you?”
“A witch,” the woman said, pride filling her voice.
“That explains the curse,” Petra muttered.
“A witch teaching curses to a dragon?” Noah asked.
The old lady shrugged.
Delilah let out an exasperated noise and patted her hair. “Boys. Oh boys! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Magic sizzled all around them as four bulky men stepped out of the shadows and formed a half circle behind her. Gargoyles, all of them.
Delilah sighed dramatically. “Argyle, get your ass over here.”
The rustling of tall grass and the gargoyle who had shown up on Petra’s doorstep earlier tonight stepped into view.
Delilah placed one hand on her hip while tapping her chin with the other. “Remind me again. Who are you beholden to?”
Argyle pursed his lips and then said in his heavily accented voice, “Our purpose is to protect from evil spirits.”
She strode toward him and stabbed her finger at his chest while he remained stoically unmoving. “Your purpose is to protect me from anyone who tries to interfere in my business.”
“Your business isn’t why they entered your shop.”
Delilah flung her arms into the air and moved back to the center of the half circle the other gargoyles had formed. “You believe their ridiculous story that all they want is a stupid spell to take back to their colony? You are softer than I believed after all. And let me tell you, I knew you were the most pathetic and weakest of the bunch.”
