Gathering Black (Devilborn Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  Cooper got back two days later, looking so haggard and careworn that I decided to put off all conversation until after I welcomed him home in the most stress-relieving way possible. Afterward, he made dinner—it was amazing, what that man could do with just a kitchenette—and told me about his trip. The lamb chops and scalloped potatoes were a great success. His mission to find the East Seed, an equally great failure. Another dead end.

  He had been chasing lead after lead on the East, and they’d all come to nothing in the end. As to the whereabouts of the North Seed, he hadn’t found a single clue. Until now.

  Finally, after he’d had a couple of beers and ample chance to unwind, I told Cooper about Arabella’s visit, and showed him her picture.

  “Yep, that’s her, all right.” He handed back my phone. “I haven’t seen her since we were kids, but she has a face you don’t forget easily.”

  I ignored that. Surely it was silly to be jealous of his own cousin, or whatever she was. Even if they did marry within the clan. “Okay, so she’s telling the truth about who she is. But there’s definitely something going on that she’s not telling us.”

  “Or that Dalton’s not telling her,” Cooper said. “He’s the head of clan intelligence. He plays things close to the vest.”

  “Even with his daughter?”

  “With everyone. I doubt he would even know how to have a completely honest conversation. Keeping secrets is just second nature for him.”

  “Great,” I said. “A spook among spooks.”

  Cooper laughed. “This whole thing is weird, I’ll give you that. Face-to-face meetings aren’t exactly standard Blackwood procedure. But I can see why he’s insisting on it.”

  “Then you can explain it to me, because I can’t.” I got up to clear our plates. “If they genuinely want the North Seed here, why didn’t Dalton just have Arabella bring it with her when she came to check the place out? And to require both of us to go get it? Why would he do that?”

  “Because he wants to size you up,” said Cooper. “Which is only fair. It’s your sanctuary spell, your hotel. That’s a lot of faith we’re asking the clan to put in a stranger.”

  “And you believe this thing about not leaving his house?”

  “If he’s turned it into some kind of fortress, like Arabella says, and it’s the only place he feels safe, then sure. Blackwoods can be pretty paranoid.”

  “Or not paranoid enough,” I muttered.

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be suspicious,” Cooper said. “But it is possible this is just what they say it is.”

  “And it’s also possible they’re lying about all of it, just to lure us out of Bristol.”

  Cooper was nothing if not loyal. Even at odds as they’d been, he was disinclined to think the very worst of his clan. But he couldn’t deny that I had a point. The sanctuary spell protected us both, within the limits of the town. But as soon as we left, we would be exposed to attack, capture, all sorts of harm.

  “Not to mention that with us gone, the seed is vulnerable to any Blackwood who can figure out how to take it,” I said.

  “But they don’t know that,” he said. “They don’t know how the spell works.”

  “They might have ways of finding out.”

  Cooper had told me that both the Wicks and the Blackwoods had access to seers, people they could bring in like a sort of magical CSI team to analyze a spell, not to break it or recreate it, but to learn something of its nature. For all we knew, Dalton might even have sent seers and spies to the Mount Phearson already, posing as guests or anyone at all.

  When I pointed this out, Cooper said, “You’re not wrong, but if you’re worried about a Blackwood infiltrating the hotel, then that’s all the more reason to do what Arabella and Dalton are asking. The last thing we can risk is them telling the whole clan where to find us.”

  “Sounds like you’re pretty determined that we should go,” I said.

  He sighed. “If this really is a chance to get the North Seed… especially if that’s the only one the Wicks need now…”

  I shrugged. “If you believe Dalton really has it, and is really willing to give it to you…”

  Cooper leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. I washed the dishes in silence, considering our options and leaving him to do the same.

  “I don’t completely trust this either,” he said finally. “But I think it’s worth the risk. I think we need to go.”

