The Paladins

by Julie Reece

  My fingers untangle at his neck and drop to the bulge in his biceps. I can’t help enjoying the way they bunch when he holds me. My legs lose strength, knees weaken. There’s every possibility the boy will kiss me into unconsciousness. Can that happen? He must know because he holds me so close I hardly have the air to speak.

  “So, how ’bout them Panthers?” My sarcasm’s an attempt to diffuse the sexual tension between us.

  He chuckles as I wriggle free of his grasp and reface the sink. He knows exactly what I’m doing but allows it.

  Focus on your sugar craving, Raven. The whole room smells of butter, and chocolate, and peanut butter goodness. Lifting a cookie over my shoulder, I ask, “Want a bite?”

  Ignoring my offer, his teeth graze the bare skin of my shoulder, and I gently bump him with my elbow. “Bite of cookie.”

  “You’re all I want.” His feet shift. “Hurry up and eat those, so I can kiss you. I’m losing patience.”

  I smile. Did he ever have any? Too lazy to get a plate, I stick two more cookies on a paper towel planning to eat them over the sink. If Jenny saw me, she’d fuss and insist on china and a linen napkin.

  The treat is halfway to my mouth when I glance through the window and spy Cole outside on the lawn—except, he wasn’t there a second ago. He appeared. As in, out of thin air appeared.

  I drop the cookie in the sink. “What in blue blazes?”

  Cole tries to stand and falls. Not a second passes and he vanishes, materializing again near the large maple tree clear across the yard.

  “Come on!” I fling my napkin and bolt for the door. Without a word, Gideon follows me outside. I love how he doesn’t ask what’s wrong. In this house, anything from homicidal poltergeists to random fires could be the culprit, and maybe he’s beginning to trust my judgment.

  My feet pound the earth as I race toward Cole’s prone body in the grass. To my rear, Gideon’s uneven gait keeps pace. The leg damaged in a fight with childhood cancer hardly slows him.

  I drop to my knees beside Cole, terrified he’s stroking out in the heat. “Hey, can you hear me?” One careful nudge with my palm to his shoulder. Two. Three. Panic takes over and I’m shaking him until his teeth rattle. “Wake up!”

  “Easy, tiger,” Gideon says, easing me aside to get a better look before placing two fingers against Cole’s neck.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I ask.

  “Probably not.”

  I watch as my boyfriend checks Cole’s airway, presses an ear to his chest, lifts each closed eyelid to stare at his giant pupils. Gideon’s expression stays serious and focused while he does what he does until I can’t take the silence anymore.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Gideon straightens. “Nothing. Not that I can see. He just … passed out.”

  “Well, that’s not normal. I mean, there must be a reason.”

  Cole seizes violently, then he’s gone again, his whole body vanishing.

  Gideon jumps a foot. “The hell?”

  We glance across the lawn and find Cole’s body sprawled on the grass by the back door.

  “Just a wild guess here, but I’m going to assume that’s your reason. Whatever that is.” It takes less than a heartbeat for Gideon’s careful reserve to slip back into place.

  I confess I don’t have his discipline. Nervous energy courses through my veins. My head aches, and I’m strangely lightheaded. The ground rumbles beneath us sending pings of cold fear skipping down my spine.

  “There, do you feel that?” I ask. “The ground shaking?”

  “Yes.” His eyes narrow, I think suspicion flickers behind them, but I’m not sure.

  Drat. “I was hoping it was my imagination.”

  When the tremors stop, my feet scramble for purchase on the dry grass.

  Steady fingers wrap my wrist before I shoot off toward Cole.

  “Wait. It might not be safe.”

  I haven’t been safe since my mother died, but I don’t point that out right now. My gaze focuses on Gideon’s amazing eyes. One blue. One green. The sight calms me, if slightly.

  Sudden wind blows up, weird since it was still and ninety degrees a minute ago. The powerful gusts nearly bowl us over. I push the hair from my face and yell, “Can you bring Cole into the house? We have to figure out what’s going on.”

  Despite the crazy winds, Gideon rises with the graceful ease I’m accustomed to. He tucks a hand beneath my arm and helps me to my feet.

