by RJ Blain
“Don’t screw with Mom.”
The pride in her voice helped. “That’s right, baby. Don’t screw with Mom. Not only does she get mad, she gets even.”
In the time I’d been in Las Vegas, my son had written ten letters, and the last one was dated the day of my flight from California. I clung to his every word, important only to us, but an important reminder my life before my divorce hadn’t been a complete waste.
My son had lost his last match, and he blamed himself for his failure.
Adken would’ve blamed everyone other than him.
Despite all odds, my son hadn’t become a clone of his father.
I submitted the initial claim challenging Adken’s custody, and the refusal came without a hearing, a setback I’d hoped to avoid but also expected. Appeals would win the war, and I decided to be grateful I wouldn’t have to wait six months before receiving a response. No reason for the refusal accompanied the notice.
It didn’t matter. According to the slip, I’d be eligible to file for appeal in four months.
True to Viktor’s claim, I had half a million to work with and six months. After my first day back, Hestia had stayed away.
I couldn’t blame her. I’d told her the truth, and it was a dark, bitter thing.
Time away would do me the most good. I lingered a week, long enough to learn my son’s fate.
Adken’s parents were awarded custody, and the date Nolan’s letters had stopped fell in line with him moving in with them.
Hestia visited once, and she seemed distant and distracted.
I feared my tainted heart was too much for her to tolerate; she was a nurturing goddess by nature, Nolan was in a family environment, and as far as I could tell, my days as a mother were finished.
With nothing left to tie me down, it was easy to let go and move on. I packed a few bags, notified my landlord I was leaving, and made arrangements for the apartment to be emptied.
The Porsche was too distinctive, but I couldn’t bring myself to abandon my hard work completely. I put it in storage, bought a junker, and headed south. With the minimum settlement, I’d be able to survive for a long time. There were places far cheaper than California.
I’d have to return to try for custody of my son again, and he’d become my goal. I didn’t want his letters.
I wanted him in my life.
The truth of Adken’s magic bit deep. It hadn’t changed me all that much, except for one thing. His magic had corrupted me, tainted me, and taken away my desire to know my son. Without his influence, I never would’ve given up my son without a fight.
Death was too kind for my ex-husband, but unless I found him, I’d satisfy myself with a deep hole only I knew about, just in case a chance presented itself. I’d feel better after I dug his grave, even if I never got a chance to dump his body in it.
I meant to leave California, but I stopped in Soggy Lake, a wasteland far from civilization, the perfect place for me to lay low and dig. Three miles outside of the town, such that it was, I found a recess tucked between boulders, the surrounding soil broken, dry, and prone to crumbling, ideal for my needs.
I located a small apartment, paid for two months of rent in advance, and pretended I meant to lay down roots. My landlord didn’t care what I did as long as he got paid.
I lazed during the day, and when I wasn’t sleeping, I read books. Late at night, I dug. For two months, I battled the earth, winning inches of depth until I needed a rope to climb out of the hole. At the fifteen foot mark, nature smiled on me, as though it knew my heart and tried to appease some of my need for justice.
The soil grew dark, and the next night, I discovered water, amazed as it bubbled up, at first in a trickle, then strong enough to claim my shovel, my bucket, and my digging tools.
I laughed until I cried. I’d found water in the desert.
That was just my sort of luck.
Since digging hadn’t accomplished anything, I abandoned my effort and went with what should have been my first plan: therapy.
If I could, I’d still drown the bastard and bury him, but until then, I needed to move on and find something I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Oil changes weren’t it.
What was it, I had no idea, but a therapist might be able to help me figure it out. To go along with my plan of hiring a professional to pull me out of the mire I’d entrenched myself within, I’d live a dream I’d abandoned long ago.
I’d get a little cabin in the middle of nowhere, secluded, and as close to nature as I could go without leaving civilization altogether. Without my children, I didn’t need to be anywhere or do anything.
I’d already messed up two attempts, which likely made ‘mother’ a job choice to avoid. Hestia had turned out perfectly, but her divinity played a role in that. I hadn’t done her much justice; enduring me snapping couldn’t have been easy for her, and divinity didn’t grant her infallible sight. She couldn’t teleport to places she’d never been. If she wanted to find me, she’d have to work for it, and I had no faith, not anymore.
Our broken family had served its purpose; it motivated her to do her job and work towards the preservation of the values needed for a house to become a home. Her magic was meant for one thing: to make families prosper.
My daughter was magnificent, and she’d only become a better woman—and goddess—over the years. Nolan would become a good man, unlike his father.
I could live with that.
My only regret was that I’d burned bridges with Viktor, using the lie of a smile to deter him. I still wasn’t sure what he’d wanted out of our time together, but I missed his companionship.
Yep. I needed therapy. Adken had been my hell, and Viktor might’ve become my heaven, if only I’d given us a chance.
Sometimes, I truly was a fool.
On my quest to find a country home, I wandered to Colorado, where I discovered a cabin in the middle of nowhere for a little over twenty thousand dollars. The mountain had a tendency of burning every year, and the previous owner had tired of testing his luck, wanting to unload his five acres of land and the two-bedroom cabin with all the creature comforts I could want and a mix of solar panels and gas generator to power everything.
