by Elena Lawson
Draven hesitated before he exited, and I gave him a quick nod to let him know it was safe. “¿Puedo hablar con tigo, senor?” Draven said as he stretched out his back, speaking to the limo driver.
I cocked my head at him, pleasantly surprised, and I’d admit—near drooling at his casual use of the romantic language. His pronunciation was on point.
I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised he could speak the language since he himself told me he spoke several others. He would come more in handy on this trip than I gave him credit for.
“He can speak Spanish?” Adrian said, jabbing a finger toward where Draven was corralling the limo driver closer to the front of the limo to speak privately. He was a little unsteady on his feet from all the champagne and I hoped there was some fresh water inside otherwise he’d end up with a nasty headache.
I could portal out later to get some food, but I was hoping to get a bit of shut eye before we had to do any adulting.
“Are you surprised?” Cal said, blinking away the sleep in his eyes. He stretched and yawned, taking a deep breath in through his nose that made his already bulky chest expand to its limits. I admired the way his green t-shirt pulled taut across his pecs and strained to contain the mass of muscle wrapped in dense cords around his biceps.
I shivered, and it wasn’t from the coolness of the evening—hell, it wasn’t even all that cold even though it was the middle of the night. Adrian handed me his jacket and I took it, not wanting to admit I wasn’t shivering from the chill, but from watching his brother wolf flex.
Cal jerked to stillness and dropped his arms, a furrow lowering one brow. “You smell that?”
I sniffed the air but smelled nothing aside from the general scent of the valley. I realized afterwards that he hadn’t been asking me. He was staring in askance at Adrian, who’s eyes sparked into a low golden glow as he sniffed the air around the back end of the limo.
He paused. “A wolf?”
“Shifter,” Cal corrected, and his spine straightened.
“Are you sure?” I interjected, unconsciously moving in tighter to my familiars. “How many?”
Cal pursed his lips. “Just one, I think.” His bright green eyes ignited as his Enduran senses worked to suss out what exactly it was he’d scented.
I narrowed my eyes, squinting into the dim brush on either side of the road. I glanced around the front of limo and saw Draven and the driver in the glare of the headlights, and beyond them a tall wrought-iron gate not unlike the one at Rosewood Abbey. The metal rods bent to form the shape of roses. But there was nothing beyond it that I could see. Not even the house.
Just a long, winding drive I could only just make out beyond the gate. The ten-foot stone walls to either side of the gates that looked to wrap around the entire property didn’t allow any outsiders the opportunity to look in.
I didn’t see any beady eyes in the brush—thank fuck.
“That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?” I asked when I was sure we weren’t about to be pounced on. “Don’t you all, like, usually travel in packs?”
Adrian smirked at my words. “Not always. More likely it could be recently changed and hasn’t found a pack yet.” He shrugged. “It happens.”
“It will probably scent us, though,” Cal said, and it was plain to see he didn’t like the idea. “Let’s just hope it keeps its distance.”
“But if they’re newly changed, they could need help,” I argued. “Guidance from Endurans who are more experienced,” I hedged.
Adrian hefted his bag onto his shoulder and grabbed the handle of my rolling suitcase in the other. “What do they teach you in that school of yours?” he asked with a quizzical look, but his tone was more teasing than anything. “If a newly changed shifter is in these woods, you better hope it isn’t a full moon anytime soon.”
That’s when I remembered…
The moon room. And how young shifters took months—sometimes years to control the primal urges of their wolves. How they had to be locked up during the full moon until they and their wolf could become of one mind.
I glanced up at the moon, considering what Adrian said. It was somewhere between a first quarter and waxing gibbous. Or maybe it was waning? Had there been a full moon recently? I didn’t think so. Which meant it would be full soon.
Well shit…
11
The limo driver drove away in a daze. Draven assured me he had even instructed the guy to destroy any evidence of this place. Including notes and GPS directions from his employer’s records.
If he’d done it right, the secret of La Casa Rosa would remain just that—secret.
A tremor of nervous energy coiled up through my feet as we approached the metal gate. Not for the first time, I wondered what we would find inside. Would it feel like home or would it feel like walking into a husk of what it once was? Had it been ransacked since it’d been left unwarded to rot? What did my father keep inside that was so important to keep secret and safe?
Or was it really just that his parents and their parents before them had just wanted a private vacation home?
Somehow, I doubted the latter.
I couldn’t see all that well in the dark, but I found no matter how hard I squinted into the blackened greenery beyond, I couldn’t see even so much as a hint of house. The brush wasn’t that dense. The trees weren’t super thick, either.
I should have been able to see something down the gravel drive, shouldn’t I?
“You sure there’s actually a house back there?” Adrian asked, echoing my own thoughts. If even his wolf-eyes saw nothing in the dim, then maybe there really wasn’t anything there.
I didn’t answer him, instead setting to work on the gate.
Drawing on my magic, I raised my hand and spoke the incantation. “Lucidus.”
The sigil sprang from my fingertips, a waving bluish line with a circular shape at the base. The sigil glowed brightly, growing and changing until it was a ball of bluish light illuminating the iron of the gate.
