“Hey—Mother. Just a sec. I left a kettle on.” I ran into the house where the guys were moving furniture around in the parlor.
“Get out!” I hissed. “My mom and my cousin on the council are here! Go out the back door and hide—hide—hide!”
“Hel—“
“Don’t argue. No time. Just go. I beg you.”
They started to move and that would have to be good enough. I hoped they listened. I could not get caught in a house alone with two werewolves by my mother and Piers. That was way more scrutiny and drama than anyone had time for right now.
“Mother!” I rushed back down off the porch. “So nice to see you! I can actually show off one of my creations. I’m just putting the finishing touches on the old girl. Welcome to Lockwood House.” I was being so fake, but who taught me to be fake? All of this was her fault. I came in for cheek kisses. Then I smiled at Piers. “Nice to see you too, cousin.”
Yow. Piers had burn scars on his face, the skin pink and a little shiny and puckered in places. There was evidence of healing spells. He didn’t have any scars last time I saw him, which admittedly, had been a long time, since he got into a fight with my brother. He looked a little older and more cynical. I guess it was an improvement from when he was younger and both very arrogant and very awkward with girls. But a cynical look in Piers’ eye, the suggestion that he might actually be getting competent and earning his position based on more than his family name? Not reassuring.
“Good afternoon, Helena,” he said. “Congratulations on the house remodel. It’s a handsome estate. I just need to search it, if you don’t mind, by order of the council. We have reason to suspect there is a dark artifact in the house, and I’m sure you don’t want to sell it like that.”
“Do you have a search warrant?”
“We’re family,” he said.
“Yes, but…it’s still my house.”
“Helena, don’t be silly. You don’t want to sell the house with a dark artifact inside of it! Piers, go on, I’ll talk to her.”
“You can’t just treat me like a kid because we’re ‘family’,” I said. “This is my house. I demand the respect of proper legal proceedings.”
“You’re hiding something,” Piers said. “Are you and Harris in cahoots? Did he ask you to get something for him?”
“Harris has absolutely nothing to do with my work.” Damn. Couldn’t even give me credit for my own schemes. Piers had to suggest some dude was behind it.
“Hel, we’re coming in. I have no idea why you’re being stubborn except for the sake of being stubborn. This thing is dangerous and the council will dispose of it properly,” Mother said. Piers started to walk toward the house.
Oh god oh god. I didn’t know what to do now. He was going to find the Arcana and the thingie. I’d been keeping them under my airbed, which was not much of a hiding place, but it took at least an hour to set up and deconstruct a really solid ward, and since I’d been trying to study the books, I couldn’t bind them up. If I protested too much, they would know I was trying to hide something. And if I didn’t protest? They would waltz right in and take my stuff.
Might as well protest, just in case I was buying time for Byron to try to hide the books. I ran in front of them and flung out my arms. “So this is how you treat me when you come to visit? You never visit, Mother. I’ve worked on eighteen other houses and you never visited any of those. So this tells me that you only showed up with Piers so you could try and subdue me. But family is a two-way street and if you’re blocking off your lane, I’m blocking off mine. You already proved that you’d disown Harris.”
“I didn’t want to disown Harris, but he left the Ethereal wizards of his own choice and he entered into that scandalous marriage! That’s just the way society works. There are rules. All of you know that. If I stood by Harris, we would have lost everything else in the end. Your father would lose his position, I would lose mine, money would get tight, soon we’d have to sell Ladyswald…”
“I love houses,” I said. “But not as much as I would love my kids.”
“Helena,” Piers said, in a voice that sounded sort of dead to my ears. If Piers had a soul, he was trying to kill it off. “You and Harris have a lot in common, and I can see why you care about him. But I am not here for any family matters. Hash it out with your mother. I will search the house, by order of the council. If you want, I’ll give you the paperwork for filing a complaint that I searched without a warrant.”
