“Do you believe in magic?”
“Eamon.” Autumn’s tone was almost reprimanding. “Why are you asking me these things? What does this have to do with the people threatening me, who also kept you in the woods for five hours?”
“Everything.”
Flabbergasted, she threw one arm up, gesturing with her hand. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never seen anything magical happen. I mean, there are card tricks, but that’s not what you’re asking. If you’re asking if I think that people can wave a magic wand and make something supernatural happen, then, no, I guess not.” She looked at him expectantly. “I’m sitting here with a very sick child, Eamon, and I could really use some answers rather than questions.”
He nodded. “All right. But remember that you promised to trust me.”
“I did. I do.”
Autumn meant what she said—she did trust Eamon, almost instinctively, and whatever it was that he had to say to her, she would know that he did it with her best interest in mind. But as he began to speak in short, abbreviated sentences, telling her a story about invisibility shields, underwater forests filled with roaming animals, and disembodied voices, she found herself physically withdrawing. She leaned back in her chair, staring silently at Eamon as she hugged her arms to her chest in a subconscious gesture of protection.
“That’s what happened,” Eamon told her, looking her in the eye, clearly aware that she was recoiling from his words. “What you saw the other night was a meeting of a people with magical ability of some kind. Their power is immense. And they brought me into another world today to demonstrate that.”
She didn’t even know how to respond. Autumn knew that there was something not right about what she’d seen, but he was telling her, essentially, that she had stumbled upon a witch’s coven of some sort, and now they were out to kill her and her children with their magical powers. “Eamon…” Autumn bit her lip, not wanting to offend the man who had done so much for her, but needing him to understand also how ludicrous he was being. “Honey, did you ingest anything—anything at all—when you were in the woods? Either voluntarily or by force?”
“I wasn’t hallucinating, Autumn.”
“Even if you came into contact with something potent, it could have affected you,” she continued. “Did you feel nauseated or lightheaded at any point? It’s possible that there’s some sort of wild plant growing in there that produces this hallucinogenic effect.” Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward. “It could have affected both of us if it’s growing along the trail. I could have hallucinated the other night, and then you had a hallucination tonight, influenced by what I had told you.” She reached for her purse, starting to pull out her phone. “I have a friend whose husband is a botanist. I’m going to call her and see if he’ll do an inspection of the trail we were on. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. I—”
She stopped talking when Eamon reached out and stilled the hand that was gripping her phone. The look in his eyes as she looked into them sent chills through her, because there was so much honest openness there.
“I wasn’t hallucinating.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eamon
He had known that it wouldn’t be easy to tell Autumn what had happened, and he didn’t blame her for searching for any alternative explanation that would keep her from having to cope with the introduction of magic into her world on top of everything else she was going through. What made it even more difficult was that he’d had to edit the story, leaving out the fact that he had tried and failed to transition and that the shield had blocked his sensory abilities. The Dragon Clan had become laxer about its rule that no one was to ever know who and what they were, but there were still consequences to bringing someone into that secret, and Eamon was a cautious man.
After all, the only two people who they had ever told about the Dragon Clan were now fully invested in it, and almost a part of it, after falling in love and becoming the future mates of their respective inductee members.
Eamon believed in patterns, and it was almost as though anyone who learned of them was destined to follow the same path, and he wouldn’t do that to Autumn. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to be tied to him. As she sat there in her hospital chair, so delicate and petite, her wide eyes shadowed with exhaustion and her perfect little face lined with confusion, he thought she was beautiful. She was sweet, endearing, hardworking, and the way she could chatter on and on both mystified and intrigued him. If he thought only selfishly, he would be thrilled to consider the possibility that she might be on a path that showed that she was meant for him, but it wasn’t just about him. She had two small children and a life of her own that did not need a dragon shifter brought into the middle of it.
“How can you be so sure?” Autumn whispered, as he assured her once more that it was not a hallucination. “People who are hallucinating don’t know they’re hallucinating. That’s the point of hallucination. You’re not aware of reality.”
“I said you were going to have to trust me,” Eamon reminded her gently. “This is not the first time I’ve experienced a magical force, Autumn. It does exist. It’s all around us.”
Rachel stirred in her sleep, and Autumn quickly got up, fussing over her daughter. She checked the girl’s temperature and seemed pleased, and even Eamon, with no medical background could tell that the girl’s color looked better. Autumn said nothing, but he knew that she was pleased with how Rachel was progressing, and that gave him peace of mind.
Smiling down at her daughter’s sleeping face, Autumn stroked her hair back, kissed her forehead, and reached across the bed to grab Rachel’s doll and tuck it back in beside her.
When she’d fussed all she could, Autumn sat back down in her chair and met Eamon’s gaze. He waited patiently, knowing that her careful tending to her daughter in that exact moment was also about her need for time to process what he was saying to her. He didn’t push her, and for a moment, they just sat there and looked at each other.
“What other experiences have you had with magic?” she finally asked.
It was a difficult, but not unexpected question. It would be easiest to give his own background and situation as an example, but he refrained from that, instead searching his memory to come up with an appropriate case to tell her about.
