by W. J. May
“What burns?” Devon breezed into the kitchen, looking surprisingly well-rested considering his late-night dalliance over schnapps. His eyes tightened with concern when he saw Rae’s hands, and before she could stop him he swept towards her, smoothing them flat in his palms. “Babe, what happened? Tell me this wasn’t another failed attempt at making toast…” He trailed off upon seeing the pointed look on her face, and followed her gaze to where her father was standing—arms crossed—just behind his shoulder. A good deal of color drained out of his face, and although he kept his voice remarkably calm he dropped her hands at once. “Good morning, Simon.”
His polite smile went unreciprocated as Simon stared back with a chilling expression Rae could only describe as ‘Dad.’ An expression made all the worse when that dad was Simon Kerrigan.
“Is it?”
Devon gulped and retreated to the other side of the room, joining Gabriel in his vigil at the window.
Rae was quick to follow, avoiding her father’s eyes as she skirted around the counter. “What are you even looking at out here?” she asked, worming her way in between the two men. “It better not be another…oh—that doesn’t look good.”
Julian and Angel were standing at the edge of the tree-line, having what looked to be the fight of a lifetime.
One was rooted to the spot, clearly trying to rein in his temper, while the other paced around like an angry little storm cloud, periodically throwing back her waves of ivory hair. Even so far away, the others could still hear the rise and fall of angry voices, and whenever there was a temporary lull Angel would jam an accusatory finger at his chest, and the whole thing would start up again.
At one point Julian threw up his hands in exasperation, yelling something that—even all the way back at the house—sounded like a very bad word. Even the coffee maker fell silent.
Coincidentally, that was the same point at which Rae decided to switch out of Devon’s tatù.
Devon, who didn’t have that luxury, leaned away from the window with a sympathetic wince. “They don’t do things halfway, do they?”
“It’s a passionate relationship,” Molly piped up from the kitchen table. She had worked so hard for so long to insert herself into Julian’s love life, she felt quite entitled to comment upon it now. “And you know what they say: the hotter the fights, the hotter the…” She trailed off as five sets of eyes turned her way. “Uh…never mind.”
Rae and Devon returned to the window with various degrees of amusement. Gabriel, on the other hand, looked rather sick. But there was a chance that Molly was on the right track.
As quickly as it started, it seemed the fight was suddenly winding down. The pacing stopped, the voices quieted, and a second later Julian pulled Angel into his arms.
She slapped him. Then she kissed him.
Then she slapped him once more and headed inside.
Passionate indeed.
“That girl is freaking crazy…” Devon murmured incredulously as she marched back across the grass.
“Careful,” Gabriel warned, although it looked like he didn’t entirely disagree.
The three of them leapt away from the window the second they heard the door, settling around the table as innocently as could be.
But Angel was in no way fooled.
“Eavesdroppers go to hell, you know,” she snapped before she grabbed her brother’s cup of coffee and stormed away upstairs.
Her boyfriend came in next, looking decidedly more subdued.
Devon sprang to his feet. “Hey, man, you okay?”
“Yeah,” Julian answered, looking only slightly whiplashed, “fine.”
Gabriel grinned and handed him a cup of coffee. “Hang in there, kid.”
Rae bit her lip, still feeling decidedly sorry for herself given her late-night mishap with her father, but flashed him a look of support.
Molly, on the other hand, was insufferably invested. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked hopefully, patting the seat beside her. “And before you give me the same answer you always do, just keep in mind that I’m your best friend, I’m a spectacular listener and, to be honest, I’m basically the one who got you and Angel together in the first place. So, it’s kind of my right to know.”
Simon lifted his eyebrows, clearly amused with the way she didn’t need to breathe. But the others had long-since grown accustom to such a rant. They averted their gaze with identical smiles, while Julian shook his head with a weary sigh.
“For the last time, Molls. You did not get Angel and me together. We met in Florence; you were in an entirely different country.”
