A sly grin broke over Astrid’s face. “This reunion calls for mojitos. They’ll knock you on your ass. I make my own rum.”
She let out a surprised laugh and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “I thought you’d never ask.”
An hour later, they were lounging on the overstuffed sofa, and Bri was gazing into the swirling mint leaves of her second—third?—mojito. The chit-chat and banter between them flowed as easily as ever. She was thankful that Astrid somehow knew that she wasn’t ready to talk about their recent loss quite yet. It gave her time to soak in that elusive feeling of belonging that only your best friend can give you. It coated her with a warm, cozy feeling that she hadn’t known she’d been starving for. For the first time since returning to the island, she felt like she was home.
After the mandatory life catch-up, she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject occupying most of her thoughts. Seeing Kean had unsettled her deeply, and not just his accusation or the things he’d said about the curse. The passion just under the surface of every look he gave her had made her heart race. He’d left her confused, angry, remorseful.
Aroused.
Despite grief and exhaustion, her body had reacted to his smoldering hazel eyes, broad shoulders, and muscular thighs on a visceral level she’d forgotten even existed. How could he still have such a powerful effect on her?
The mint leaves swirled, very un-prophetically, and her next thought slipped out of her mouth without permission. “Why isn’t Kean married with five babies by now?”
Astrid snorted. “Have you ever seen Kean give up on anything? I don’t think there’s been a day since you left that he hasn’t found some way to bring you up. I’m actually kind of sick of you.”
She smiled in reply to Astrid’s barb. She’d always made fun of the mushy stuff. Bri and Kean called her their Prickly Pear. “Ha, ha. I’m serious. How is it even possible that he hasn’t been tagged and bagged?”
“Oh, they’ve tried. He had his party years where I didn’t bother to learn their names. Then he dated a few mundanes. They were nice girls, but no one he would ever get serious with. He had one girlfriend for a couple of years, Zyne, from a good family. She was a Ward too. They did all kinds of crazy shit together — total adrenaline junkies. He seemed ready to commit, but the family couldn’t stand her. Turned out they were right. She made a move for Drustan.”
Bri cringed. Drustan was the middle of Kean’s three older brothers. He ran the business side of their family vineyard in Eastern Washington out of his office in Seattle. Like all the Fitzgerald boys, he was total heartthrob material. And, like all the Fitzgerald boys, he put family before everything. “That must not have ended well.”
“Last I heard, she moved to North Dakota and married a mundane.”
“Ouch. I almost feel sorry for her.” Bri made no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She was totally not an adrenaline junkie. And why was she getting jealous over a girl who wasn’t even in the picture anymore?
“You’re not fooling anybody, you know. Least of all Kean. There’s still unfinished business between you two.” Astrid said business like most people would say fellatio.
“So. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“If I were you, I’d opt for hot, sweaty consolation sex.” Astrid winked and bounced the cushions underneath them.
Bri tried to look scandalized, but couldn’t maintain it when one of the nearby dogs chose that moment to jump up and bury his wet nose in her crotch. She burst into a fit of giggles. It had to be the mojitos. Or maybe just the joy of learning she hadn’t lost her best friend. She hadn’t laughed so easily, or so hard since…she couldn’t remember. Recovering some composure, she clutched a pillow in her lap and cleared her throat. “Speaking of Kean, he came to see me last night.”
“I heard.” Astrid hopped up and pulled her apron back over her head. Since Bri had left for New York, she had been to culinary school, studied abroad in Europe, and returned to North Wake to open an incredibly successful gastropub. The smells emanating from the kitchen had been enough to tempt Bri to stay for dinner. That, and she didn’t really want to be alone in Ce-Ce’s house any more than she had to.
“He seems to think I’m in danger from my family curse and need his magical protection. Were you going to weigh in on that at some point?”
“I was warming up to it,” Astrid said, slicing into a filet of fish. “I should have known he would go charging in. I told him how it seemed like you already knew when I called.”
