Friends without Benefits (Rise of the Discordant Book 4)

by McMullen, Christina

  “Unbeknownst to me at the time,” I continued, “My arrival into Blackbird was expected. Rupert Donaldson, the founder and owner of Blackbird Paper and Pulp, had just died earlier that week. While his son had long since taken his place as the head of the mill, it seemed I was called to Blackbird to take Rupert’s place in other matters.”

  “He was a mystic?”

  “That he was,” I said with a smile as I remembered the odd set of coincidences that led me to stop and stretch my legs in the quaint and crumbling city. “Of the six that remained, only Harry is still with us. Oh, you should have seen that little upstart and the hissy fit he threw when he found out I was a woman of loose morals.”

  I was powerless to stop myself from going into a fit of laughter at the memory. It was so contagious that Desmond even cracked a smile.

  “And Taffy’s opinion?”

  “Taffy was still back in Chicago with the man she had stolen from me,” I explained with an expression that I’m sure looked as if I’d bitten into a sour lemon. “It wasn’t until seven years later, when Leon unexpectedly kicked the bucket that she tracked me down. I do believe her intention was simply to come and blame me for his death. As irrational as that was, I’d known Taffy long enough to know that this was just her way of venting her frustrations. She would make my life difficult for a while and then get out of Dodge as soon as the boredom set in. Unfortunately for Taffy, fate had other plans.”

  “I’m assuming Blackbird needed a new mystic?”

  It should not have surprised me, but I was picking up quite a bit of skepticism from Desmond’s tone. I can’t say that I’d ever met anyone as enigmatic as our resident Warrior and that was saying something, given the number of enigmas Blackbird has attracted over the years.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. As I said, Harry was a bit of a young upstart, but the others looked more like a retirement community than a mystic community. Ava, an air witch and the resident coven leader, had just passed mere hours before Taffy’s arrival. Of course, Taffy being Taffy, immediately set her sights on Frederick Donaldson, the richest man in Blackbird at the time, and the two were quickly married. In fact, looking back, I’d say it was very likely that all of the corners cut by the mill had Taffy’s name written all over them. The woman was nothing if not tacky and cheap.”

  “Tell me how you really feel, Myrna,” Desmond said with a hint of amusement.

  “We would be here all day,” I said with a tight smile, but lightened the mood with a wink. “But whether you want to believe it or not, the history of Blackbird’s mystic community stands as one of the most predictable. Darlene, another psychic, was the next to die. It was at that time that Eller Raglund returned. Louise was hired to manage the bank right after Gray Horse died. Within a few months, her younger cousin Betty came for a visit. It was during that visit that Matilda, another air witch, died. Needless to say, Betty’s visit became permanent. And finally, it was just a week before Donna came of age that the last witch of the Cloud coven died.”

  “And now?” Desmond asked, skepticism replaced by curiosity.

  “And now we wait for the next hapless mystic to stumble into town. Admittedly, I’m not as up on current events as I once was, but Donna assures me that none of the young’uns recently have shown an aptitude for magic of any kind, though there is one now who is just entering school age. I am pleased, at least, to know that I will be able to watch the magical progress of my own replacement, even if she is to become Harry’s student.”

  “Surely you can’t know who a young child will replace, or when.”

  There was, just below the stoic surface, a little bit of emotion choking Desmond’s words and I felt a twinge in my own heart.

  “Oh Desmond, you are wonderful for caring, but yes, I’m afraid that through the combination of the Rose family curse, a spirit walker as a best friend, and my own psychic abilities, I am aware of how little time I have left in this body. However,” I said before he had a chance to protest. “I am also aware that I have been blessed with a longer than average lifespan and I am pleased to know that unlike many, I will keep my faculties until the very end. Do not waste another moment worrying for me. Now, I am sure you did not call upon me to hear the long and sordid history of Blackbird’s mystics.”