He started walking. I followed him. I couldn’t hide my dread. Luckily I was already so sweaty and so annoyed at my mother, maybe no one would notice.
Not that it mattered. I wasn’t powerful enough to fight Piers, and he was a council member and my cousin, and he had my mother for backup.
Piers flicked out his wand and walked into the house, his wand hand twitching as he whispered, sensing for magic. As he crossed from the foyer to the parlor, I was clutching my cheeks with my hands.
“Helena, just tell Piers where it is,” Mother said. “I can tell something is bothering you.”
“You’re bothering me,” I said. Obviously, she knew the deal, but I wasn’t just going to roll over.
“Hmm…” Piers poked at the fireplace and tapped at the walls. He kept going, into the dining room.
What? He didn’t find it? I noticed then that the air mattress was askew. So one of the guys must have gotten the stuff out after all.
“This wallpaper is just splendid!” Mother couldn’t help but say.
“I know!” I couldn’t help but feel proud that I kept it.
But this brief moment of mother-daughter agreement was quickly ruined as Piers kept charging through the house, poking inside all the cabinets in the apothecary room before heading upstairs.
“Who is parked outside?” he asked me.
“Oh—my work crew,” I said. “They went to lunch in the van.” That was a nice, smooth lie but it wouldn’t hold up for long. Thank goodness the guys hadn’t set up beds. If Jake and Jasper could get the books smuggled deep in the forest, Piers would have a harder time sensing them, the same way I couldn’t find where Graham had hidden them.
Piers sensed the floorboard where I first found the piece of the box. “Something was here. Tell me, Helena.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.”
“The former owners must have taken it out or something!”
“You will speak no lies when I ask you a question…” He moved his wand toward my throat.
“No! Dispel!” I jumped back.
“Piers…” Mother looked unsure about Piers casting a truth-telling spell on me. “Helena might be telling the truth.”
I wasn’t, but, thanks, Mother.
“The house is beautiful,” Mother said, looking uncertain. “I hope you found a good buyer and I appreciate you letting us look around.” She could be very polite. Piers clearly didn’t want to let it go that easily. Mother made a little jerking hand gesture indicating they should go.
“Mrs. Nicolescu, with all due respect—“ Piers began.
“We talked about this,” Mother hissed. “Helena is my daughter. Let’s go.”
I hadn’t seen the last of them, but she was buying me time.
Piers’ footsteps were catlike down the stairs, I noticed. He must spend a lot of time sneaking around for it to come naturally. Man, I didn’t trust him at all. I kept my wand in my hand.
At the bottom of the stairs, while Mother turned to the front door, he darted to the back, flung open the door, and ran toward the woods.
“Hey!”
“I saw the truck, cousin!” Piers shouted back at me. “Where are those dirty dogs?”
Ohhh. Right. I remembered the Sullivan brothers’ logo on the side of the truck. Wolves at the Door. Not subtle at all. Couldn’t they have just called it Sullivan Bros. Remodels or something? Anything? The jig was up now for such a stupid reason.
Mother stopped at the back door. She was wearing designer
pumps and there was no way she could run after us, so she just stood there.
“I’m sorry, spider,” she said, using my childhood nickname—because I used to save all the spiders—for the first time in a long time. A very long time. I wish she hadn’t. It made her words sound like a serious parting.
It made me very nervous, but I plunged into the forest after Piers.
Chapter Thirty-One
Helena
Piers was fast, moving like a man on a mission. Ahead, I saw a pile of flannel shirts and jeans. The guys had turned into wolves, and wolves would always be faster. They could travel more easily through thicker parts of the forest.
Piers started whispering out a spell. From the snatches of words I could hear, he was trying to illuminate their trail.
“Stop it!” I said.
“Helena…” Piers looked at me. “It is an offense punishable by prison to conceal a dark and dangerous object from the councils. I suggest you cut out the children’s game you’re playing and call your friends home. Give me the object and you can get back to your normal business. Sell the house.”