The first thing I noticed was that there was no lock. No big key-hole. And unlike a normal gate, this one wasn’t made up two doors that would swing open to allow anyone on the outside passage within. It was seamless. A wall of curling iron between two tall walls of stone. It wasn’t meant to be opened. At least…not by mortal means.
“Can you open it? Draven asked with an eyebrow raised.
I huffed a breath and rolled my sleeves. “Let’s see.”
I hadn’t had to do this sigil in a while, and I took my time drawing it out. The bright green of my magic trailing behind the path of my fingertip as though I’d dipped it in otherworldly paint. I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. So, I made each line and curve in the unlocking spell perfect. I had a feeling it wouldn’t work unless it was just right. I channeled more power into the witch’s mark, making it surge brighter—filling it with power.
I clenched my teeth, trying to ignore how as my body drew the earth’s magic into it. A bit of darkness tried to push inside, too. It’d been like that since the blood magic spell I’d done to recover Bianca’s memories. I’d used blood magic too many times and if I wasn’t careful, it would consume me.
I shoved down that part—the part that hissed and writhed below the earth’s crust begging to be set free. “Resigno,” I said, pressing my palm flat against the wavering lines of the sigil in front of the gate.
The sigil faded.
“Well that didn’t work…” Cal so helpfully pointed out.
I groaned. “No shit.”
I tried the sigil again, speaking the incantation more forcefully this time. Pouring even more power into it. But it didn’t work. The gate didn’t budge, and my magic fizzled out a second time.
Fuck.
“Maybe we could—”
“I need to think,” I interrupted Draven, clenching my fists. I had an idea—but I didn’t know exactly what it was. There was a way to open it. I knew it. And I knew that I knew it. But it was like a word trapped on the
tip of your tongue; no matter how many times you open your mouth to speak it, it sticks there stubbornly until someone else says it for you.
Ugh. I groaned as I sifted through the foggy, sleep-addled abyss of my thoughts. The fact that I hadn’t been sleeping much lately coupled with the long day of lessons, shopping, and travel were getting to me.
It took a few minutes, but then the thought started to take proper shape. The bookcase. That awful night with the phantom with the blackened flesh. I shivered just to remember him—it—whatever it was… so glad that whatever had tied those spirits to me after the origin spell seemed to have all but faded.
But I remembered now. How the one spirit told me how to open the secret passageway. I remembered the words. The incantation that loosely translated meant open for blood.
My blood was my father’s blood, too. It was how I’d entered his secret study. And I had the feeling it would be how I entered here, too.
I pressed my hands against the cold iron and bowed my head to focus—drawing on my power a third and hopefully final time. I felt the connection between myself and this place. Even though it was a place I’d never been before, it called to me from the other side of the gate like a siren. The connection was there, and I needed to use it gain entry.
My lips parted. I hushed Cal as he attempted to say something, and then I spoke the words. “Recludo Sanguis.”
The iron beneath my hands warmed and then evaporated as though made of the lightest, smallest grains of sand, and blew away in the gentle night’s breeze, dissolving until the gate was no more.
It was as the gate fell away that I realized there was some other form of magic clinging to the iron. A stationary ward of some kind. A spell to conceal what lay beyond.
Because one second I was staring through the bars at a long gravel drive and nothing else but trees and shrubbery. But as the gate vanished, the truth of what it hid became rapidly clear. In the span of a single blink, there was a house. As though it sprang up from the earth out of nothing.
It was plain to see it was old, but it wasn’t decaying or crumbling as I’d feared it would be. It was immaculate. Pristine as though the slow decay of time did not deign to touch it. The villa was tall and wide. At least three stories. Its walls were eggshell white and stuccoed. The shutters on either side of each window were the same burned orangey red of the terra-cotta tiles on the peaked roof.
A large veranda could just be seen on the right side of it, jutting out from a master bedroom, I supposed. Lush gardens hedged the whole thing in and crawling green vines clung to the exterior over the arched doorway and around the back. It looked like something out of a fairytale. I was willing to bet when the sun hit it in the morning, it would be even more beautiful. If that was possible.
I tried to imagine my father here—to picture it. Him with his parents and younger sister before she perished in the fire…running through the gardens—laughing. It was an impossible image. I didn’t even know what they all would’ve looked like.
A deep sadness filled me and some of my excitement waned. Maybe I would gain some insight with what we found inside. Perhaps there would be family photos of them all. Maybe I’d get to know them through the house they made a second home in.
“It’s…really nice,” Cal said, faltering as though unable to find the words to describe it properly.
“It is, isn’t it?” I replied.
Draven hefted his worn leather duffle over his shoulder and started down the drive toward La Casa Rosa. “Come on,” he said. “We should get inside.”
The first rays of sunrise had begun to stain the underbellies of the clouds a blush pink. He was right. We all needed some rest. At least a few hours before we could have a proper look around. I hoped there were some useable blankets and pillows on the beds. Though I supposed I could pop back to the Abbey to grab some if needed. Even though the mere thought of expending more energy to open a portal back home made my eyelids heavy.
