by Eva Chase
“Do you want a ride over to your mother’s place?”
“Nah, I can walk that.” I hefted the bag I’d brought with me out of the back of Seth’s pick-up truck. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this visit either. It’d be even worse if she started complaining in front of him.
But even if I was frustrated with Mom, I wanted her safe. The painting I had in this bag should be one step toward that. Not enough, but I knew Rose was doing everything she could.
The muscles in my arms were starting to ache by the time I’d carried the heavy painting through the streets to my mother’s house. After my conversation with Seth, I was even more aware of the occasional figure by a drawn curtain, noting my passing. Although maybe any gossip about me now would be more along the lines of, “The poor Lyang boy, did you hear about his art gallery?” with plenty of hand-wringing on the side.
I’d rather that than them discussing my love life.
I knocked on the screen door of my parents’ house and then walked right in. I’d texted Mom, so she knew to expect me. “I’m here,” I said. “And I brought something for you.”
Mom emerged from the living room. Her smile looked a bit strained. “Jin,” she said, “I don’t need presents.”
“I think you’ll appreciate this,” I said in my breeziest tone. “You were worried about my creative growth being stunted. Well, now you have definitive proof that I’m still making art.”
I carried the bagged painting into the living room and glanced around. Rose had said the magic would work best where it could draw on the energy of sunlight as well. She’d adjusted the spell to try to increase its protective power that way. I’d already known the perfect spot for it.
“Can I take that down?” I said, motioning to the impressionist landscape she had hanging over the couch. “If you decide you don’t like mine, we can switch them back.”
“All right,” Mom said, but she fidgeted with her hands as I stepped onto the couch to unhook the painting from where it was mounted. “You know, producing one painting doesn’t change the point I was trying to make. It’s about the whole artistic spirit, the creative drive. I think there’s a reason so many artists are pretty much married to their work. That’s what’s best for the art. If you turn all that devotion onto a person instead, you just don’t have the emotional energy you need.”
Oh Lord, I’d hoped she wouldn’t start in on this right away. “Mom,” I said. “Can we not talk about that right now? I’m trying to do something nice for you here. And I am still devoted to my art. You really don’t have to worry.”
“I have to say something. You don’t think it’s awfully strange that while she’s distracting you from your work, your gallery mysteriously catches fire? Do you think she really wants to compete with a passion like—”
I set the painting down with a louder thump than I’d intended and spun around. “Are you seriously suggesting that Rose might have arranged for my gallery to be burned down because she’s jealous of my art?”
“Well, I…” Mom faltered a little at the sharpness of my voice, but I could tell from the flash of her eyes that she had meant exactly that. “How well do you really know her, Jin?”
“More than well enough,” I said. “And you should know her better than that too. Just stop, okay. Let me get this up.” And then I’d probably be leaving again, because I sure as hell wasn’t sitting through more of this conversation. For fuck’s sake, didn’t she remember how Rose had come here just a couple months ago offering everything she could to make up for how her dad had abruptly fired Mom?
I tugged the bag off my painting and lifted it to set it in place on the wall.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s not about what you want,” Mom started in again. “It’s about—”
The painting tapped against the wall and settled into place. My mother’s voice faded. She looked at it, and at the sun streaming through the window, and rubbed her forehead. Her expression clouded. “What was I saying?” she said. “There was something important, but it just escaped me.”
I stepped down from the couch and studied her. “Are you okay, Mom? You were talking about my art, and Rose.”
“Oh. Yes.” She paused, still looking bewildered. Her gaze went back to the painting. A smile crossed her face. “That’s lovely, Jin. Thank you. Are you sure you don’t want it for when you get a new gallery set up?”
Her sudden change in demeanor was unnerving. I kept watching her warily. “No, I made this specially for you. Actually, Rose helped a little.” In magical rather than artistic ways.
Mom’s face brightened more. “Did she? I’m so glad you’ve found someone as supportive as she obviously is.”
What the hell was going on? Had someone just replaced my mother’s brain?
I looked around the room, and it hit me. Maybe someone had—but not right now. This was how I’d have expected Mom to talk before she’d started getting all strange about Rose.
What if those thoughts hadn’t really come from her head? What if some magic had been stirring up paranoia and distrust? A magic the protective spell on the painting had just disrupted.
My heart started to thud faster. The Frankfords had been acting against us in ways so subtle I hadn’t even realized. What might they have been doing to the other guys and their families? To the whole town, for all we knew?
I had to get back to the manor. Rose needed to know this—everyone needed to know.
But first I had to say one more thing to Mom, for the parts of her that paranoia had fed on.
“Sit down for a second,” I said. “I’ve got to go, but there’s something I want to talk about with you first.”
She frowned as we sat on the couch together. “Is something the matter?”
“No, Mom. It’s just…” I dragged in a breath. “I know you care a lot about seeing me pursue my passion for art, just like Dad has always been wrapped up in his music. You want me to find someone who’s going to be my support, like you’ve been for him.”
“Of course,” Mom said.
