“Ooh…we’ve got something good here. Bevan! Come take a look.”
Bevan appeared, perched on a curtain rod, and immediately swept down, studying the spell from his smaller vantage point. It looked like a glowing web around the floorboard.
“This one will take hours to unravel,” he said.
“Well, I have to do it. There could be something dangerous in there.”
“Better wait until the canines have packed up and gone home. I didn’t know when I invited them that they would stick around. I thought you’d want to get rid of them as soon as you felt better.”
“Yeah, but…they’re fixing that whole room. I can’t say no. It’s dangerous in there. And I am paying them. They must have some free time they thought they’d be using when they bought this place.”
“Either that, or they think you’re going to find treasure here and they want in on it… They bid you up much higher than this place is worth. Curious, isn’t it?”
“You did bring them here,” I snapped at him.
“Because you were hurt! Now you need to tell them to go away!”
“It’s only polite to let them finish.”
“That’s what she said,” he said drolly.
“Go away!” I hissed, blushing as I heard Jake and Jasper’s work boots creaking toward me.
“Hey, we’ve got your floor all set,” Jasper said. “New tongue and groove boards, reinforced the joists… We’ll leave the ceiling repair in the kitchen to you since I don’t know what you plan to do in there.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s great. I didn’t expect it to go that fast.”
“The good news is that it wasn’t termites,” he continued. “It looks like it was a magic blast that just blew the floor out.”
“Uhhh…I guess that’s good news.”
“So we’re heading out,” Jake said, tossing a hammer from one hand to the other and slipping it in his tool belt. “You good here, Duchess?”
“Baroness,” I reminded him. “Yes. Totally. I got it from here. Really appreciate your help. How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” Jasper said, like he just wanted to move on. “We weren’t doing anything today.”
“And we’re still not,” Jake said. “So if Jasper isn’t going to accept the fee, then maybe I will.”
“What—a date!?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me like he knew he was hot when he swung a hammer around, and he wondered if I was going to make something of it.
“Are you fucking serious?” Jasper said.
“I gave you a fair shot,” Jake said. “But let’s be real here. We didn’t help her because she’s ugly.”
“We helped her because she was hurt.” Jasper grimaced.
“I don’t mean that part. I mean the day we just spent sweating over flooring! And I haven’t been on a date in a while. I know you’re bound and determined not to fall for either of us, Hel, but I’m willing to try my luck.”
I was gaping at them both stupidly. There was a reason I left society to work on old houses. I could make a snappy comeback, sure. I had grown up in a household of squabbling siblings. But I wasn’t good at knowing what to say when faced with the idea that maybe they…both…had been into me this whole time? Was I reading the room wrong? I didn’t want to get a swelled head, but it seemed like they were competing over me.
“We’ll keep it casual,” Jake said. “You don’t even have to change. I like the smell of plaster dust and sweat.”
“Hold up,” Jasper said. “I was trying to be the gentleman here, but if you’re going to make her go on a date anyway, then the date is mine. For one thing, it’s true, I was the first one to actually note that you are attractive…and for another, this guy is just a terrible date.”
“You said there’s a bowling alley around?” I said. “How about we just all go and…”
“Whoever knocks over the most pins gets the goodnight kiss,” Jake said.
“Nobody gets a fucking goodnight kiss. That’s my final offer. I’ll pay for all the balls and pins and stuff. Otherwise I’m writing you a check for a fair price and calling it a day.”
They both started laughing at me now, Jake more boldly while Jasper was still trying to hang onto a shred of politeness. “Have you ever been bowling before?”
“Excuse me for spending all my time working,” I said, but I knew this was one of those moments where I couldn’t hide where I’d come from. When you were trying to cling to the shreds of a lost royal dynasty, you didn’t take your daughters bowling. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Chapter Eleven
Jake
“Look at this.” Our cell phone service returned halfway into town and I had found a photo of Helena’s graduation or prom or, I don’t know, what did you call that debutante coming out thing? A cotillion?
“Yeah, I’ve…seen that photo,” Jasper said, glancing at the tiara and forced smile of a presumably teenage Hel. Of course we’d first encountered her at the auction of a one-bedroom cottage in Connecticut, where she showed up looking exhausted but came to play ball, bidding up to fifty grand before dropping out with one silent stamp of her foot. It was hard not to keep looking at the willowy young blonde witch who came out of nowhere like she’d been doing this forever.
But a rival was a rival, and we could all do without any more rivals, so I can’t say I was happy about it. And when I heard she came from the von Habsburg-Nicolescu clan I was even more annoyed. Why did some rich bitch need to be horning in on our territory?
Slowly, I started to notice that this wasn’t a hobby for her. The girl was all-in, and her family was nowhere in the picture.
“I should’ve known I’m not the first one to hunt around for old photos. Man, she looks miserable,” I said.
“I know. That’s what makes her hot now.” Jasper was driving in the lead with Helena’s truck bearing down on us on the two lane road.
“You want to speed up a little?” I said.
“I’m going the speed limit. She’s the one riding my ass.”
