by Eva Chase
“How long is that going to take, though? It’s not just me. All the other witches they’re hurting or might be, while we’re poking around at files, doing our best to scrounge up even a little evidence we can use… I’m not saying I think we should do anything cruel.”
Gabriel’s hand stroked up and down my back. “What are you saying, Rose?”
“I guess just… I want to be ready. For anything I might have to do. I’m just one witch, and Frankford has a couple dozen families on his side, some of them powerful ones, not to mention the demons and whatever power they offer.”
“It’s not just you,” he said gently. “You have the other witches who’ve come here. They’d help if you asked them. And you have us. You always have us.”
My throat tightened. I hugged him and tipped my head up for a kiss. He offered that without hesitation, his fingers teasing into my hair as the heat of his mouth washed through me. I gripped his shirt and eased up on my toes to kiss him even harder.
The memory of kissing another guy in here tickled up in the back of my head. The things I’d talked about with Jin, after. When we eased apart, just a few inches, I asked, “Do you still have that page from my book? The one I called you back here with?”
Until he’d shown up that day, I hadn’t known for sure he even still had that token I’d given him. While the other four guys had stayed in town, Gabriel had been gone for years when I’d first gotten back. It’d been too painful for him to stay after his father’s depression and suicide.
But he’d been missing from a group, like a hole no amount of closeness between the rest of us could fill. I’d reached out to him, urging him to return to us, with the faint glow of magic I’d managed to kindle with the other guys before we’d been officially consorted. And he’d shown up a couple of weeks later with the folded page in his hand.
Jin didn’t have his page anymore. It would have burned up with everything else in that fire. That thought sent a jab of bitterness through me. I hoped I’d ruined at least one thing really dear to Helen Frankford’s heart too.
“Of course I do,” Gabriel said. “It’s tucked away in my wallet right now. What, did you think I was going to throw it out?”
A blush warmed my face. “Well, no.”
He kissed my cheek. “It brought me back to you. I’d like to know it always could again.”
I cupped his face and brought his lips to mine. A sharper desire rang through me as our mouths melded together. Making love with more than one of my consorts together was something special, but sometimes it was a thrill to focus all my attention on just one of them.
“Maybe more practice can wait,” I murmured. “Would you care to join me in the master bedroom? I have an, um, engine that could use revving.”
Gabriel cracked up with a sputter of startled laughter. Before I could join in, he was kissing me again. “You,” he muttered affectionately. He swept me off my feet into his arms as if he planned on carrying me to the bedroom.
“Gabriel,” I said, half pleased, half protesting. We did still have to keep in mind appearances for the staff.
“I know.” He stopped when he reached the door, kissing me up against it, his hand easing over my hip. Then he set me down. “Let’s make sure the coast is clear.”
I edged open the door and peeked out. No one in the upstairs hall. No sound of anyone puttering around up here. I grinned and grabbed Gabriel’s hand, pulling him with me.
We were two steps from the bedroom door when the buzzer for the gate sounded from below.
I stopped with a groan. The chances that whoever had come calling wanted to see anyone other than me were slim to none.
Gabriel kissed the top of my head. “We’d better go find out who it is,” he said, his voice easy but his body tensed. It could be someone Frankford had sent again. It could be another investigator from the Assembly. The list of bad possibilities was a lot longer than the list of good ones.
I peered down the drive from the window at the front of the house, but I didn’t recognize the car: a navy sedan with styling that looked at least ten years out of date. Whoever had reached out to signal the buzzer was hidden behind the reflections on the windshield now.
Frowning, I headed downstairs. Gabriel came with me, falling back at the sight of the single member of my current cleaning staff just emerging from the living room. Imogen bounded out of the kitchen a moment later.
“Who’s here now?” she asked, her bright red curls bouncing around her face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you stay in here until I figure that out?”
The younger witch nodded sharply. We’d had a brief talk earlier about which places were and weren’t necessarily safe. I worried about her more than Lesley, who could have defended herself magically at least a little. I wasn’t sure how brightly the other witch’s spark was still lit since her consort’s death, but it was at least kindled. Imogen had never been consorted at all.
The camera feed by the gate control, which had blinked on at the buzz, showed our visitor was still in the car. Bracing myself, I pushed open the door and hurried down the front drive.
She got out when I was halfway there: a tall skinny woman in a slim pantsuit, her posture elegant but a little stiff. A few streaks of gray wove through her cloud of frizzy brown hair. She bit her lip and then seemed to catch herself, releasing it, as I got closer. She looked about as old as my Aunt Ginny, Naomi’s mother: mid-forties, maybe. But there was a weariness in her eyes that struck me as much older than that. My chest clenched.
“Can I help you?” I said.
Her gaze burrowed into me. “Lady Hallowell?” she said. “You’re the one taking in witches who need asylum?”
No one had put it that way before, but I guessed that was what I was doing. “Yes,” I said. “Is that what you’re here for? Are you okay?” The longer I looked at her, the more I got the impression that the stiffness in her stance was the only thing holding her upright—that if she’d relaxed for a second, she might have collapsed.