“And that’s fine. But I think—” My mind drifted to the forms I’d done with Rose, that dance of magic where we’d seemed to move in perfect harmony with each other, and a rush of warmth filled my chest. “I think maybe I’ll be happy sometimes being the supportive one for someone else. I want that kind of relationship in my life, one where I’m helping someone else achieve what they need to, too. So I don’t want you to worry that just because I’m not setting off to indulge my creativity all around the world every other month that it means I’m losing my art. I’m always going to have that passion. I don’t want to chase it quite the way Dad does; that’s all. Okay?”
Mom looked at me for a long moment. Then she clasped my hand with a quick squeeze. “You’re a good boy, Jin,” she said. “No, I should say a good man. You know what you need in your life. You go chase that, and as long as I can see that joy in you, I’ll be happy for you.”
The tension in my chest loosened. For a moment, even with everything I’d just learned, the battle ahead of us didn’t feel quite so hopeless.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rose
“Is it okay if everyone stays?” I asked Jin. “I want the other witches to start feeling like more a part of what we’re doing.”
My artist glanced across the family room to where my guests had gathered. Lesley was perched at the edge of one of the sofas, her hands clasped on her lap. Imogen sat at the other end, her arm dangling over the side. Thalia hovered behind them. Every minute or so she paced a few steps, as if she didn’t feel comfortable staying totally still.
“I guess we’re a little past the point of total secrecy,” Jin said with half a smile. He dropped his voice so they couldn’t hear. “I don’t think anything I want to talk about should conflict with the oath. And maybe they’ll have some insight that’ll help us.”
He’d called my remaining consorts together here in the manor too. The twins were sitting on the ot
her sofa, Seth’s forehead furrowed and Kyler’s foot tapping against the floor nervously. Damon was slouched in one of the armchairs. His dark blue eyes looked even more shadowed than usual. Jin hadn’t said yet what he wanted to talk about, but it was clear he thought it was important. And when the most carefree spirit of our group got serious, it was hard not to worry.
The manor’s cook had baked fresh tarts for this get-together, but even with the crisp lemon-sugar smell drifting off their plate on the coffee table, no one had moved to take one. I guessed we were all too tense.
Everyone’s eyes followed Jin and me as we moved from the doorway to join the group. I sank onto the sofa between Seth and Ky, taking comfort in their presence, and Jin dropped into an armchair.
“I might as well get right to the point,” he said. “In the last week or so, my mother has been making comments about Rose—the time that I’m spending with her, how committed I might be to her… Comments trying to convince me that I shouldn’t be seeing her.”
My back stiffened. “Jin,” I started, but he held up his hand.
“You need to hear all of this,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it sounds—and, well, maybe it’s worse too. I thought there must just be a lot of gossip going around town, and that must be provoking a side of her I hadn’t really seen before… But I brought a painting with protective magic to her house this afternoon. As soon as I got it up on the wall, she couldn’t even remember what she’d been upset about. She went back to sounding like herself.”
Not as bad and also worse, he’d said. I could see what he’d meant now. “She wasn’t really upset,” I said. “There must have been magic acting on her that the protective spell interfered with.”
Imogen’s eyes widened. Thalia had stopped in the middle of another pacing moment, leaning her arms on the back of the sofa. On either side of me, the twins exchanged a glance.
“That’s what I have to think,” Jin said. “And I have to think if our adversaries were trying to stir up her paranoias, they probably went after all of our families.”
That wouldn’t have applied to Gabriel, since his dad was dead and he had no contact with his mother. But the other guys…
Ky shifted on the sofa, his head ducking awkwardly. “I didn’t want to talk about it, because it didn’t change anything about how I felt,” he said. “But my mom started hassling me about how much time I’ve been spending up here a couple weeks ago.”
Seth grimaced. “She’s laid into me too. My dad even made a few harsher comments the last time I saw him… If the spells are directed at the house, that makes sense, since she’s home a lot more than he is.”
My heart squeezed. “You didn’t tell me they were giving you a hard time.”
“Like Ky says, there wasn’t any point,” Seth said. “You’d have felt bad about it. We knew it wasn’t going to be possible to avoid rumors altogether. We were prepared to get some comments.”
“I’ve heard my grandmother talk about a spell like that,” Lesley put in, her voice quiet but steady. “She told this story about how when the Assembly wanted to help a lot of unsparked people during an approaching emergency, one quick way was to make them feel more fearful, so they’d react to the earlier smaller signs of danger and get out of there faster. But sometimes that could backfire and they’d end up freaking out over totally unrelated things.”
Thalia was nodding, her mouth tight. As if she knew of those spells but couldn’t talk about them. Because she’d seen or heard her husband and his associates using that strategy?
I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t talk about the oath in front of the other witches, but that explained how the Frankfords’ people could have gotten around it. A general spell to increase apprehension could be framed as something helpful, not harmful. But they could easily have guessed that the guys’ parents would be sensitive to rumors of a strange relationship with a woman who wasn’t really part of the town.
