William started talking again, but I’d stopped listening. A rushing sound began in my ears as I formed a plan about where we could go next. Should we just go get the car and start running? Would we ever be safe again?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CALI—FLIRT
Forcing myself to calm down after William’s announcement, I took another bite and then rejoined William’s conversation about his life as a warlock. How was it that I hadn’t noticed the magick in this house? Looking around, I still saw nothing out of the ordinary. My mortality blinded me.
“It sounds a lot more complex than it is. I use the herbs to heal people and animals when they’ve been injured,” William said, tipping his chair back and off of its front legs slightly. “For example, Mr. Stonewall down the road has a bit of high blood pressure, so I made him a concoction with hawthorn to help.” He rubbed his fingers along his jaw as he spoke, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Do you have any other powers or gifts?” I asked, trying to keep my face a pleasant mask. I didn’t like the way William made me feel, as though every inch of me fell under inspection and nothing of value had been found. Or at least the judgment had been withheld. He seemed to look straight through me to the most vulnerable part of me, the part that I kept hidden, especially from people like him.
“Well…” William paused for a moment and then leaned toward me across the table. “I’m also really good at picking up information from people.”
I looked away, catching the expression on Gabriel’s face: horrified.
“What, like, you can read minds?” Gabriel asked.
William smiled at him. “Sort of. I get impressions from people, snippets of information here and there. Sometimes it’s concrete and sometimes it isn’t.”
Sitting forward in his chair, Kellen met William squarely in the eye. “So what impressions have you gotten from us?” he asked.
I glanced at Kellen as he spoke. Kellen didn’t like William, that much I could tell, maybe from the first moment that they met. Perhaps it simply felt that way because a stranger had been introduced into our situation, but judging by Kellen’s posture—rigid, leaning forward as though ready to fight—I didn’t think so.
William took a sip of his wine, which only added to the tension. “Not much,” he said. “Except that your name is Kellen and this is…Cali?” William raised an eyebrow, looking at me as he said my name.
A sinking feeling in my stomach made itself known. Why would Dillion have us trust this man? How could a warlock mean anything but trouble?
“Interesting. So how does that work, exactly?” Kellen asked, taking a sip of my wine, his eyes meeting William’s in challenge over the brim of the glass.
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” William confessed. “A person’s name is the easiest piece of information to pick up from him or her. When you introduced yourself, you gave me one set of names, but I picked up on another.”
I took my glass back from Kellen, tasting the wine again. My cheeks burned. It seemed intimate drinking from the same glass as Kellen had, but I had no idea how to respond.
Gabe spoke up. “They’re eloping. They’re under eighteen and they don’t want their parents to find out, okay? Kellen’s my cousin. I’m just trying to help him out.”
William seemed to mull Gabe’s lie over for a moment before raising his glass. “Congratulations to both of you, then. Don’t worry, your…secret is safe with me.” He locked onto my gaze and I couldn’t look away. The words sounded sincere, but I didn’t believe that William took Gabe’s story as truth.
Again, I made a conscious decision to slow my pulse to act calm when in fact I felt the opposite. I smiled at William. “We’ll keep you in mind when we’re at the ceremony next week.”
“I’d like that,” William said, inclining his head in what appeared to be a silent salute to me before he drank.
“William,” Kellen interrupted him and I realized that I’d been leaning in a little too close to William, as though he’d held me transfixed. I sat up abruptly. “Do you mind if I check out your collection?” Kellen gestured at the shelves on the wall.
“Be my guest,” William said, though his eyes remained on me as he answered.
Once again, I found myself leaning toward him, staring into his eyes, and I made myself pull back. Why did I keep leaning closer to him? Had he entranced me? Perhaps he had.
“So you’re getting married, huh?” William said, as though Gabriel no longer sat at the table with us. “My bad luck, then.”
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but I could only look at him. What was this trickery?
“Yes, they are,” Gabe said.
There was something so unusual about William, yet strangely familiar. Like I knew him before, somehow. That was impossible, though, and it scared me. I didn’t know this man, yet I knew him somehow. I needed to understand the connection—and fast.
“Pity,” said William, taking another drink, not breaking eye contact with me. When he finished, he licked the rim of the glass slowly with his tongue, sending an involuntary chill through my body. The action reminded me of a serpent.
“This is a really interesting collection of jazz books you’ve got here, William. Or can I call you Bill?” Kellen said from across the room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kellen perusing each title, no doubt searching the contents of each book. He’d only have to glance at the information to recall it in perfect detail.
William shook his head. “No, William is just fine. Thanks,” he said, never taking his eyes from me.
“When did you become a practicing warlock?” I asked, raising my coffee cup to my lips. When I set it back down on the table, William pushed the wine toward me. Reaching behind the wine glass, I took the coffee, holding the steaming cup close, my eyebrows raised.
William laughed out loud, still watching me. “It was the family business, you could say,” William said. “At least at one time. Now there’s just me.” His face changed, and for just a short space in time, he looked bitter.
“Man, I bet that’s cool, though, being a warlock. Someone doesn’t toe the line, you blast them away or something,” Gabe said.
