And she was afraid of not being able to fix things.
“Let me talk to her.”
“Fine,” Tyr said. “I’ll send Zane in, since she runs screaming from me.”
Rebel waited while Zane got Tempest on the phone. “Tempe, what do you see?”
“They’re coming after us,” her sister said. “Big dogs with glowy eyes.” Fuck. Hellhounds. “Where? When?”
“I don’t know!” Tempest said, sounding panicked. “And I can’t figure out how to fix it. I’ve been trying for hours.”
“You have to tell the others,” she said “It’s time.”
“They won’t believe me.” There was years of ridicule and psychiatric treatments behind that simple statement. It wasn’t just an excuse, it was a fact.
Except before, they’d been dealing with normal people. And before, they hadn’t known they were witches. “Give the phone to Zane.”
When he got on, she said, “Zane, listen to me very carefully. Tempest has the ability to see the future in her stories and paintings. What she writes and draws happens. And if she sees something bad happening, she’s compelled to keep creating different versions until she finds one where she can fix it. So whatever she is about to tell you, believe her. Or I’ll come back and poison your cake.”
“Holy fuck,” Zane said. “Okay. We’ll take her seriously. Now Find the Seal.”
“Right.”
She disconnected the phone. There was a short silence. Then Thorne said, “Tempest can see the future?”
“Sometimes.”
“And she can change it?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you didn’t think this would be useful for us to know?”
“She’s scared of people knowing. She’s been locked up in a mental hospital because of it. And until magic started happening all around us, even I wasn’t sure it was real. It’s not like she can do it at will. It just comes.”
Thorne bit his lips. “And now it says something is coming. At the lair. Damn, I wish I could be in two places at once.”
“You and me both. So let’s find this damn Seal and then get back to the lair as quick as we can.”
In answer, Thorne pulled over to the side of the road. “Switch,” he said, and got out of the SUV.
Rebel slid over to the driver’s seat, and Thorne opened the back hatch, grabbed a laptop, and climbed into the passenger seat.
“It’s a damn good thing I got the special edition SUV and upgraded up the wireless hotspot.”
And that her sexy beast was one of the best hackers on the planet. Rebel pulled out into the road and began driving.
Rebel tapped her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel while Thorne launched search after search, called up web page after web page.
“Okay, here’s something,” he said finally. “Some kind of ‘history of witchcraft’ wiki.
The Coven of the Waves: A matriarchal coven of witches led by the Wilder family, it claims to go back in an unbroken line for at least a thousand years. As far back as records can be found, there was a Wilder witch at the head of the coven, until sixteen years ago when the death of Silvanna Wilder at the age of eighty-four left the leadership of the coven vacant.
Since that time, the coven is rumored to have abandoned their secret enclave in Oregon and gone underground. Rumors abound about the annihilation of the matrilineal line, with Silvanna’s daughter and granddaughter meeting untimely and suspicious deaths.
There is considerable speculation that an heir may survive; however, if she exists, she would be considered by many to be unfit for leadership because of tainted bloodlines.
Thorne stopped reading. “Tainted bloodlines? What the hell?”
Memories of that night intruded again. “That’s what they were shouting at my parents,” Rebel said. “That night. They called us abominations—me and Tempest. Tainted.”
Thorne stopped typing. “Why?”
“Like I know?”
He rested his hand on her arm for a moment before going back to typing. Just that small touch felt comforting. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted small gestures like that until she had them.
Thorne mused, “Some kind of forbidden mating? Is that why they were living in hiding?” He typed ‘forbidden love’ and ‘witches’ and ‘Wilder’ into his search parameters.
“I am not a fucking abomination. And neither is my sister.”
“Hey.” He stopped typing again, reaching over to cup her cheek. “Nobody on this side of the car is saying that. As someone who was called an abomination for centuries, I can attest that it sucks.”
She sighed. “Sorry.” He patted her thigh and went back to his computer. “So can you find out anything about why someone would say that?”
“I’m looking. Damn, this is so much easier now that I have names to work with.”
“Send a thank-you note to Mr. McHenry. And our Nigerian princes at Farnham and Peabody.”
“I’ll leave them the thank-you note when I hack into their files.” He tapped a few more keys. Then, “Are you serious?”
“Is who serious?”
“Someone called Cassandra Ravenwolf. There’s an article on her website called ‘The Witches’ Romeo and Juliet: the Tragic Love Story of Evelyn Wilder and Daniel Stone.’”
Rebel stared. “Excuse me? What the hell is that, a witches’ tabloid site?”
“Kind of, yeah.” He skimmed the article. “Holy shit. If this is true, it’s the mother lode.”
“So are you going to just sit over there and marvel at it, or are you going to tell me what it says?”
“Okay. I’m skipping the maudlin, badly written excesses. The gist of it is, the Coven of the Waves and the Coven of the Firebird had been enemies for years. Something about one of them stealing the other’s territory when they came here from Ireland.”
