by D. N. Hoxa
But Julian grinned. “I’d do that, but do you really want me half naked in front of other women?”
My heart almost melted. Holy spell, he was right. I definitely did not want that. “Just keep your shirt on, Mister Prince.”
“I do intend to—right until this is over and I get you all alone. There’s only so much a guy can take.”
I grinned, heat crawling up my cheeks. “No, no, you can handle it. You’re made out of tough stuff, I know it.”
Stuck waiting by the door of the leaders’ office for Bender and his card, Julian grabbed my chin in his hand. “You overestimate me, Winter Wayne.”
“A girl’s got to have high standards, and you do look like a guy who’ll do anything to meet them,” I mumbled, but his lips, so close to my face, were really distracting, and they took all the fun out of this little game we were playing to try and relieve some of the tension from our shoulders. It was now doing the exact opposite.
“Poor old me. You’ve already met all of mine,” Julian whispered and brought his lips dangerously close to mine when…someone coughed one of those goose bump-inducing, fake coughs.
Bender was at the bottom of the stairway, looking at us like he was bleeding out. Guilt gnawed at my insides at the sight of his face and I stepped back until my back hit the wall. Unable to meet his eyes, I just looked at my feet until he walked up and opened the door.
Shit. I shouldn’t be feeling like this! I’d never promised Bender anything, had I?
And what the hell was I doing, thinking about this when Ezra and Lynn were in the hands of Jane Dunham, who was waiting for me in my mother’s house?
Stupid.
“Here,” Bender said, handing me a black shirt with white buttons, perfectly pressed and folded.
“Thanks!” I said, my voice high pitched, and I disappeared out of the room running, thankful for the opportunity to get the hell out of there before the awkwardness swallowed me whole.
By the time I went to the ladies’ room a floor below and put on the shirt, the others had already started to arrive. I was right, Bender’s shirt was three sizes too big, but tying the ends around my hips did wonders. When I went back to the office, I could breathe a lot easier.
The Bone leaders were already there, and the Bloodies came in right behind me. They all stood on their feet, except Monica Raymond and her husband, who were the oldest of the bunch. When the Green leaders finally arrived, my nerves were almost completely fried. I couldn’t wait to get this over with and get the hell out of there.
“Right, so since we’re all here, I’m going to tell you the plan real quick so we can get going,” Bender said, rubbing his hands together as he stood in front of us all.
“The plan? What plan?” Joseph Davis asked.
“We know where Jane Dunham is,” Bender said impatiently. He looked…different. Less desperate and more pissed off, which could definitely work in his favor. I could feel guilty about his change of moods later.
“If you know where she is, why did you make us summon the Seelie King?” Simon Reed from the Blood coven asked.
“Because we didn’t know before. When she disappeared from the portal, she left Winter a clue.”
Just like that, everybody turned to look at me. I kept my eyes on Bender.
“She left you a clue?” Alice Rivera asked, shaking her head in confusion.
“We think she wants something from Winter,” Bender said. “But that doesn’t matter. We know where she is. We’re going to go there as soon as we’re done here. What we need from you is your people. Everyone you can spare to come to our aid. We’re not sure if she still has fairy soldiers with her, but we need to be prepared.”
“Have you forgotten what happened last time we sent our people against theirs?” Monica Raymond asked from the sofa.
“Yes. We lost people. We also killed all the Hedge witches,” Bender said.
“Yet one is still alive,” she said, her tone mocking him. It took a lot of bites on my tongue to keep from talking. We couldn’t afford arguing about it now.
“Which tells us how powerful she is,” Bender said, his voice a bit raised. “Let’s not forget that she has the Spellmaker, and my niece.”
That shut them up for quite a long second. The Spellmaker. It still felt weird to think of Ezra that way. God, he was just a little boy, probably scared out of his mind. A little boy who believed that I was going to keep him safe. I might have failed a lot of people in my life, but failing him was something I was never going to forgive myself for.
“How many do you need?” asked Austin Marshall from the Green coven.
“As many as you can spare,” Bender said. “But only the best.”
“We are not going to put your people face to face with Jane Dunham,” I said. “What we need them for is to guard—and to fight off the fairy soldiers, if she has them with her. I will be going into the house alone, but they need to make sure she doesn’t escape.”
“No, you’re not,” Julian and Bender said at the same time.
“What house?” asked my aunt. She had her arms folded in front of her chest, trying to keep her hands from shaking. She was really scared now. They all were.
“My mother’s house in Long Island.” Well, she rented it, but I was used to referring to it as her house, so…
“Your mother’s house?” Simon Reed asked. He didn’t need to say how much he suspected me with words. His face said it all.
I raised my chin. “Yes.” I had absolutely nothing to hide. Not in front of them, at least. All of them knew about my magic already.
“Why would she go to your mother’s house?” he asked next.
“Who cares?” Bender said impatiently. “Look, it doesn’t matter why. Right now, what we need to do is get my niece and Ezra back, and kill the Hedge witch. We can talk about whys later.”