I trudged along the gravel in my new distressed brown leather combat boots. The ominous crunching of dirt and stone beneath our soles the only sound in the growing dawn, save for the chirp of crickets and the beginning of birdsong as the sun rose.
“You think there’s food in there?” Cal asked in a low voice as he caught up with me—keeping pace with my slow steps.
I smirked. Of course, that’s the first thing he asks for.
I guessed I’d be making a trip back to Abbey after all. “Don’t worry,” I said, unable to keep the note of exasperation from entering my voice. “I’ll make sure I get you something to eat before I pass out.”
He bumped his shoulder against mine and I grinned. “I’ll make breakfast if you bring back some eggs and bacon.”
I looked at him incredulously, my eyes narrowing to slits as we came up on the front door. Draven was already feeling around the top ledge of it for a spare key. “You cook?” I asked Cal.
He cocked his head at me. “Maybe not very well, but yeah. I can cook.”
Well, I’ll be damned.
I shrugged. Seemed like a fair enough deal to me. “Sound like a deal, then. I’ll grab what we need from the Abbey. Or—” I added, thinking better of that since the last I looked in the pantry back at the Abbey, there were cobwebs forming in the corners and not much left at all, save for canned goods and bags of coffee beans. “I might have to actually go shop for some. Maybe you could—”
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
I whirled around and an arm shot out and shoved me back. Cal had moved me behind him so roughly and so suddenly, the breath caught in my throat. Damn. As I sputtered, I tried to make sense of the scene. Squinting in the gloom of early morning, I could see a figure standing several feet away from us.
Adrian and Draven abandoned their things at the door and came to stand with us.
“Look, lady, we don’t want any trouble,” Adrian said impatiently. “And the better question is—how did you even get in here?”
I drew down Cal’s arm to stand beside him, trying to get a better look at the person. Once I was around Cal’s large frame, I could see her better.
The woman was middle-aged. Her long pin-straight brown hair had streaks of gray around her crown and her eyes were a dull shade of brown—tired. Her skin was tan beneath the white night-gown type dress she was wearing. Her feet bare. But there was something in her voice that didn’t suit this place. The lilt of an accent whittled down to a whisper of its former self.
I couldn’t place it.
But I knew one thing for certain—it wasn’t a Spanish accent.
Was she…? Was this woman living here? Was she squatting in my father’s house?
The woman opened her mouth to protest against Adrian’s question, but I silenced her with a snarl. “This is my house,” I told her. “It’s belonged to my family for generations.”
The woman looked like I physically slapped her, and I thought yeah, that’s right, my house, not yours. She’d better get out of here before I had my guys force her out. It was clear from the first moment I saw her she wasn’t a witch. The woman was human and had no right to be in this place.
“You’d better leave, ma’am,” Cal said, his voice gruff, but also gentle, as though he pitied the woman who was clearly squatting in my father’s empty house.
The woman didn’t so much as glance at Cal, or any of the others. She was staring at me as though transfixed by the curve of my face. Or maybe the vibrant red of my hair. “What is your name?” she asked me.
“Harper,” I said, crossing my arms. “Harper Hawkins. Now, you’ll need to be go—”
The woman shook her head and in the oncoming dawn I saw the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes. “You’re…Alistair’s daughter,” she choked. “You’re—well, you’re all grown up.”
Wrinkling my brow, I shared a look with Draven who looked just as perplexed as I was.
“I’m sorry but how exactly do you know my father?”
She wiped away the wetne
ss rimming her eyes on the sleeve of her night dress and lifted her gaze back to me. “I-I’m the housekeeper,” she stuttered. “I live in the cabana out back. My family has watched over La Casa Rosa for the Hawkins’ for generations. I…I haven’t seen you since you were just a babe. After Alistair…well after what happened, I didn’t think anyone would ever come back to this place.”
I didn’t believe her.
She had to be lying. My family wouldn’t hire a mortal to take care of their home, would they? It didn’t make any sense—besides it was against the law. Unless…unless this woman and her family didn’t know they were housekeeping for witches.
“How’s the Abbey?” she continued. “Have you been there? Is Martin still the caretaker? The man must be close to three-hundred by now.”
I winced.
So, she did know we weren’t mortals.
And she knew Martin…I didn’t want to be the one to tell her about what happened to him. She must have seen the discomfort in my expression because she stepped forward and said in a much softer voice. “Is something wrong?”
“Look, lady…I don’t really know who you are or what’s going on here, but we’ve got to get inside,” my gaze flicked to Draven, taking in the taut line of his jaw as he watched the clouds brighten. “We’re all really tired—”
“And hungry,” Cal added, and I elbowed him in the ribs.
“Maybe we can talk some more tomorrow. I—I’m sorry I told you leave. I didn’t realize…” I trailed off, not really knowing what else to say. I just wanted this long ass day to end.
The woman raised her hands as though to wave off my apology. “Not at all. I’d be just as confused to find a strange woman on my property,” she paused and then tilted her head toward the villa. “There are clean sheets in the closets of each room. I stopped making the beds some years ago—but I do wash the bedding every other moon. You’ll have to light the boiler if you want hot water. Oh! And run the taps for a bit before you drink the water—I haven’t done that in a while.”
