“You’re apologizing to me for what happened?” I asked.
“There’s no apology I can give to make up for what I did,” he said, his jaw set in a grim line. “I spent two whole years volunteering at the rape crisis center, listening to people’s stories, vowing I would do everything I could to make the world a safe space for women … and look what I did.”
He was actually starting to tear up a little, and he finally lifted his gaze toward me, his expression pure misery. “Jesus Christ, look what I did to you.”
“No. Warlock, just … no. You weren’t the perpetrator of anything that happened between us. I was in control. I let it happen because I gave in to some seriously violent urges.”
I paused. “If there’s more blame to be laid here, well, okay, we can share it, if that makes you feel better. You didn’t do a bad thing to me; we did bad things to each other. Because of Miko.”
He shook his head. “I can’t lay it on her. I did it, and every time I think about what I did to you, I feel sick. I feel … poisoned.”
I got up and walked over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He flinched a little at first, but he didn’t ask me to stop touching him.
“I know that poisoned feeling way better than I wish I did,” I said quietly. “But I kicked her ass for good last night, and she’s not going to trouble us again.”
He shook his head. “But I—”
“Hey. Look me in the eye. Right now.”
The Warlock finally looked up.
“Do I seem traumatized?”
He shook his head.
“Am I looking at you like you raped me?”
Another head shake.
“Then I’m not, and you didn’t. And that’s all there is to it as far as I’m concerned.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, too. I hurt you, and I don’t feel like I can make up for that, either. I know you still have a lot to work through, and I know that things can’t be the same … but can we at least be friends again?”
He gave me an uncertain, lopsided smile, and then put his hand on top of mine.
“I think so,” he replied. “I’d like that.”
chapter
thirty-nine
Family Matters
One of the palace guards was waiting for me outside the Warlock’s room. He snapped to attention and saluted me.
“Meine dame, Magus Marron wishes for you to brunch with him on the dining balcony of Tower Three,” the young man announced. “I am here to escort you, if you like.”
It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about Cooper. “Oh. Okay, sure. Lead the way.”
The guard took me down the long hall, through an open breezeway, and into the tower, where he bowed me into a modern elevator that had been decorated in marble and wrought iron inside to make it match the style of the rest of the castle.
Cooper was sitting at a small round table sipping coffee; apparently he had the spacious balcony all to himself. I’d expected him to be in jeans and a sweater, his hair still a bed-head tangle, but he’d showered and shaved and was wearing a nice pair of pants and a suit coat, with a black silk dress shirt underneath. He’d even put on a fancy pair of Italian loafers.
He turned his head at the sound of my footsteps and smiled at me. “Oh, great, they found you!”
“Well, don’t you look sharp today?” I sat down across from him. “Suddenly I feel underdressed.”
“Oh, no, you’re not, not at all. I just … wanted to look nice for you.” He cleared his throat. “So, the maid said she took you to the Warlock’s room.”
I nodded. “We had a talk.”
“How was it?”
“Surprising. But good, I think. We got some things worked out.”
A waiter who’d been standing discreetly by the curtained doorway stepped out and bowed to me.
“Would you like a beverage?” he asked.
“Coffee would be great,” I replied. “And some orange juice, if you have it.”
He nodded and disappeared into the tower.
“Wow, it’s just crazy beautiful out here, isn’t it?” Cooper leaned back in his chair, smiling out at the sun gleaming on the lake and the snowcapped mountains. “I got lunch out here yesterday, and thought breakfast for just the two of us would be nice.”
“Yes, it’s really nice, honey.” I inhaled deeply, closing my eyes for a moment to try to steady my nerves. “Look. I guess this is my day for clearing the air, and … I have to tell you something.”
His smile vanished. “What’s wrong?”
“When Miko trapped me in my hellement, we ended up doing … stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“I had sex with her,” I blurted out, feeling my cheeks grow hot. “It was horrible, but also … wasn’t. I … thought you should know about that, in case …”
“In case what?” he said after I went silent.
“In case you don’t want to be my boyfriend now that you know I’ve had hellsex with both your brother and our mortal enemy.” I was staring at a spot on the linen tablecloth, afraid to meet his gaze. “In case you think I’m a dirty whore you don’t want anything to do with.”
“Jessie.” He reached across the table and took my hand in his. “Look at me.”
