Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3)

by Candace Knoebel

  Heartache takes my hand and pulls me down into a deep, dark hole. “I’m so sorry, Kat,” I say as I pull her into a hug.

  For a small, infinitesimal moment, I feel like I used to. Like the girl who took pictures of the sky and worshiped quirky facts. Like the girl who was afraid of boys and the dark, and thought of Katie as my other half.

  Only this time, I’m stronger. More resilient.

  You can only be knocked down so many times before it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. Before you grow calluses. Before you’re ready to fight back.

  A thought creeps out from the shadows in my mind. A statement I remember hearing from Seamus, but not dwelling on because there wasn’t enough time to think about it before when everything was spiraling out of control in Ethryeal City.

  “How much do you know about the Darkyns?” I ask, my chin resting on the crown of her head.

  She shrugs. “Enough, I suppose.”

  “Do you know where they get their powers from?”

  She lets go of my waist. Leans back, eyebrows furrowed.

  “There’s this machine. The Exanimator. It’s what Clara’s after. It’s what the Darkyns use.”

  “I’ve heard my father mention it before,” she says, “but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “When I was in Ethryeal City during one of Clara’s torture sessions, she discovered that my gene make-up… the Everlasting gene that I possess, may have the power to split the affinity bond in half without damaging the powers of the Witch and Hunter involved. Seamus told me after he had men raid her home, that he found enough evidence to assume it’s what she wants, and he thinks it can be done with the Exanimator. This is one of the many reasons she wants me in her grasp.”

  Katie’s hand flies up to her mouth as she gasps.

  “I’m not saying this is the solution,” I rush to say, “because we both know I can’t just turn myself over to her, but it is something to think about. If we succeed. If we bring her and the Darkyns down, then we’ll have that machine.” I take a deep breath, trying to gather my spiraling thoughts back together. “I haven’t mentioned this to anyone. Not even Jaxen,” I admit. “Honestly, I haven’t really let myself think about it until now, but if we succeed in overthrowing the Priesthood, then we’ll be writing a new chapter in our Coven’s history.”

  “And you think undoing what the Divine did to keep our kind working together is a good idea?” Katie asks, sounding mildly appalled and somewhat intrigued.

  I shrug. “I don’t know what I think just yet. Like I said, I haven’t really put much thought into it. But seeing you like this… knowing how hard it is on Watchmen who lose their partners… I don’t know. I’m just saying maybe it’s worth thinking about.”

  She’s shaking her head as thoughts assault her eyes. “I-I don’t know. It’s all so overwhelming to think about. You think it can actually be done?” she asks, looking at me almost as if she’s afraid to know the truth. Afraid to even think it.

  “Maybe?” I say, biting my lip. “Maybe I should bring it up—”

  “Kat?” Chett says from the doorway.

  She lets go of me and stands, smiling at him. “Hey, babe,” she says, moving over to him and sliding her arm around his waist.

  He pulls her against him and kisses the top of her head. “Faye, right?” he says, looking over at me.

  I nod and say, “Chett.” I’m still trying to adjust to seeing Katie’s demeanor change so quickly. Trying not to jump to conclusions.

  “You have one hell of a right hook.” He rubs his jaw, smiling at me, but not in a taunting manner.

  I’m taken aback for a moment, unsure of what to say. How to broach that sore subject in a way that isn’t offensive. I’m glad for the reprieve Katie gives me by inhaling sharply and turning to Chett, pulling his gaze away from me and onto her.

  “Would you mind letting my dad know I need to speak with him? I think he’s still down there with the rest of the Rebellion. I’d go get him myself, but he’d probably try to pull me into a conversation with the rest of the people, and I’m not in the mood.”

  “Sure,” Chett says, kissing the top of her head again. He smiles at me before excusing himself, but something in his smile unsettles me. Something in the way he holds my gaze for a moment longer than I want him to, like he’s showing me that he always wins, even if it’s a staring contest, makes my fists clench at my sides.

  “I have to get down to the kitchen,” I say when her eyes leave the empty doorway and move back onto me. “I pinky-promised Cassie I’d help her with dinner, and you know what happens if you don’t follow through with that,” I say with a small, forced laugh.

