Lore vs. The Summoning

by Anya Breton

  The Alpha had a ready answer for that. "The senator found time to wipe her memory and replace it with a new one. Either she had some incriminatin' evidence in her head he doesn't want us to know about or he really wanted to make sure you weren't brought up on murder charges. So you get him here so we can find out which one it is."

  It had been in the back of my head but I hadn't wanted to think it. Aiden had mysteriously found me in Jamaican Plain. He could be the mastermind I was looking for or perhaps working for that person. For all I knew, he'd volunteered me to investigate this simply to appease the local rulers because he didn't expect me to find anything. And sure, he'd given me the gun that had killed the kidnappers, but he'd also tried to get me to stop investigating. Maybe I'd stumbled on something a little too close to home for him.

  "I don't want him in my apartment," I admitted rather than argue. "I'll set it up for tomorrow night at the brownstone. You remember how to get there don't you, Mailman?"

  "His name is Michael," the Alpha informed me coolly.

  "Yeah, whatever." I gestured dismissively to shut him up before pointing my index finger at Michael. "He finds someplace else to sleep. I'm still healing from that blow-up last night and I can't sleep with another person in the house."

  It was a quirk of mine that had been another reason Zeno and I had been on again off again for as long as we had. If I'd been able to sleep with him in the same apartment, hotel room or even at his place, we might still be together. It didn't help that I tended to get cranky when I didn't sleep.

  Okay, maybe it was a little more serious than a quirk.

  "You can't sleep with another person in the house?" Dominick repeated in disbelief.

  This wasn't something I was going to talk about with them. I turned on my heel to head to the refrigerator. Hopefully they'd get the hint. I'd not had time to pick anything up at the store yet so there was nothing to look at inside it but random condiments and a half a jug of spoiled milk.

  "What time tomorrow night?"

  The Alpha hadn't pushed me to answer him nor was he arguing that his wolf should stay. It surprised me enough to turn around. They both watched me with irritated expressions but that was nothing new.

  "I don't know," I answered. "I'll shoot for ten. That should give him time to wake up, ready and get there after the sun sets. I can call you when I know for sure if you want to leave your phone number." I gestured to the pad of yellow sticky notes next to my home phone.

  "Yeah, okay."

  And surprisingly that was all there was to the conversation. The Alpha scribbled his phone number on the top sticky note, stuck it to my phone's handset and then left me alone with a murmured parting greeting. I was cautiously optimistic about how that had gone. Anything greater than that and I knew I'd be risking a jinx.

  "Hey, jerk!" Jim's teeth spread into a blinding white smile that popped against his darkly tanned skin.

  Being called a "jerk" would probably offend most people but it was my father's term of endearment for me. He'd seen the movie with Steve Martin years ago and had been calling me that ever since. It didn't faze me now. At some point I'd have to rent the movie and find out what exactly I'd been compared to.

  He started across the dirt yard littered with metal shrapnel and random construction debris toward me. The pace he moved at was slower than usual. But his smile was as broad as ever. "Jim of the indomitable spirit" should be his nickname. He'd survived car crashes, burns and above all marriage to my mother.

  I let him do the hugging because I couldn't remember exactly where his burns were located. But as he squeezed me I set my hand to his bare arm to stealthily Heal him. It wasn't so much that he'd notice, but enough that it would only be a few more weeks before he'd be good as new.

  "I brought you lunch," I said with smile when he pulled back.

  "You didn't have to do that." Jim looked down at the bag of submarine sandwiches in my hand with what looked to be suspicion. "You know, I'm starting to get the feeling that these visits aren't just because I nearly died. You're trying to work up to tell me something bad, aren't you?"

  Wow. How to answer that one? No, Dad, I'm secretly Healing you with the power my real father gave me? Yeah, that would go over real well.

  "Lydia get remarried again?"

  I snapped out of my internal monologue at his calm question. Lydia Stevens was my mother and she'd been married, oh, let's see, was it five or six times now? I had trouble remembering. Part of that was that she'd stopped telling me when she did it now because she knew I didn't agree with the idea of marriage.

