Grim Tempest

by Amanda M. Lee

  Cillian nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s probably the mature way to handle things.”

  “And lord knows we Grimlocks are always mature,” I teased, resting my head on his shoulder as I opened my book. “I’m happy for you.”

  “I’m happy for you, too, Ais.” Cillian pressed a quick kiss to my forehead before turning back to his work. “This evil storm stuff is probably crazy, though. I’m just warning you that we most likely won’t come up with anything.”

  “In this particular case, I’m fine being wrong.”

  “Really?” Cillian’s voice was laced with doubt.

  “No, I’d much rather be right.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  10

  Ten

  I’m not sure when I fell asleep. Cillian’s presence always calmed me, but I was intent on research. And yet somehow I drifted off. When I woke, I found I was half propped against the couch, my head still resting on Cillian’s shoulder. He snored lightly as he dozed.

  I rolled my neck to assuage the stiffness and when I turned I found Griffin sitting in the chair across from us. He was staring.

  “Hey.” My voice was a bit raspy so I cleared my throat, making sure to keep my tone low so as not to wake Cillian. “Um … what time is it?”

  “Early.” Griffin’s expression was hard to read. “You know, most men would be annoyed to find their fiancée sleeping with another man.”

  I’m always slow in the morning, so it took me a moment to realize what he was insinuating. “What?” I slid my eyes to Cillian. “He’s my brother. Don’t get gross.”

  Griffin cracked a smile. He enjoyed messing with me when the opportunity arose. “I didn’t know what to think when I woke up in your bed. I was especially confused when I realized I was alone.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” I meant it. “I didn’t mean to get so distracted.” I dragged a hand through my hair as I shifted, my back protesting the movement. “Ow.”

  “What’s wrong?” Griffin furrowed his brow as he got up and moved to crouch next to me. “Are you in pain?”

  I nodded. “I’ve grown too old to sleep on the floor. When did that happen?”

  Griffin chuckled as he sat next to me and dug his fingers into my lower back. “Let me see if I can loosen you up.”

  “You always know the way to my heart.”

  Griffin pressed a quick kiss to my forehead before focusing on my back. “What are you doing in here with Cillian?”

  I thought about what Cillian told me, about his plans to propose and how he intended to move out. I knew that was a secret even though Cillian didn’t admonish me not to spread the word. In this house, gossip would fly fast and furious, and Maya would know about Cillian’s plans before he could put anything in place. That wasn’t fair to either of them.

  That meant I had to keep things to myself, which I wasn’t especially comfortable with. I have a big mouth and bad impulse control. I could potentially ruin everything for Cillian and Maya. Crap! Why did he have to tell me? Keeping my mouth shut for weeks – probably months – wasn’t in my wheelhouse and we both knew it. I blame him.

  Wait … what were Griffin and I talking about?

  “Were you researching something?” Griffin asked, inclining his chin toward the book on the floor.

  “Oh, yeah.” Now I remembered. “We were trying to look up magical storms to see if we could find anything.”

  “And how did that go?”

  That was a good question. “I don’t know.” I rubbed my cheek. “I fell asleep.”

  “That sounds about right.” Griffin grinned as he watched me grab the book. “You didn’t find anything, so does that mean you’re going to let it go?”

  “Who says we didn’t find anything?” Cillian asked, stirring. He rubbed his eyes as he sucked in a breath to wake himself. “I’m the king of research. I always find something.”

  “Being the king of research isn’t nearly as much fun as being the queen of the universe,” I pointed out.

  Cillian was grouchy in the mornings, too, so he merely rolled his eyes as he grabbed the book from my lap. “Don’t lose my place.”

  “Did you really find something?”

  Cillian nodded. “I did, but you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you. I told myself I was simply going to rest my eyes, but I’m pretty sure that was about six hours ago.” He looked to the clock on the wall for confirmation. “Yup. I spent the night on the floor with my sister. That shouldn’t result in any teasing from the rest of our pack.”

  “Ignore them. That’s what I do.” I tapped the book for emphasis, groaning when Griffin’s fingers found a particularly tender spot on my back. “Right there. Oh, baby.” I wiggled my hips. “Don’t stop doing that.”

  Cillian let loose a disgusted sigh. “This is so not how I planned to spend my morning.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Stop making those noises, Aisling. They make me uncomfortable.”

  “That’s because you’re a big baby,” I shot back. It took everything I had not to purr when Griffin found a second spot. “What did you find, Cillian?”

  “Oh, right.” Cillian flipped back a page and tapped on an article. “I found this. It mentions magic storms being used by mages and warlocks in the 1800s. The text treats the subject as if it’s common.”

  “What does that mean?” Griffin asked, his fingers busy as I shifted so I could lean closer to him. “Do you think Aisling is right about the storms?”

  “Let’s just say that I’m not as keen to completely disregard the possibility as I was,” Cillian said. “I’m still trying to track a few things down, but I want to scan this symbol in and see if I can find some information on it.”

  “What symbol?” I asked.