  “No, though I’m afraid Taffy’s passing comes at an inopportune time,” he said with a sigh. “I’ve only been here a few short months, but I have quickly come to accept that there is no such thing as conventional when it comes to Blackbird. However, the Discordant’s most recent attempt to upset our tenuous balance is most troubling. I’m afraid that if you are correct regarding the strength of numerology, this is not a good time to have six mystics.”

  “Troubling, yes, but not entirely unexpected,” I agreed with a sigh. “We’ve all known for some time that Blackbird would be shaken to its foundation. Granted, we didn’t expect to be literally shaken,” I added as an aside.

  “Well, certainly fracking has had a hand in speeding up the process,” he agreed. “However, I’m afraid there’s something that may be a bit more pressing.”

  “Oh?” Given that nearly all signs pointed to a large conflict happening in the near future, I could not think of anything more pressing than preparing for an impending battle.

  “Quite honestly, Myrna, your daughter’s mental state is a bit… troubling.”

  “Ah, yes, well…” It didn’t take a psychic to know what it was that Desmond was not saying. My daughter’s mental state as of late had many of us on alert. “Given what role Donna was supposed to play in the Discordant’s endgame, I can see why you are troubled.”

  “That’s the part that I’m afraid I do not understand. I was under the impression that Donna…” Desmond cut off, clearly embarrassed.

  “Broke the Rose family curse?” I supplied with a patient smile. “Yes and no.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself. I knew this day was coming, but try as I may, I’d never quite got around to preparing for it.

  “I’m afraid that the whole situation is a little more complicated than you, Seth, and even Donna have been led to believe.”

  I’d known ever since I’d first interfered with what I should not have that there would be repercussions. Foolishly, I’d hoped to put them off for more than a mere five years. A deathbed confession would have been preferable, to be honest. Old I may be, but infirmed I was not.

  “It was Taffy who initially discovered that Donna was the thirteenth in our line to be born in the manner in which she was,” I began to explain. “I, of course, knew I was in some way cursed long before that, even if I hadn’t ever believed my mother when she claimed my father came to her in a dream. It was this discovery that led me to seek out Seth’s assistance. Although I swear there was someone else…”

  I trailed off in vague confusion. Looking back, there was an almost deliberate fuzziness about the memories. It was as if there was something that I was forgetting. No, not quite forgetting. It was more like a part of my memory had been erased. While curious, there was also something telling me the matter was insignificant.

  “I suppose that doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head as if I could clear the suspicions. Yet even as I spoke the dismissal, I knew there was something more. I reached absently for my divining glass. It too was cloudy on the past, as if a memory had been erased.

  The Guardian, of course!

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Blackbird must have had the protection of a Guardian long before those kids showed up. Yet, that was all. Even knowing what had been manipulated, the glass would show me no more.

  Though what it did show was significant.

  “What I am about to tell you is nothing less than a confession, Desmond. This is the part where the police would tell me I had the right to remain silent.”

  He took in a deep breath and gave me a hard stare for a moment.

  “I don’t know what you are or are not telling me M
yrna,” he said slowly, “but before you continue, understand that I am an agent of Order and I do have a responsibility to analyze and use anything you tell me as evidence if need be. You may want to consider your words before you say anything at all.”

  He was right, of course. What I had done was criminal and no court of law, governmental or magical, was going to let me off easy.

  “You have a right to know the truth,” I said at last, pouring another glass of lemon tea before setting my hands in front of me on the table. Goodness! When did they get so wrinkled? I closed my eyes and turned my thoughts inward. Where to begin?

  “As I said, when I became pregnant, Taffy figured out what had happened and that I was indeed a Nyx. When it was discovered that Donna would be the thirteenth, we all realized that there was significance to this and that we were in a race against the clock to keep her from fulfilling her birthright.