I loved everything about it, even the risk of it all going up in smoke. If I drove for an hour, I had a choice of two small towns, and if I sacrificed an extra twenty minutes, I could reach a young city, which boasted a large enough population to have therapists. To reach the city, I had to drive over twisting roads skirting precarious edges that dropped away to craggy valleys filled with tenacious pines.
I loved them, too.
To buy myself some privacy, I paid in cash and used my maiden name for the sale. The owner didn’t care, and since he didn’t want to be bothered with the bureaucracy, he signed over the deed and abandoned ship.
I spent a week turning the little cabin into a home, and once I was satisfied I’d made my mark on the mountain, I did what I’d come to Colorado to do. Hunting a therapist meant heading to the city, but instead of a doctor specialized in fixing broken people, I found Viktor.
Jumping around the corner made me a bad person, and I stole peeks at him.
He still checked off every last one of my boxes for the perfect man, and I adored him in his worn jeans.
On my third such peek, he arched a brow. “What are you doing?”
Busted. “Hiding so you don’t spot me. Is it working?”
“You yelped before you ducked for cover. If you’d stayed quiet, maybe.”
“Good to know.” I stayed on my side of the corner and peeked again. “You’re looking good.”
He chuckled, leaned against the building, and made himself comfortable. Jeans suited him, and I contemplated kidnapping since my attempt at murder hadn’t gone to plan. I could learn first-hand if he counted as therapy, and I had a brand-new bed.
“You have a twig in your hair.”
I lifted my hand, and sure enough, there were pine needles stuck in my hair. “Ther
e’s an attack pine near my house. It likes me.”
Viktor closed the distance between us and picked pine needles out of my hair. “You’re a difficult woman to find when you get it into your head to disappear, Dakota. Once I pried your maiden name out of your daughter, who is about ten minutes away from her first midlife crisis, I got a hit here, but I couldn’t find the damned address I got a hit on. It’s not on the bloody map!”
I laughed because I’d needed help from the previous owner to find it, too. “It’s remote and private.”
He sighed, plucked out a few more pine needles, and ran his fingers through my hair in a futile effort to untangle it. “I’m going to give you two choices. You can take me home with you, or you’re coming home with me, but after spending two months looking for you, I’m not letting you out of my sight. Obviously, the fault’s with me, as I should’ve given you strict instructions not to do anything crazy without me. Hestia’s frantic from worry, and you have a court date in two weeks.”
“I have a court date? Why? My appeal date isn’t for another two months. I haven’t done anything illegal.”
Viktor arched a brow and waited.
“I haven’t done anything illegal yet,” I dutifully corrected.
Sighing, he took hold of my shoulders, turned me away from the building, and marched me to the parking lot to an old dark gray SUV. “We figured the custody refusal had tripped your trigger. There’s been a missing person bulletin out since you disappeared. It was a stupid mistake. The CDC didn’t think to check the damned judge in charge of your case for beguilement. Adken had gotten to him, so he rejected your claim. A new judge has been reviewing the entire case, and you showing up in court is a formality. You’ll be receiving the rest of your settlement and Nolan’s custody. Nolan’s already been informed, and his custody has been transferred temporarily.”
I dug in my heels, twisting in Viktor’s hold. “Who has custody?”
I flinched as my voice went up an octave.
“This is where things will get a bit weird,” Viktor confessed, giving me a gentle push towards the SUV before releasing me and opening the passenger door. “I asked to be evaluated as a temporary guardian, and the CDC approved my claim after a nudge from Hestia. She approves of me.”
My daughter might end up the death of me. “Because you don’t snore and sleep in the nude.”
Laughing, he leaned against his SUV and shook his head. “I tell her no. The instant the CDC realized I could get a fledgling divine to heel, they decided I could serve as a temporary guardian until you’re settled. I’ll confess, the first thing I did was have him transferred to a boarding school. There was a bit of resistance I wasn’t expecting however.”
“His tennis partner?” I suggested.
“I’m not going to ask how you knew that.”
“Mother’s intuition. He absolutely won’t blame Latasha for their mutual losses, and he sent a few letters on the scraps of tennis practice schedules. When Adken’s parents had custody, he stopped writing.”
“The first thing I did was promise he’d be able to see you as soon as I found you. I explained things to him, and he understands why you’re unbalanced right now. It’ll get better, Dakota. I promise.”
It wasn’t fair. How could someone like Viktor, my living, breathing dream come true, pull miracles out of his ass and lay them at my feet?
“You got custody of my son.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t want him to go into the system, and Adken got his talent from his father. I didn’t like the idea of Nolan being left with the family, and I demanded he be evaluated for beguilements. Seems like your resistance to beguilement’s genetic, because Nolan’s got a knack for it, too. It took a vampire, but he’s been freed from his father’s beguilements, too. As Adken’s father has the same talent, I won the case. I challenged there was no way to verify a new beguilement couldn’t be laid. Since my talent is used for rehabilitation, it was decided I was the best guardian in the meantime, as I could handle the consequences of long-term suppression. Fortunately, he wasn’t difficult to handle. And no, he didn’t need a succubus.”