  I dried my hands, not liking it, but not disagreeing with him either. Whatever Arabella’s game was, we knew one thing for certain: she knew where we were. And as much as I hated the fear of a trap that was at that moment congealing my dinner in my belly, I hated the idea of just waiting for a bunch of hostile Blackwoods to show up and ruin my hard-won sanctuary even more. I’d given up a piece of my soul for that spell—a dire act I still feared would have unknown and unforeseen consequences.

  “Well,” I said. “At least we won’t have to listen to Lance whine about you leaving this time.”

  Five months before, Cooper had accepted the hotel manager’s offer to become the head chef at the Mount Phearson’s new fine dining restaurant. Construction delays, mostly having to do with electrical and plumbing problems, had pushed the opening back until fall, but it didn’t matter—Cooper wouldn’t be part of it. It soon became clear that saving the world was a more-or-less full time job. He was gone a lot, and when he was around, he spent most of his time on a computer, trying to decode messages and hack his own family.

  Plus, Lance was most displeased to discover that Cooper, living off the radar and off the grid as he did, lacked a few things that employers find convenient, like a social security number. Apparently he’d been giving false information to everyone—including our old boss back in Lenox—and just never staying anywhere long enough for it to catch up with him. But that wouldn’t work at the Mount Phearson, where he hoped to settle down for a bit longer.

  As it happened, Cooper had left for this last trip on the same day Lance’s two sons went back to their mother in Charlotte, after being at the Mount Phearson all summer. Lance’s mood was not what you would call approachable, and when he heard Cooper was going too, they had a rather intense disagreement. It ended with both accepting the inevitable: while Cooper could consult on the menu and several other decisions, in the end, Lance would have to look for a new head chef.

  Personally, I was relieved. At least Lance could stop clucking around like a mother hen, demanding to know where Cooper was going, when he would be back, and when I might expect him to stop doing such dangerous work. Besides, it seemed to me that we had plenty to do.

  Cooper was disappointed, though. Being a chef made for a good cover for his other activities, but he also genuinely liked it. Cooking was a stress-reliever for him. Not to mention that it seemed to grate on him to be a kept man, unemployed and dependent on his girlfriend.

  We would have to address that last issue before much longer, along with whether it was a good idea to be living together so soon, or whether it might not be more prudent to get him his own room at the hotel. But those were thorny topics, and like I said, we had a lot to do.

  Including, it seemed, going to see Dalton Blackwood.

  Cooper got in touch with Arabella in the roundabout way the Blackwoods had—in this case, masked as an exchange between two widowers in an online golfing forum. After five days of back and forth, he closed his laptop when I came into the suite one afternoon and said, “How do you like the idea of revisiting some familiar territory?”

  “He’s not in the Berkshires?”

  “No, but he’s in Boston.”

  I sighed. “Great. I suppose it was too much to hope for it to be South Carolina or Tennessee or something.”

  “Could be worse,” said Cooper. “Last I heard he was living out of the country. There was a rumor about an island somewhere.”

  I conceded that it could indeed be worse, but as far as I was concerned, Boston was plenty far enough. Not being one for carrying ID
or leaving a record of his passing, Cooper never flew anywhere if he could help it. Nor did he drive directly anywhere. This would mean weeks on the road, away from the Mount Phearson, exposed to danger.

  But it would be worth it, if it really did end with us putting the North Seed in the vault alongside the West. Besides, it was September, still hot and humid in North Carolina, even in the mountains. “At least we’ll get out of the heat,” I said. “Maybe we can go see the ocean when it’s over.”

  “I guess that depends on how it ends,” Cooper said.

  I wrote us some protection spells, and packed up some herbs and minerals for magical defense. We decided to leave the West Seed at the hotel, with a promise from Lance to take some extra security measures. Cooper wasn’t especially comfortable leaving it behind with neither of us there to watch over it. But despite its vulnerability to Blackwood infiltration, the vault still seemed like a safer place than his pocket to me. Especially under the circumstances; I gave it at least a fifty-fifty chance we were heading into a trap.

