Despite the clawing need to put my eyes on my best friend, I couldn’t screw up the nerve to enter the house. Coward that I was, I decided to circle the wraparound porch and peer through the windows until I spotted signs of life. Or undeath, considering half the house’s occupants weren’t alive in the traditional sense.
Soft humming distracted me enough I bypassed a few windows to check the front porch swing.
“Odette.” I stumbled over my own feet. “I thought you’d left.”
“Without saying goodbye? Never.” She patted the spot beside her, and I sat. “I smudged the house and invoked Hecate in the upstairs guestroom where our poor Amelie rests.”
“You knew,” I surmised. “That’s why you stayed behind.” Probably why she came at all.
“The people you love are shadows to me, but I still snatch bits and pieces from others on their periphery.” Her arm snaked around me, and she pulled me down until my cheek mashed against her bony shoulder. “I don’t know why you must hurt so.” She rested her chin on top of my head. “This world seems determined to make you suffer, and I can’t see the whys or hows or whens. Sometimes I hate your mother for binding me. Sometimes I hate Maud too. They left you defenseless.”
“I’m working on it,” I assured her. “I won’t be defenseless forever.”
“Ah, bébé.” Her deep sigh rustled my hair. “I worry for you, but I do not doubt you.”
“Odette?” The smell of her skin, ocean and seagrass and sand, burned my nose in a pleasant way. “Will you sing to me?”
“Your ears would bleed.” She jostled me then jerked her chin toward the front door. “Better to leave such things to the young men inclined to serenade.”
Boaz watched us from the doorway, his expression inscrutable. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
“It’s time for me to return home.” She peppered my face with kisses then drifted over to Boaz, where she jerked to a halt, her frame trembling, and the voice that poured from her mouth was multilayered and as foreign as I imagined fae lands would be to human eyes. “You stand at a crossroads, Boaz Pritchard. Choose well, and you will have your heart’s desire. Choose poorly, and you will lose that which matters most to you.” A shudder broke the spell, and she rasped, “Choose, child, and do it soon.”
“Thank you for your wisdom, ma’am.” His tone was solemn. “Do you need a ride home?”
“I think I’ll walk.” She patted the nearest column. “Take care of our girl, old friend.”
Woolly shifted her consciousness in a wave that rippled through me, and the porch creaked agreement.
We watched until Odette vanished from sight, and then Boaz joined me.
“It’s a long walk to Tybee.” He craned his neck. “Will she be all right?”
“Odette does everything for a reason.” That much was for certain. “For all we know, she’s going to come across an accident while walking, dial 911 and save a life. Or, maybe she forgot her phone, and she stands there to bear witness to a death that otherwise might have been prevented. Either way, she sets a series of events into motion that mere mortals such as us can only begin to fathom.”
That relaxed him enough he assumed Odette’s position, draping the comforting weight of his arm across my shoulders. I folded my legs under me and settled more fully into his side while he took up the chore of rocking us. We didn’t talk. There was too much to say.
The blare of a ringtone had Boaz lifting his hips to retrieve his phone from his back pocket. “Pritchard.” He closed his eyes and listened. “Yes, sir.” A heavy exhale punched from his lungs. “Yes, sir.” His knuckles whitened around the phone. “I’ll be there, sir.” He ended the call with a mash of his thumb that could have splintered the glass. “I’m being called in. As far as the Elite are concerned, I did my job, and it’s time to get back to my unit.”
I rescued his phone before he thought better of it and hurled it in the bushes. “What about Amelie?”
“She doesn’t exist anymore, Squirt.” His heart was a relentless drumbeat in my ear. “They won’t make any allowances for her as far as I’m concerned.” His arm resettled against me. “I don’t know what we would have done without you. She has nowhere else to go, no one else to protect her.”
“I’m happy to do it.” Amelie was only the latest of Boaz’s treasures to seek asylum in my care.
Twisting on the swing, he slid his hands under my arms and lifted, hauling me across his lap so that my knees braced on the seat to either side of his hips. “Don’t make light of something that means everything to me.” Sincerity burned in his eyes. “You’re a gift that keeps giving, Grier. I open one box, and there’s another inside waiting, and another inside that and so on to infinity.” His arms linked around me, crushing me against him and forcing me to brace on his shoulders to keep from smooshing my boobs in his face, which, honestly, might have been his intention. “How do you do it? How are you this person? How are you in my arms?”