“You wish. Well, go five miles over. This road is empty.”
“I’m not going to plow into a deer.”
“That was a fluke. And it was crazy lucky, if you’ll remember. Nice, clean kill. It made delicious sausage.”
Jasper was the more level-headed of the two of us, of course—there was always one. He was the one who made sure we didn’t overpay for houses, and stuck to a schedule, and in the early days he stopped me from some bad remodeling decisions that were just what I happened to like. It’s true that I have a weakness for log cabins, and I actually like wood paneling on walls. I think it’s a wolf thing. Primal. You want to feel like you’re in the woods. I also feel that an old camper parked on your property makes for a sweet guesthouse. But unless your buyers are also wolves, I quickly learned that Jasper was right.
“So…are you really…into her, or are you just messing with me?” Jasper said, after a stretch of silence.
I laughed, with a touch of nervousness. “I don’t know, man. I mean, she is more your type than mine.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
“But you should have just taken the date for yourself,” I said. “I gave you an opening.”
“You fucking humiliated me, and you know it.”
“It had to be done! You weren’t going to tell her.”
“I just don’t know if I should really be gunning for a girl like her. That’s going to be way too complicated. She’s still an Ethereal witch. We’re wolves. It’ll bring unwanted attention.”
“Stuff like that never stopped anyone, if you fall in love,” I said.
Jasper gave me a quick sideways glance like, Don’t get all romantic about it. He was more practical with relationships, too. When I do fall for someone, I’m all in.
“Have you heard about her brother?” Jasper said, after another long moment.
“Wasn’t he aiming to be on the warlock council or something like that?”<
br />
“No,” Jasper said. “Aunt Susan told me that the family disowned him because he’s in a bond marriage.”
“Holy shit, really? That can’t be true. A guy like that?”
“You never know with Aunt Susan, but…” Jasper shrugged.
“Bond brothers or bond sisters?”
“Brothers.”
“I don’t believe it.” A bond marriage? No way. Human wizards didn’t share like that. Usually only demons still practiced it regularly, to strengthen their position in the magical world. Bond marriages occurred when a clan or group of close friends, either male or female, agreed to share one mate. If Helena’s brother was truly in a bond marriage that meant he and two or three other warlocks had sworn their loyalty to each other and to one woman, sharing her in every way.
Shit, I was getting hard just thinking about it since I already had Helena on the brain.
Not that I had any desire to share.
“It is very hard to imagine,” Jasper agreed. “I’m sure Hel wouldn’t be into it. She seems like she hasn’t even had one man in a while.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said, grinning as I glanced in the rearview mirror and that battered truck trying to push us down the country road. Someone’s in a hurry, I thought. I bet it’d be fun to show her how to take it slow. “I’m not the sharing kind.”
Chapter Twelve
Helena
“Why do you guys drive so slow?” I hopped down from the truck and jammed my keys and wallet in my pockets, regretting the tight jeans. “Jasper, was that you?”
“I was going the speed limit!”
“Yes. I was painfully aware of that. You can go five miles over. I mean, it’s ridiculous that a completely empty straight road was only thirty-five most of the time anyway.”
“So pass me.”
“But then I would be here by myself and—as you now know—I don’t even know how to bowl.”
“It’s not hard,” Jake said.
“I figured that, but still.”
“Jake hit a deer on a country road just like that one, so I am not going to drive like an idiot,” Jasper said, in a voice so on the edge that I could tell Jake had already been hassling him about it. I guess me and the asshole brother did agree on one thing.
The bowling alley was on the outskirts of whatever town this was, surrounded by a few cornfields at close range and some hills in the background. An old neon sign blared into the dusk, and the parking lot was reasonably full, but it was…what was it? Tuesday. It looked a little rundown and inside, a grease-tinged funk hit my nose. It was the smell of french fries, old carpet, and apparently, a lot of shoes.
“What size do you wear?” Jake asked.
“We have to wear those?”
“Damn. You really don’t know anything about this. Never heard of bowling shoes?”
“But why?”
“So your dirty boots don’t scuff up the lanes and junk.”
The old lady behind the counter gave me a faint, are-you-a-simpleton smile.
“She’s a baroness,” Jake offered, leaning an arm on the counter. “So she’s never been bowling.”
“Haha…that right?” The old lady looked at me like, yeah-and-I’m-Queen-Victoria.
“I wear eight and a half,” I said, just wanting to get on with it. I didn’t want to seem prissy, and it was definitely stupid to care about wearing nasty old shoes when my entire job was dealing with nasty old houses, but…hmm. I guess I was sensitive about what I put on my feet. The boots I was wearing had not been cheap either. When you leave your high-rolling lifestyle behind you’re allowed to keep a few indulgences, I’d say.
So I was a little reluctant as I tugged the laces on, but then my competitive streak lit up as the guys picked out balls.
“You just lob this thing toward the pins, right?” I said.
“Yep, like so.” Jasper held the ball to his chest and then took a couple low steps forward and slung the bowling ball out onto the lane. It sailed down straight but then got off track near the end and knocked over four pins.