  "If she did, she didn't tell me," I answered Jim with a shrug meant to be flippant. It probably looked jerky and annoyed. "I haven't heard from her in a while."

  Jim's sandy eyebrows lifted at me. "She lives thirty miles up the coast and you haven't heard from her? You heard from me more than that when I lived in Rochester."

  "Yeah, well, it's Lydia. Why are you surprised?" I shrugged lightly though my voice was edged in irritation because I knew he was right.

  His jaw tightened but he answered with, "I don't know."

  I knew he still loved her. It drove me mad because he was too good for her. When it came to Lydia I thought my ordinarily intelligent dad might be a little stupid. Even when he was dating other women he'd still asked me how Lydia was doing every time I saw him. I wondered if he'd run back to her if she crooked her little finger. Probably.

  Maybe my mother was secretly a succubus. That would explain all her marriages, beaus and illicit affairs. A supernatural answer would actually make me feel better about the idiocy of the male species.

  Jim and I settled onto a bench on the outskirts of the construction site. My eyes scanned over the skeleton of metal beams for the signs of the fire. I didn't understand how he could come back here after what had happened. He was a foreman at B&K Construction. He could have asked to be reassigned to one of their countless other projects. Considering he'd nearly died in a fire meant to destroy the place, I thought they'd have switched him out in a heartbeat rather than risk a lawsuit over damage to his mental health.

  But no, Jim Denham sat tearing into his steak and cheese sub with only the usual shadow of doubt in his small brown eyes. He glanced at me to smile. I felt a flutter of unease in my stomach.

  Gods, I would be hurt, truly hurt, if he died. He felt like the only family I had, which was ironic considering we shared no blood bond at all. Someone was going to pay for what they did to him.

  I bit into my own steak and cheese sub while he told me about a surprise phone call he'd gotten from his brother. As he talked I wondered what features of his I would have claimed if he had been my real father. Would I have the nose that was far too wide? Or maybe his square-shaped head and tiny chin? Would those be better than the plain features I did have? At least they would be unique. I was so generic it was painful.

  During our parting hug he told me to say hello to my mother when I spoke to her next. I nodded mutely while sending a little more Healing energy into him. As I pulled away with a last smile I thought how much I wished Lydia were a hurt I could Heal because she was surely as toxic as any disease.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Aiden knocked on the brownstone door at exactly ten o'clock. I'd been gnawing on a fingernail in the furnished lobby, contemplating how I was going to afford the property taxes on the place the next time they came around. I called out rather than answer the door myself.

  As he walked into the room my eyes automatically went to the vampire's face to see what he'd look like today. It, of course, was a different visage tonight than the previous. This was perhaps his best to date. A seemingly perfect nose pointed the way to his luscious, ghostly gray lips. The rounded mound of a chin had a dimple at the center that was at odds with his otherwise strong jaw line. I could see faint pink scars along his right cheek but it didn't detract from the beauty of his features. I glanced away to hide any pleasure that might be in my eyes from how attractive he was.

  He'
d been surprisingly casual in his clothing choice tonight. The blue polo shirt, black pants and black leather shoes he wore seemed a little too ordinary for him. Maybe it was the unfashionably long chestnut hair he'd pulled back with elastic at the base of his neck or his aristocratic appearance but I thought he'd look better in a tuxedo or frock coat.

  "Am I late?" He glanced around the empty lobby. "You did say ten o'clock, didn't you?"

  "Yeah. You're fine." Too fine actually. I swallowed down the uneasy thought so I could add, "The others aren't here yet."

  He nodded then looked around once more. "You haven't changed a thing."

  "I barely use it." I shrugged. "It's going to cost me enough to pay the property taxes. I'm not wasting money on redecorating."

  Dominick burst through the double glass doors without knocking. Michael shuffled behind him and, of course, the girl that had sold me out in the pound-for-women trailed them. She didn't instantly recognize me but I thought her expression had soured. Maybe her subconscious remembered my insults.