“I’m not sure who this person is yet,” I admitted. “You look at me, and you still see the girl who grew up next door, but she died in a cell in Atramentous. That Grier is a comfortable shirt I wear sometimes so I look like I fit in with you and Amelie, but it’s too small. One day I’m going to pull it on, and the buttons are going to pop off, and you’re going to see what’s really underneath.”
“I’m going to stop you there and say I’m a fan of buttons popping off any shirt you’re wearing.”
“I suspected that metaphor might get away from me.” I linked my arms behind his neck, fingernails rasping his nape. “We good?”
With his hands bracketing my hips and my thighs spilling over his, I didn’t have to shift my weight to feel his answer. “We could be very good.”
“Be serious.” I braced my forehead against his. “Just for a minute.”
The charming veneer Boaz wore like a second skin peeled away beneath my stare, revealing a passionate man stripped of his pride and arrogance. One who had fought hard to save a sibling he loved and lost her all the same. His heart was a gaping wound that made each bruise and cut easier to see. The puckered scar tissue he exposed had built up over the years we had spent apart, and it made me wonder if I wasn’t the only one who wore a familiar-looking shirt to fool people I cared for into believing nothing had changed.
“Time’s up.” The wicked curve spreading over his lips knit his façade back together before my eyes. “I have to go.”
“I know.” I stayed right where I was, breathing him in. “I wish you could stay.”
“You just want me around for when you work up enough mad to holler at me about the cameras.”
“There is that.” I wanted those cameras gone yesterday, though I might be persuaded to install my own. “But I also miss you when you’re not here sucking up all the oxygen to inflate your ego.”
“Hmm.” He pressed his lips to mine. “Oxygen deprivation would explain why you haven’t wised up and left me.”
I scowled at his phone when it started going off in my hand. “Whatever they want, tell them no.”
He checked the display then answered in a clipped tone, “Whatever you want, the answer is no.”
“Boaz.” Hammering his shoulder with my fists, I gaped at him. “What are you doing?”
“Following orders, ma’am,” he told me with a wink before returning to his conversation. “Yeah, I’m on my way.” He ended the call and exhaled long and slow. “Becky says there’s a situation in Athens. Our whole unit is being deployed.”
“Is this going to be our new normal?” I leaned back to look at him. “Kisses and goodbyes?”
“I’m a soldier. This is my normal, period.” He drank in my features, his brow furrowed. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No.” I climbed out of his lap. “Slow is a good idea for us.”
Adding Amelie into the mix would complicate things before all was said and done. Gratitude might come easily to him now, but given time and space, that might change. As much as I w
anted to believe he would see things from my perspective, a Pritchard attempting to view the world through High Society glasses was what started this trouble in the first place.
“You still think we’re a good idea.” He dialed up the charm. “And that we are an us.”
“No, Boaz, I sit on the laps of all the men who visit me.” I spun on my heel in a huff. “You didn’t think you were special, did you?”
Boaz, being a subtle man, bum-rushed me. I got out a squeak before his arms closed around my newly healed middle from behind, and he hoisted me in the air. He whirled me in a circle until Woolly took notice of the shenanigans on her porch and put her foot down. The board under his foot warped, and he stumbled enough my feet touched planks. That leverage was all I needed to break his hold and skirt his reach.
Woolly kept the porch boiling like an angry sea until he was forced to pinwheel his arms to maintain his balance.
“Fair warning.” He pointed at me while stumbling down the steps. “I’ll be back to finish this.”
I winked saucily at him from behind the safety of the wards. “I’ll be counting down the days.”
Boaz backed toward the garage where he cranked Willie and set out for Athens after blowing me a kiss I refused to catch on principle. With no other handy distractions available, I entered the living room and went in search of Amelie.