  “What?”

  I backtrack a step. “Well, if you break the promise, then you have to cut your pinky off. That’s how it originated.”

  She looks at me funny.

  I know I’m lying about promising Cassie, but I don’t think I can stand here and pretend like everything is okay when it clearly isn’t.

  “Right,” she says, smiling dishearteningly. “You and your facts. Listen, I need to talk to my dad about Mom anyway. She’s probably freaking out right about now.”

  My stomach flips. I didn’t even think about that. “How do you plan on communicating with her?”

  “I don’t know. He was supposed to talk to Mack about it.”

  “Does she know about the Rebellion?”

  “Yes. She… uh… she doesn’t agree with it.”

  I stare at her for a moment. “But your dad…?”

  “He’s been going behind her back. Made me swear not to bring it up around her. But she knows. She has to. Especially now that we’ve both been missing for so long after being taken in for questioning under Clara’s orders.”

  The worst-case scenario plows through my mind. “What does he plan on doing?”

  She looks at me like I asked her something I should already know the answer to. “Bring her here, of course.”

  Of course, like having her here would make things so much easier, I think to myself.

  “If you all permit it, that is,” she adds quickly, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  I look off to the side, unsure of what to say to her. If her mother is against it, then how can we trust her? How do we know Clara hasn’t already gotten to her? How do I tell Katie this without upsetting her?

  The air is dead between us.

  “What is it?” she asks. “I know that look.”

  “I just—how do you know we can trust her?”

  A frown pulls at the corner of her lips. “I don’t,” she says plainly, sadly.

  Footsteps clunk up the steps, and I turn to see Jonathon and Chett heading our way.

  “Faye,” Jonathon says lightly. In his eyes, I see the moments we’ve shared… the moments where I was at my darkest, and I wish I could scrub his mind clean of them.

  I force a smile on my face.

  He smiles, and then turns to Katie. “You needed to speak with me?”

  She moves aside so he can enter her room.

  “I’ll see you guys at dinner,” I say, excusing myself.

  Once outside the door, I pause, leaning against the wall. How did everything that was going so good flip so suddenly upside down? I look up to the ceiling, cursing whoever is in charge of fate. Cursing life for throwing another crack into our friendship.

  I have to talk to Jaxen about Chett. Have to find out if he’s who he says he is. I don’t want to think the worst, but his aunt is a Priestess… something that can’t be ignored. He knows where we live. Hears all of our meetings.

  Panic grabs a hold of my brain and squeezes.

  I take in a deep breath, steadying my heart, and then open my eyes with only one thought left.

  I’ll be damned if I let a so-called former Witch hater be the cause of our destruction.

  ONCE INSIDE THE KITCHEN, I find Jezi setting the table she extended with magic. Cassie’s adding bowls filled with vegetables, spreading them out on the tab
le like an offering on Thanksgiving. Gavin’s setting out the silverware, and Jaxen’s in the corner grabbing plates off the shelf.

  I head in his direction, intent on asking him to talk privately when Cassie says, “Oh, good, you’re here, Faye.” She’s waving me over as one of the pots boils over on the stove with a look of panic on her face.

  Jaxen stops fiddling with the plates, looks up at me, and manifests a smile that could part any rain cloud. That could destroy any evil, and I feel like I’m standing on the middle of a swaying seesaw, with what I want on one side and what is right on the other side, both equally trying to outdo the other.

  I really need to tell Jaxen about Chett, but I really shouldn’t do it when others are around, in case I’m wrong. And I can’t turn Cassie down again. Not when I’m the focal point of uniting everyone on this property.

  With an exasperated sigh, I attempt a smile back at him and trudge over to Cassie. She hands me a wooden spoon when the alarm goes off as smoke escapes the edges of the oven.

  “Shit! The garlic bread!” After zapping the alarm off, she turns and spells the oven open, moving the now-blackened bread onto the stove with magic streaming from her fingers.