  “It seemed at first as if this was not going to be difficult. After all, not even you can deny that my daughter is an attractive woman. Of course, I wasn’t so bad myself back in my youth and yet… Well, my problems are unimportant. What I’m saying is that while all of her friends went on first dates and began getting invitations to homecoming, proms, and the like, my Donna was not. Oh, she had male friends. Many, in fact. But, well, she wasn’t much different then than she is now. They just didn’t see her as anything other than just one of the guys.

  “Soon her eighteenth birthday came and went, and the senior prom was fast approaching, yet still, Donna had yet to be asked out. This was not for lack of trying. Perhaps it had to do with the age gap, or perhaps because I had always been up front and honest about our predicament, but Donna and I have never had much of a conventional mother-daughter relationship and she had no reservations about discussing her lack of a love life with me.

  “Indeed, as prom night approached, Donna became panicked. I daresay she was not the only one. While I did not know when her incubus would strike, I had foreseen enough to know that she didn’t have anywhere near as long to wait as I had. That’s when I took matters into my own hands.”

  Well, that certainly had Desmond’s attention.

  “Please tell me all you mean is that you hired an escort.”

  His tone told me that he already knew this was not at all what I meant.

  “If only it was as simple as that,” I said with a wistful smile. “I had, in fact, taken Donna up to Chicago for her eighteenth birthday with the intention of doing just that. But I’ll be damned if we didn’t show up right after a city-wide raid had everyone lying low. I didn’t dare think that was coincidental, mind you.”

  “I’d heard about that, actually,” Desmond said with a raised eyebrow. “To be fair, the news had a good number of Discordant in Los Angeles running scared, which was… beneficial to say the least.”

  “I’m pleased to see that something good came of it,” I muttered with a tight smile, remembering the near grand I dropped just to have some young man spend the night taking my daughter club hopping, only to deposit her back at the hotel with her ‘virtue’ still intact. “But as prom approached, I became desperate. So desperate, that I sought the aid of my dear, misguided friend.”

  Desmond’s eyebrows shot up again. “Taffy Reese?”

  “The one and only.”

  “You said she was a spirit walker…”

  I could see the wheels turning. Desmond was not stupid. He easily began to piece together what had happened.

  “As it so happened, a young man had wandered into town. Taffy had seen him hitchhiking along the highway without any luck, so she picked him up and got into his head. Now Desmond, I will tell you right now, before you make any pre-judgements on what happened next, what she found was no innocent soul. This one was a bad seed and had been for as many lifetimes as Taffy was willing to walk back. What we did might have gone against the rules, but I assure you, we did the world a favor.”

  “And so, what you did,” Desmond said cautiously, “was find a random stranger, turn him into a zombie-”

  “A puppet,” I corrected, but Desmond’s expression told me that he wasn’t interested in hearing the semantic differences.

  “And so you… What?”

  “And so we introduced him to Donna as Taffy’s nephew, Ethan, who was conveniently visiting through the end of the spring. It helped that he had been an attractive young man. The rotten ones always are,” I added under my breath. “Naturally, when Donna mentioned the prom he readily agreed to go and I conveniently made plans to spend that night at Taffy’s. In the morning, I sent her a message that I was coming home and had Taffy summon back her puppet. When I confirmed with my daughter that the deed had been done, Taffy took care of the evidence, so to speak.”

  “Wow.”

  For a moment, that was all Desmond could say. I could tell that it pained him greatly as he weighed whether or not my confession was worthy of a trial.

  “I’m not proud of what I did, Desmond, but I will defend my actions as being for the good of the whole if that is what you require of me.”

  He shook his head.

  “I will admit, Myrna, under any other circumstances, that story would be enough to bring you in for a trial.” He hung his head with a deep sigh. “But even I can see that you did what you did as a last resort and well… Whatever it was you expected your actions prevented, I assure you, it would have been ten times worse had Donna given the incubus an heir.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly. It meant a lot to me, knowing Desmond as I did, that he was willing to look past this. “Perhaps I should be getting to Taffy’s. You’ll want to come with, of course.”