  “Hang on a sec!” Cole’s thin, but tall and solid—enough to be a handful in this gale. I leave the boys, run in through the back door and holler for Dane.

  “What’s wrong?” His answer comes fast enough to tell me he wasn’t far.

  “Did you see?”

  “See what?” Maggie asks, bouncing into the kitchen from the butler’s pantry where they were probably making out again.

  If only Gideon and I could be so carefree. I wonder if life will ever slow enough for us to have a simple relationship.

  I point toward the backdoor. “Can you help us with Cole first? We’ll go from there.”

  Positioned on the sofa in the study, Cole lies pale and still as a corpse. I flash back to the cellar where his spellbound body lay in a straw-lined casket next to two dozen others. It’s not a nice memory.

  As Mags enters with a basin of water, I quickly fill her and Dane in on Cole’s disappearing act outside. Gideon sits in a chair nearby and watches the sky through the window. He adds nothing to my story, only rolls the old coin his father gave him between his fingers.

  Maggie places the bowl on the end table at the head of the couch, and hands me the washcloth. She settles herself on the floor in between Dane’s outstretched legs, while I apply a damp cloth to Cole’s forehead.

  We’re waiting for Doctor Dave, Gideon’s eccentric, private physician who’s paid well to make house calls, treat bizarre injuries, and ask no questions.

  “Do you think it’s the curse from before?” Dane asks, nodding toward Cole. “Or is this something else?”

  “Dane,” Maggie hisses. “Don’t ask things like that. You’ll scare everybody.”

  Like disappearing bodies, rouge plants, and fires won’t?

  “Oh come on. This place was jacked up long before Wynter got here. I used to think horror movies were hilarious before I knew the shit was real.” He palms Maggie’s cheek. “I don’t want you around it anymore.”

  “You talk like it’s a disease I can catch.”

  “I’m not sure it isn’t. Seriously, I’ve thought about this a lot lately, and I think we need to be careful. Now, I don’t know that I believe everything Rae does about God or heaven and hell, but I know the things we do follow us. Good and bad pieces of the past stick to us and affect the future.”

  I’ve never heard Dane get so philosophical, but I see what he’s getting at. Cole’s choices, Ben’s, mine, Gideon’s, they’ve all had consequences—and Dane watched it unfold. His father beat him pretty often before he moved to the garage apartment offered at Maggie’s aunt’s house. He’s had no one of his own until a few months ago when Maggie realized she’d been in love with him all along. He won’t risk her.

  Maggie plays with the collar of his shirt. “Don’t you think—?”

  “No,” Gideon says. “I agree with him.” He looks pointedly at Dane. “You’re not wrong.”

  Dane nods like a whole lot more just passed between them in the guy-non-speak we girls don’t understand.

  “About … ?” Maggie asks.

  “Protecting the people he cares about.” Gideon rubs the dark gold stubble on his jaw, his gaze drawn back to the world outside the window. His savage expression makes my stomach flutter. I’m ridiculous, but I never get tired of watching him, or fail to notice how spectacular he is doing the simplest things.

  “I woke up the other night with a memory I haven’t thought about in years, and it’s been haunting me ever since.” His
fingers stop moving, and the gold coin disappears into his palm. “Simply put, Artisans are guardians of a magical power handed down through generations. Though my father taught me some about the Artisan way of life, Desiree killed him long before he finished. There’s little written down, but I knew a few details: the importance of secrecy, and I remember the idea of commerce attached to his explanation of magic, something about cost and checks and balances. He used to say magic is everywhere, but the world can’t see it. And it doesn’t die.” Gideon faces us. “Actually, his words were, magic never dies.”

  Dane lifts his chin from the top of Maggie’s head. “So, when a magical curse is broken … ”

  “ … Where does the magic go?” I finish.

  “The plants!” Maggie says. “Raven, did you tell him about—”

  Cole’s timely groan saves me from the explanation I’ve dreaded all day. His lids crack open and he lifts a shaky hand, examining his fingers as though they’re brand new. “What happened?”

