by Eva Chase
An engine growled in the distance, but it was Jin’s car that turned down the drive. I watched him and Naomi join us with a mix of relief and nerves. The longer we waited for the Assembly officials, the more chances the Frankfords would have to uncover our real plan and act against us.
“Seth says they’ve handled all the guards who came their way,” Ky reported, looking up from his phone. “We’re good there.”
The show was ready. We just needed our main audience.
The sound of another engine reached my ears—and another. My pulse sped up. Three sleek sedans turned onto the drive. They purred toward us and stopped several feet from the house.
Gwen Remington got out of the car at the head of the bunch, a man I guessed was her assistant following. She looked us over with a frown as I stood up. “What the hell is going on here? Where is Charles Frankford?”
Justin Brimsey was getting out of the second car, Miriam Travers from the third. They were really here. We’d done it. I’d gotten them to cross tens of miles. Now I just needed them to walk another quarter of one, and the Frankfords’ faction would never get away with their awful scheme again.
“Charles and Helen Frankford aren’t who you think,” I said. “I asked you to come here so we could show you the horrifying things they’ve been keeping on their property.”
“You asked us to come,” Brimsey said. He took a step back toward his car. “You’re Rose Hallowell. I don’t think—”
“You know me, too, don’t you?” Thalia said, joining me. “Or at least you used to, before my consort…” She grappled with the words she couldn’t say for a moment before giving up. “You need to see what’s been happening here. I swear to you, we’re not the villains in this scenario.”
Honesty hummed through her voice. The Assembly officials exchanged a glance.
“Just come with me past those trees to the path down the cliff,” I said, pointing. “Or go by yourselves if you’d rather. You can arrest me first if you want to. But you have to at least look. You’ll see why this is so important. There’s a cave there, where there’s a spell giving dangerous beings access to our world.”
Another car pulled down the drive. I tensed for a second before I recognized the tan compact as the one Investigator Ruiz had arrived at my estate in. She parked behind the sedans and got out with another woman, both of them in enforcer sweats.
“What are you doing here?” Travers demanded.
“Lady Hallowell said she had information about a crime,” Ruiz said, nodding to me.
“Apparently we have to take a walk down a cliff to some cave with ‘dangerous beings’,” Brimsey said. “It all sounds like a lot of bluster to me. You lied to us to bring us out here, and—”
“It was the only way we could bring you to a place where we could prove what we need to,” Thalia interrupted. “By the Spark, I will lead you down there if that’s what you want.”
A shiver ran through her body as she spoke, so obvious Remington’s eyes widened.
“Please,” I said. “Why do you think we went to all this trouble? We’ve been fighting for our lives to make sure you see this.”
Ruiz stepped forward. “I want to have a look at whatever the hell this is. Whether the rest of you join me is up to you.” She jabbed her finger at me. “You stay here.”
I nodded, swallowing through my tightened throat. “After you’ve seen… it… I can explain some of what I know about it.”
She nodded sharply and walked on toward the trees. Remington wavered on her feet and then hurried after the investigator, motioning for her assistant to follow. Brimsey grimaced, but he shifted forward too.
And at the same moment, tires screeched as a gleaming SUV raced onto the driveway. Charles Frankford’s thin face leaned out the open window, the wind rippling through his slate gray hair.
“Stop right there! Stop this, all of you!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gabriel
Pebbles rattled against the SUV’s undercarriage. I couldn’t see the speedometer from where I’d been shooed into the back seat between two of Charles Frankford’s guards-on-staff, but I could tell he had his driver racing us down the country roads way faster than the legal limit.
I didn’t know what he’d heard when he’d gotten that call. He’d been pacing in the stately living room of his Portland house, alternating between glaring at his phone waiting for updates from Seattle and glaring at me while he barked questions about what I thought Rose might do next, and the second he’d answered that last ring, his face had gone white with rage. He’d stepped out of the room with a slam of the door and returned a few minutes later.
“You,” he’d said with a snap of his fingers. “Come.” Like I was a dog.
But that was essentially what I was pretending to be here, what I wanted him to see me as: a poor stupid mutt who’d gotten so scared I’d run off with my tail between my legs, only realizing hours later that I had nothing left but the clothes on my back. Nowhere to turn but to the one person I knew for sure stood against the woman I was supposedly terrified by. So I’d followed him to the car.
It wasn’t that hard to act as if I were terrified when it came to Rose. The Frankfords didn’t know me or her well enough to realize I was terrified for her, not of her.
She wouldn’t really have tried to hurt this kid, his grandson, would she? I hadn’t gotten a clear picture from what Frankford had said of what exactly he’d heard or she’d done, but it’d sounded like the boy was still fine. If Rose had actually wanted to attack him, I was pretty sure she’d have succeeded before the Frankfords ever got wind of it.
It was a diversion. A ploy. Please, dear Lord, let it be a ploy.
I’d managed to get those names to her, to point to that meeting place where the Frankfords had hauled me and had me retell my story about how unstable and aggressive Rose was becoming, how I was worried about what she might do next in her vendetta against her father and his colleagues. A story I could tell where the Frankfords couldn’t speak against her because of the oath. I’d made myself useful enough to get what I needed.