  “I will admit a certain amount of curiosity,” he said without amusement as he stood to follow me from the kitchen. “Though I do not want to raise suspicions.”

  He had a point. Taffy had some nosey neighbors and I wasn’t sure if she’d set up any kind of protections that would reveal a cloaking spell. I was simply going to give him the address and have him meet me inside when I thought of something.

  “Oh! Come to think of it, I had a piece of pottery Taffy had asked me to repair. Perhaps I should bring it with me and look like I had a reason to visit the old bat. It’s rather large. Do you think you can help me move it?” I asked with a wink.

  Desmond chuckled and shook his head at me. “You’d make a terrible spy, Myrna. Lead the way. Oh and um… how far away does, rather, did Taffy live?”

  “You’ll only need to ride in a car with me for twenty minutes,” I assured him.

  “I was merely checking to make sure her home was not outside of my allowable boundaries,” he covered quite smoothly, but I was not oblivious to the ashen shade of green that came just from the thought of getting into my car. Though after a few minutes of driving in virtual silence, I was starting to feel somewhat offended.

  “Oh, come now. Is my driving so bad? You’re not even gripping the dashboard.”

  That, at least, got a smile out of him.

  “No, I appreciate you taking it a little slower for me,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m afraid I was lost in thought for a moment about a problem of my own.”

  “Oh?”

  For another long and awkward pause, he silently stared at the landscape going by, apparently warring with whether or not to burden me with his problems. Though perhaps he was just warring with whether or not to tell me to keep my eyes on the road.

  “Desmond,” I chided lightly. “After everything I just revealed is there really anything you can tell me that would come as a shock?”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said, still staring off into the distance. “It’s… Seth knows… That is, I let slip who he had been in my lifetime.”

  “I see,” I said quietly. Well yes, Desmond certainly had quite a bit on his plate. We’d discussed the situation at length. At first, I felt that telling Seth up front was the right thing to do, but after a few heart to hearts with both men, as well as a consultation with my glass, I found myself agreeing wi
th the Warrior that waiting was in everyone’s best interest. Granted, I had expected a much longer wait, but it seemed premature confessions were the order of the day. “And how did Seth take the news?”

  “As well as could be expected, but I’m afraid that our strained relationship has become… more strained.”

  “I would imagine,” I said, causing him to turn a questioning gaze on me. “Oh Desmond, think about it. It was bad enough when you were just a guy who made him feel inadequate about his masculinity. Now, you’ve gone and diminished it further.”

  “What? That’s utterly ridiculous,” he said, putting his face in his hands. “We’re agents of Order. We know that soul has no gender. We have also both lived through the systematic breaking down of bigotry. Seth should know that I pose no threat to his…his… I can’t even dignify that.”

  “Oh Desmond,” I said, shaking my head. “Rationally, Seth knows this as well as you do, but I’m willing to bet that he’s not thinking rationally at the moment. Give him time.”

  “I have,” he said in a voice that was almost defensive. “Though it hasn’t been necessary. Seth has gone out of his way to avoid me for nearly the whole week since I slipped.”

  There was an unusual and out of character sadness in Desmond’s voice that got me thinking.

  “Desmond. You aren’t expecting Seth to resume the role Sarah filled, are you?”

  “What? No, of course not,” he said automatically before dropping his head to his hands and sighing heavily. “We should know better. Both of us. We’re supposed to be enlightened by the Truth. And yet… I find that I’m just as uncomfortable as he is. I loved Sarah and in a way, I love Seth, but I don’t… I can’t…”

  “Oh, Desmond,” I sighed, shaking my head slowly. “Seth is not Sarah. Yes, of course, the soul remains the same and the two of you have a soul bond, but the lives, the experiences, as fleeting as they may be, are individual. It would be entirely unfair of you to expect Seth to fill the emptiness Sarah’s passing left in your heart. But it would be just as unfair for you to expect yourself to have feelings that are not natural to you in this lifetime.”