“Two years ago, or so, a man came in and asked us to investigate a series of thefts at his house. He was a golf hobbyist. Very dedicated. Devoted a lot of time and money to the hobby,” Eamon said, crossing his legs so that his right ankle rested atop his left knee and folding his hands in his lap. “He had a top-of-the-line set of golf clubs. Worth thousands of dollars. But one day, when he was getting ready to go play, he found they had disappeared from his garage.”
“Magically?”
“Wait,” Eamon told her, shaking his head. “He searched everywhere, but they were gone. He was so upset that he was going to file a police report, but before he could, they reappeared, exactly where he had left them.”
Autumn arched an eyebrow. “That’s not magic. That’s forgetfulness.”
“Wait,” he chided again. “It was too late for him to go golfing that day, so he rescheduled. He was confused, but glad to have his golf clubs. The next day, when it was time to leave again, the golf clubs had disappeared.”
“That’s not magic,” Autumn argued, leaning forward in her chair. “He’s forgetful! Or his wife didn’t want him to play golf and she was moving them. Or…or…I don’t know! But there are plenty of rational explanations, including that he’s crazy.”
“His wife was away at work every day when this happened,” Eamon continued. “And every day, it kept happening. He started locking the golf clubs up. Hiding them. Keeping them somewhere beside his house. Whenever he would go to check on them, they were always there—unless he was about to leave to play golf.” Eamon shrugged a shoulder. “He gave up eventually and asked us for help. He wanted surveillance, and he didn’t tell anyone he was hiring us to i
nstall cameras. The day after we installed them, we caught footage of the bag disappearing into thin air, just minutes before his scheduled departure for the golf course.”
Autumn was staring at him skeptically, her nose scrunched. “No way.”
“Way.”
“So what was happening?”
“His wife was a witch.” Eamon smiled slightly. “She was sick of him spending all of his time and money on golf, but didn’t want to fight with him about it.”
“No way!”
Eamon shrugged again. “Way. He found out that she was a witch who was trying to live without her magic—except for when it came to his golf habits.”
“Was he mad?”
“Of course.”
“Did they get divorced?”
“No.” Eamon’s eyes twinkled ever so faintly. “They made up and decided to start using her magic for both their purposes.”
“Oh God.” Autumn groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “I really, really, really, really, really want to believe that you just made that story up on the spot to convince me to believe in magic for some unknown reason, but I don’t think that you did. Nobody convinces someone there’s magic in the world with golf club stories. Witches and golf clubs. What the hell?”
Eamon repressed the urge to go over and rub her back, unsure if that was the kind of relationship they had, even if he had impulsively hugged her after emerging from the forest. “I know it’s a shock. It was for golf club guy too, but he coped with it, and you will too.”
She jerked her head up and looked at him. “Was anyone threatening to kill him with magic?”
“No,” Eamon said, growing more somber. In the process of trying to convince her that magic was real, being relieved about Rachel’s improvements, and reliving what had been a reasonably amusing case, he had lost sight of the fact that both of them were in very real danger. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s say I believe you,” Autumn said. “What am I supposed to do next? Who protects me from magical murderers, Eamon? Is there a special police force I go to? A magical investigative team? Do I just jump ship and leave town? I mean, how does this work? I can’t protect myself from magic! I mean, if they’re magical, then they can kill me right here where I’m sitting, in this hospital. A golf club could just swing from the clear blue sky and knock me over the top of the head!”
She was panicking, and he didn’t blame her. Unknown forces had threatened to kill her and there was nothing that she could do about it. It was terrifying, and as her eyes welled up with tears, Eamon forgot that he was trying to keep her at a distance, and he stood up, crossing to her and pulling her up into his arms.
Autumn clung to him, and they stood there in that hospital room, wrapped around each other, his cheek resting against her hair as her slight body pressed against his.
“Trust me,” he whispered to her. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Autumn. To you or your kids. Trust me.”
She said nothing, but her tears seeped into his shirt, and he rubbed her back, his hand sliding up to gently cup the back of her neck, his thumb kneading the tight muscles he found there. The way she melted under his touch was intoxicating, and her tears began to slow as his hand crept upward, releasing the tension from the upper part of her neck and sliding into her hair to continue his massage.
Cradling her head against his chest, he pressed his lips to her hair, too lost in the heart-pounding moment to question himself as to whether this was a good idea. She wasn’t protesting, and he didn’t want to let her go, and so he didn’t, bringing both hands up to cradle her face and slide down the slender column of her neck.
The sound of retching interrupted both of them as he looked into her red-rimmed eyes, and suddenly Autumn pulled away from him, darting over to her daughter’s bed and holding the basin beneath her as Rachel once again voided her stomach.
“Oh God,” Autumn whispered, rubbing her daughter’s back. “Shhh. Shhh, it’s okay, baby. I’m here. I’m here.” She looked back at Eamon, fear in her eyes. “This isn’t right. She shouldn’t be doing this again. Something’s wrong.”