Bri shrugged. “Ce-Ce appeared to me, but that’s not so unusual, right? She was a powerful Oracle. She could have reached out to any Zyne. With our blood connection, I would be easy.”
She watched Astrid’s expression carefully for any sign of what the two of them were keeping from her. No luck. The Edgewoods were legendary for their poker faces. “That takes an enormous amount of will, even for a witch as powerful as Ce-Ce. What did she say?”
“Just my name. She wanted me to see…something. There might have been more. I was still reeling from the regression I’d just had.”
Astrid froze as she bent to place her platter in one of the double-ovens. “Interesting.”
Bri picked at the pillow in her lap. That was the reaction she’d been afraid of. Kean was probably right about the power flare too, dammit. The two probably were related somehow. She knew practically nothing about magic or her heritage. “I never wanted any of this.”
“I know,” Astrid replied with no inflection.
“But?”
She wiped her hands on her apron, appearing lost in thought. “But maybe Ce-Ce sent you that message as a warning.”
Bri rose and crossed the room to sit at the counter while Astrid mixed them another drink. “Whatever you guys aren’t telling me, spill it.”
The wheels were visibly turning as Astrid debated her best course. She finally sighed, dropping all pretense. “This was not just an accident. I can’t explain how, but I know it in my bones. It feels wrong.”
“I know. I feel it too.” Like the ground had crumbled underneath her and she was stuck in that terrifying moment of suspension before plummeting into the abyss. She knew the feeling intimately. “It never feels right to lose someone you love.”
Astrid scoffed. “You’ve been to too much therapy. I mean it feels Zyne kind of wrong. Ce-Ce was acting strange for days before the accident…stranger than usual. Like she saw something coming. There was a bag packed in the car, full of Tara’s clothes. Then there’s the little quandary of the unexplained storm and rockslide. Weather was clear everywhere else on the island that morning.”
The tiny hairs on the back of Bri’s neck stood on end, causing her to shiver. That definitely sounded supernatural. The more she heard, the more she knew that her first instinct had been right. Ce-Ce hadn’t gone crazy and torn her own study apart. She couldn’t have imagined a storm and rockslide into existence. “I can add to that list. Someone broke into the house.”
Astrid dropped her knife. The room went eerily quiet. “What? When?”
Bri told her about the study.
“Fuck.”
“But at least that means it’s not a curse, right?” She coule really use some good news.
“A curse would be easier to counter. This means there’s a killer in our midst. We need to step carefully. We don’t want to alert our quarry of the trap we’re going to set for it.”
“Wait. That makes it sound like I’m going to be bait.”
“You’re not bait.” A hard glint glazed Astrid’s eyes. She tossed her knife into the air, end over end, caught it, and chopped a head of cabbage in half with one swipe. “You’re the secret weapon.”
“Okay…except I’m useless magically.”
“That’s bull. Ce-Ce reached out to you. She wouldn’t do that without a purpose. So, the next question is, what does she want you to see?”
Bri shook her head. “I didn’t see anything useful in the vision.”
�
��Not see—See—as in, use your gifts.”
“I don’t have any gifts.”
Astrid pinned her with her hardest no-bullshit look. “Just because you chose not to use them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
“I made my choice. I thought there was no going back.” At seventeen, every Zyne chooses to either pursue the study and practice of the Threefold Path, or else have their magic bound. When her time had come, Bri couldn’t get away from the island — or her nightmares — fast enough. She sometimes regretted cutting herself off from a big part of her family, but she’d found comfort in chasing her dreams instead. They were about to come true, too…which was probably why her life was falling apart.
“If you want to go exactly by the book, yeah, but a binding is just a ritual. All magic has counter-magic. Nothing is irreversible.”
“So that’s what you want too? For me to unbind my power?” Bri had been haunted by memories that weren’t hers for as long as she could remember, and she had a feeling that was just a trickle. Did she really want to open the floodgates? What was the point if she ended up locked in a padded cell, or worse?