“We’ll get you what you need,” Joseph Davis said with a nod. “But there is a way to know for sure if she’ll have fairies with her, isn’t there?” He looked at Julian. “How fast can you go back to the fairy realm and find out?”
Oh, he was definitely on to something. I looked at Julian.
“Fast enough,” he said with a nod. “If you’ll allow it, I’m going to invite the commander of my father’s army to come help us.”
I flinched. Marva.
“We’ll allow it,” Simon Reed said without missing a beat. “Do what you have to do, but bring the Spellmaker back. He cannot die, under any circumstances.”
On that, we agreed.
Twenty
Everything happened so fast. The coven leaders walked out the door almost all at once after Julian took off to the fairy realm. Bender went down to his office to call for the best guards they had, and the Blood and Green leaders were going to do the same. I gave them the address to my mother’s old house so we could all meet there.
I was checking my weapons and the Pretters in my braid to make sure everything was in place, when I looked up and found myself in the office all alone with Amelia.
My cheeks caught fire and my brain screamed for me to run. Out the door and out the city, anywhere at all but there. I swallowed hard, and I think she heard it from all the way across the room.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said, slowly walking over to me.
I looked behind me, but all I could use to hide were the five desks lined in front of the side wall, so I turned to my aunt again. For the life of me, I just couldn’t bring myself to look into her eyes.
“No, I haven’t,” I mumbled, then pretended to check my guns again, though I’d just done that.
“Winter, just tell me. What is it?”
Ah, shit. Please stop, please stop, please stop. “Um…actually, I need to go talk to Bender about—” I was already walking toward the door when she cut me off.
“You’re not going anywhere without telling me what’s on your mind. You’ve been looking at me funny and you haven’t said a single word to me since this started,” she demanded.
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Squeezing my eyes shut, I slowly spun around. Why the hell did she have to notice how I’d been looking at her? This was not fair. The words were at the tip of my tongue. Jane Dunham’s face was right there in front of my eyes, daring me to say it. To ask her.
“Look, this isn’t the time to talk about this. We’ve got to get to Ezra and Lynn before it’s too late,” I said, though a monster was growing fast inside my chest, fighting me for control over my mouth.
“We’ve got a few minutes until Bender comes back,” Amelia said with a nod. “So?”
The universe had perfectly aligned for the sole purpose of putting me in that position. I realized it far too late. There was no way to escape this. I was looking at what could be one of the worst moments of my life right in the face, and I could do nothing but open the door and let it come in.
“Winter, you’re scaring me,” Amelia whispered. I must have been looking at her funny because she walked over to me and took both my hands in hers. “What is it?” Her skin was cold against mine. Foreign.
How could Jane Dunham get so deep under my skin? How could she make me doubt the only member of my family? What gave her so much power over me? Because I felt my jaw moving even before I realized I’d decided to say it. But who was I kidding? I’d known this was going to happen if I was left alone with Amelia. It’s why I’d been avoiding her like the plague.
There was no more running. Now, it was time to face the music. Either Jane Dunham had been right, or she was full of shit.
“Where is he?” I whispered, my voice so small and weak, it sounded nothing like me.
Amelia narrowed her brows. “Where is who?”
Unable to even take a deep breath, I held on to her cold hands. “My father.”
My mother once said to me that sometimes people said much more to you by not speaking at all.
Unfortunately, this was one of those times.
Amelia let go of my hands and stepped back. Her eyes grew wide, her lips parted. Even her chin quivered a little. She didn’t take in a breath for a long time. Long enough for me to realize that Jane Dunham wasn’t full of shit. No, she’d been right.
My aunt knew where my father was.
“You lied to me,” I whispered. Tears in my eyes. An army couldn’t stop them from falling.
I felt so little. Betrayed, stabbed in the heart repeatedly, and I was slowly bleeding out.
“Winter, I can explain,” Amelia said, her voice not her own.
“Explain?” My tears washed away my laugh in a second. “You want to explain to me now? How about when I first came to you? How about when you told me that my father was a fairy? Why didn’t you explain then?” My voice shook and broke, but I was way past feeling any shame in my weakness now.
“I was…I was just a kid. I was eighteen! I didn’t know what I was doing, I swear,” she cried, her own tears dripping down her cheeks. They only served to get me colder and colder, until even my heart felt like it had frozen.
“Do what?” I asked and when she stepped back, shaking her head, I walked over to her and grabbed her by her shoulders. “What did you do?!”
Was she the reason my mother has always said that she and my father were never meant to be? Had my aunt somehow been the reason she was the saddest woman I’d ever known? Because if she was, I swore to God that I would…
What? Kill her? The voice in my head mocked.
No, I wasn’t going to kill her.
I let her go and stepped back, breathing deeply to get myself under control. I was jumping to conclusions way too soon. She still hadn’t told me what she’d done.
“Winter, you have to understand. Please,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what I was doing. My parents, they…they made so much sense to me at the time.”
I pulled my hands into fists and held on tightly. “What did you do, Amelia?” As I said the words, I wished I could be strong enough to walk away. I wished I could be strong enough to not want to hear what she was going to say next.
