by Eva Chase
What if he’d been responsible for her death too? She didn’t have to ask that question—it hung in the air regardless.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said to the questions she had asked. “I can see if there’s anything to dig up here. What’s their family name?”
“Levesque,” she said. “That was her maiden name. Alora Levesque. I found an old photo once of her with her sisters—the older one was Irene and the younger one was Virginia. I don’t know about her parents, or any kids my aunts might have now…”
“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s enough.”
I started by searching for Irene and Virginia Levesque in the New York City area. It didn’t take long to find a large property on the outskirts of one of the particularly posh suburbs. Irene held that one. And Virginia’s name was on the deed of a slightly smaller estate just a mile away.
“It looks like they’re still in New York State,” I said. “And close to each other. Let’s see what else I can find…”
My digging turned up almost as much nothing as when I’d looked for Margo Elands.
“There are a couple of records in the Assembly’s database,” I told Rose. “A while back Virginia filed a minor dispute with Frankford about the tutor she hired on the Education division’s recommendation. It looks like she has a daughter who’s just a couple years younger than you. And Irene and your father served on a board together for a year, about thirty years ago. I’m going to guess that was how he ended up meeting your mother. I don’t see any sign that the two of them had any connection other than that.”
“Hard to tell without being able to access the deeper records, though, right?” Rose said.
“Yeah. I can’t be sure. Even with those we couldn’t be perfectly sure.” I ran my hand over my hair, the curls scattering under my fingers. “But if anyone from your mother’s family was on your father’s side, you’d think he’d have brought them back into your life. Another point of influence.”
“That’s true.” Rose rubbed her mouth. “At least we know where to find them now.”
That didn’t feel like enough. I frowned at the phone. Then something Gabriel had mentioned earlier came back to me. The enforcers who’d been holding us—one of them had said something to him about a “Cliff.”
A search of the Assembly’s database turned up nothing. I switched to the regular internet. First I checked for “Maxim Hallowell” and then “Charles Frankford.” My thumbs stilled over the screen.
“Did you find something?” Rose asked, leaning closer.
“I don’t know.” I cocked my head as I considered the article I’d found. “It’s just a little piece from some small-town paper… So small I guess this qualified as news. It’s reporting that Charles Frankford the First purchased a large property near the coast there, ‘just east of the cliff area.’ The First? It’s from fifty years ago.”
“Maybe the dad of the Frankford I’ve met? Or his grandfather? What’s the name of the town?”
“Heronville.”
“Nope, definitely never heard anything significant about that.” Rose’s brow knit. “Maybe that’s something to look into if we can’t dig up anything else to help us, though.”
“Yeah.”
“But not right now,” Seth’s voice carried from the front. “You two are supposed to be getting some sleep, remember? We want to be fresh for whatever the Assembly throws at us tomorrow.”
Rose made a face. “He’s right,” she said. “Come here.”
She nestled against me, inviting me to lean my head against hers. I let myself relax into her the way I’d longed to earlier, because Seth was right. I needed my mind sharp. And I’d already found out a lot.
But under the warm flush of victory, my nerves weren’t exactly calm. We might have allies in Rose’s mother’s family, but what had happened between them and her dad in the first place? And what did this Cliff have to do with anything?
Nothing good—that was all I knew for sure.
Chapter Eleven
Rose
“So you said Margo Elands’s shop is on Staten Island?” Gabriel said. He was at the wheel of the SUV now. It was late afternoon, and we’d just come into the built-up area around New York City proper.
I rubbed my eyes. I’d gotten some sleep here and there overnight and through the day’s long drive, but I couldn’t say I really felt rested. Especially since I’d been reaching out with my magic over and over, testing for the presence of other spells in opposition.
Just in the last few hours, I’d started to feel a faint tingling. Distant still and not an overt attack, but enough to put me on my guard. The Assembly was still searching for us. I couldn’t be sure how closely they were tracking us.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’ve got the address. I can give you directions once we get over there.”
“Looks like we’ll reach the bridge in about ten minutes,” Kyler said from where he was navigating from the phone.
Behind me, Damon leaned his arm out the open window. “I want to head over to Brooklyn for a bit. There are a few guys there I know. They might be able to help out in non-magical ways.”
“Like what?” I asked, tensing a little, both at the idea of one of my consorts leaving the group even for a little while—and at the idea of what Damon might have planned. He’d calmed down some since I’d first gotten back in town, but he still had some… overly aggressive ideas of how to deal with problems. He’d sent a bunch of small-time gangsters to beat up Derek when my former fiancé had been getting overly pushy with me, even though I’d had the situation under control.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said in his favorite cocky tone. “I’ll just be getting some supplies. I promise I won’t get anyone else involved.”
Well, I guessed that was something. “I don’t think you should go alone,” I said.
“These kind of guys don’t really want a whole party of people they don’t know showing up on their doorstep.”