“It’s still your choice.” Astrid said, “but hell yeah! I want you safe, and I want to find whoever is responsible for this. Now I know you are the key. Ce-Ce never did magic without a reason.”
“Let’s say for a minute that I go along with everything you’re telling me. What about my life? Am I supposed to just put everything on hold? Drop my career? Tell my almost-fiancé, ‘Sorry, honey, I have a magical murderer hunting me. And by the way, I’m a witch’?”
“Well…yeah. This is bigger than just you.” Astrid’s eyes, the color of the night sky, twinkled with unshed tears. “Don’t you think you owe it to them? Don’t you want to know?”
“Of course I do!” But she’d also seen the strain of her mother’s powers. She’d watched it drive her father away, tear their family apart. Powerful Oracles were rare because it was the hardest of the Threefold Paths to master. It could drive you — quite literally — insane. Ce-Ce and Geri handled it better than most, and sometimes even they seemed to be talking nonsense to nobody. If only Astrid could see the blaring Vegas-style sign that said This Way Lies Crazy.
Everything was changing so fast. Her entire world felt unsteady, as if the tracks of destiny were uprooting under her feet and twisting into a new pattern. Now her best friend wanted her to open Pandora’s Box, bursting full with — quite literally — her worst nightmares. She didn’t have the courage to let her escape hatch close all the way. She had built a life in Sydney. A normal, settled, safe life.
But.
Whatever Ce-Ce was trying to tell her, it must be important. If a witch was hunting down her family members, running would do no good. She didn’t know anything about combating magic — she’d never worked a single spell. If other people got hurt because she was too afraid to do her part to uncover a murderer, she would never forgive herself.
“This is the only way to get justice,” Astrid said.
“I don’t understand why the Synod hasn’t gotten involved. Isn’t dispensing justice their job?” The Synod was responsible for guarding the Legacy from the mundane world and upholding the laws of magic use. Her father had left them when she was ten to take a Council position at the Arcanum on one of the nearby islands. Surely he’d heard about Ce-Ce and Tara’s accident. Didn’t he care about his youngest daughter’s sudden and unexplained death? She knew he was cold, but how could he just look the other way?
“The Council will only intervene if there’s firm evidence that magic was involved. As long as Gawain is cock-blocking us with his ‘open and shut case’ bullshit, there’s nothing we can do. But Ce-Ce’s message could be the smoking gun. If we can prove there’s someone behind this, they will have to act.”
Briana pulled herself from the mire of wretched feelings that came with thinking of her father and tried to catch up. “Wait…what does Gawain have to do with anything?”
“Oh, you didn’t know? Pesty Gawainey Waney is not only the town Sheriff, he’s also the coven Sigma. When the Synod speaks, he is their voice.” She mimicked gagging herself.
“Wow. That must really get under Kean’s skin.”
Astrid rolled her eyes. “History’s longest pissing contest continues — you have no idea. Most of the coven would follow Kean if he wanted to challenge for Sigma, but he refuses to be the Synod’s message boy. One thing I will say for Gawain is that he’s a good little stooge.”
“How were you planning to get around that?”
“Ideally? We would break off from the coven, so that he can’t stick his nose into what we’re doing anymore.”
“You can do that?”
“We could, but we need a third. Kean’s a Ward, I’m a Summoner, we need an Oracle.” Astrid gave her a pointed look.
Right. Back to this. “What about Geri?”
“I tried that angle. She said it’s not her place. We figured she knew something we didn’t…”
The rest of the thought hung in the air between them. That explained why Geri seemed confident she wasn’t leaving so soon. But as everyone was so adamant about pointing out — it was her choice to make.