“What is the object?” I asked, hoping he didn’t notice my shaky knees. “At least tell me that. I want to know what it is before I give it to you.”
Piers stared at me for a moment. Again I was struck by the blankness in his eyes. I’d never liked my cousin much, but I wondered what being on the council had done to him.
“It’s a map of Sinistral,” he said. “From what I understand.”
“A map?” But it’s just a triangle, I thought. And how can you map the magical realms? They’re always changing.
“Not a normal map,” he said. “Our scholars have theorized that the map was created to control the realms. Think about what a great power there is in a map, cousin. Before man has a map, everything beyond his neighborhood is an unknown. It could be anything. But once he has a map, he can travel, expand territory, or go to war. To create a map of the magical realm gives one power over it. Of course, the magical realms cannot be mapped the same way the Fixed Plane can. I presume that’s what made it such a special map.”
“A map…” I’d never considered that. I was very intrigued and I couldn’t wait to ask Byron if he knew how to read the map.
“That’s my end of the bargain,” Piers said. “Call the wolves.”
He said ‘the object’. So he didn’t even know about the books.
I took a deep breath, my lungs seeming to collide with my wildly pounding heart. “Jake! Jasper! Bring the triangle thingie! I don’t want to get you in trouble with the council!”
I didn’t see many options now. I didn’t want to get arrested and lose all of the stuff. If we gave Piers the map, then we would still have the books and we might be able to get our hands on the other two pieces. I was guessing now that they were maps of Etherium and Wyrd. I hoped Jake and Jasper had the sense to leave the books behind.
After a long moment, they came running out of the woods. One of them had the map in his mouth. No books. Phew.
Their wolf forms are so cute, I thought. Was that the right word for a wolf? Or so majestic. Even though they slept in their wolf forms, they were upstairs and I was downstairs, and I had never seen them in their fluffy glory.
“L’eclair,” Piers said, in the most dispassionate voice I had ever heard.
“Piers, no!” I cried as I saw him flick out his wand, a conductor of pain as he shot lightning toward the unfortunate wolf who was carrying the map. The wolf was thrown back, crashing into brush. Piers waved a hand and the map whisked from the wolf’s mouth, which now slacked open, and into his grasp.
“Piers! He brought the map! Why did you hurt him?”
“He tried to run from a member of the council. And he’s just a wolf. What good do they do for this world in the first place?”
The other Sullivan launched at Piers and a scream tore from me in what felt like slow motion as I saw the disaster unfolding. If a wolf mauled a council member, they would arrest him and execute him.
“No!” I shot a blast between them with my own wand. I think I gave the wolf’s fur a little scorch and sent Piers stumbling back. The heat seemed to freak him out. I guess whatever burned him before was a bad memory, so now he had a weakness, like Frankenstein’s monster.
Byron appeared behind him and yanked the map from his hand. “Helena, catch!” He threw the bundle at me.
I had to act quick to get ahold of it. The wrappings flew off of it as Byron tossed it to me, unveiling the black stone and the light that came surging out of it. Remembering how the light knocked me back, I thrust it toward Piers. The map was trembling in my hands with the energy that was pouring out of it, and it struck Piers in the chest and knocked him flat.
Byron passed a hand through Piers’ head. “He’s down. Wrap it up.”
I grabbed the cloth, struggling to contain the energy of the map. The blast seemed to pass harmlessly through the trees but it definitely hit people. I wondered how the cloth kept it contained. It must be specially treated.
“What do we do with him now? My mother is back there,” I said.
“We can’t kill him,” Jake growled, now in human form and pulling on his jeans—oh damn, I missed that when my back was turned—and then he turned to Jasper. “But if he killed my brother, I might do it anyway.”
“We can alter his memories like we did with Caleb…but it won’t last long,” I said.
“No…,” Byron said. “We’d have a clock to beat. But…”
For the first time, I saw something in Byron’s eyes that made me wonder just how far he would go to do whatever it was he was trying to do.