  My friends Wendy and Caleb rented a car for us, so mine wouldn’t be seen driving out of town. They brought it to the hotel along with a bag of croissants from their coffee shop, and a couple of poppets. I thanked them for all of it, even the poppets. I hated the little dolls, but they were good for protection.

  Also good for protection was the Glock Cooper put in the glove compartment beside them. He hated to use guns—they were too noisy, and drew too much attention—but it never hurt to have one around, in case it came to that.

  Our defenses thus ordered, we drove away one bright morning from the hotel I’d come to love and the town I had, against all odds, come to think of as home, down the mountain and toward whatever fate awaited us in Boston.

  For a short time, I was actually lulled into believing that fate would wait that long to show itself.

  We went to Georgia first, and spent two lovely, vacation-like nights on the coast there. After that we went west, rambling through Alabama and Tennessee. I bought a new disposable phone every couple of days, and called Lance or Agatha to check in on the hotel.

  “Phineas called me this morning,” Lance told me on our fourth day away. “He was worried because he couldn’t get in touch with you on your mobile.”

  That was understandable, since my mobile was locked in my suite back in Bristol. “Balls,” I said. “I forgot to call him before I left. What did you tell him?”

  “I gave him the basics about your trip. Figured you wouldn’t mind him being in the loop.”

  “No, I don’t mind. Wendy would have told him anyway. But I’m guessing it didn’t set his mind at ease.”

  Lance chuckled. “At ease isn’t the phrase I would use to describe his demeanor, no. He felt you should have called him to help out.”

  “Of course he did.” My recently-discovered cousin was already in the habit of acting a lot more like an overprotective big brother. I made a mental note to call him with the next disposable phone I picked up. I’d already made three calls on this one, which was the limit Cooper had set. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Marjory Smith was here yesterday, asking for a meeting with you.”

  “Saving the best news for last, I see. And what did you tell her?”

  “That you weren’t available,” Lance said. “Nothing more. She laughed at me.”

  “Laughed at you?”

  “Like it was some inside joke we shared. It was strange, but what interaction with Marjory isn’t?”

  “Good point,” I said. “Did she leave after that?”

  “She hung around the lobby for maybe half an hour. Walking kind of aimlessly around the room, then sitting in front of the fireplace.”

  “That’s weird. She didn’t do anything that looked like it might have been a spell?”

  “Not that I saw, but you know I’m not very good with that sort of thing.”

  I decided not to worry about it too much. Marjory and the Bristol Garden Club delighted in doing things just to unsettle us. If she knew I’d left town—and I was sure she did—she probably just wanted to make me worry that she was up to something in my absence. I told Lance to let me know if she came back, and hung up.

  “What was that all about?” Cooper asked.

  I gave him the shortest summary I could, in a tone that invited as few questions as possible. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I was oddly possessive of my conversations with Lance. The Mount Phearson was my hotel. I didn’t owe Cooper a report.

  It had already begun by then: the occasional bouts of melancholy, the flashes of temper, the anxiety and restlessness that felt like they were about more than just our dangerous mission. The only thing that seemed to soothe me was calling home, and I resented Cooper’s rules that allowed me to do so only rarely. It didn’t matter that those rules made perfect sense, and were necessary for our safety.

  Cooper attributed my moodiness to the tedium of travel, being trapped in a car all day, eating bad food. At the time, I did the same.

  I didn’t hear any more about Marjory Smith, and nothing else happened to disturb our endless driving. When Cooper was finally satisfied that we weren’t being followed, we started heading north.

  We’d been gone almost a week when we stopped for lunch somewhere in Virginia, both of us as eager to stretch and move as we were for food. We took a walk around the diner, past the parking lot and into the thicket of scrubby trees behind it, to the edge of a small stream.

  “Careful!” I yanked Cooper’s elbow to pull him away from a patch of poison ivy, then swatted at him when he gave me a look. “Just because you can heal yourself doesn’t mean you should hang around in poison ivy on purpose.”

  “So I guess throwing you down in it and ripping off your clothes is out of the question?”

