Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Another text message came in on my phone.

  >I will be there before sunset.

  I turned the phone to silent, but not before a third message appeared on my screen.

  >Listen to me, Wisteria. I can get you through this unscathed.

  Declan crossed his arms, smirking at me knowingly.

  I tucked the phone in my pocket. If we were reading the situation correctly and the vampires were in the cottage, Kett might be able to get me through the coming confrontation unharmed. But I knew the executioner chose his words carefully. And his not mentioning being able to also shield Jasmine and Declan was a deliberate omission.

  Declan’s smirk turned into a grin. Apparently, ignoring the dire warnings of an ancient vampire was what it took to put me in his good graces.

  “Is that something?” Trying to get us back on task, I pointed toward a spot of energy I could feel more than see on the door handle. “Other than whatever that is, the cottage’s wards feel receptive to me. But the door looks like it’s deadbolted, and we don’t have the key.”

  “I do,” Declan said. “Step back. Please.”

  I took a step back, then instinctively tucked myself behind him. He tossed something at the door, then spun to face me, spreading his coat to the sides and blocking my sight of the house.

  I met his golden-hazel gaze questioningly.

  Magic exploded. Wood splintered and snapped.

  A wide smile spread across Declan’s face as he laughed quietly.

  “You’ve just been waiting to blow something up,” I said teasingly, ignoring that I would only need to lean forward just a few inches to kiss him. “Though if we were avoiding detection, that just clearly announced our presence.”

  “Triggering the first spell did that already,” Declan said wryly. “Though before I met your boyfriend, I assumed vampires were dead during the day.”

  He turned to survey the damage to the door. I let the boyfriend comment stand again. As before, arguing the point would have taken far too much explanation.

  The wards coating the exterior of the cottage still held the door upright in its frame, but a large fissure had opened across it, from just above the doorknob to the bottom hinge. I couldn’t see any hint of whatever spell had been layered on it.

  I touched my fingers to the doorknob. The wards accepted me without resistance.

  Wrapping my hand around the knob, I tugged forward, pulling the lower half of the door completely away from the frame. Once freed from the wards, Declan grabbed the ruined section, setting it off to the side.

  I ducked underneath the top half of the door to slip into the kitchen. It looked clean, though it hadn’t been renovated or seen a lick of paint in a decade. Unused.

  But when I crossed to open the fridge, it held two loaves of bread and some sliced turkey. All fresh.

  “Electricity is on,” I murmured. “Is that normal?”

  “Most likely,” Declan said. “Wouldn’t want the place to go musty without any heat.” At the sink, he turned on the faucet. Water gushed out, confirming that it hadn’t been shut off for the winter either.

  I closed the fridge, not bothering to search the kitchen any further. It was already obvious someone was staying in the cottage.

  With Declan on my heels, I swiftly crossed out of the kitchen into the dining room, silently pointing out the magic glistening along the edges of the door that led to the cellar as I crossed through. More traps. More confirmation that vampires might very well be slumbering beneath our feet.

  Declan nodded silently as we continued on, passing between a teak dining table and a hutch filled with mismatched china.

  At the front of the house, the living room was empty. A layer of dust covered every surface.

  I passed the front door without bothering to scan it for magic, moving back through the center of the cottage and into the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  Even a dozen or more feet away, I could tell that the closed door at the far end of the darkened hall was spelled. Likely trapped. I didn’t bother glancing into the open doors of the bathroom or either of the other bedrooms, instead making a beeline down the corridor in the faint light spilling in from their windows.

  “I was afraid they’d have her downstairs,” I whispered. “With them. If they’re here.”

  “Too risky. What if she got loose while they were sleeping, or dead, or whatever they do during the day?”

  “Right.”

  I stopped myself from pressing my hand to the door, not sure I could have sensed the interior of the room or Jasmine’s presence even if I did. Years ago, I would have been able to touch the wards on the exterior of the house and know exactly who was in the manor or the cottage. But not having practiced for over twelve years, I was rusty when it came to wielding any magic other than reconstruction.