Jake went over to Jasper. “Fuck. His leg.”
“Is it broken?”
“Yeah, it’s—snapped. Fuck. I feel sick just looking at it. I don’t want him to wake up. He needs a healer stat.”
I heard very careful footsteps behind me and just when things couldn’t get much worse, I saw my mother distantly approaching. She was going for it, heels or not.
I quickly shoved the map under a pile of leaves. Then I didn’t know what to do, but my heart said helping Jasper was more important than worrying about Piers.
“Ohh…ohh no!” Jasper’s leg already looked so much more fragile in his wolf form, and it was snapped, the bone showing. So much worse than I thought. His leg had clearly gotten the brunt of Piers’ blast because the rest of him seemed all right.
Jasper suddenly seemed to come to and he let out a howl of pain. He was shivering. I could see his thick fur trembling.
“Don’t change!” Jake said. “Stay still.”
“What’s going on?” Mother said behind me.
“Jasper…” I swallowed a sob. “I know he’s just a werewolf to you, Mother. He’s just been helping me on this project. He’s a good guy. Piers—“
“Oh, dear. That does look bad. Come on. Let’s do it together.” Mother pulled her heels off and knelt next to me on the forest floor.
It had been so long since I’d suffered any stupid childhood injuries that I forgot this side of my mother. She was a strict disciplinarian—but she was also a good nurse. She put one hand on Jasper’s head and the other on his leg. My hand joined hers. She spoke familiar healing words, leading me in the chant, and as the healing magic flowed, warm and soothing as hot tea sliding down to the stomach on a winter day, I could feel the magic working through the wound and I let the worries leave my mind and gave everything over to the magic. Now she deftly worked her hands to set the bone in place, catching the spell as it sparked through Jasper’s fur.
“There, that’s better,” she said.
“Thank you. Really.”
“Of course. But…” Her attention turned, as did mine, back to Piers. And Byron. Byron was in his ghostly human guise and not his demon one, but he had his hand on Piers’ forehead and my mother immediately turned suspicious again.
“Get back from him!” she said. “Piers…”
Byron took a step back
and bowed to her. “I beg your pardon. I’m the resident ghost. A friendly ghost, or so I hope. I protect the house, and I don’t appreciate this gentleman attacking the men who are trying to repair it. But I also don’t want anyone dying on my watch. He seems to be all right.”
Even my mother wasn’t immune to the charms of an incubus. I could see her wrestling between her distrust of Sinistrals and thinking that this was a very gentlemanly ghost.
Piers opened his eyes and groaned.
“Piers?” Mother said. “Did you find the thing you’re looking for?”
“I was wrong. It’s not here. Just these stupid wolves.” His eyes were even more dead now, glazing with confusion.
I glanced at Byron. He looked back at me. I understood.
The clock was now ticking until Piers remembered all of this.
Piers got to his feet, and I was still so disgusted with him that I had to open my big mouth. “Get out of here,” I said. “You attacked my workers over nothing. They’re good guys; I don’t care if they’re wolves. I’d rather hang out with wolves than your entitled ass.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Piers said. “You’re on a pathway to destruction; I hope you realize it before I see you in jail.”
“Piers, let’s go,” Mother said. She put a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Helena, remember to keep your wits about you. And you know what I always told you. Never trust demons.”
“I remember, Mother. It’s just a job.”
But I could tell by the way she held my gaze too long, the way her eyes seemed a little moist, the frown tugging at her mouth—she wasn’t fooled at all. She was saving me today, but she wouldn’t save me tomorrow. She was giving me a chance to rethink my decisions.
I don’t trust her either.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Helena
I loved and hated open houses, the way I loved and hated Christmas Eve as a kid, or getting on an international plane flight. The mixture of anticipation, excitement, and fear, the butterflies in my stomach that made me feel alive.
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 17