I looked up.
“I love you,” he said, gazing earnestly into my eyes. “And Miko was a fucking monster. I mean that in every sense possible. It makes me furious that she hurt you and twisted your mind around and made you think that you’re anything less than a beautiful, wonderful person. And it makes me just as furious to think that she made you believe I wouldn’t love you anymore because of what she did to you.”
He paused. “And as for the sex, I would still love you even if you gave the stable boy a blow job this very morning.”
“Juice?” the waiter asked loudly behind us. He was standing stiffly in the doorway holding a pitcher of fresh-squeezed OJ in one hand and a silver pot of coffee in the other. The man wore a carefully neutral expression, pretending he hadn’t heard what my boyfriend had just said.
But clearly he had, and now it was Cooper’s turn to blush.
“Yes, please, thank you,” I said.
The waiter carefully poured our beverages, and a moment later a second waiter wheeled out a cart bearing sliced baguettes and soft cheeses, scrambled eggs, huge glossy blackberries, caviar, and a platter piled high with fresh cooked bacon.
Cooper pointed at the bacon as the waiter set the serving plates on our table. “Is this Sansâme?”
The waiter nodded. “Yes, exactly as you ordered, sir. May I bring you anything else?”
“No, this is great, thank you.” I bit into a savory slice of the crispy spirit-free bacon.
“Please ring for us if you need anything.” He gestured toward a little silver bell among the plates of food.
Once the waiters had left the balcony, I looked back at Cooper and smiled slyly. “So, for real about the stable boy?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be happy. But I’d still love you.”
“Good to know.” I took another bite of bacon. “You know, if you blew the stable boy I’d still love you, too.”
Cooper sighed exaggeratedly and shook his head.
“But if you were planning to, could I watch?”
“Oh, for the love of … eat your breakfast, woman! Jeez.” He threw his napkin at me in mock fury.
Once I got over my giggling fit, I dug into the eggs and berries and we ate in relative silence.
When we’d had our fill, the second waiter came back out to clear the plates, and the first waiter arrived with two flutes of champagne on a silver tray.
“Dom Perignon, as you requested, Magus.”
“Thank you.” Cooper took them both from the tray and handed one to me. “I thought that, considering everything that’s happened, we should have a toast to our future.”
“To our future.” I clinked my glass against his and took a long drink of the fancy champagne.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a gold ring shaped like an ouroboros with a diamond eye, and got down on one knee beside me. “Will you be my wife?”
He held the ring out to me, and all I could do was stare at it for a moment. Was I still asleep? Was this a joke? Was I hallucinating? I looked from the shiny ring to Cooper, and his expression was totally sincere. No joking there. And I could feel the cool mountain breeze riffling my hair, taste the sour-sweetness of the champagne in my mouth. If I’d been dreaming or tripping, I’m pretty sure I would have imagined whiskey instead.
“Whoa. Really?” I squeaked.
“Yes, really. Should I have gotten a snowy owl to fly this over?”
“No, I mean … yes. Yes, I’ll be your wife.”
Cooper grinned at me. “Then give me your hand.”
I held out my right hand, and he slipped the engagement ring onto my third finger.
“Cool, I got the size right,” he said.
I replied by grabbing him by the ears and kissing him deeply, passionately, until a couple of palace guards cleared their throats in the doorway.
“Yes?” I asked them.
“Magus Shimmer requests that you and Magus Marron join him in his office,” the first guard said to me.
Cooper and I shrugged at each other, and we got up and followed the men down the corridors toward my father’s tower.
“So, do you want to tell your father about our engagement, or should I?” he whispered.
“Um.” Suddenly I was nervous about telling my father. I knew my feeling was irrational. Before we went to Texas, Magus Shimmer had evidently grilled my boyfriend over his intentions toward me. So surely my father would be pleased by the news, right? Or at least he wasn’t going to have Cooper thrown out a tower window over it. Probably.
But what if my father was super, super, superexcited about the whole thing? Would there be lots more awkward hugging? Would he want us to get married right away? The thought of being shotgunned into some massive traditional ceremony scared me almost as much as the thought of Cooper being defenestrated. I’d never been one of those girls who dreamed of a white wedding, but now that I was going to have one of whatever hue, I wanted time to make it ours.
I took a deep breath. “Let me tell him. But let’s see what he wants first.”