  “Let me,” Declan said.

  I had to force myself to move out of his way as I whispered, “Please be careful.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Wisteria,” he said. “I can be subtle.” Then he flicked a small stone at the door.

  It hit the doorknob, then burst with a faint pulse of magic — a spell that quickly wrapped itself around the knob, coating it. Then the metal simply twisted in on itself. The mangled knob and its interior components fell to the ground, completely inert.

  I stepped forward, brushing past Declan and pressing my fingertips to the door before he could stop me. It swung slowly open.

  I found the light switch and flicked on the overhead light without looking. Three of the four bulbs were burnt out, but I could still see inside the bedroom.

  Jasmine was naked, tied spread-eagled to a bed that had been moved to the center of the room. Even from the doorway, I could see that she’d been bitten multiple times on her inner wrists, thighs, and neck. Her blond curls were matted and strewn across her face, as if she’d been thrown down on the bed unconscious and hadn’t moved since.

  For a heart-stopping moment, I wasn’t sure she was alive. “Betty-Lou?” I whispered.

  Then she turned her head, piercing me through the heart with her sky-blue eyes. She wrapped her hands around the ropes that bound her as she snarled. “They took my phone!”

  I laughed, a desperately wild sound. I wanted to run to her, but Declan was holding me back. Tearing my gaze from Jasmine, I scanned the remainder of the room. An old quilt had been tossed on the floor a few feet away from the door, but the room had been stripped of all other furniture.

  However, tiny pockets of magic encompassed the brass feet of the bed. And some sort of spell glimmered on the sill of the curtained window, likely another trap and the reason Kett had kept his distance while prowling the perimeter.

  “The window and the bed frame is spelled,” I whispered, running my gaze across the bare mattress and the ropes that bound Jasmine. “Mattress and ropes look clean.”

  “Except for the blood,” Jasmine said sarcastically.

  Declan released his hold on me, hunkering down to get a better look at the magic on the feet of the bed.

  “We’re coming for you, babe,” I said as soothingly as I could.

  “I know,” Jasmine murmured, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Declan gently rolled a series of marbles across the worn oak floor. The tiny beads of glass briefly flared dark blue, then fanned out around the bed. Each came to rest against one of the pockets of magic on the bed frame’s brass feet. Then they imploded one at a time, each marble eating whatever spell had been trapping the bed.

  It was an impressive casting that didn’t earn so much as a second thought from me. Because I was already moving before the last one had triggered. Pushing by Declan and scooping up the old quilt, I threw the blanket and myself across Jasmine.

  “Ouch!” she cried, only partially sarcastically.

  I reached for the ropes around her nearest wrist, tearing at them futilely with my fingers. Declan paced a quick search around the room before crossing to us. Then he slid a sharp, short blade through the kno
t holding Jasmine’s left arm, freeing her.

  “I’m okay,” Jasmine said. She flexed her fingers, then wrapped her freed arm around my waist. “I’m okay. I’m okay, Betty-Sue.”

  Declan circled the bed to systematically cut through the other ropes. His face was etched with pain and he kept his shoulders angled away, carefully avoiding looking at Jasmine.

  Once freed, she wrapped both arms around me, clinging to me. “I’m okay.” She started sobbing, a harsh, terrible sound. As Declan freed her feet, she curled around me in a fetal position, her head on my lap.

  I stroked her hair, avoiding the half-healed bite marks on her neck as I tried to comfort her — but managing only to sob myself.

  Declan crawled across the bed, wrapping himself around her from behind.

  “Bubba …” She sobbed. “I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s just … just … they make you like it, even when I refused. Fucking vampires. They drug you, force pleasure on you against your will. Like Jasper. Like Jasper did. Until you forget you didn’t ask for it. Until you forget you didn’t give them permission.”