  “Don’t worry. I got it,” Jezi calls out. She says a quick spell, and the bread slowly lightens until it looks deliciously toasted. “I told you we should have just used magic to put this meal together.” She spells the pot to pour itself into a strainer already set up in the sink. “It’d be so much easier.”

  Cassie’s forehead creases. “And I told you I wanted to do this the right way. This should be something we can handle. Without magic.” She turns to me. “Stir!”

  Jaxen and Gavin chuckle from the table.

  I do as she says and stir the sauce as Jezi rolls her eyes and says, “There’s no shame in using your Witch abilities to get the job done, Cassie.”

  “Yes, there is,” Cassie says with a scowl. “It’s called laziness.”

  Jezi props her hand on her hip and replies, “No, it’s called innovation.”

  “I think the correct term is cheating,” Weldon says from the doorway. He’s leaning against the doorframe in his usual manner, smirking mirthlessly at her. “There’s nothing sexier than a domesticated Witch who knows her place.” He ducks when a spell flies in his direction from a furious Jezi.

  “Hold still, damn it,” she says as she shoots a cluster of spells at him, and I think she just might kill him.

  Weldon chuckles and ducks again when she rounds the table, stalking toward him with the intent of hurting him written across her face.

  No one moves to stop her.

  “I was only kidding,” he says, dodging off to the right and ducking behind me, holding onto me like a shield. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  She hits him in the arm with a spell.

  “Ow, damn it! Truce!”

  She stops in front of me, hands planted firmly on her hips. “Move, Faye.”

  “He said he was joking,” I say, trying not to laugh as I push his arms off me.

  “And you’re both keeping Faye from her job!” Cassie shouts from the sink.

  Jezi’s lips go thin. “I don’t care. I’m going to domesticate his ass, and then we’ll see how funny it is.”

  “Is that a promise?” Weldon asks, standing up straight. I hear the smirk in his voice.

  She shoots him a warning look. Huffs loudly. “You’re so annoying!”

  “And you love it,” he says, moving around me. She lifts her hand, but he’s quicker, grabbing it and pulling her against him. “I was only kidding, woman. Lighten up a little.”

  Her breath is caught in her throat. Her eyes are locked with his before they drop to his mouth. She shakes her head and says, “I’ll lighten up when you find fresh material to joke about. The domestication thing is old and clichéd.”

  I move back to the stove, stirring a sauce that doesn’t really need to be stirred.

  “But it did the job, didn’t it?” he asks, moving a strand of hair that’s fallen back behind her ear.

  She swallows. “Far from it,” she mutters. She stiffens her shoulders. “You couldn’t make me laugh, even on a good day.”

  His left-sided smirk crooks up. “I wasn’t trying to make you laugh, Jezibelle. It got you hotheaded, which is your sexiest quality. And it brought you here, closer to me.”

  I want to help her pick her jaw up from off the floor, but I’m afraid to leave the sauce and face Cassie’s wrath.

  “Okay, you two. Not in front of the children,” Gavin says as he tosses a washcloth at the back of Weldon’s head. “We don’t need those pheromones polluting Cassie’s sauce. It smells delicious by the way,” he adds, shooting Cassie, whose hair is a big, puffy mess, a signature Gramm smile.

  She blows out a breath and smiles at him. “Thanks,” she says. “I tried.”

  Jaxen stalks over to me, putting his hand on the small of my back. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I say as he steals a meatball, popping it into his mouth.

  “Hey!” Cassie shouts, smacking the air at him.

  “Mmmm,” he groans, his eyes squeezing shut.

  Weldon stares at him, face pinched. “Would you like some private time with those balls?”

  Jaxen’s eyes flit open mid-chew. He swallows. “Why? Jealous?”

  Weldon smirks and turns back to Jezi.

  “I need to talk to you,” I say quietly to Jaxen.

  Jaxen’s eyebrows furrow. “Is something wrong?”

  I peer over his shoulder, making sure everyone else is preoccupied, because I don’t want to cause any more doubt in this house when we already have problems with the wolves. “Yes and no. I just… I want to talk in private.”

  His eyebrows draw together, face tightening. “Okay,” he says, brushing his hand along my cheek.