  Cillian gestured toward the bottom corner of the page. “This one. There’re very few illustrations in this book, so I figure this one must be important. It’s in the section about magic storms.”

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw the symbol. I narrowed my eyes and leaned closer. “Huh.” That was the only reaction I could muster.

  “Do you recognize that?” Cillian asked.

  I nodded. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Do you remember where?” Griffin prodded.

  “I do. It was the day before yesterday. I was at Harry Turner’s house.”

  “Who is Harry Turner?” Cillian asked. “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

  “He was the chief of the Royal Oak Police Department,” Griffin supplied, his eyes moving to my face. “Aisling absorbed him the day before yesterday. Why would you have seen that symbol at his house, baby?”

  “He had a bunch of metaphysical stuff there,” I supplied. “He had these disc things.” I held up my hands to indicate the size. “They had designs on them. Most of them were glass. I thought they were more decorations than anything else, but one was made of silver and stood out.”

  “And that disc had this symbol on it?” Cillian pressed.

  I nodded. “I remember because Harry yelled at me to put it down.”

  “Do you think it’s still in his house?”

  I shrugged. “I guess it would have to be. I kind of lost track of it when Harry distracted me. It’s probably there.”

  “So let me get this straight, Ais.” Cillian leaned forward and pinned me with a harsh look. “You saw this symbol on a weird silver disc, and two minutes later we started having violent storms. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Oh, well, when he put it like that. “You’d better not be blaming me.”

  “I’m not blaming you, but that’s a hell of a coincidence.”

  He was right. “You don’t think I could have triggered it, do you?”

  Cillian opened his mouth to answer and then snapped it shut. I wasn’t thrilled with his reaction.

  “You do.” I tilted my head and scratched the back of my neck. “You think I did this.”

  “He’s not saying that,” Griffin said hurriedly before lowerin
g his voice and focusing on Cillian. “You’d better not say that to her,” he warned. “She’s not to blame for this.”

  “I’m not saying she’s to blame,” Cillian said cautiously. “I don’t know what to make of the situation. There’s no way she could’ve set off something like this without a magical intervention. At least, I can’t think of any way. I don’t blame her … so chill out.”

  Griffin was mollified, but only marginally. “So what do we do now?”

  Cillian shrugged. “More research, I guess. We’re going to need help if we want answers quickly.”

  “Oh, we’ll get to the answers.” I groaned as I rolled to my feet. “But first I need to find Dad and the others. I think we need to have a little talk.”

  Cillian didn’t understand my shift in attitude. “About what?”

  “It’s time for my ‘I was right’ dance,” I supplied. “Twice in one month. You guys better start taking notes because I’m on a roll.”

  Cillian heaved out a sigh as he met Griffin’s amused gaze. “I should’ve seen that coming.”

  “You really should have,” Griffin agreed. “She can’t help herself.”

  “That’s because she’s annoying.”

  “I find her cute.” Griffin affectionately patted my rear end. “Wait for me. I love it when you do the dance. I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Don’t encourage her,” Cillian whined. “She’ll never stop if you allow her to think it’s funny.”

  “That’s fine.” Griffin was blasé as he fell into step with me. “I find the dance sexy. I can live with it.”

  “You might change your mind fifty years from now.”

  Griffin pursed his lips. “Even then I’ll bet I find it sexy.”

  I beamed at him. “That was a really nice thing to say.”

  “I have my moments.”

  “I’m going to share one with you after the dance.”

  “Knock that off!” Cillian snapped. “I don’t want to hear this part of the conversation.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  DAD WASN’T NEARLY as impressed as I expected him to be when I launched myself into his office and started dancing.

  “I was right! I was right! I was right!” It wasn’t exactly singing as much as chanting. I swung my hips and tossed my hair to add some oomph to the routine, so that made up for the fact that I was essentially tone deaf. “I was right!” I stomped my foot for emphasis as I struck a pose in front of Dad’s desk.

  Dad, almost always calm, lowered the newspaper enough that he could peer over the top. “Did you say something?”

  “Ha, ha.” There was no way I would allow him to get away with that. “I was right about the evil storms. I knew I was, so … ha!” I extended a finger and made it dance.

  Dad reached out to snag the finger to stop it from moving, but I quickly evaded him.

  “I was right,” I repeated, more emphatic this time. “Bow down and grovel before your queen, because I was totally right.”

  Griffin cleared his throat from the chair he settled in when I wasn’t looking. “That’s taking it a bit too far, Aisling.”

  Hmm. Was he right? More importantly, did I care? “I’m good,” I said after a beat. “I think I took it just far enough.”

  “You would,” Cillian complained as he sat in another chair. “As much as I hate to encourage her – and you have no idea how loath I am to do that – I think she might have been right.”

  Dad was more willing to believe Cillian, so he turned an interested set of purple eyes to my academically-minded brother. “What do you mean?”

  “Aisling and I had a meeting of the minds in the library last night,” Cillian explained. He looked wearier than I felt. Of course, I got more sleep than him, and he was forced to serve as my pillow, so that was to be expected. “I decided to do some research and she came along and helped for a bit.”