I climbed into the SUV, hesitated, and pointed at my junker. “That’s my car.”
“Would you be too angry with me if I had it towed to a junkyard for disposal? It looks like it’s ready to fall apart.”
I scowled. “It runs.”
“I’m not sure how.”
As I expected him to rightly give me the eye over my choice of vehicle, I decided to address the problem before it became a problem. “I didn’t sell the Porsche. It’s safely in storage, which is paid for six months. I was clearing my head until I could appeal for custody. I haven’t completely snapped, thank you.”
“Fair enough. What about the junker?”
“I probably should get rid of it,” I confessed.
“I’ll get rid of it so you don’t have to worry about it.”
“You need to stop being so nice. You’re making this very difficult.”
He smirked. “You want to take me home and indulge in my manliness, don’t you?”
“If you keep insisting on being so nice, I might have to reevaluate my stance on men in my life, and that’s not at all fair.”
His smirk broadened to a grin. “How terrible. I do find it endlessly amusing I found you after becoming so frustrated I decided I needed a therapist. I figured if I needed a therapist, there was a chance you figured out you needed one, too.”
“Guilty as charged. I’m definitely in need of therapy, although you’ll do for tonight.”
“Just for tonight?”
I liked the idea enough I met his grin with one of my own. “We’ll play it by ear.”
He chuckled, closed the passenger door, and circled his SUV, sliding behind the wheel. He fit appropriately, and I nodded my approval while buckling my seatbelt.
When he started the engine without a word, I added, “I dug a hole and found a spring, but I didn’t have anyone to toss in, so I came here.”
“You really should give Hestia a call.”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t need me and my instability ruining her plans. Right now, I’ll get in her way. She was busy.”
Viktor shot a glare at me. “I told her she needed to be more careful. Dakota, she’s young and discovering the world. You’ve taught her a very important lesson about taking people for granted. She needs to know her mother is all right just as much as you need some TLC from her. Now, that said, I should take you home. That I couldn’t find it is driving me absolutely insane.”
“It’s a long drive down narrow, twisting roads. We could go to a hotel instead.”
“I’d like to see your house. It’ll give me a good idea of the type of home you like.”
“It’s a tiny cabin in the middle of the woods.”
“Not what I was expecting, but I can roll with that. Where am I going?”
I gave him directions to my cabin. Once on the road, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I have some news for you, but I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad news.”
“Tell me.”
“I know where the bastard is, and I know exactly how we can get our hands on him, but you’ll need to be the bait. If we do this just right, we can commit the perfect murder. It’ll be legal in the eyes of the law, written off as self-defense without punishment and barred from our records.”
I had to be dreaming, so I pinched myself to check. I yelped at the flash of pain, staring at the crescent mark on the back of my hand. “You really think we can get away with murder?”
“We tell him where you are, and if he comes for you as I expect he will, it’s self-defense. That we’d be ready for him doesn’t change the verdict. The CDC has already issued a bulletin for him authorizing lethal force. If he uses his magic on you or touches you, I can kill him without penalty. We just have to lure him out, which will be very simple.”
“I’d like to help kill him,” I complained.
“The real
ity is, he’ll blank slate you, so the killing will fall to me. You’ll have to trust me, because if I fuck this up, you’ll be in his hands. It’s risky.”
“He used his magic on Nolan,” I snarled.
“I know, I know. Nolan’s safe from him, as is Hestia. Hestia knows what he looks like, and I’ve told her I’ll light her ass on fire if she doesn’t teleport away the instant she spots him. He’d have to catch her completely off guard, and I don’t see that happening right now. She’s jumpy.”
“Jumpy?”
“Once she knows I’ve found you, I’m sure she’ll drive us both insane with her matchmaking efforts. She’s determined, I’ll give her that.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not every day a goddess rather explicitly tells me what I should be doing with her mother. I haven’t laughed so hard in years. She wasn’t happy I started laughing, but I couldn’t help it. She has no idea I’ve enjoyed every minute spent exploring you. I’m hoping you’ll invite me into your home and allow me to repeat the experience.”
“It’d be cruel to leave you to the tender mercies of the attack pine.”
“I think I owe you some murderous pillow talk, too.”
“I dug a nice hole in California. Weren’t you the one who told me to dig it so deep no one would find the bastard? We could still go with our first plan.”
“We could, but I have a condition.” He smirked, turning his attention to the road.
“What?”
“When we’re done, you’ll owe me a favor, which I’ll ask over his dead body.”
What sort of favor could Viktor want from me? Whatever it was, it’d be worth it. “You have a deal.”
Chapter Eight
Adken was hiding near Reno where the city and the Sierra Nevada clashed, far enough from civilization no one would hear him scream. Cabins just like the one Adken owned at were available for rent, and after a dozen calls, I was able to reserve one within three miles of where my ex-husband hid.
“We’re going to need a new hole,” I complained to my partner in crime, looking over the map marking where my ex lurked. “Mine’s too far away.”