“Yeah, but what about in San Francisco?” she insisted.
He paused. “What about in San Francisco?”
“You remember!” Her eyes lit up with a nostalgic smile. “That time when I encouraged you to sneak us all into her apartment on a fake booty call, so that we could torture her for information!”
Julian blinked in disbelief as Luke slowly lowered his face into his hands.
Molly remained oblivious, rewarding each of them with a triumphant smirk. “If that’s not good matchmaking, I don’t know what is.”
In perhaps the greatest timing in the world, the front door opened again and the gang was spared from having to answer.
There was a sound of quiet voices, then Beth raised her voice. “Hello, hello! Where is everyone?”
Rae rose quickly to her feet, giving Julian a sympathetic pat as she did. “We’re in the kitchen, Mom!”
Her mother had gone back to Guilder the previous day, along with Keene and Fodder, to survey the damage incurred after the trial. It was another bout of brilliant timing in that she had missed Samantha’s little visit entirely. Rae saw this as a blessing. Beth would not.
“It’s freezing out there,” Beth said as she joined them in the kitchen, sliding off her long trench coat and tossing it over the counter. “It has to only be about…” She trailed off suddenly as she saw Simon.
It was an abruptly awkward moment. Especially considering the way he was following her every move. Especially since the last time they saw each other he was holding her in his arms.
Beth did her best to recover, but the shock of rounding a corner and seeing her resurrected husband had yet to fade. And he certainly wasn’t making it easy. Not with the way he was staring.
“Did you want to say something, Kerrigan?” she snapped.
His eyes sparkled as he stared at her with a tender smile. “You are as beautiful as the first day I met you.”
Okay… Now it was an awkward moment.
Beth froze, while Fodder, who had just walked in behind her, lifted his eyebrows in surprise.
Rae, on the other hand, rushed forward, wondering if it was possible to both faint and throw up at the same time. “He didn’t mean that! He’s under a sort of spell!”
Fodder turned his look of surprise to her, but Beth couldn’t stop staring at Simon.
“A spell?” she said, keeping him warily in her gaze. “What kind of spell?”
Rae’s heart fluttered with increasingly nervous energy, and she glanced back at her friends for help. A row of silent, unhelpful faces stared back at her.
No. They were not getting in the middle of a Kerrigan-marriage dispute. Tough luck, Rae.
“It was…it’s Samantha’s tatù—spell—whatever you call it, actually.” Rae closed her eyes and braced for the explosion. She was not disappointed.
“WHAT?!” Beth screamed. “You saw her AGAIN?! She came to the HOUSE?!”
It was amazing how much each of those words could resonate in the little kitchen.
Rae flinched and nodded, feeling strangely guilty for the whole thing. Probably because she had forgotten to call afterwards. It was a hard instinct to learn, after getting by alone for so long. On Beth’s other side, Fodder was glaring daggers at his youngest son. That explosion would come later. “The group of us sat down in the living room for a little…talk,” Rae edited carefully. Best not to tell her abo
ut the confinement. Or the threats. Or the impromptu make-out session there at the end. “But she forced us all to do so honestly. Every word we said was the absolute truth.” She cast an apologetic glance at her father. “We were all released from it after she left. Apparently…apparently Simon wasn’t.”
It was a rather brilliant move on Samantha’s part, Rae had to admit. If there was one way to turn the world against Simon Kerrigan, it was to force him to tell the truth.
That being said, Simon didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was still looking at Beth as if the last fifteen years had never happened. As if they were just teenagers at Guilder again, training together in the Oratory as they fell more and more in love.
“Would you like some coffee, my dear?” He pulled down a mug from the cupboard, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. “Still take it black with two sugars?”
Okay, this is WAY too weird…
“How did it go with you guys?” Rae asked quickly, changing the subject. “Did you and Keene get a chance to talk about what comes next?”
As President of the Privy Council, she was automatically at the head of any decision-making process. But as the daughter of the accused, the matter had been passed along to less-biased hands.