But I wasn’t. I was as weak as they come.
“When Adeline got pregnant with you, my parents refused to accept it. They demanded she have an abortion, but she wouldn’t hear it.” Wow. Here I thought I couldn’t feel any shittier about my existence. “It got into their heads that she only refused because of your father. Because he…he wanted you.”
Shivers washed down my entire body. My muscles paralyzed so I couldn’t turn around and face her just yet. And I couldn’t ask her. I couldn’t ask her if she was sure. Absolutely sure that my father wanted me and my mother. That he didn’t just abandon us, right after he destroyed her life, like I’d thought my whole goddamn life.
Amelia took in a shaky breath and continued. “They were convinced that if your father walked away, Adeline would change her mind. She’d come back home. Everything would go back to the way it was.” My head fell and my chin touched my chest. How could grandparents be so cruel? When I was a kid, I’d stayed up at night, dreaming about what it would be like to have grandparents to spoil me, like the other kids in the neighborhood did. Someplace to go on summer break. And now, I hear this? “But your father wasn’t going to leave. So, my parents decided to take matters into their own hands.”
Finally, my body unfroze and I was able to face Amelia. Her face was red, completely wet, her whole body shaking, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for her. Not now.
“So, you killed him.” The words tasted like dirt in my mouth. My aunt, my own grandparents had killed my father. It really couldn’t get any worse than this.
But wait…I had made a habit out of talking too soon.
Amelia shook her head. “No, Winter. We didn’t kill him. We just made sure he would never come back.” Oh, so it could. It could get worse.
“How can you do that?” Making sure someone never comes back?
“I don’t…I don’t know, Winter. I was just a kid. I’d just gotten my powers and when my parents asked for my help…” she shrugged, shaking her head. “You have to understand, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“But you knew what you were doing when I came knocking on your door. You knew then, and you didn’t tell me.” I hated that I sounded so heartbroken, so depressed, but that was how I felt. And part of me wanted her to know it, too.
“I was afraid. I didn’t want you to hate me.” My aunt, ladies and gentlemen.
“What about my mother? Did she know?”
Like slapping her across the face, Amelia stepped back. More tears down her cheeks. “Let me guess. You didn’t want her to hate you, either, right?”
Covering her face with her hands, her whole body shook while she cried. But compared to my whole world shaking and crashing down, that was nothing.
“Tell me where he is, right now,” I demanded, wiping the tears from my face. No more crying.
“I don’t know, Winter. We…my parents imprisoned him. They used dark magic to do it. It’s why I’ve sworn off spells for good.” Did she think that was going to make me feel better? Because it didn’t.
“Where is he, goddamn it?! Where did they imprison him?”
“It’s a magical prison, Winter. There’s no where,” she whispered.
There’s no where? What the hell was that supposed to mean? There was always a where.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said, the threat imminent in my voice. I didn’t care who she was any longer. She was going to tell me everything she knew, or I wasn’t going to let her go.
“He’s stuck in-in m-magic! I don’t know how. I’m not an expert in dark magic. It’s all I know, I swear it on my life. You have to believe me. I’d tell you if I knew. I’d have gotten him out by now.” Lies, lies, big, fat lies. That’s what her words sounded like to me.
Now I knew what gave Jane Dunham the power to make me doubt everything I’d thought I’d known. It was the truth.
The door to the office opened and Bender stepped in. “We’re good to go,” he said, then narrowed his
brows at the sight of my face.
I wiped another couple of tears that had escaped me and cleared my throat. It wasn’t that I believed Amelia told me everything she knew, but she did tell me enough. Now, I would know what to look for. Because I was going to find my father. I was going to find him if it was the last thing I ever did.
“This isn’t over,” I promised her, then walked toward the door. It was far from over.
“How did you know?” she whispered, before I’d reached Bender.
Reluctantly, I looked back at her. “Jane Dunham told me.” She’d see the irony just fine. Jane Dunham, my sworn enemy had told me about my father, when my own aunt knew where he was all along. She had been the one to imprison him, too…
“Winter?” Bender called, but suddenly, a dark veil fell in front of my eyes.
Prison.
The word rang in my ears. Where had I heard that word before? It was so, so familiar, like I’d said it every night and day…
And then Ezra’s face brightened up the view in front of me. The man in the prison. The man in the prison who spoke through him—the one who knew my name. The one who asked me to find him, to release him.
Holy spell, the man in the prison was my father.
Twenty one
“Are you okay?” Bender asked me while we ran down the stairs.
“Fine.” But I wasn’t fine. I was angry. I was desperate. I was full, just about ready to explode.
“What happened in there? You two looked like shit.”
“Knock it off, Bender,” I said through gritted teeth. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I had run out of patience, and I’d say my sorrys at the right time.
“Well, whatever it is, you better sober up real quick. All we have is seven people willing to come to our aid. After what happened last time, the leaders gave them a choice. Most refused,” Bender said.
Cursing under my breath, I almost pulled my arm out when I opened the passenger door of Bender’s car. “What about the other covens?”