That perked up Rebel’s ears. “Ireland. Like in the legend—the place where Arkyld took the Seals.”
“Exactly. It turned into an all-out war, with each coven scheming to eliminate the other. Apparently, the son of the leader of the Firebird Coven managed to join the Coven of the Waves to spy on them. Instead, as you might expect, he fell in love with the granddaughter of the coven leader. Evelyn Wilder.”
Rebel’s heart thudded in her chest. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a badly-written web article. It was real. “My mother.”
Thorne nodded, scrolling down. “The problem was, there was supposedly this legendary curse, that said that the bloodlines of the two covens were naturally opposite. Joining them would be a disaster and produce—you guessed it.”
“Abominations,” Rebel whispered.
“Which you are not. Because this writer is an idiot. But apparently other people believe it too.”
Enough to kill her parents.
“So the two young lovers eloped and went into hiding. They supposedly had two children, or three, or maybe only one who had the powers of both bloodlines and ate babies for breakfast.”
“Awesome.”
“I told you she was an idiot. Anyway, they were—” His tone grew serious. “They were hunted down and killed, cleansed by fire. Again, some say the children died with them. Others say they’re still alive, doomed by their tragic ancestry.”
“That’s me. Doomed.”
Thorne leaned over and kissed her shoulder. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” He consulted the screen again. “What’s weird is, after your parents were killed, both covens seem to have disappeared. Poof. No one left.”
That was weird. “So that’s why my great-grandmother’s estate is abandoned.” She shivered. “I wonder what happened to them.”
“I’ll keep looking. Or maybe Farnham & Peabody will know.”
“Can you hack into their files and get the address of the estate?” Rebel said. She was getting a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, like they were running out of time. “If there were hellhounds at the trailer, and the appointment with Jean-Claude was a trap, what ar
e the odds that Farnham & Peabody are going to be a bunch of friendly old vampires?”
“About the same as a fake Nigerian prince sending you a wire transfer for ten million dollars.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Chapter 40
Farnham & Peabody’s system was ludicrously easy to hack once you knew what to look for. “It’s like these people don’t have any firewalls at all,” Thorne muttered. “I could make a fortune hiring myself out as a security specialist.”
“You already have a fortune.”
“True.”
By dawn, they’d found their way to a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It ended at a set of tall wrought-iron gates, decorated with a large circle ringed all around with stylized waves—the official symbol of the coven. Above it was a leaping dolphin.
The two of them exchanged looks. Dolphins.
The gate was the only opening in a high stone wall that stretched as far as they could see in both directions. Through the gate they could see a long, cracked driveway leading to an enormous house with dozens of blank windows, a set of wide, shallow stone stairs leading up to the front door.
It was obvious it was abandoned. The cracks in the driveway were full of weeds, and the trees that lined it obviously hadn’t been trimmed in years.
“This looks like the place,” Thorne said. He got out of the SUV and walked up to the gate, Rebel keeping pace with him. He gingerly touched the gate, and electricity snapped painfully through his fingers.
“Warded,” he said. He wished like hell his immunity to magic and wards had stayed with him when his dragon went. “We may need the keys after all.”
Rebel shook her head. She was gazing at the house, and unreadable expression on her face. “We don’t need anything,” she said. “I’m the key.”
She reached out and put her hand right through the wards. “I can get us in.”
They pulled the SUV off the road and Thorne put a cloaking spell on it. Then Rebel walked up to the gate and put her hand on the lock. It snicked open. She opened the gate, took Thorne’s hand, and led him through.
He could feel the wards, like walking through a sheet of water, but they didn’t react to him now that she was touching him. She pushed the gate shut and it locked behind her.
They walked up the driveway. As they approached the house, they could see that on either side of the front staircase was a stone dolphin, leaping out of the waves. Great. If the whole place was going to be covered in dolphins, how would they know which one was the Seal?
Rebel’s face had gone soft with wonder. She walked up to one of the dolphins, running her hand over its back. She looked up at the house again. It was huge and had once been grand, but now the windows were boarded up and the paint was peeling, with gaps here and there in the siding where pieces had fallen off.
But Rebel was looking at it like it was the holy grail. “I’ve been here,” she breathed.
That stopped Thorne in his tracks. “You have? When?”
“When Tempest was born. So I had to have been six, I guess. Mom was sick just before the birth, and dad was worried about her, so Mom and I came here.” She paused. “I didn’t understand why Dad didn’t come, but I got the impression he wasn’t welcome. And that I wasn’t either, but I was allowed to stay.”
“Well, now we know why he wasn’t welcome. And they were probably taking a chance letting you stay here, too, the way people felt about your parents’ marriage.”
“I guess,” she said. “At the time, I just felt unwanted and out of place.” She caressed the dolphin. “It was so rich, so fancy, and when we walked up this staircase I felt really, really tiny. My mom brought the two of us inside and we were shown upstairs to see this old woman in a long dress the color of cranberry juice.”
“Your great-grandmother, probably,” Thorne said. “Silvanna Wilder.”