She hesitated, and then she said, “Yes. Yes, I think so. I think I’d better come in— If it’s all right.”
I couldn’t see anything threatening about her. But recent events made me even more cautious. “I just need to be sure—will you offer a truth-magicking? Just to confirm why you’re here.”
She nodded as if she’d expected that. A hint of power crackled into her next words. “I give my oath that I mean no one here any harm. I’m here because I had to get away from… from what was happening to me.”
The magic twanged off-key with those last words in a way that jarred against my nerves. I swallowed hard. She had a spell binding her from talking about “what had happened”—I could feel it. A sudden certainty swelled inside me.
“They’ve used you, haven’t they?” I murmured. “At the Cliff…”
A flash of panic crossed her face, so stark and raw I almost wished I hadn’t said anything. That was confirmation enough. I hit the control to open the gate.
“Thank you,” she said, sinking back into the driver’s seat. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I—I cast a spell to cover my tracks. They shouldn’t be able to tell I’ve come here, even if they’re watching.”
So they couldn’t bring her back to more of whatever they’d already done to her. “It’s no trouble at all,” I said firmly. I backed up to give her room to drive in, horror reverberating through me.
They’d used her a lot, the Frankfords and their faction. Drained her almost dry. How often had she faced the demons in the portal, been forced to contend with their nausea-inducing power?
That could have been me. If Dad had succeeded in his plans, if he’d managed to rope me into that deadly consorting with Derek or anyone he’d found to replace him… In another twenty years, I might have looked like she did now.
I glanced back at Gabriel, who’d been waiting near the garage. The same understanding was etched on his face. “Maybe I’d better talk to her alon
e,” I said. After the way her consort must have treated her, I didn’t know how much she’d want to see any male face.
He bobbed his head. “I’ll be in my apartment if you need me.”
I waited close by the car as the woman got out in case she needed any physical support. She walked toward the house at a slow and stiff but steady pace. A few times, her head twitched around to check the gate now closed behind us.
“I’m not sure…” she said. “I think the spell I worked will be enough. But you never know. They have so many ways...”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re here now. They can’t do anything about that. What’s your name?”
“Thalia Ainsworth,” she said.
I stopped in my tracks at the bottom of the front steps. “Ainsworth?” I said. “You’re not—Tom Ainsworth’s wife?” He was another of my father’s associates, not as close as the Frankfords or the Almeidas, but he’d been at many of our Portland gatherings. His wife and consort, he’d always claimed in a fond sort of way, preferred to stay home and read, she disliked socializing so much. I’d envied her. But that wasn’t why he’d kept her out of the public eye, clearly.
I should have realized. I’d seen his name in the Frankfords’ files but not his consort’s.
Her lips pressed into what was only a smidgeon of a smile. “That I am. At least until I can sever that bond officially.”
She’d started to sway a bit where she was standing. I grasped her elbow to usher her up the steps. “Okay. Why don’t you just rest for a bit, and then we’ll figure out what we can do for you?” Imogen poked her head into the hall as we came in, and I motioned her back. I wasn’t sure how Thalia would react to meeting more strangers right now.
“There isn’t much to do,” Thalia murmured, almost dreamily. “They take the power… They want to be like us. Men aren’t meant to be witches.”
I almost halted again in shock. Was she saying that the men were trying to take—or did take—the demons’ power right into themselves? So they could work a sort of magic of their own?
“Is that what they do in the cave?” I said cautiously.
She opened her mouth and winced. “I can’t… I can’t really talk about it.”
I knew that feeling too well.
“I know. I’m sorry. Here, we’ve got another bedroom free upstairs. We’ll see how much we can talk when you’re feeling up to it. For now, just focus on recovering.”
If she even could recover from what they’d put her through. As I helped her up the stairs, the emotions churning inside me squeezed into a hard ball of fear—and rage.
How dare they do this to any witch? And every second I let it continue, I was helping them.
Chapter Twelve
Seth
Maybe fixing up other people’s houses wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life, but there was still something comforting about the smell of pine sawdust and the feel of the solid wood against my hands. I hefted another board into place, holding it while my father drilled in the screws. He stepped past me to the other side to repeat the task and then nodded.
“There. That’s the end of that.” He motioned to the truck parked in the driveway. “Would you grab the first packs of insulation?”
“Are you using that scratch as an excuse to slack off?” I said jokingly. A bandage was wrapped tight around his left wrist. The truth was, from what I’d heard, it was more than a scratch. He’d needed ten stitches where he’d lost his grip on the saw for a second. If his reflexes had been any slower, he could have lost his whole hand. But he’d ribbed me enough growing up that I figured it was my job to pay him back when I could.
He grinned at me. “Doctor’s orders! I have to admit it’s easier to take it easy when you’re around.”
His voice was light, but a prickle ran through my chest at what he’d left unsaid. I hadn’t been there to actually see his accident because I’d dropped down to three days a week working with the family business instead of five. The other free days I’d been spending my usual work time visiting property offices, checking out blueprints—basically digging up everything I could about every property the Frankfords and their known associates owned. If there was a gap we could exploit to expose them there, I was going to find it.