“We did, actually.” Fodder stepped forward, graciously relieving Beth from the spotlight in light of weightier things. “And I think you’ll find it a bit of a surprise.”
That doesn’t sound good…
“In light of the present threat from Miss Neilson, and taking into account the extreme measures Mr. Kerrigan took to save the lives of those gathered at the assembly…the Council has decided to temporarily suspend his sentence.”
Rae stared at him in shock, unable to believe it was true.
They were suspending Simon’s sentence? After everything she’d seen? After everything he’d done? How was it possible that they would just look the other way?
“This is only a temporary measure,” Fodder reassured her, guessing her thoughts. He, too, had taken the journey back into the horrors of Simon’s past. He did not take it lightly. “Provisional supervision, just until the culprit is found. Until she is, we simply cannot risk transporting him to a detention center.”
“Why not?” Luke asked incredulously. “It’s a simple enough task.”
“Simple enough, perhaps, but a dangerous one as well.” Fodder’s eyes rested lightly upon his son. “To start, we would have no idea of knowing if she was already inside.”
As the rest of them fell silent, considering all the implications of such a power, Rae started to put two and two together. Provisional supervision? Surely that couldn’t mean—
“Here?” She interrupted the quiet discussions around her, zeroing in on Fodder with her arms folded over her chest. “You want him to stay here? Again?”
“Oh, Rae, isn’t it wonderful?” Simon’s eyes glowed as he looked between his estranged wife and his daughter. “The entire family under the same roof.”
Rae stifled a gag as Beth turned sharply on her heel and walked out of the room. Leaving it to Fodder to work out the rest of the details she hurried after her, catching up by the front door.
“Mom!” she called, skidding to a stop beside her on the tile. Beth paused, and gave her a moment to catch her breath. “Mom…I’m really sorry about not calling about Samantha. It happened really late at night, and we all just got up. It wasn’t really—”
“Honey, I’m not mad at you about Samantha. With everything else that’s going on,” she paused as her eyes flickered reflexively back to the kitchen, “I can see how it slipped your mind.”
Rae followed her gaze, then turned back with a worried expression. “Are you going to be…okay, with this?” She bit her lip, uncertain exactly how to continue. “I know it’s a lot to ask…”
Much to her surprise, Beth threw back her head with a laugh. “A lot to ask? Being trapped inside a mansion with my recently un-deceased husband? All I’d need for it to get really weird is a supernatural truth serum thrown on top.”
Rae nodded quickly, pursing her lips. “Yeah, that was a stupid question.”
Beth’s hand slipped into hers. “It wasn’t a stupid question. It was sweet. And it’s not you who’s asking. It’s the Council, and the Knights, and a whole lot of other people who are afraid and need some kind of reassurance.” She glanced back at the kitchen again, this time with a little sigh. “If we can help give them that by keeping an eye on him…then, yes. I can learn to be okay with it.”
The two women stood there, side by side, as a voice echoed up from the kitchen.
“We should see if Kraigan’s awake yet.” Simon sounded nothing short of delighted by the whole idea. “Maybe the four of us could have lunch…?”
Rae shot a sideways glance at her mother, who closed her eyes with a painful sigh.
“But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Chapter 15
“Attention, shoppers: to the person using laundry detergent to make a slip-and-slide on aisle seven, please stop.”
Rae and her friends paused for a moment, gazing up towards the ceiling, before shrugging it off and making their way further into the store.
In an effort to escape the sudden awkwardness brought about by a newly-liberated and oh-so-honest Simon, Rae and Molly had decided to run out to the local grocery store to buy ingredients for dinner. Neither one of them had any experience cooking, of course, but between one’s natural over-abundance of enthusiasm and the other’s burning desire to escape her father—it had only taken a minute for them to convince themselves that it was a tremendous idea.