“Okay.”
As we reached the elevator, I heard footsteps in the hall behind us.
“Please to hold the lift!” a young man called out.
I turned, and saw another palace guard nervously leading Pal toward us. My familiar was lumbering along at an overly casual pace, which seemed to make the guard’s anxiety even worse. Clearly the guy wasn’t keen on being so close to a large grizzly bear.
“Your father summoned me,” my familiar said. “This arctophobic fellow wouldn’t say why. Not that I could ask him, of course.”
“Huh. I wonder what’s going on?” I replied.
“Both of you know that family is very important to me.” My father poured Cooper and me some ninety-year-old Scotch from his wet bar. Pal was on the floor a few feet away from us, gnawing on some huge filets of salmon jerky that a butler had brought in on a silver platter.
“It’s important to me, too,” I replied, feeling a pang of sadness cut through the afterglow of Cooper’s proposal. The dream about my mom had lingered in my mind. And thinking about her death had also made me start thinking about my aunt Vicky’s suicide. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in college maybe I would have realized that she had fallen into a serious depression. Maybe I could have helped her, and she’d still be alive.
“Your mother loved you very much,” my father said, handing me a Scotch.
“I know.” I sipped the drink. “She died because of me.”
“Not because of you,” he chided. “She did what any good mother would have done in her circumstances.”
“She’s still gone.” I absently thumbed my engagement ring, rolling the ouroboros back and forth on my finger. I wasn’t hiding it, but I hadn’t shown it to my father yet. In my indecision over when to tell him, I’d decided to wait and see if he’d notice my new jewelry on his own. Pal hadn’t spotted it, either, but his vision as a bear probably wasn’t very good. And also the ring wasn’t made of delicious fish, which was the main thing he was interested in at the moment.
My father paused. “It need not be so.”
It took a moment for his comment to sink in. I felt the world tilt again, and my heart started beating faster. Was my father suggesting what I thought he was?
“What do you mean?” Cooper asked.
“You were able to bring your young brothers back to the living world when surely they should have been long dead.” My father looked from Cooper to me. “You have unusual powers, the two of you. I believe that with my assistance, you could resurrect your mother and give her the life that the Virtus Regnum denied her.”
“What about Aunt Vicky?” I asked.
“Her, too. Certainly. It would be a dangerous undertaking, but—”
“I’ll do it,” I said. This mission I didn’t have to think about. I owed both my aunt and my mother my life, and if there was even a slight chance I could bring them back, I was going to do my damnedest to make it happen.
Pal dropped his salmon. “Wait. Jessie. ‘Dangerous’ is an understatement. You suffered serious side effects from the Marron brothers’ resurrection, and the Virtus Regnum—”
“Fuck the Regnum,” I replied. “Seriously, fuck those guys.”
I felt a righteous, exhilarating anger harden my resolve. The Regnum had killed my mother—what better way to avenge her execution than to bring her back from the dead? Bring her back safe and sound to my father where they couldn’t touch her ever again? Hell yes.
And … I was getting married. Frankly I didn’t know the first thing about wedding dresses, or wedding shoes, or wedding anything. Having Mom around to help me pick stuff out would be awesome. If I had to plan the big day all on my own, the theme would probably end up being spontaneous combustion.
But, really, screw the decorations. I wanted my family there when Cooper and I said our vows. My whole family, dammit.
“Whatever it takes, I’m doing this,” I told Pal. “Are you with me?”
He blinked at me. “I have concerns, but yes, of course I’m with you. Always.”
I looked at Cooper, who wore an expression of profound surprise. “Are you in?”
He nodded. “I’m in.”
Author’s Note
This is the third book in the Jessie Shimmer series. While I have done my best to make sure this novel stands on its own, the story builds on everything that happened in Shotgun Sorceress, which in turn built on everything that happened in Spellbent.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to express my appreciation to my editor, Shauna Summers, my agent, Robert Fleck, and my first readers: Sara, Trista, Dan, Scott, and Pete. Thanks for all your help! Special thanks also goes to Cindy-Jane for her translation assistance. My most profound thanks goes to Gary Braunbeck for his reading and advice on Latin ritual.
ALSO BY LUCY A. SNYDER
Spellbent
Shotgun Sorceress
Switchblade Goddess Page 25