“I guess it must have been,” Rebel said. “Everyone called her the High Priestess or just Priestess, but I called her the Lady in my head. I thought she was beautiful but scary, because of the way she looked at me. Like she knew all the bad things I’d done and thought I should be punished.”
“You probably should have been,” said Thorne. That got a faint smile.
“Seriously, though, she terrified me. When I found out we had to stay I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want to cry in front of her. So I held it in.”
Thorne put his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. He wanted to find that woman and terrify her, for frightening a little six-year-old girl and turning her into someone who could never show when she was scared.
“Do you sense the Seal anywhere?” he asked.
Rebel shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, and it could take forever to scan this whole place. I just keep feeling like we don’t have that kind of time.”
Thorne bit his lips, thinking.
“Is there any part of this place that draws you? The room where you stayed, maybe?”
Rebel snorted. “I hated that room. I wasn’t allowed out of it at all. Every day I could see kids playing in the garden, and I begged the woman who watched me to let me go down, but she said I couldn’t.”
That was probably dead now. Everyone in the coven might be dead. She wondered if some of those kids she’d seen playing had been her cousins.
She added, “I tried my damnedest, though. I finally climbed out the window and down the drainpipe.”
Thorne gave a huff of laughter. “Of course you did.”
“They got me before I reached the garden, and I was taken before the Lady and given a stern lecture.”
“Did that make you behave?”
“Nope. I just did it at night after that. Clearly I was destined for a life of crime.”
Of course she was. “Show me,” he said.
Rebel used her abilities again, and they walked straight through the house—through the front door and across a huge reception hall, and out a back door to the terrace. There was a knee-high lawn and then acres of what must once have been fantastic gardens.
Rebel pointed up at one of the third-floor windows. “That’s the room where I stayed,” she said. “When I climbed down that night, there were no kids, but there was this private garden I’d seen from my window, all walled up like it was a secret. There were fountains, and a fish pond that sparkled in the sun. I’d gotten kinda kid-obsessed with it, so I set off into the garden to find it.”
“All by yourself?” He was impressed.
“Yeah. I was never scared of the dark. I liked the night. And I felt like an adventurer in a fairy tale, going to find the magic garden and get the treasure.”
“So you did read fairy tales.”
A frown creased Rebel’s forehead. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I did. I must have stopped after everything went to hell, and I figured out there was no happily ever after.”
That sent a shard of pain through Thorne’s heart. “I wish I could give you a happy ending,” he said.
She put both hands on his chest and tilted her head up, pressing a light kiss to his lips.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like I was born into a fairy tale, whether I knew it or not. Maybe someone in it gets a happy ending.” She stroked his hair back from his forehead. “I hope it’s you.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her against him. The only way they could both have their happy ending was for her to fall totally, completely in love with him. And he still wasn’t sure that would happen.
He kissed the top of her head and moved away from her. “So did you find your secret garden?”
Rebel nodded.
Thorne looked at her face, soft with remembering. “Okay,” he said. “Show me where it is. If you were so drawn to that place, maybe that’s where we start.”
Chapter 41
They walked across the lawn and down one of the garden paths. Rebel was surprised she remembered the way, but it was like the knowledge had been sleeping in
side her all these years.
They pushed their way through the underbrush, heading closer to the center of the gardens, until they reached a door in the garden wall.
Thorne ran his hands over it. “There are more wards here,” he said. “I wonder if they were there then. Not that that would have stopped you.”
“Nothing would have stopped me. I was a very determined little girl.”
“You haven’t changed.”
Rebel opened the garden door the same way she had the gate, then took Thorne’s hand and led him through the wards. This time she didn’t drop his hand afterwards.
The walled garden was overgrown, just like everything else in the place, but Rebel could remember it perfectly, the way it had been. She kicked at the moss on the stone path, uncovering a mosaic showing a unicorn. There were others, she knew. Griffons, flying horses, dragons— every mythical creature you could think of.
The fountains were dry, of course, but there was still water in the central fish pond, with aquatic plants growing in it.
She said, “At night this place was like fairyland. There were tiny lights all up in the trees, and along the paths. They all led to the fish pond. I remember there was this fish in there that sparkled like silver in under the lights, darting in and out of the plants. I wanted to catch it so bad…”
Thorne smiled. “And did you?”
She shook her head. “No. Lucky for the fish, I got busted. I was lying down on the edge of the pond, right there, with my hand in the water, when I heard this grating sound. And then the Lady walked up from underneath the pond. I thought she was magic.”
Thorne snorted. “She was.”
Rebel started. “Fuck. I guess she was. Although that wasn’t how she suddenly appeared like that. There was a secret passage.”
Thorne looked interested in that. “Where?”
“Around the other side of the pond. The Lady looked at me very sternly, and told me to leave the fish alone, that I wasn’t old enough to take care of a fish.” She snorted. “Plenty of six-year-olds have goldfish.”
Dragon's Rebel Page 18