  The Alpha slowed several feet away with a wary eye trained on Aiden. His trio made the final point of our isosceles triangle. It felt like we were about to battle. I really hoped it didn't come to that.

  "Bruce?"

  My attention switched to the wolf's bitchy sister. She tried to break free of Michael's grip to go to Aiden. The brightness of her smile and glimmer in her eyes could be mistaken for nothing but pure, unadulterated pleasure. She was ecstatic to see the vampire.

  Aiden's head turned toward her slowly. He didn't answer her, merely closing his eyelids in a leisurely blink.

  "Let go," she hissed at her brother just before giving him an impressive shove.

  She was across the room two seconds later, sliding her arms over Aiden's polo-clad shoulders to pull him against her twig-like body. He remained still beneath her movements. There was no expression on his face. That alone was eerie but she didn't seem to notice as her lips clamped over his for what would have been open-mouthed kiss if Aiden had allowed it. He didn't step backward until she'd finished her cordial greeting.

  I desperately tried to ignore the burn of anger in my gut. Michael had less luck than I did because his Alpha's firm grip was the only thing that kept him from foolishly attacking a powerful undead senator.

  "Get your hands off my sister," Michael ordered in a remarkably savage growl.

  "My hands aren't on your sister," Aiden replied in a neutral tone. And they hadn't been, at all. She'd done enough touching for them both.

  "Make her remember what really happened," the wolf demanded.

  Aiden turned his face toward me. The unreadable expression was still affixed to it. "This is the woman whose memory you wish to retrieve?"

  I nodded rather than speak because I wasn't certain I could hide the irritation in my voice. When he'd called me last night, after I'd left my information with the young man at his house, he'd been uncertain he could get the memory back but had been willing to try. From what I could see now, I wondered if this was more a case of him not wanting to get the memory back. What if he'd wiped her mind to cover up something awful he'd done after I'd freed her? Or perhaps the Alpha was right. Aiden could very well be the one I was looking for.

  It just didn't add up. Why would the vampire save my life multiple times only to try to kill my dad? And then why would he send me on a wild goose chase? Could misdirection really be the answer to all of this?

  "What is your name?" Aiden asked in a voice so soft I almost didn't hear it.

  Her expression twisted into something unattractive. I thought maybe it was her disgusted look. "You know my name. You were screaming it all week."

  My teeth set tightly within my mouth as I looked away. What the hell was wrong with me? I could be standing feet away from the man that nearly had Jim charred and I was angry that another woman thought she'd had sex with him.

  "Please say it," his soft voice commanded.

  "Michelle," she practically snapped.

  "Michelle, please concentrate on my eyes. I'm going to touch your arms, like this."

  I didn't watch, didn't want to know what was going on between them. All I wanted to know was who had kidnapped Michelle.

  "You can touch me any..." Her voice trailed off without finishing the statement.

  "Move with me back through your memory, Michelle. Beyond Cancun, there was a cage. Do you remember?"

  Michelle choked suddenly on a sob. "Yes."

  "Who put you there, Michelle?"

  "A girl I met at yoga class," Michelle answered with a hiccup. "She burnt me when she shook my hand and told me she'd do worse if I didn't go with her."

  "Another Fire witch," the werewolf Alpha deducted.

  I'd almost forgotten he was still in the room. Aiden had a knack for drawing my full attention to him. I wished it wasn't the case because I didn't want to be focused on him right now. Oh, who was I kidding? I didn't want to be focused on him ever. It was already too hard to ignore him.

  Motion beside me seemed to say the Alpha had turned. I glanced up to see that he now faced me. "We need to talk to Morrígan," he announced.

  "I hope you mean you and the mailman," I replied with a deep frown creasing my face.

  A glance to the side showed me that Michelle stood glassy-eyed and dazed. I wasn't certain she heard anything we said. That was a really good thing.

  "No," the Alpha answered with what I feared he would.

  I shook my head rapidly, my pitch lifting in agitation. "She's the last person I want to see."

  "She's probably the only lead we've got right now. We have to see her," the Alpha insisted.