As she spoke, Eamon’s eyes settled on the doll that was pressed to Rachel’s side, and in a flash, it all clicked in his mind. He lunged forward, grabbed the doll, and threw it as far away from the bed as he could. It landed in a slumped heap up against the far wall, and he walked over to it, delivering a kick to the doll’s face that bent and warped the plastic features, making her look grotesque. He was breathing hard as he did it, his adrenaline pumping through him, almost as though he was anticipating what was about to happen.
The doll’s features shifted back into place perfectly, and then, as Eamon watched, the doll grinned at him and winked one eye.
Chapter Fourteen
Autumn
“I saw it.” Autumn clutched her daughter to her in the aftermath of the small girl’s bout of sickness, but her eyes were fixated on the doll that had just briefly come to life before her eyes. “I saw it,” she said again, her voice almost a whisper.
If Eamon had planned it himself, he couldn’t have convinced her better that there was something at work that was far beyond the natural world. The plastic doll that she had seen tucked beneath her daughter’s arm all day long had just come to life, its benign features twisting into an expression of pure evil, taunting her over her daughter’s misery. Fury burned low in Autumn’s gut as the realization that someone had targeted Rachel—an innocent little girl, who had nothing to do with what was happening—washed over her. Someone had hurt her baby, and she was going to absolutely destroy whomever it was—no matter what it took.
But first she got her daughter settled again, noting an immediate change in Rachel as she seemed to settle and rest easier against her pillows. Rachel even gave her a faint smile as her eyes fluttered closed and she started to drift to sleep once again.
Autumn watched over Rachel for a moment, and when she was sure her daughter was sleeping, she turned back to Eamon, approaching him with fire in her eyes. “The woman in the toy store.”
He nodded.
“It was a setup. She was with them. It was a follow-through on the threat they made against my girls.” Autumn felt sick herself, the wave of nausea so strong that if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought she was catching Rachel’s stomach flu. “They targeted my daughter with a toy. With a doll that she loves, Eamon. Why?” Her voice was getting too loud, but she couldn’t help it. “Why? What do they think I’m going to do to them? I don’t even know what I saw! I don’t even know who they are! What could I possibly do that would interfere with their little witch coven cult?”
“Shhh,” Eamon put a finger against her lips as she shouted the last three words. “You have no idea who’s listening.”
She turned away from him, dragging a hand through her hair as she tried to settle her anger and her affronted sense of justice. A nurse poked her head into the room to see what the commotion was about, but Autumn shook her head, waving the woman away. “We’re fine,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”
Except nothing was fine, because that doll still lay there, slumped against the wall, its unmoving face a symbol of the darkness that had fallen over Autumn’s world.
“Get it out of here,” she told Eamon, pointing at the creature. “I don’t want it anywhere near her. If you hadn’t figured it out—God—if you hadn’t, and she had kept voiding her stomach…! People die, Eamon. They die from dehydration and lack of nutrition. She’s just a baby.”
“I’ll take it away,” he promised, crossing the room to take her arms in his hands as he looked down into her face. “I’m not going to get rid of it, because I want to see if we can track the magic connected to it. But right now I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
Eamon tucked a piece of short hair behind her ear, his eyes moving over her face. “You’re not. And you shouldn’t be. Your world is scary right now, and you’re not fine.”
She kne
w he was right—she wasn’t fine or anywhere close to it. But what could she do about that right now? She couldn’t break down and cry out her frustrations and fears and fury. First and foremost, she was a mother, and she had one little girl who had been attacked and was in a weak, sick condition and another daughter who could at any moment be attacked, or at the very least, would be terrified when she inevitably learned about what had happened to her mother and her sister. There was no time for her not to be fine, because she had to be strong for them. She was all they had in the entire world.
“It’s okay,” Eamon said, pressing his strong hands against her arms gently. “It’s just you and me here. Right now, I’ll be strong, and you can be scared. She’ll never know.” He nodded his head toward Rachel. “It’s okay.”
His words wriggled their way right into her heart, and Autumn’s breath caught. She began to tremble in his arms, and when he pulled her back to him, she let herself go, sobbing into his chest as he clutched her to him. He didn’t speak, and she didn’t need him to. He just held her and rubbed her back as she let out all of her stress—not just her stress over the fact that her family was in danger, but her stress over her long-term exhaustion, over the fact that, no matter how hard she worked, she could never get ahead, over the fact that she faced everything in the world without a partner there beside her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had let herself cry—perhaps not since the months after Robert’s death, when all she had done was cry—but she gave herself permission now, feeling safe with Eamon there to hold her close. Somehow, she just knew that he wasn’t judging her, wasn’t impatient with her feelings, and wasn’t going to try to say any of the silly things that people always said when someone was sad.
Not once did he tell her that everything was okay.
Eventually, her tears did slow, and when she was down to just sniffles, she eased back from Eamon’s chest and glanced up at his face. It was impassive, his sympathy only evident in the softness of his eyes as he looked back at her. She offered a slight smile of apology, and he swiped a tear from her cheek, wiping it on the black denim of his jeans.
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