  “It’s still rape,” Declan said. His insistence was thick with emotion.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. What Jasper had done to us as children, as young adults, had been exceedingly specific and carefully enacted. He’d wanted us bonded to him, controllable by him. He’d manipulated our feelings. Even though we knew it was wrong for him to touch us, to molest us, we wanted to be loved. And even knowing that it was wrong didn’t take away the shame of enjoying parts of it.

  Our twisted pleasure fueled his spells, and kept us unnaturally bonded to him.

  One of the worst things my mother had ever said to me — when I was pleading with her to protect Jasmine and Declan, but before I made the deal that severed me from the coven — was that Jasper had told her I’d never protested. That I’d enjoyed what he taught me.

  She gilded over it with the assumption that he’d been talking about magic, when of course he’d been talking about molesting us for the accumulation of power. She’d willfully ignored my declarations of abuse, simply calling my ‘stories’ feeble attempts to protect Declan.

  I’d never spoken about it to anyone, ever again. Never described what it felt like to know I should fight him, but being too scared to do so. Scared for Jasmine and Declan more than myself. And desperately guilty that Jasper could make me feel any pleasure at all.

  I had always imagined that Declan and Jasmine felt the same. And though that remained unspoken between us, it only strengthened our bond.

  Jasmine rolled onto her back, reaching up and pulling my face within inches of hers. “I knew you’d come. You and Bubba.”

  “Always,” I said. “Always.”

  She brushed the tears from my cheeks, heedless of the ones still streaming down her own face. “Is it Jasper? Was it Jasper?”

  “I don’t know yet. It seems to be about Kett. Except … we found you here.”

  “Too obvious for Jasper,” Declan said, rolling onto his back and slinging his arm across his eyes. “Unfortunately.”

  “I want him dead this time,” Jasmine said. “If it’s him, I’ll kill him myself.”

  “If it’s him,” I whispered, “I’ll kill him first.”

  Jasmine nodded. Then she awkwardly tugged the quilt up, wiping her face with one corner. “I need clothes.”

  Declan slipped off the bed, crossing toward the door.

  “Are the vampires staying here?” I asked. “In the cellar?” I didn’t want to press her, but we needed to know what we might be up against.

  Declan paused in the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” Jasmine said, shaking her head erratically. “I didn’t even know where the hell I was until I realized the ward magic felt familiar. Where’s Kett?”

  “On his way.”

  “Then let him take care of those assholes.” She clutched the quilt fiercely, but her hands spasmed with the effort.

  Declan exited into the hall without another word.

  Jasmine watched him go, then looked at me. “I knew you’d come, but you took long enough.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you were on the other side of the country. And … you didn’t know about the job for Kett.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Betty-Lou. None of that matters now.”

  “It never does with you, Wisteria,” she whispered. “You … your … what could I have possibly done to earn your love?”

  Staggered by her question, I could only laugh while more tears streamed down my face. “Don’t you know?”

  I tugged the gold necklace I’d been wearing for too long already off over my head, then settled it around Jasmine’s neck in the same motion.

  She brushed her fingers across the tiny oyster-shell cubes with a satisfied sigh. They glowed softly at her touch.

  “You’re my heart,” I whispered. “My beating heart.”

  “And Declan,” she said smugly, as if she’d cornered me into admitting something I wouldn’t willingly admit.

  I laughed.

  “ ‘And Declan’ what?” He strode back into the room with what had to be ten outfits’ worth of clothes, dumping everything he’d collected on the bed.

  “Whose are those?” I asked.

  “Jasper’s last apprentice,” Jasmine said. “I recognize that shirt.” She pulled a couple of the dresses toward her. “This is what you bring me? Floral prints and cotton? I’ve just been ravaged by vampires.”

  “Jesus,” Declan said, rubbing his hand through his hair, then over his face. “I hate it when you do that. Joke about terrible shit.”

  “What would you have me do? Wallow in it?”