  I remove the soggy cloth from his head. “We were hoping you could tell us.” Though I don’t look up, I feel Gideon staring a hole through me. Of course he’ll want to know why it’s taken me all day to bring up the plants. I wish the reason was more interesting than plain old denial.

  Cole’s eyebrows crunch together. “I was in my room reading through an old diary. I must have fallen asleep when Rosamond broke through again. One minute we were talking, and the next, I’m caught inside a bloody hurricane. I can’t explain, but it was a little like flying.”

  “We found you out on the lawn. You were there and just like that,” I snap my fingers, “you were gone and reappeared twenty feet away.”

  His eyes widen. “You’re barking. I didn’t—”

  “We aren’t. And you did.” Gideon palms the lion head of his cane. “The question isn’t if. It’s why?”

  Mounting tension ramps my pulse. Fires, rogue plants, Cole’s arrival along with the mysterious girl … it’s obviously connected, I just don’t know how.

  Gideon’s gaze meets mine. His head shakes, no more than a hairsbreadth, and I get that he wants to talk in private.

  “I need to get up.” Cole’s shoulders lift, but my body blocks his path. “Raven, you don’t understand. Rose told me things about Pan, the magician who rules The Void, and the mirrors he’s watching us through.”

  Hair prickles on the back of my neck.

  “Let me up.” Cole pushes past, swinging his feet around me to the floor. “The answer could be in the journals.” His face is drawn, but the resolve in his dark blue eyes is undeniable.

  Gideon’s bloodless knuckles grip the lion head of his cane, and he stands. “I’ll have the books brought to the dining room. We’ll spread everything out and hunt together.”

  Hunt. Interesting word choice.

  Determination sharpens his features as he strides toward me. “Rae and I will be there in a minute, right after we chat.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Gideon

  Raven avoids my gaze choosing instead to employ the nervous habit of plucking at a hangnail.

  I lower to the seat beside her, enclosing both her hands inside my larger palm. She stills. I swear I feel her pulse slow down, but that’s impossible, isn’t it? Heavy lashes fan her smooth cheek. Silence becomes a living, breathing thing between us.

  “Will you look at me?”

  Eyes, gray as a summer storm, search my face for answers I’d rather not give. Our breath mixes, heartbeats align. She pulls a hand free and runs her fingertips over my mouth. I kiss the tips before pushing my cheek into her palm.

  “It’s all going to change again, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I say truthfully, and consider breaking up with her. Letting go might be the right thing to do. My life endangers hers, and it’s been a hell of a long time since I did anything unselfish.

  “What’s happening to us?”

  I’m not ready for that conversation yet. Taking a lock of her hair, I rub the silky strands between my fingers. My stomach knots knowing it’s a privilege I may not have much longer.

  Neither of us wants to reopen the newly formed scab of hope we had on life, so I don’t tell her that I suspect we’re only beginning another chapter of supernatural horrors. I also don’t say that I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her. That I would die to protect her, or that I would marry her tomorrow if I could. We had no financial constraints to keep us apart, but that’s not true anymore. So I keep my mouth shut, because these are things you can’t tell the girl you’re planning to leave.

  Since my hypocrisy only goes so far, I’m not angry that she’s keeping secrets. “What happened this morning?”

  Raven’s gaze cuts to the window. “Remember I told you about the breathing tree in Maggie’s backyard? You said that I’d probably fallen asleep or imagined it.”

  I nod, fear an invisible fist in my gut.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why?” I trace the delicate lines in her palm. Each crease is supposed to mean something, but I don’t know what. I do it mainly to keep sane while I listen.

  “Last night, I dreamt my mother was talking to me in the park. Warning me actually, about good trees, and bad trees, and I can’t remember what all. Then these vines started growing out of her body, and when I woke up … voila, real plants.” She slides her hand from mine. “Gideon, this is going to sound insane, but Maggie thinks I called them, and I think she’s right.”

  Wait … “What?” I feel my expression hardening. “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean I woke up literally covered in these huge, thick vines that encased me like a mummy. Poor Edgar went ballistic trying to get me out. Maggie, too. I don’t know how I did it, but I’m pretty sure I wished them there. And then it got weirder.”