“Can you at least take someone, just in case trouble shows up?” I wasn’t sure what any of the guys could do against the enforcers on their own, but at least if two of them were together, they had more of a chance of creating a distraction or getting a message to me so I could help.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the city,” Kyler piped up before Damon could argue with me. “I could use some supplies too—see if I can come up with some tech for getting through all the Assembly’s internal security, if we ever have the chance to take a real go at the deeper layers of their network.”
Damon sighed. “All right, all right. But you’re hanging back while I’m actually talking with these guys.”
Ky raised his hands. “No argument there. The low-lifes are all yours.”
Damon snorted a laugh, and Ky grinned. Sometime last night they’d gotten a little friendlier. I’d have been happier to see it if my stomach wasn’t still twisted up at the thought of them leaving my side at all.
But the enforcers hadn’t really hurt the guys even when they’d had us all locked up before. After they’d crashed the van, their spells had been aimed more to capture us than destroy us. They were protecting me for whatever reason. I could hope they’d at least continue that policy.
“Do you have enough money for these supplies?” I asked, reaching for the purse where I’d stashed all the cash I’d taken out.
“I cleared out my account,” Damon said. “I’m set for a while. I won’t be getting too fancy, angel.”
The twist in my stomach tightened with a pinch of guilt. One more way their association with me was changing all of their lives. I didn’t want them losing everything. Maybe it was silly to think that way about money when our actual lives were on the line, but they wouldn’t have been risking anything at all if it wasn’t for me.
Seth reached over from where he was sitting beside me and squeezed my knee as if he’d sensed my thoughts. They wanted to be here, I reminded myself. With every action and every word, they proved
how true that was.
“It’s not just for you, so it shouldn’t all come out of your wallet,” I said. I fished out a wad of hundreds and handed it back to him.
“Rose,” Damon said.
I shook my head. “You’re taking it. To make me feel better. Come on.” I shook the bills at him.
He grumbled wordlessly, but he took the cash.
“You too,” I said, handing some to Kyler. He raised an eyebrow at me as if to say I should know it wasn’t necessary but took the money without protest.
“I can think of a few uses I could put this to.”
We cruised over the bridge and down the wide, sparsely treed streets of Staten Island. As we reached the main commercial strip, I motioned for Gabriel to stop.
A fresh wave of that eerie tingling washed over me again. Distant, yeah, but I wasn’t sure I could even trust my sense of its source. The enforcers had taken us by surprise before.
“It’s just a few more blocks,” I said. “We can walk the rest of the way.”
Gabriel parked by the curb. Damon and Ky hopped out right away, Damon grabbing me for a quick kiss.
“We meet back here,” I said. “Or I’ll text you on your burner if we have to head somewhere else. And you tell me if you see anything suspicious.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Damon said dryly. He gave Ky a light shove toward the road and flagged a cab.
“Should someone stay with the car?” Jin asked, leaning against the back of the middle row of seats.
I wavered. “No. I want you guys with me if anything happens. We can stand to lose the car.”
I hefted my purse over my shoulder. With Jin, Gabriel, and Seth gathered around me, we set off down the street. I counted off the numbers as we approached the spot where Margo Elands’s New Age shop should be.
The website had prepared me for the garish purple-and-green sign and the twinkling of crystals in the window. It hadn’t prepared me for the CLOSED sign hanging on the door.
My legs jerked to a halt. I scooted to the side to be out of the late afternoon just-got-out-of-work foot traffic. The guys gathered around me as I peered into the dark space beyond the window. A whiff of resin-tinged incense carried through the door, but nothing moved among the shelves of tarot cards and multi-colored candles on the other side.
“The website said the store is open until eight,” I said. My gaze dropped to the letters printed on the glass. The hours there were exactly the same.
“Maybe she’s changed things up and hasn’t had time to edit the website?” Jin suggested. “Or the door?”
I bit my lip. I hadn’t texted Margo ahead of time because I didn’t know if the Assembly might be keeping an eye on her because of her past behavior. If I’d given them any hint we were coming to see her, though…
“What if they figured out we were coming this way?” I said. “What if the Assembly has already come after her?”
Gabriel frowned. “Then they’d have been here waiting for us to show, wouldn’t they? They’d have already grabbed us. It could be anything, Rose. She might be taking a sick day or something totally normal like that for all we know.”
Seth rubbed my shoulders. “You know I’m not one to be carelessly optimistic,” he said. “But I agree with Gabriel. Why don’t we come back tomorrow morning and see if she’s here then?”
“I’ll text her now,” I said, pulling out my burner. “Nothing obvious. Just asking when the store will re-open. That shouldn’t hurt anything.” And at least it’d give me some reassurance she was okay.
“What should we do in the meantime?” Jin asked. “Do you want to reach out to your mother’s family right away?”
My pulse skipped a beat. “No,” I said. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea to extend ourselves too far all at once. Let’s wait and see what I hear from Margo—if I hear anything—and then figure out how to approach them. I’ve never even talked to them, let alone seen them. I don’t even know for sure if they know I exist. It’s not going to be a simple visit.”