  I quickly sorted through what Declan had gathered, finding a cotton T-shirt, a hoodie, and pink sweatpants. “We’ll start with these,” I said. “We need to get you to the bathroom, to wash the … wounds. Then to Rose.”

  Jasmine took the T-shirt and struggled to pull it over her head. She didn’t have full control of her limbs yet. Declan was going to have to carry her.

  “I’d love a shower,” she said. “But the wounds won’t fester. He licks them after. All the better to preserve his food.”

  “He who?” Declan asked — and I heard the terrible promise of death and destruction laced through his words.

  “Valko.” Jasmine spat the name viciously, but she let me help her with the fluorescent pink hoodie without resistance. “Dark hair, pale skin, accent. Thinks he’s hot shit.”

  “We saw him at the hotel,” I said.

  Declan snorted rudely, but I ignored him as I zipped up Jasmine’s hoodie. She glanced between us. “What?”

  “More like Wisteria propositioned him in the hotel lobby,” Declan said.

  “There’s a driveway,” I said, getting us back to more pressing concerns. “It runs around the back of the property to the secondary gate.”

  “More like a wide path,” Declan said. “For service vehicles. And the gate will be chained and padlocked.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said. “I’ll go back for the Jeep, then —”

  “No!” Declan and Jasmine said in unison.

  “Declan, you can hold the room better than I can,” I said. “And carrying Jasmine to the front gate, or even to the manor, will hamper you in a fight.”

  “We’ve got at least thirty minutes until sunset,” Declan said. “We don’t split up. We’ll go to the manor and you’ll seal us in. Text Kett again.”

  “Jasmine needs Rose,” I said. “And most likely a blood transfusion.”

  “A glass of water would be a good start,” Jasmine said weakly, leaning back onto the bed. “And pants.”

  Declan growled something under his breath, then left the room in a huff.

  I grabbed the sweatpants.

  “Give me your phone.” Jasmine flapped her hand at me feebly.

  “Declan has yours.” I got the pants around her ankles and started tugging them up her legs, desperately trying to avoid looking at the
bites on her thighs and hoping they wouldn’t scar.

  “Wisteria!”

  I looked up at the desperation in Jasmine’s plea.

  “Your phone. Please.”

  I looked around, realizing that I must have thrown my bag down just inside the door. I crossed over to grab it. Jasmine wiggled the pants up over her hips, still having issues using her fingers.

  As I placed my phone in her hand, she sighed as if she had just been reunited with an old lover.

  I shook my head, digging through the pile of clothes for socks or shoes, but finding neither.

  Declan strode back in with a glass of water. “The cellar door is still sealed. I think I’ll leave a little surprise of my own on our way out.”

  Though Jasmine waved him off, he held the glass for her, letting her drink while her thumbs flew across my screen.

  “A phone.” Declan skewered me with his gaze. “You thought a phone was the most important thing right now?”

  Jasmine’s arms went limp as she finished texting, as if she couldn’t hold them aloft any more. She was smiling smugly.

  “What have you done?” I asked.

  Her grin widened. Then she took the glass of water from Declan and downed the rest of it.

  My phone buzzed. Jasmine checked the screen, then chortled.

  “Okay, if you can text, then you can move.” Declan took the empty glass from her, setting it down, then reaching to gather her in his arms.

  As he stood and swung Jasmine around, she shoved the screen of the phone in my face. I caught a glimpse of a series of emoticons, then a single red, angry face in response.

  “I wouldn’t want to be a vampire on Kett’s shit list,” Jasmine said, grinning almost manically.

  “Christ,” Declan said, heading toward the door and out into the hall with me trailing behind him. “You’re both dating him? He doesn’t seem that hot to me.”

  Jasmine threw her head back, laughing.

  A ruddy-haired, pale-skinned vampire was sitting on the kitchen counter next to the back door.

  I glanced at the closed door to the cellar. Whatever magic had sealed it was gone. Behind the vampire, through the window, I could see the first tinge of pink on the horizon. The sun was starting to set.