I hoped I hadn’t done too good a job of convincing the other Assembly people. They hadn’t looked as if they thought much of what some unsparked former employee had to say. Honestly, they’d seemed a little fed up with the Frankfords’ dramatics. And the Frankfords had been nervous. They saw that bunch of witching people as a threat. So I’d taken the opening I’d seen. I’d been waiting too long already.
The landscape outside the window started to look familiar. I caught a glimpse of the blue stretch of the ocean, and my stomach lurched.
We weren’t heading to Seattle to see some horror Rose had visited on a seven-year-old boy. We were heading to the Cliff, to something even more horrible.
Had she come out here to try to destroy the cave after all? Had his guards caught her and whoever she’d brought with her? Why had Frankford wanted me here?
He might have suspected Rose was about to strike here. I’d heard him and his wife talking about a trip he’d made out here just last night. Helen Frankford had left for Seattle as soon as they’d heard of the threat. I guessed I should be glad for that. Of the two of them, she was the one with the magic. But there was an unnerving energy that radiated off of Charles sometimes, when he was angry or particularly happy, that took me back to that moment in the cave when the demonic face had loomed through the glowing portal and I’d been a hair’s breadth from pissing my pants.
Frankford muttered something to the driver. The engine thrummed with an erratic rhythm that meant it was being pushed to its limits. Somehow I didn’t think the witching man was going to appreciate me piping up with mechanical advice.
I leaned back in the seat, keeping my breath as steady as I could, considering my options. It was difficult to prepare when I didn’t know what was waiting for us or what Frankford planned to do with me. All I knew for sure was that I had to be ready to make a move in an instant. If he tried to hurt Rose, I had
to stop him. That was all there was to it.
“There, there, let’s go!” Frankford snapped. The driver hauled on the wheel. As the SUV swayed around a bend, Frankford sent his window whirring down. Warm salty air flooded into the air-conditioned space. Frankford leaned out the window, his shoulders so tense you’d have thought a stiff wind like that could snap them.
“Stop right there! Stop this, all of you!”
The middle seat, where two more guards were sitting, blocked my view of the windshield. Who was he shouting at like that? I braced myself in my seat. I couldn’t do much with the guards on either side of me, but they’d get up as soon as the car stopped, right? Then I might have a chance, if there was anything at all I could do.
The SUV jolted to a halt. Frankford was throwing open his door before the engine had even fallen silent. He motioned for the guards with a jerking motion of his arm. The women on either side of me did get up—but not before the one at my right had clamped her well-muscled hand around my forearm. She yanked me up with her.
I scrambled after her, the metallic taste of adrenaline sharp in my mouth. What the hell was going on? The guards up front heaved open the back door and spilled out ahead of us. My guard dragged me out into the hot mid-day sun to face a cluster of startled-looking figures.
My gaze went straight to Rose. God, it wasn’t much more than a week since I’d last been in her presence, but every part of me ached at the sight of her, as if I’d been deprived of a substance as vital as water that was now in reach. Her dark hair lifted in the breeze as her head jerked around. When our eyes met, pain flashed across her face. An echo of it jabbed into me like a knife.
I’d been afraid from the first moment I’d come back into town that I’d cause her pain like that, but I’d never thought I’d end up doing it purposely.
I opened my mouth—and the guard who’d dragged me out shoved her hand against my throat. She wasn’t carrying a weapon, but she didn’t need to. I’d watched witches call forth incredible forces with just a twitch of their fingers. The threat couldn’t be more clear.
This was why Frankford had brought me. I wasn’t a resource to him anymore. I was a hostage. My life for Rose’s compliance.
Rose’s mouth tightened further as she caught the gesture and the guard’s glower. I tried to move, and the woman’s hand clamped down harder. She might crush my windpipe without any help from her magic at all.
“What by the Spark is going on here, Charles?” a woman I’d met briefly at the Den of Spades—Gwen Remington—was saying. “This young woman is saying—”
“I’m sure she’s making up all kinds of stories,” Frankford said. His voice came out smooth, only a hint of a tremor in it. I hoped the others would hear it. “Clearly Lady Hallowell’s animosity has carried even farther than I imagined.”
“I haven’t made up anything,” Rose said. “They can see for their own eyes what I saw here a month ago. If there’s nothing there, you shouldn’t care if they take a look.”
Another woman stepped forward, the middle-aged witch I’d met briefly when she’d arrived at Rose’s estate just before I’d left it. Frankford’s stance tensed at the sight of her. “Lady Ainsworth,” he said quickly, before she could speak. “Has she roped you into her delusions too? My colleagues, you really must—”
“You can’t dismiss me just like that,” the older witch said in a taut voice. “Don’t you dare stop this. Your time is up. Maybe I can’t talk, but I can fight.”
“Now, then, this doesn’t need to come to blows,” one of the other Assembly officials—Justin Brimsey—said, holding up his hands.
“It won’t if these criminal intruders are removed from my home.” Frankford turned to Rose and shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You threaten my grandson, break onto my property, and you’re still making demands? You belong tied up in a cell where you can’t hurt anyone else. Keep in mind what’s at stake here for you too.”