I followed the scent of sage from Odette’s smudging up to the second floor and down the hall to Amelie’s new bedroom. I cracked open the door to peek in on her, but her back was facing me. I settled for watching her breathe, a habit learned from Maud, one she had developed after Mom died. I don’t know how long I leaned there, cast in a slice of sunlight, untangling the messy worries in my head.
“Grier?” Amelie’s muzzy voice rose from beneath a mountain of quilts. “Is that you?”
The combination of time, distance, smudging and ink was bringing her around. Sleep would only help.
“I’m here.” I straightened. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’alright,” she mumbled and lifted one edge of the quilt. “Get under here before my buns freeze.”
After kicking the door shut with my heel, I crawled under the covers with my clothes still on just like when we were kids. Maud always refused to let us sleep in the same room when she claimed there were plenty to spare. “Amelie…”
Gentle snores announced her descent back into sleep. Unwilling to leave just yet, I turned onto my back and stared at the ceiling until her breathing smoothed into an even rhythm. The temptation to stay snuggled up in bed with her, to pretend everything was okay, that the outside world could wait, kept me breathing in the scent of detergent on the quilt and listening to the comforting sounds of sharing space with another person longer than Maud ever would have allowed.
Fear of getting punished, though there was no one left to catch me, prickled at my skin until I conceded defeat and sneaked into my room. Once there, I found Oscar waiting for me. “Do you need a glass of water before bed?” I was mostly kidding, but the boy kept wringing his hands. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m scared of sleeping in new places,” he whispered. “Woolly gave me my own room but…”
I saw where this was headed and pulled an Amelie. I was too tired to fool with stripping off my clothes or finding pajamas. I dove between the covers and lifted an edge for him. “Come on if you’re coming.”
Oscar stopped fiddling and hurled himself at me across the mattress where we snuggled until he faded to ether.
Alone in my bed, I stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep while actions and consequences tumbled through my head in a grind of shame and sadness and guilt. I was about to go in search of Eileen to get in more ward practice, though I couldn’t remember the last place I remembered seeing the grimoire, when I heard a muffled voice drifting up from the garden. “What is that?”
Woolly, whose presence had followed Oscar to my room, raised the window a crack.
“A stone for a heart and a blade for a tongue, fair beauty she slayed all her suitors but one…”
Linus may have inherited Maud’s talent, but she hadn’t passed her voice on to him, but it didn’t matter.
Within moments, the song worked its comforting magic on me, and my bones began to sag against the mattress. I should have called out to my fellow insomniac, complimented him or asked how he had known just what I needed to send me drifting, but sleep hauled me under as fair beauty lowered her gate.
Join Hailey’s Newsletter
Want to get news updates and alerts about Hailey Edwards and her new books? Sign up for her newsletter to get info on new releases, giveaways, appearances and more.
About the Author
Hailey Edwards writes about questionable applications of otherwise perfectly good magic, the transformative power of love, the family you choose for yourself, and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily all at once. That could get messy. She lives in Alabama with her husband, their daughter, and a herd of dachshunds.
www.HaileyEdwards.net
Also by Hailey Edwards
The Foundling
Bayou Born #1
The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy
How to Save an Undead Life #1
How to Claim an Undead Soul #2
Black Dog Series
Dog with a Bone #1
Dog Days of Summer #1.5
Heir of the Dog #2
Lie Down with Dogs #3
Old Dog, New Tricks #4
Black Dog Series Novellas
Stone-Cold Fox
Gemini Series
Dead in the Water #1
Head Above Water #2
Hell or High Water #3
Gemini Series Novellas
Fish Out of Water
Lorimar Pack Series
Promise the Moon #1
Wolf at the Door #2
Over the Moon #3
Black Dog Universe Shorts
Out for Blood
The Bakers Grimm
Thrown to the Wolves
A Stone’s Throw Christmas
Araneae Nation
A Heart of Ice #.5
A Hint of Frost #1
A Feast of Souls #2
A Cast of Shadows #2.5
A Time of Dying #3
A Kiss of Venom #3.5
A Breath of Winter #4
A Veil of Secrets #5
Daughters of Askara
Everlong #1
Evermine #2
Eversworn #3
Wicked Kin
Soul Weaver #1
How to Claim an Undead Soul (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 2) Page 28