Devon and Luke, appalled to be left behind, had instantly jumped on board. Prompting Julian and Angel to feel left out. Prompting Gabriel to get dragged along. Prompting Kraigan to get paranoid they were plotting against him, so he tagged along as well.
In the end, all eight of them had ended up cramming into a trio of sports cars and heading into town. They’d parked in a little row near the back of the lot so as not to draw attention, but what with the rather ostentatious nature of the cars in question—along with a set of diplomatic flags that Rae had gotten from the Future Queen of England as a birthday gift—they tended to stand out.
No more so than their drivers.
Rae stifled a smile as a girl, who looked to be about her age, stared at Devon long enough that she accidently rammed her cart into a wall. She was in good company. The floor was still littered with fallen apples from when a man had done the exact same thing upon seeing Angel.
“Do you think that was real?” Luke asked, still hung up on the intercom. “A slip-and-slide?”
Kraigan’s eyes lit up in a rare moment of excitement. “Only one way to find out…”
The next second the two of them took off, leaving the others behind.
“Hey!” Molly called after them. “Hey! Would you guys stop being silly? We came here for a reason, you know!”
Luke pretended not to have heard as he and Kraigan slipped around a corner and out of sight. Molly glared after them for a second before pushing the cart on with a self-righteous sigh. “Honestly, sometimes I think he needs a sitter,” she huffed, browsing without any clear agenda through a selection of breakfast cereals. “The guy spends half his life working for an elite, covert agency trying to keep the world afloat, but the second you remove the pressure it’s like he reverts back to freaking preschool.”
Rae glanced over her shoulder to where Devon and Julian were fencing each other with a pair of salad tongs. “Must be a man thing…”
“Hey,” Gabriel interjected, “you don’t see me—oh, Molly, get that one.” He pointed eagerly to the box she was still holding in her hand. “That’s the one with the decoder ring.”
The girls gave him a long look before slowly pushing the cart forward.
“Do you think this is what it would be like?” Molly mused, placing the cereal in the cart anyway as they wandered further up the aisle. “If none of this craziness was happening
right now? If things were just…”
Rae caught the wistful note in her voice, and finished the question with a knowing smile. “Normal?”
Molly met her gaze before glancing down in spite of herself at her flat stomach. “Yeah…normal.”
Both girls went quiet for a moment, lost in thought, before they were interrupted by the third, and predictably eccentric, member of their feminine trio.
“In my experience, there is no such thing as normal.” Angel skipped out ahead of them, happily sporting her chef’s hat. When she’d found out this was a trip to facilitate ‘cooking dinner,’ she’d whipped the thing out so fast Rae could have sworn she conjured it. Since then, she’d been vacillating between extreme interest and extreme boredom. Alternatingly either sticking random items in the cart, or napping curled up inside. “There’s just whatever present reality your day happens to include,” she continued. “If there’s something more normal out there, I certainly haven’t found it.”
With that bit of unexpected wisdom she was off, springing lightly down the aisle in the hunt for her next entertainment.
Molly and Rae stared after her with wide eyes. It didn’t happen often, the girl knew how to hide it well, but every now and then the others got a glimpse of that magic that Julian saw every day. The same magic that had made him fall in love with her.
That being said…she didn’t exactly make things easy.
“You’d think she’d never been inside a grocery store before,” Molly murmured, watching as Angel seized upon the notion of ‘pasta’ with a fervor, and began piling it up in her arms.
“She hasn’t,” Gabriel replied distractedly. When the two girls looked up in astonishment, he offered them a simple shrug. “She grew up beneath a church and spent her only years above ground living off take-out while trying to seduce your clairvoyant best friend. When would she have possibly gone to a grocery store?”
It was sound logic, and yet…
Rae took over pushing the cart with a little sigh. “Maybe Angel’s right. Maybe there is no normal.”
They wandered on for the next several minutes, listening with increasing entertainment as it became clear that Luke and Kraigan had effectively hijacked the intercom.