William laughed again, breaking our eye contact and looking at Gabe. Apparently, the idea of blasting someone away held appeal for William. “It doesn’t quite work that way, but you’re right, that does sound cool,” William replied.
I took a slow, deep breath, trying not to show my relief at breaking my gaze away from his. I looked into my coffee cup, determined to look everywhere but at William for the rest of the night.
Kellen intervened. “So, William, you like Stanley Turrentine?” he asked. In his hands, he held some small square things that were different colors with pictures on the front of them. I leaned forward to ask what they were, but then stopped myself. William didn’t need to know the truth about me, even if Dillion did trust him.
William stared at Kellen, his thin build stilling as he froze. Hmm. Interesting response. He seemed to recover quickly, though. “Yeah, he’s great,” William enthused. He glanced at me again and I looked down at my lap without hesitation.
“He was a fantastic trumpet player, wasn’t he? You know, he had this Bach Stradivarius trumpet that his parents bought him when he was a kid. He never played anything else,” Kellen continued, as if he had William’s full attention.
William’s face lit up somewhat. Forced enthusiasm. “I never knew that. Huh,” William said, sipping his wine.
Kellen walked closer to the table as he talked, hooking his right thumb into the loop in the back of his pants. His other hand rested against my shoulder. I leaned toward Kellen and watched William’s eyes flash. Let him be angry. He was out of line looking at me that way.
“They just honored him in his hometown of Los Angeles, too,” Kellen continued.
“I really wanted to go.” William’s voice held some enthusiasm, though to me it seemed false.
“Me too,” Kellen said.
Leaving me, he returned to the shelves again.
After a moment, Gabe, William, and I continued our conversation. Gabe asked William about the most outrageous case he’d ever helped a customer on. William told us about the time that he’d had to help an owner with a lovesick cow. William seemed to relax, though he continued to watch me for the rest of the evening.
I’d made a point of laughing and pretending to enjoy the night, though I would have preferred to be anywhere other than near William. He didn’t say much about being a warlock that concerned me. It all seemed medicinal and appropriate, but there was just something about him…
“Tell me, William,” Kellen said, coming back to the table and standing by me, the square boxes replaced on the shelf. “How do you know Dillion?”
Surprise crossed William’s face. “Dillion who?”
But he’d been too late to deny it. All night long, I’d kept waiting for him to mention Dillion. After all, if Dillion trusted him, it made sense that they would know one another. But as my mind started to replay the scene with the chalkboard, I realized that the only people that Dillion would have known would have been members of the Children of Danu, our enemies. Even if his intentions were good—and I wasn’t certain they were—William must have been one of them. He had to be.
“I think we’d better be going,” I said, standing up. Across from me, Gabriel mirrored my actions. His tall form, across from Kellen’s, made for a pair of imposing guardians.
William got up too, trying to hold me with his gaze again. This time I’d prepared myself for it and I quickly looked at Kellen.
“Thank you for dinner,” Kellen said. He didn’t extend a hand to William, as I expected, but instead kept his hands in his pockets.
“Thank you for joining me,” William said.
We turned and started walking toward the door. I couldn’t wait to leave that place. The evening had been a mixture of compelling emotions, among them dread and a bizarre attraction which I still couldn’t explain.
“Kellen?” William’s voice made us pause.
“Yeah?” Kellen said, turning back to look at William. I gripped Kellen’s arm and looked at the floor.
“Stay out of the woods,” William said, his voice holding either a note of warning or threat; I couldn’t be sure which.
“Thanks,” Kellen said, turning and pulling me along by the hand, his own gripping mine like a vice.
The door clicked shut behind us. Taking a deep breath, I waited until we’d reached the end of William’s yard before I said, “Run”.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
KELLEN—NEED
When we returned to the house, each of us sounded out of breath. Though William’s house couldn’t have been that far away, it’d seemed much farther. Gabe bolted the door behind us and turned on practically every light in the place, both on the inside and outside.
Shrugging out of my coat and tossing it onto a bench by the door, I walked into the living room and turned to look at Cali. “Why did we have to run?”
Cali primly took off her coat and hung it up on a hook by the door. “I wanted to get back here. The woods are the last place we need to be, and I didn’t care for William.”
“That probably was a good move. The guy’s a complete fraud anyway,” I said.
“Are you talking about the warlock thing?” Gabe asked, tossing his coat on top of mine.
“There was more to it than that,” I said, rubbing my hands along my arms, trying to warm up. “I got the impression that we weren’t even in his house. He didn’t seem to know much about his own music when I asked him about it.”
“I thought that he reacted oddly when you brought it up,” Cali said.
“Yeah, I made stuff up. Stanley Turrentine wasn’t a trumpet player from LA; he was a saxophonist from Pittsburgh. Plus he’s dead. For somebody who had such a big collection of one artist’s music, you’d think he would have known that.” One thing was certain: William wasn’t who he claimed to be. And he knew even less about jazz than I did, if that was possible.
“Wow,” Gabe said.