He made a subtle gesture, and the guard holding me shifted her other hand in what must have been a threatening gesture, the beginnings of a spell. Rose’s whole body stiffened. He was counting on her still caring about me, regardless of how I’d betrayed her, and she did. Fucking hell, I didn’t deserve all the anguish that was etched on her face.
She’d fought so hard to get this far. Given so much of herself. I’d thrown myself into the fray to save her, not to be the one who brought her down.
“Do whatever you have to do,” I said. “I don’t matter.”
The guard’s hand jammed on my throat. But even as I choked, I caught a glimpse of the only thing I needed to see if I was going to die. Rose’s eyes held pain and fear, but a shimmer of understanding had crept into them.
She knew. She knew even though I’d hurt her that I’d been doing this for her all along.
She whipped out her arm so fast I wasn’t prepared. The guard wasn’t either. A spell slammed into the woman’s head from the side, and her grip loosened. One of the other guards leapt in to grab me, but Ky was already lunging at her with a stick he brandished like a club. I didn’t have time to wonder what he figured he’d accomplish with that. I hurled myself forward.
A magical grip caught my legs. Another spell smacked against the first. I stumbled as the strands of magic wrestled with each other.
“That’s enough!” one of the Assembly witches shouted, just as Rose made a slicing motion with her hand.
The pressure around my ankles shattered. I staggered toward her, and Jin tugged me into their midst between him and Rose.
My throat was still throbbing, but I had to use this moment of freedom, however short it might be.
I spun toward the Assembly officials. “I lied to you before. Frankford is the one who’s the real threat. You need to see what’s down the cliff.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rose
The other Assembly members looked bewildered, but Frankford’s face twisted into a mask of anger. “You,” he snarled. His gaze jerked from Gabriel to me, his eyes blazing. He smacked one hand against his chest and thrust both upward in a stiff mockery of a witching form. Three guttural syllables I didn’t understand burst from his lips, and then, “I forsake the oath I took.”
The air shivered between us. I had only a split-second to register what that declaration might mean, that he’d somehow been able to make it on his own without my agreement to dissolve the oath, when he was thrusting his arms toward me, sending a bolt of searing energy straight at my heart.
My hands leapt up to cast a shielding spell, but I couldn’t have spun it out fast enough. I would have died if Gabriel hadn’t realized what was happening. Even as Frankford sputtered out his words, my consort was reaching for me. The heat of that spear of magic singed my skin, and I was stumbling out of the way at my consort’s yank as he threw himself in front of me.
Gabriel buckled an instant later, a pained breath hissing through his teeth. His side was blackened and seeping blood where Frankford’s spell had hit him. Frankford growled and lifted his arms again—and Investigator Ruiz charged up to him, snatching his wrists and hauling them behind his back.
I dropped to the ground as Gabriel sank to his knees. My fingers fluttered over his wound, summoning the energy to seal it, to dull the pain, anything I could do. From the raggedness of his breath, I wasn’t sure it hadn’t hurt internal organs I didn’t have the slightest idea how to start mending.
“He needs a medic,” I shouted to anyone who’d listen, clutching my consort’s shoulder. “Fast! Please.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Gabriel mumbled. He managed to raise his head. Pain had tensed his features, but his gaze found mine and held it. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I love you. I always loved you. I always will.”
My eyes welled up. Around me, the meeting I’d set up had erupted into chaos. Voices clashed and hands waved. Kyler knelt next to me. He’d torn off his shirt and pressed it to the wound on Gabriel’s side.
“What do you need me to do?” he sai
d. “Who should I call?”
I didn’t know who the nearest medic was. There were a couple names I knew from Portland, but they wouldn’t come at some unsparked man’s request. I didn’t even know if they’d come at mine.
“Let me go,” Frankford was snapping at Ruiz.
She glared at him. “I witnessed an unauthorized use of hostile magic against an unprepared victim. This is my job.”
“How did you even do that?” Gwen Remington broke in. Her gaze twitched between us. This was the first time I’d ever seen a witching man cast magic of his own, so I’d bet it was a first for her too.
Not magic of his own. Magic he’d borrowed from those demons. My heart skipped a beat. He’d broken the oath. I could say anything I wanted about him now.
“He’s made a deal with the things in the cave down the cliff,” I said. “Him and a bunch of the other families—my father and the Almeidas and—I have a whole list of them, I have their records. They summoned monsters and they force them to give over power. They trick witches into unbalanced consortings and then force them to control the things.”
Frankford let out a scoffing laugh. “Listen to her. She’s completely delusional. An unprepared victim? I was defending my property and myself from this witch who’s determined to tear me down. I have a right to do that.”
“How many people have you torn down?” Damon retorted from where he was standing over me, his enchanted stick still gripped in his fist. “I’ve seen the files. I saw the creature down there. You’re as much a monster as it is.”
Frankford rolled his eyes toward the other Assembly officials. “And this is who she brings into her side. Unsparked men she’s dallying with. Impressionable young witches who don’t have the experience to know better. Jilted wives out for vengeance.” He nodded to Thalia.