  “Completely.”

  “Okay, I’ll settle for against this tree, then.”

  I started to laugh, but before I knew it, I really was up against the tree. And not minding it one bit.

  But things hadn’t progressed very far before we were interrupted by a dainty little cough.

  I yelped and pushed down my shirt as Cooper turned, shielding me with his body so that for a second, I couldn’t see who he was swearing at. But the language was a pretty good indicator that it wasn’t anyone good.

  Cooper’s gun soared out of his hand before he even finished pulling it from the waistband of his jeans.

  He started forward, then stopped dead, raising his hands in a conciliatory way. His movement had given me a clear view, at least.

  The man who stood a few feet away, overdressed for the warm weather in jeans and a coat, was a stranger to me. But I knew from his wan, pointed face that I’d met his brother and sister before. And watched them both die.

  Unlike his siblings, who I’d never seen armed, it seemed Talon Wick was comfortable using a gun. At least, he looked perfectly at ease, pointing Cooper’s Glock at my head.

  Why doesn’t he just shoot us?

  Of the several panicked questions running through my mind, that was foremost. Cooper could heal himself, but only if he had the time. A headshot that killed him instantly would deny him the chance. Talon had the gun—he must have fed recently, to be able to magic it out of Cooper’s hand like that—so why wasn’t he pulling the trigger?

  Verity came to no harm on the road to Boston.

  A spell folded up in the special pocket sewn into my bra for that purpose. Cooper had a similar one in his own pocket. No doubt my magic was one reason we weren’t dead already.

  But not the only one. He wants something.

  While I was busy trying to figure out up from down, Cooper and Talon were facing off against one another, neither speaking. Cooper looked coiled and ready to spring, but as able a fighter as he was, he wasn’t stupid. He was waiting for the right moment to strike.

  “Tell me how to get to the West Seed, and I’ll let the girl live,” Talon said.

  Well, there you go. No need for all that wondering
.

  So Talon knew that Cooper didn’t have the seed with him, despite the fact that Blackwood carriers normally, well, carried them. Or he’d at least made an educated guess. The Wicks themselves couldn’t enter Bristol anymore, but they had their share of spies there. They couldn’t know any more details of the sanctuary spell than the Blackwoods did, but they knew enough about the town and the Mount Phearson Hotel to fill in some blanks.

  “Just the girl, huh?” Cooper asked. “No promises to spare me?”

  Talon smiled. It looked almost friendly. “You killed my brother and my sister. Even if you weren’t a filthy Blackwood, I’d never let you walk away from me.”

  Cooper nodded slowly, frowning, as if Talon had just presented him with a word problem to solve. He was stalling, of course. Even Talon surely knew that—my first impression was that he didn’t seem as stupid as his brother Falcon had been—but he seemed content to wait Cooper out. Perhaps enjoying his moment. We looked pretty powerless, after all, which must have been fun for him.

  But looks could be deceiving.

  I was pretty sure Cooper could disarm Talon, if he could get close enough without getting shot in the head first. He just needed an opportunity. A distraction. And I thought I could provide that.

  The members of the Garden Club were constantly watching us in Bristol. So much so that it became uncomfortable, sometimes, to leave the hotel and walk around town. I was always turning a corner to find Jessica Glass, pushing a stroller and greeting me with the fakest of smiles, or Elise Minnow, beeping at me from her minivan. All by way of saying, Talon no doubt knew a lot about us, including how my magic worked. I was a powerful witch, but most of that power resided in the story spells I wrote. There wasn’t a lot I could do on the spot.

  As far as they knew. But I owned a lot of property. There were a lot of places, even in a hotel, where I could go to be away from watchful eyes. Places I could practice new kinds of magic. I’d spent a lot of time, that summer, trying anything and everything I could think of to work my will in more immediate ways. My life had gotten dangerous, and I knew I couldn’t depend entirely on anticipating that danger ahead of time, and writing stories to protect myself from it.