But that had meant Dad was relying a little more on the apprentice he was training in.
I hefted a bale of insulation out of the truck and carried it over, setting it with a thump by the frame of the addition we were building. Right now the structure didn’t look like much more than a wooden skeleton, but when we were done, the Nelsons would have a whole new family room off the back of their house.
They’d scheduled the reno for while they were visiting relatives out of state so they didn’t have to deal with the noise and the mess while we did our work. There were positives and negatives to absent clients. No spontaneous offers of free coffee or donuts, sure. But also no one peering over our shoulders making suggestions based on approximately zero knowledge of construction.
“What have you been up to the last few days anyway, Seth?” Dad said as he joined me. “I know something’s obviously keeping you very busy.”
I weighed my words before answering. Kyler had mentioned our mom laying into him a bit about the time he’d been spending with Rose—and that he’d hinted I might be seeing her too. She’d probably passed that information on to Dad. But he wasn’t the type to outright pry about my love life.
“Just some independent projects,” I said. “Pretty intensive stuff, but mostly research and planning at this stage.”
“Not anything you can discuss with your old man?” he said a little teasingly.
“That’s right,” I said, matching his tone. “Top secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
He laughed and pulled up his mask as he leaned over the bale of insulation. It muffled his voice, but I could still hear him clearly enough. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found something of your own to occupy yourself with. I can’t imagine you really wanted to spend the next twenty years with your dad for a boss. But I do miss having you on hand for some of these jobs. You’re still the best employee I’ve ever had.”
A knot of emotion formed in my chest. “You’ve been a damn good boss too,” I said. “The whole dad thing aside. But do you really figure you’re still going to be at this in twenty years? What about retiring?”
He laughed. “Oh, Lord, can you imagine? I’d be so bored—I’d drive your mother crazy around the house. I can already picture it. No, I’ll make it thirty more if I can still handle the tools well enough when I’m eighty.”
I rolled my eyes at him with a shake of my head, but I was smiling behind my own mask. It was hard imagining Dad just sitting around at home without anything to build or remodel. He’d probably end up refitting the whole house. They’d end up with five stories and ten additions and no more back yard.
We worked in silence for several minutes as we fitted the insulation into place along the one wall. The sky was overcast but not too thickly clouded—just enough to press the summer heat down on us. My breath turned the air inside my mask even more humid. Sweat trickled along the side of my face and down my back, only cooling me a bit in the sluggish breeze.
“We’ll want to cover this whole area up before we leave tonight,” Dad said, stepping back to survey our work so far. “That haze could turn into storm clouds in a blink.”
“The extra tarp is in the truck,” I said.
He pointed a playful finger at me. “This is why I need you around. You think of these things.”
He took another step backwards, turning to where the new back door would be, and the frame shifted with a sharp cracking sound.
“Dad!” I leapt toward him instinctively, but the whole back end of the addition was already collapsing in on him. Several pounds of hard wood battered his head and back. He lurched and crumpled under them.
One of the boards clipped my shoulder. I dodged and threw myself forward again, gr
asping the fallen slabs at the top of the heap. The splintered ends rasped against each other.
Dad groaned. I tossed one and then another board aside, heaving them off him as quickly as I could. My lungs were so clenched up I could hardly force air into them. “Dad, are you okay?” I called.
He didn’t answer me. His face had gone slack where he was slumped on the ground. His chest was still rising with halting breaths, but blood was seeping from a blow to his temple where his head had hit the concrete foundation, and more was trickling through his hair from wounds I couldn’t see. My heart stuttered painfully. No. Fuck, no. We’d just been talking about thirty more years.
I hauled the last few boards covering him out of the way. He still hadn’t moved. I moved to kneel beside him, to grasp his arm, and then hesitated. What if I hurt him more by accident?
I fumbled in my pocket, almost forgetting to yank down my mask before I whipped my phone to my ear. 9-1-1. I’d never needed to use that number before today.
A responder answered with a decisive even voice. “What is your emergency?”
“My dad. We were doing some construction work, and a bunch of the frame fell on him. He’s unconscious—bleeding…” I couldn’t tell if I was making much sense.
Her next words drifted through my head as I answered her questions automatically. There wasn’t room for much in there except for the thudding of my pulse and the image of Dad sprawled motionless beside me.
“Don’t try to move him,” the woman said. “That could exacerbate any injuries. It’s a good sign that he’s breathing. If you’ve got something reasonably clean you can press to any wounds that are bleeding to stop the flow, do that. Otherwise, hang tight and be ready to reassure him if he comes to. Don’t let him try to get up until the paramedics arrive. The ambulance is on its way.”
A good sign that he was breathing. I held onto that as I squatted down next to my father. I wrapped a spare shirt from the truck around his head as tightly as I dared, and then I couldn’t do anything for him except wait. Wait and watch his chest hoping it kept rising.