  How the hell can this get any weirder?

  Her gaze flits everywhere but my face.

  “Because … ” I prompt. My fingers wrap hers, both to stop her trembling and keep me grounded.

  “Because, when Maggie went for an ax, I felt sick that the plants would die when they were only trying to help. I wished they would save themselves, and Gideon, they did! Wound out the window as easily as rolling up your everyday garden hose.”

  On instinct, I cup her cheek. Her belief in me, in us, is so solid, right or wrong; I question my ability to leave.

  “The magic is still here,” she says, finally pulling away. “Maybe it’s different, but it’s alive.”

  A glass-shattering scream sends Raven bolting into my arms. The cry came from the dining room down the hall. In seconds I’m up, and with Raven safely behind me, we’re racing out the door.

  Wind roars as loud as any locomotive.

  Another scream. Rae’s fingers are a vice on my hand as we run up the long hallway. Ahead, closed double doors rattle on their hinges. White light shines through every gap around the dark oak frames.

  It takes all my strength to force the doors open. Once I do, wind blasts the hair from my face. Sheer drapes snap and blow around closed windows as though a hurricane were unleashed, yet outside the leaves on the trees are calm and still.

  Wall sconce lights flicker. Dane holds a hysterical Maggie near the fireplace, while Cole sits in a chair at the far end of the ten-foot table. Vibrating.

  “This way!” Rae’s panicked shout eclipses mine. When she steps toward Mags, I fist her flimsy blouse and draw her back.

  Dane meets my gaze, but Cole grabs our attention as his choppy, broken movements increase in speed. Something makes my old schoolmate’s body jerk wildly. His image blinks on and off again, as grainy as bad TV reception. And then he’s gone, reappearing two chairs away.

  He’s standing by the window, then the doorway, on top of the table, under a chair, knocking it over. Now he’s nearly on top of Dane and Mags. I can’t keep up. Both hands cover his ears. His chest pumps up and down as though he’s hyperventilating. And he’s screaming.

&nb
sp; Doors on the buffet slam open and shut. A vase blows off the mantle, smashing on the glossy wood floor. Glass shards fly through the air as jagged missiles.

  “Bloody hell, make it stop!” Cole bends at the waist, arms wrapping his torso as though that will keep his quaking body from coming apart. He looks across the room and just that fast, he’s there.

  This is more than being tossed around by a storm. Cole’s completely vanishing and reappearing in other places. Raven believed she called the vines. That she wished them into being. Could Cole be doing the same without knowing it?

  “Calm down!” My words die in the gale. Wind rocks the chandelier overhead. Another chair topples, blowing across the floor and into a window with a crash. “You’re doing it yourself!”

  “I’m what?” Cole vanishes only to appear halfway up a paneled wall. His body falls to the floor in a heap of arms and legs.

  Driving against the wind, I deliver Raven into Dane’s arms alongside Maggie. My head throbs, chest squeezes too tightly as I pivot back and forth, tracking the ever moving Cole. I sound like a lunatic, but I’m determined to try Raven’s theory. “Try to relax!”

  “Sod off,” Cole shouts, before disappearing again. He pops up behind me, nearly knocking me down. I whirl, grabbing both of his arms. “Tell the wind to stop.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Take deep breaths,” Rae volunteers. “It helps.”

  That’s my girl.

  The doors swing open behind us as my employees enter. Jenny shrieks as she’s flung against a wall, her enormous bust bouncing on impact.

  Jamis totters like a drunkard in the swirling gusts. “What shall I do, sir?”

  “Help me hold him still!”

  Jamis digs his ancient, claw-like fingers into Cole’s shoulders. His body rattles beneath our hands, energy rolling off in constant waves. My chest grows uncomfortably warm, then hot in response, as though I’m absorbing his energy. A powerful current zings down the veins in my arms to my fingertips, fans through my legs burning the soles of my feet. “I think it’s you, man. You’re controlling the wind!” A sudden gust nearly bowls us over.