  He was right. Morrígan would know all of the Fire witches in the entire state and more, even the ones that weren't part of the covens she oversaw.

  "Fine," I said. "I'll go talk to her by myself."

  "No," Dominick argued. "I'm comin' too. They tried to kill one of my wolves and they kidnapped his sister."

  "I remember what they did. But I'm going alone." I gave him a firm look before enunciating the words clearly, "This isn't negotiable."

  He snorted like an angry animal. And maybe he was. "How do I know you're not the brains behind this whole thing?"

  That question was actually a little offensive. In a low, sharp voice I retorted, "Because I'm the one that got my ass handed to me six ways from Sunday for rescuing your wolf's sister in the first place."

  The Alpha's expression softened momentarily before it went hard again. "I'm goin' with you."

  "No. You aren't, Alpha."

  His eyes flared a split second before he pounced at me. I had my gun out and aimed beneath his chin in time to keep him from doing more than grabbing my shoulders. "Don't. You. Move," I ordered with a sharp jab of the barrel into the scruffy skin of his unshaved chin.

  "Let her go." I hardly recognized the ordinarily smooth voice of Aiden Bruce beneath the furious demand.

  The Alpha unwisely ignored him. "I told you I didn't want to be called that."

  "And I told you I didn't know..."

  He shocked me by kissing me. It was a quick, dirty affair done with a loaded gun pressed between us. I was acutely aware of my finger beside the trigger and how dangerous this was. But the fact that it was actually sexy stopped me from following through with the threat I'd made earlier. It helped that Dominick kissed like a man whose sole aim in life was to make his partner weak-kneed. And I was.

  He pulled back to look down at me with a heavy-lidded gaze. He'd not been an unaffected party in this. I took comfort in that.

  "Do you know me well enough now?" He asked in a gravelly voice that made me want to touch his throat.

  Thanks to my properly muddled brain it took me a second to understand what he'd asked me. But once I'd figured it out my lips twisted to the left. "No."

  He stepped forward to start another round of getting to know each other. I'd been about to shove him with the barrel of the gun when he was wrenched backward in a blurring motion.
r />   "I said let her go," Aiden growled deep within his throat.

  I saw a look on the vampire's face I'd never seen before, it was pure malice. His chestnut eyebrows had drawn tightly together, the silver irises had a ring of red surrounding them and his sharpened canines were bared in a snarling sneer. If he'd ever looked at me that way I'd have shot him. My hand curled around my gun in its home in my holster anyway.

  The Alpha glanced between the two of us without moving. I was thankful that he hadn't tried to grab me again because I wouldn't have known which of the two of them to restrain. But the resentful gleam in the wolf leader's eye concerned me.

  "Why did you alter Michelle's memories?" He demanded of the vampire as if he had the right to. When he got no answer back, the Alpha asked another question, "Why did you help Laura?"

  "I owe you nothing, wolf," Aiden replied in a low voice that sounded threatening to my ears.

  Dominick couldn't leave well enough alone. No, he had to start shit with yet another person. His hairy finger poked toward the vampire. "You're one of her suspects now, you know. She thinks maybe you're the one that kidnapped these women."

  Aiden's eyes were the only part of him that moved. They slid to the left to look at me. The red ring quickly faded and his canines retracted. I felt the heavy weight of that gaze like a blast of hot air.

  "I altered the memories of the women to keep Miss Denham safe from the authorities," the vampire answered him while holding my eyes.

  "Why?" The Alpha pressed.

  "She couldn't continue her investigation if she were incarcerated."

  "What investigation?"

  Aiden's gaze pulled away from me to fix the Alpha with a dead-eyed stare. "You presume much, wolf."

  Apparently that stare unnerved the Alpha as much as it did me because Dominick focused his attention back on me. "We need to talk to Morrígan. I can probably get a meetin' with her tomorrow afternoon."

  I opened my mouth to tell him I was busy then but Aiden beat me to the punch. "I'll set the meeting up for after dusk tomorrow. That is if you are available, Miss Denham?"