  Cassie stalks over to us and dips a metal spoon into the sauce. “It’s ready,” she says after she pulls the spoon from her mouth. “I think everything is done here. Would you mind letting everyone know?”

  “Not at all,” I say, setting the wooden spoon down. I grab Jaxen’s hand and pull him toward the mudroom

  He shuts the door behind us. “What is it?”

  “Chett. I was talking with Katie before I came downstairs. Everything was fine. We were finally reaching that point where we felt comfortable around each other again, when she told me a couple of things that unsettled me.”

  “Like?”

  “She says he’s changed, but I don’t know how much she really believes it herself. I could see it in her eyes. I mean, people don’t change like that. You don’t go from being a woman beater and Witch hater, to a pillowy soft marshmallow overnight. And that got me thinking… what about his aunt? Evelyn? She seemed to be on Clara’s side, and she’s a Priestess. If he wanted to, he could rat us out.”

  Jaxen goes rigid. He turns, presses his fists against the wall, his knuckles turning white.

  I feel like needles prick at the back of my head. Tremors from every misstep we took quake in my stomach.

  “I don’t know. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he has changed, but when he looked at me, something in his eyes told me otherwise. It’s a gut feeling. I just… I don’t want to say anything and cause any more problems than we already have, especially if I am wrong about him.”

  Jaxen’s looking at me like he’s not sure if he wants to find Chett and strangle the truth out of him or take a more diplomatic approach to this. He holds his fists against his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut in thought.

  “I’ll talk to Mack,” he says. He drops his hand and looks at me, clarity in his gaze. “He’ll know how to handle this.”

  “Okay,” I say, wishing things didn’t have to be like this. Wishing that wishes were more than just empty wells I keep dropping all of my pennies into.

  He pulls me into a hug. “It’ll be okay, Faye. Whatever happens, Katie will be safe.”

  “I just don’t get it. How can a family hate Witches that much?”


  “Because of Mourdyn,” Jaxen says. “If he hadn’t abused his power and tried to kill off the Hunters, then we wouldn’t have the affinity bond to begin with. From what I’ve heard, the Carters are an old family that had consisted mainly of Hunters before the affinity bond was set in place. They were around when Witches went dark, before and after Mourdyn, and they never lost the old way of thinking, which was that Hunters are the superior race—something we definitely don’t need to be associated with when we’re trying to establish equality.”

  “Why hold on to that hate for so long?”

  I feel him shrug. “My guess would be the Darkyns. Witches have been the only race thus far to openly declare war against Hunters. And after the affinity bond, they were the only race to cut off their marks and create their own Coven. It’s not a good look.”

  I rest my ear against his chest, wishing the world had an easy button.

  “I just don’t want her to have to be powerless,” I admit, feeling like I could cry forever and it still wouldn’t be long enough to rid myself of these awful feelings.

  “I know. If only the Divine had given exceptions.”

  My wayward thoughts crash against my skull.

  I lean back. Look up at him, blinking away the searing heat in my eyes. “About that… there’s something else I wanted to tell you.”

  His eyebrow dips.

  “Do you remember what Seamus said about the Exanimator? About Clara wanting it to split powers safely so she could do away with the affinity partnership?”

  “Sort of,” he says hesitantly, searching my eyes.

  “Well, what do you think about that?”

  He jerks back. “What do you mean? I don’t think about it.”

  I can tell by his tone that I’m crossing dangerous, uncharted territory, but I press on. “Yeah, but what would you think if it was a possibility?” I ask, biting the inside of my cheek.

  He grabs my arms and looks down at me with such intensity, such force, that it robs me of breath. “I’m going to say this once, and then we’re not going to talk about it again, okay?”

  “Jaxen—”

  “What you’re suggesting isn’t just insane, it’s dangerous, Faye. It’s the equivalent to removing laws from humans. You’d be handing people like the Carters a silver platter with the heads of every Witch we know. You’d be the face of a revolution that would drive this world as we know it into the ground. We need structure. Balance. Rules if we want to survive. Do you understand?”