  “You decided to do some research before Aisling bugged you to do it?” Dad challenged. “Why?”

  “Because Maya called from the hospital to say they were making her work a double shift and some of the things she said to me didn’t sound right,” Cillian admitted. “She said a lot of people got into fights during the storm. The emergency room was overrun. She made an offhand comment about the storm causing it, saying something like they were all joking because they noticed it was always storming when the fights started. That was at least enough to have me looking.”

  “And you found something?”

  “Yup. There were beings called storm wielders hundreds of years ago. Apparently they could create storms to do a multitude of different things, including influence emotions. It wasn’t looked at as out of the ordinary back then, but the practice has obviously been forgotten over the years.”

  “It would seem someone remembered it,” Griffin said, snagging me around the waist and pulling me to his lap.

  “I’m not done dancing,” I complained.

  “You’re done for now.”

  “You’re done for the foreseeable future,” Dad corrected, his tone fierce. “As for the storms … just because people could do it centuries ago doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening here. How can you be sure?”

  “I guess we can’t be a hundred percent clear,” Cillian conceded. “I think Aisling was on the right track from the start. I know that will inflate her ego, but it makes sense. As far as we can tell, the acts of violence have only happened during the storms.”

  “But you said it yourself yesterday, Aisling, not everyone has been affected,” Dad persisted. “Aidan wasn’t affected.”

  “No, but that could be because he’s a reaper,” Cillian pointed out. “For all intents and purposes, we’re the same as normal humans. We have a slight difference in our blood chemistry, which sets us apart. Perhaps the storms were created to affect only humans.”

  “But who would do that?” Dad pressed. “Why would someone do that?”

  “I have no idea,” Cillian admitted. “There is slightly more to the story, though, and it’s something I didn’t know until this morning. I might’ve woken you last night if I knew the second part of it.”

  “Oh, geez.” Dad slapped his hand to his forehead. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Probably not, but you need to know,” Cillian replied. “There was a symbol in the book. I left it upstairs, but I took a screenshot.” He held up his phone so Dad could see it. “The book didn’t have many illustrations so I thought this might be important.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea, but Aisling saw it two days ago.”

  Dad turned very slowly, very deliberately, in my direction. “Where did you see it?”

  I told him about Harry Turner, leaving out the part where I talked to him for almost an hour. “I didn’t think much about it at the time – other than that he was weird – but I remember the symbol from one of the discs on the shelf.”

  “And why were you poking around Mr. Turner’s personal items?” Dad challenged.

  “Um … I’d rather not say.” I averted my gaze.

  “I think it’s good she was poking around the shelf,” Griffin offered, keeping a firm grip on me as I squirmed. “That’s how we know where to look for the symbol.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re a big marshmallow where she’s concerned,” Dad groused.

  “Because you’re the Marshmallow in Chief, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Griffin said dryly. “Either way, it doesn’t matter why she did it. It only matters that she did and we know where to start looking.”

  “I guess.” Dad wrinkled his nose as he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know what to make about any of this. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “I figured we could talk about that over breakfast,” Cillian said, sobering. “I might go into the main office and use their library. I have some suggestions for a few stops for Redmond and Aisling today, too.”

  I perked up. “You have a suggestion for me?”

  Cil
lian bobbed his head. “I do indeed. Madame Maxine.”

  My smile slipped. “I don’t want to go to her. She always gives me crap when she sees me. She makes me uncomfortable.”

  “You’re going, and that’s a fabulous idea,” Dad said. “I’ll pull you three out of the rotation and give Aidan and Braden most of the work for the day. I’ll call for two subs so we don’t have to listen to them whine.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Griffin asked. “I can’t very well avoid the rain if something happens. I also can’t ask my co-workers not to go out during a rain squall because my girlfriend believes the storms are evil. They’ll laugh me off the premises.”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said, turning serious. “You need to be careful. If Aisling is right you’re susceptible. Not only could you hurt an innocent person, you could hurt your entire future if you react the wrong way while under the influence. I’d say that you need to avoid the storms at all costs until we know more.”

  Griffin didn’t look thrilled with the suggestion. “I’ll do my best.” He gave me a reassuring squeeze when he saw I was frowning. “I promise I’ll be okay.”

  I wasn’t convinced that was true, but there was very little I could do to change the situation. “Hopefully Madame Maxine will have some of the answers we need,” I griped. “If I have to put up with her mouth, I’d better get something out of the deal.”

  Griffin poked my side to ease my bad mood. “I think that’s what most people say about you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Ha, ha. I … .” The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside Dad’s office tipped me off that my brothers were up and moving through the house. I scrambled to climb off Griffin’s lap, completely forgetting what I was about to say.

  “Where are you going?” Griffin called after me.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just going to do the dance for Redmond, Braden and Aidan. They haven’t seen it yet. I don’t want them to miss out.”

  “Have fun,” Griffin said, not bothering to hide his chuckle as Dad scowled and made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.