It wasn’t just paranoia. If that was the sort of spell that’d been used on the guys’ parents, then it was feeding off concerns they really did have about me, deep down. How much were those concerns exaggerated and how much had their comments been truths they simply wouldn’t have said otherwise?
“I was working on the tokens to lay around the property,” Jin said, “but I’m thinking I’ll put that on hold to get a bunch more paintings done for you all to bring to your parents’ houses. Maybe their workplaces too? We’ll just need to talk about what they’d be willing to display, or if I need to make smaller ones that you could just tuck away somewhere, that sort of thing. I can get a bunch done tonight and tomorrow if I don’t get too ambitious in size.”
Damon hadn’t said anything during the entire exchange. “Have you visited your mom recently?” I asked him. “How’s she doing?”
He shrugged, his gaze flicking away from me for a second. “Pretty much the same. Can’t hurt to make sure her apartment is protected too, though.”
From the tension in his shoulders, I had the feeling there was something more on his mind. But Damon wasn’t always a fan of group sharing. I’d have to nudge him about it the next time we were alone.
“I don’t understand,” Imogen burst out. “Why won’t these people just leave you alone? You’re not doing anything.”
My mouth slanted at a pained angle as I looked at the younger witch. “They’re worried about what we could do. What we wanted to do. We know things they don’t want anyone outside their circle knowing, and that means we’re a threat as long as we’re around at all.”
She shuddered, her curls rustling. “It seems like there’s nothing you can even do.”
“We can do this,” I said. “Construct as many protections as possible, ward them off in every direction we can. And—”
My phone chimed with an incoming text. I pulled it out, expecting to see a message from Naomi, who was the only person who even had the number for the burner phone I used for my more confidential conversations other than my consorts.
It came up as an unknown number. Is this Rose Hallowell?
Ky leaned over to peer at the screen. “They’ve cloaked their number.”
“Can you get around that, figure out who it is?” I asked.
“Maybe. Depends on what method they’re using.” He grabbed his tablet, which he never let get very far from his side. “The more texts you can get them to send, the better. More activity I can try to trace.”
I nodded. “It could be a witch who needs help. Naomi might have passed the number on.” Even as I said that, though, I didn’t really believe it. Naomi might like to joke around about our situation, but she took it very seriously underneath. She hadn’t compromised the security of this number with anyone before.
It is, I wrote back. Who is this?
We waited in silence for the reply. Jin scooted closer on his chair to watch. A long text popped up on the screen a minute later.
That doesn’t matter. All you need to think about is that it’s more than time for you to back down from this ridiculous fight. You know how outnumbered and outclassed you are. The longer you stretch this out, the worse things will get for you and everyone around you.
My stomach flipped over. Definitely not someone asking for help. “Wonderful,” I said. “Now they’re sending anonymous threats. How did they even—”
Oh. I knew how they’d gotten this number. Gabriel must have told them. The sharp retort I’d been forming faltered.
He really had gone over to them if he was giving them information like this.
Ky tucked his arm around my back with a reassuring squeeze that suggested he’d connected the same dots. “I’ll pick you up another burner they won’t know the number to,” he said.
“Should I answer this? Keep them talking?” I asked.
He nodded. “As long as you can stomach it. Maybe they’ll let something useful slip in the conversation too. Act like you don’t believe them.”
“Yeah,” Damon said with a vicious grin. “Provoke them and see
what you get.”
“If you want me to do the talking,” Seth started to offer.
I shook my head even though my throat had clenched. “I can handle this.” I should be able to do at least this much.
We’ve dealt with everything you’ve thrown at us so far, I typed back. Somehow I’m not so worried.
This reply came back faster. And yet your own consorts are no longer so devoted. Even they think you need to be stopped. Look who I have right here with me.
A photo came through in crisp color: Gabriel, sitting to the side of what looked like a dining table. He was looking at something off camera, not toward me, but my heart lurched anyway. I almost dropped the phone.
Ky took it from me, gently extricating it from my tensed fingers. “Do you recognize the place?” he asked, his voice gentle too. “Do you know where he is?”
I forced myself to check the photograph again. The phone was zoomed in enough that there wasn’t much to see around Gabriel except the end of the table and a cabinet with a glazed clay pot and a brass pendulum clock. The wall above the cabinet was painted a plain beige. Nothing about it looked familiar.
“If I’ve ever been there, I don’t remember it.”
Thalia skirted the other sofa and came up beside ours. Ky offered her the phone. She studied the photo, and her eyes widened.
“I know it,” she said. “In the basement. Their house in Portland. The…” She stumbled around something whatever spells they’d laid on her prevented her from saying. “Meetings,” she managed finally. “So many meetings.”
“The Frankfords’ house?” I said, watching her expression.
Her jaw tightened. She couldn’t quite nod, but her unwavering gaze was answer enough.
“Wait,” Lesley said, sitting up straighter. “Charles and Helen Frankford?”
“It could be one of them sending these texts,” Ky said. “We’ve got a location, at least.” He tapped away at his tablet.
“Yes,” I said to Lesley, because I could at least confirm that. I took the phone back from Ky and typed quickly, trying not to look at the photo.