“I don’t think we can just crash in the SUV overnight,” Seth said, glancing back toward our vehicle with a frown of his own.
Gabriel nodded. “Not the kind of thing you can get away with very easily in a big city. What do you think is our safest bet while we wait, Rose?”
“I have a friend in the art scene who has a pad in Manhattan,” Jin put in. “He gave me carte blanche to stay there when he’s not in town, which is most of the time. He just left for a month-long trip across northern Africa. I don’t have the key on me, but we’ve got magic on our side, so…” He grinned at me.
We could keep driving around until I heard back from Margo—or we could get some real rest. I hesitated. “Let’s take a look at this place. I want to be sure we can get out of there quickly if we need to.”
I checked my phone for the millionth time as we pulled up outside the building where Jin’s friend had his “pad.” Damon had confirmed that he and Kyler would head over here when they’d finished their errands, but still nothing from Margo. I resisted the urge to nibble at my lip and peered out the window.
I’d been picturing some Manhattan high-rise, but what I saw actually put me more at ease: a four-story brownstone with a hair salon at its base, an alley beside it, and a fire escape snaking down its brick side. We’d have at least two exit routes, then. And it’d be easy to keep an eye on the street outside to see if anyone was approaching. The enforcers would have to get close to attack us physically in there. They couldn’t tip over a whole building like they had the SUV.
A quick spell got us past the front door and then the door for the actual apartment. It was two floors of open-concept space, all creamy walls, leather and ebony furniture, with modern art in stark colors and shapes all over the place. A crisp, slightly ocean-y scent hung in the air. The whole setting was so different from what we’d been living with for the last few days that a slightly hysterical laugh slipped out of me.
“He’s got a bit different artistic tastes from you,” I said, turning to take in all of the paintings on the walls.
“Yep,” Jin said. “Modern to the bone. But we do manage to get along somehow anyway.”
There were three bedrooms upstairs. I walked into the first one, took one look at the king-sized bed with its fluffy duvet, and collapsed right into it. For a second, surrounded by feathery softness, I actually felt relaxed.
Gabriel chuckled. “Enjoying yourself, Sprout?”
“I’d be enjoying myself even more if I had company,” I said, and then reality caught back up with me. I pushed myself upright and flicked my hand through the air to send out another testing wave of magic. It didn’t meet anything at all around us. Even the tingling from before had faded. But we’d been through too much for me to take comfort in that.
“We should keep an eye on the area around the building,” I said. “Someone watching the front and the back from the windows at all times.”
“Sure,” Gabriel said. “But not you. You’ve worn yourself thin enough as it is. Lie back down and get some rest.” He gave me a crooked smile. “At least once in a while I should get to give the orders. I’ll take the front window.”
I muttered a vague protest, but I didn’t really want to get up. I flopped back down on the pillow. “I’ll keep an eye on the backyard,” Jin said. “Nice little balcony back there anyway.”
Seth paused by the doorway. “Well,” he said, “since it sounds like the surveillance is covered…”
He climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arm around me. I turned to snuggle closer with a happy sigh. My hand traced down his muscular body, easing around the pendant I’d been able to cast a protective spell on during a brief stop for gas this morning. I tipped my head to steal a kiss.
I’d meant it to be just quick and sweet, but as Seth’s mouth moved against mine and heat flared through my body, I couldn’t remember why I wouldn’t have wanted this to last forever.
“Are you up for more?” he murmured against my lips
. The huskiness of his voice took my breath away. When I’d gone to check on him in the back seat this morning it had turned into a quick tumble, but it was hard to imagine the hunger I felt for him and all my consorts ever completely fading. Maybe it would ease off a little when our bond wasn’t quite so new, but right now I wanted as much of them as I could get.
“Always,” I said. Then I pulled back a little farther to search his gray-green eyes, like his twin’s but always more serious. “Are you sure you’re up for it? You were just hurt, and this morning we already—”
He interrupted me by nuzzling my cheek. “I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t eager. You know, there’s one thing I’ve been wanting to do that there really wasn’t much room for in the car.”
Before I could ask what, he was already sliding down my body. His hand opened my jeans and tugged them down in two smooth motions. He kissed my stomach, my hip bone, the sensitive skin just above the band of my panties. A tingle of anticipation shot up from my core. Heat pooled between my legs.
Seth stroked a finger over my clit and down my panties, drawing the wetness of my arousal through the fabric. Then he eased those down too. His breath spilled hot over my sex as he lowered his mouth to me.
I whimpered, clutching at his close-cropped hair, as he swiped his tongue across my clit and lower. His thumb dipped inside my opening. Pleasure spiked through me with each caress of his lips and hand, sending the light of my spark flooding through every nerve.
“Seth,” I mumbled. And then I couldn’t form any coherent sounds at all. His teeth grazed my clit and his fingers worked deeper inside me, and for a few minutes I was nothing but bliss beneath my consort.
Chapter Twelve
Damon