“Well.” Bri shoved her empty glass aside. No matter what it was going to cost, she couldn’t turn her back now. She’d spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. “I can give you a couple of days to see if there’s more to Ce-Ce’s message. Maybe that will be enough to get the Synod to investigate. But we have to do it in a way that doesn’t require releasing my binding. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”
“Deal, but I reserve the right to renegotiate at a later date.” Astrid smiled as she washed her hands. It lit up her face, and the mood of the whole house seemed to lift. The birds started chirping happily. The plants rustled. “So, how did things go with you and Kean last night?”
Bri scooped up the black kitten batting at her toes and snuggled it under her chin. “Same as always.”
“Anything broken?”
“Just a teacup.” Maybe both of their hearts.
“Huh.” Astrid lifted her eyebrows. “He doesn’t lose control much anymore. You must have really pissed him off.”
Bri nodded. She still knew how to push Kean’s buttons, and once he went over that edge, he was incandescent in his fury. The thought made warmth pool in the center of her body. Not that she’d pushed him on purpose. Mostly not. She hadn’t considered what else had changed in the years she’d been away. He’d grown a half-foot and put on at least thirty pounds of muscle, but the deepest changes were invisible. Kean was a Ward, a Zyne warrior. He’d broken the cup with a tiny slip of unrestrained will. She couldn’t help wondering how much raw power was leashed inside him now.
“Well, I hope he’s over it, ‘cause he’s gonna be here any minute.”
Bri hissed in a breath as the kitten sank his claws into her neck. She set him on the chair and rushed across the room to snatch up her purse and dig for her compact and lip gloss. “It was all part of your plan to get me liquored up before telling me that, wasn’t it?”
Astrid grinned, revving her food processor like an engine at a red light.
Chapter Six
Kean found Bri on the beach, wrapped in a scarlet sweater the wind kept trying to strip away. Sunlight sparked off her hair in strands of ruby fire. Even if he’d wanted to stay angry, the sight of her in the flesh washed away everything but the truth carved into his soul: he still loved her.
She shaded her eyes to watch him approach. The tide was going out, a ring of wet sand widening beneath her with each lapping wave.
He glanced down at her pretty pink toes. “You did notice it’s November?”
“Yeah, well, those are five-hundred dollar shoes.”
He whistled between his teeth and revealed the paper-wrapped mug he’d brought. “Good thing I didn’t explode those. Here.”
“Is this a peace offering?”
Maybe he could have handled thin
gs better last night. Astrid had already read him the riot act, even though everything he’d told Bri had been the truth. None of that mattered now. “Astrid said you’re going to help us.”
Bri studied him for a thoughtful moment. “I thought I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” Kean kicked a rock free from the sand to roll down the beach. Second chances, on the other hand, were rare. The wind brought Bri’s sweet, honeysuckle scent to him, mixed with the salt air, and it took all his control not to reach out. This was their second chance, if she’d only see it.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve died so many times in my nightmares, unable to escape. My body doesn’t know the difference. I don’t just see it, I experience it — all the pain and suffering that’s not mine. I wanted to be free to live a normal life. Now you’re asking me to open myself up to more. You have no idea what it’s like to not be in control of your own thoughts and feelings.”
She shivered, and he stepped close enough to wrap her in his shields. They blocked the chill of the wind and muffled some of the noise. He felt more at ease as soon as they closed around her.
“No, I don’t know what that’s like.” He did know how awful it felt to be helpless. That was why he needed her to stay where he could make sure she was safe. “But I do know that whatever magic is behind this, you’re better off with me standing in its way.”
He took her hand and pulled her back towards the path. Bri fell into step beside him, as if they strolled like that every day. “That’s what I’m trying to say — I’m not sure there’s anything worse than the monsters in my own mind. You can’t protect me from them.”
“Your power is overwhelming at first, but once you learn to control it, it won’t be so bad.”
She squeezed his hand, a shadow of doubt passing over her face. “I think I might be broken. That’s why Ce-Ce never pushed me to stay. That’s why she bound my magic without even questioning my decision. What if she knew I couldn’t handle it?”
Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy) Page 4