“Plus, there was a poncho for a guy about five times his size hanging on the back of the door. I’m wondering if the caretaker, you know the guy you mentioned—”
“Thomas,” Gabe said, paling considerably.
“Yes. I’m wondering if he really did retire or…” I said.
“Lying bastard,” Cali muttered.
My eyebrows shot up at her words. “Clearly you have an issue with him,” I said.
She looked at me and then wrapped her arms around herself. “I felt like he was doing something to me when we were there,” she said.
My jaw clenched. “Like what?”
“It was like he was forcing me to look in his eyes, like he tried to hypnotize me. He didn’t, at least not to my knowledge, but I couldn’t look away. At one point I felt like I wanted to be closer to him, and then I caught myself.”
Gabe looked contrite. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—” What? That William was such an unmitigated ass that he’d hit on my fiancée at dinner? Scumbag.
“There’s no way that you could have known,” Cali said. Her brow furrowed for a moment as she stared at the chalkboard on the wall. “Kellen, what if the note on the board didn’t come from Dillion?”
Once again, I found myself leaning toward him, staring into his eyes, and I made myself pull back. Why did I keep leaning closer to him? Had he entranced me? Perhaps he had.
Gabe went over to his coat by the door and pulled the napkins out of his pocket. When he returned, he laid them on the counter in front of me. I only had to glance at them. Then I saw it: an extra flourish to the S that Dillion hadn’t used.
My heart started beating fast in my chest. “It’s the same handwriting, but you’re right. It’s not his. I screwed up,” I said. Cali and I looked at one another.
“Don’t beat yourself up, man. I wouldn’t have even recognized it was similar if it were me,” Gabe said. He patted me on the back, almost knocking me into the kitchen island.
Once again, the three of us stood facing one another, in the same position that we had stood in not so long ago. The unspoken question hung in the air. Was anyone coming to help us?
“Then that makes William the enemy,” I said.
“I think you might be right, Kellen. If he has any knowledge of Dillion’s handwriting, or knows anything about him at all, he must be one of the Children of Danu,” Cali said.
“And if William is behind this, then it stands to reason that Thomas is toast,” Gabe said, reading my mind.
Weariness about knocked me over then. A stranger knew about us, knew our names, and I felt as taut as a high wire under the big top. “We should never have gone there tonight.”
“I know…And I know that we think we have this pinned down, but let me call my mom and ask about him, okay?” Gabe said. He picked up the cordless phone from the counter.
“Good idea,” I said.
“I’ll be in the back bedroom for the night. Why don’t you two try to relax?” he suggested. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Gabe turned and left, leaving Cali and me standing alone in the kitchen. My heart raced inside my chest and for about the millionth time I wished we were anywhere but there. Somewhere where we could be alone. Where we could escape. That’s what I needed now, if only for a few moments…an escape.
“Would you like a fire?” I asked her, stepping forward and letting my hand trail down her arm.
“That would be nice,” she said, fidgeting. She toyed with her hair, turning and walking around the room as though she couldn’t sit still. I understood. I myself couldn’t have been more aware that the two of us were sort of alone in the large house. One of the few times we’d ever been truly alone.
Crouching down in front of the fireplace, I started a fire as my Gran had taught me, checking to make sure the flu was open, adding the wood, lighting a starter log with kindling. The flame took, and I stepped back to e
xamine my handiwork. Turning around, I found Cali lying back on a large grouping of pillows that had been strategically placed just at the end of the hearth. I hadn’t even heard her approach.
Gabe did tell us to try to relax. My eyes flew to the windows, uneasy, but what could I do about anything we’d learned? Nothing but wait. Bringing my gaze back to Cali, I sighed. “We’re in the middle of this mess and all I want to do is be close to you,” I said, too tired to play it cool.
She didn’t say anything, but held out her hand to me. Kicking off my shoes, I lay back on the pillows with her, letting her snuggle her head on my chest as she so often did. She looked up at me then, my Cali. “You look lost in thought.”
For some reason I thought of William then, of how Cali had described what had happened at dinner. She’d seemed like she’d been having a wonderful time. How much of that had been William and how much Cali? My mouth opened to speak but I shut it firmly. A rule of thumb for me had always been to keep my mouth shut if I worried that I’d regret what came out of it.
Cali wrapped her arms around me, snuggling closer. “Kellen, what’s wrong?” Her voice sounded insecure, so different from the voice of the goddess that I’d known.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“So if it doesn’t matter, then why don’t you tell me and get it over with,” she challenged.
“Were you…were you flirting with William?”
“I told you. He was doing something to me. I can’t explain it,” she said.
“You hung on his every word at dinner,” I said, unable to keep the accusation out of my voice.
“No, I wasn’t. He was manipulating me, controlling me somehow. I couldn’t look away. Then I decided it would be in everyone’s best interest if I acted like I was enjoying myself.”
I turned in her embrace and looked into her eyes. “So you weren’t flirting with him?”
“No, but I was trying to get information. I figured it made the most sense to try and form an alliance with him.” Her cheeks turned red under my scrutiny and I could feel the heat of her anger as she met my gaze.
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