“Warm up,” he said. His second roll got two more pins down.
“Move over,” Jake said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.” He flashed me a cocky grin before getting the ball going with more speed than Jasper. It wasn’t really the sexiest sport in the whole world, but considering how pent up I’d been, I was enjoying it heartily. Jake straightened out again, ready to pump a fist of triumph—only for his ball to make the exact same move as Jasper’s and take out the same four pins.
Jasper and I both had to laugh. “Twin balls!” I said gleefully.
“Bite me,” Jake said.
Jasper did get a spare on his second roll. I was watching carefully, determined to show them up, but I wasn’t sure if there was any trick to it.
“Your turn, show us what you’ve got, huh?” Jake said, giving my shoulder a brief clap that unexpectedly sent a jolr through me. His hand was so—manly. I mean, obviously. He was a man, who did manly things all day, and this just showed I had grown out of touch with what other people’s hands feel like.
I really do need a date, I thought. A real one. But it couldn’t be with these two. Or—one of them. It would complicate everything way too much. I just need to get laid.
I thought about the dream incubus again and…hmm.
I showed them what I had, which was a confident move that rolled straight into the gutter, twice in a row. Adding insult to injury, in the next lane over a small child had basically plunked her bowling ball straight down and it slowly rolled to the end and knocked over all but one pin at the same time as I was bombing.
“Shit! I can’t believe how stupid that was!”
“Well, you’ve never bowled before,” Jasper said. “So…no one expects perfect. We haven’t exactly been kings of the lanes either.”
“But a child could do this!” I waved at the next lane.
Jasper went again as I was talking and knocked over all the pins. “Strike” flashed on the screen. “And that’s how it’s done,” he said to Jake. They were mugging for my attention a little bit, I think. Or, then again, they might just be like this all the time.
“Well, at least I’m not the only one with a heavy competitive streak,” Jake said. “I’ll try to be a good sport while I watch Hel ponder if she needs bumpers in her lane.”
“Never,” I said. “And yeah, I’m competitive. I have five sisters and I’m number five out of six.”
Jasper whistled low. “So I’ve always wondered how you ended up doing this. In our eyes, you came out of nowhere at that one auction.”
“Oh, well, I grew up in old houses,” I said. “Our house in New York was big and grand but also needed a ton of maintenance. More than anyone could afford. You know, they build stuff cheap nowadays, but when they built those houses back in the day, I don’t think anyone was really thinking about the long game either. It was just a different problem. Instead of having to live in a cheap house and repair cheap stuff with more cheap stuff, everything lasts longer but then takes way more money and time to fix. Our house has all this slate roofing in diamond patterns, and fancy wooden trim, and—”
“Sounds like a gorgeous house,” Jasper said. “Those old houses are worth the trouble.”
“It is. And they are, yeah.”
“So did you have a groundskeeper or what?”
“Well, we had a gardener. We still hired specific people for repairs, but I always liked to watch them work. Our usual handyman would explain things to me when he saw I was interested.” I shrugged. “Still, the first few houses I did were easy jobs, and I barely broke even. I wasn’t going to auctions yet. They weren’t houses you would have even looked at.”
“That’s awesome, though,” Jasper said. “I’m sorry we hassle you so much. Gotta haze the new kid.”
“I’m not sorry,” Jake said. “What kind of alpha would I be if I didn’t assert dominance?”
I noticed that Jake was slinging the bowling balls as fa
st as he could while glancing back at us. He seemed like he would rather get in on the conversation than play the game.
“He’s not the alpha,” Jasper said to me.
“Right…”
“We’re just brothers, not a pack. There is no alpha. Unless it’s Dad.”
“What about you? Did your dad teach you guys this stuff?” I asked, as my turn to bowl came back around.
This time, I actually knocked down a few pins, but the small child in the next lane was still slaughtering me.
“Yep. Dad taught us everything,” Jake said. “We’ve been doing this since we were fourteen, and our brother Declan builds furniture for a living, so it’s the family business.”
“Must be nice. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a family that doesn’t think you’re weird.” I laughed, trying not to sound like I needed therapy. I knew I should be grateful for growing up with so “much”, at least that was what everyone told me. You should be grateful, Helena.
But mostly, I just felt incredibly lonely. I used to cry in my dorm room at boarding school and then have to suck it up quickly if my roommate breezed in. School dances were especially dreadful. Dressing up and wearing makeup and trying to angle for the richest and most handsome boys just drove me into more crying in the bathroom while listening to the most emo music of 2010.
So when I bought a truck and hitched an old trailer up to it to call home and left them all behind, and my parents told me I was going to be so lonely? Nope. I was never lonely.
Not…that kind of lonely.
But I was sort of aware that I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman who never had the pleasure of falling asleep in someone’s arms or passing out after a killer orgasm. I had just finished fixing up a warlock’s bungalow outside of Scranton, so that was just three weeks of cleaning up an old man’s house, in Scranton, all by myself.
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 6
