Black as Midnight

by Mary Martel

  He eyed me warily. "Okay," he said slowly. "If you're sure."

  Boy, was I ever sure. I nodded, almost frantically so, hoping to all that was holy he would drop this subject and we could get back to why he'd really asked me over here. I didn't need to break down and have a moment on him.

  "I'm sure," I murmured, hoping like hell he'd leave it alone.

  Marcus gave me what he always did, and, that's to say, everything I needed from him, and he let it go. I wasn't stupid enough to think he'd forget about it though, because he wouldn't. He’d keep a closer watch on me from here on out to make sure I really was okay and I didn't have a problem with that. Just so long as I could sweep it under the proverbial rug for now. I was becoming so good at sweeping shit under that rug that it was a miracle the thing still lay flat on the floor.

  Marcus sighed as his eyes dropped down to his bare feet. He was letting it go. Yeah, I so totally loved him. Even more so now than I had before because he gave me that, gave me exactly what I needed, and didn't press the issue when it was so obvious he wanted answers.

  It made me feel like an asshole for not being honest and baring my soul to him.

  "Okay," he breathed out, before straightening his shoulders and dropping his arms down to his sides.

  He looked me dead in the eyes and the love he had for me shined bright in them for me to see. The problem I had with this was that I no longer wished to see that emotion coming from him at the moment.

  I dropped my gaze from his and glanced back toward the island counter where my coffee mug sat. I picked up the mug and pressed it to my lips. I took a healthy—or not, depending on how you looked at it—gulp of coffee before resting back against the island, my mug held aloft before my chin, and I stared at Marcus.

  "What was it you were planning on telling me?" I asked in a quiet but sure voice. The only thing I was sure of was that I didn't want to go back to talking about me. Just so long as he didn't tell me he was getting married or dying I knew I would be okay with this conversation.

  Marcus turned away from me and pulled open a drawer. He reached inside and came out with two manila colored folders.

  He walked over to where I was standing at the island and set the folders down, one on top of the other. I turned around so my back was facing the wall and I was staring down at the island counter, the folders sitting beside my almost empty coffee mug.

  Marcus gestured down with his hands toward the folders. He cleared his throat nervously and the sound of it didn't do anything to put me at ease. What the hell was in those folders?

  "I went out to the motel the Council is staying at earlier this week after we had our lunch together," he began. "Adrian had requested my presence there and I didn't think it wise to disobey him just yet."

  That ‘just yet’ part killed me because I could completely understand where he was coming from. This was Adrian we were talking about here and he was a psycho.

  "Okay," I said hesitantly. I didn't want to encourage his bad behavior where the Council was concerned, because I didn't think that boded well for anybody and I really did not want this to go badly for Marcus.

  "Well," he drawled, "I found some things that were disturbing."

  I could understand this, because I, too, had gone out to the motel and found pretty much everything I'd seen there to be disturbing.

  "What did you find, Marcus?"

  Marcus tapped his finger against the manila files. Once, twice, three times, before looking back at me from beneath his long, dark lashes. It bothered me how attractive I found him, even though he was so much older to me and I saw him as a parental figure. He wasn't my dad, I knew that, but it still bothered me to find the man attractive. I loved him and he'd had sex with Vivian. This was not normal and I hated that.

  I was losing my mind, that had to be the only explanation I could think of.

  "Open the files," he ordered softly, and I did as he said.

  I flipped open the first folder. There was a 4x6 photograph inside of a woman. She looked to be walking down a busy street. Her head was turned to the side and long, straight black hair fanned out around her. There was a look on her face I recognized all too well. She looked scared, haunted even, her eyes were narrowed on something I couldn't see but the look on her face was enough. I was scared for her.

  The picture was the only thing in the folder.

  "I found the photo on Adrian's desk and made a copy of it. The next folder has a name and a telephone number. I need you to get these to Rain, and I need you to do it soon. I think the phone she uses is a burner phone that she must keep off most of the time, or they would have found her already."

  My eyes were glued to the photograph staring up at me, transfixed.

  "Why does the Council have a picture of this woman?" I inquired but, in my heart, I already knew. She was like me, but she was hiding from them.

  "Rain," I choked out my father's name.

  "Yeah," Marcus spoke quietly. "He'll be able to take care of her and keep her safe. But, for me, I can't know anything else about her other than what's in these folders."

  I frowned at this as I finally tore my eyes off the picture and looked up at him. "What aren't you telling me?"

  He was hiding something, that's for sure. It seemed like everyone was trying to hide something these days. The whole thing was starting to become exhausting.

  "The less I know the better," was his cryptic reply.

  Fine. Whatever. He could keep his secrets if he really wanted to.

  "I'll get these to Rain, but I'm going to leave them in his apartment for him instead of texting him. Now that I know Adrian has my phone number and knew about the shop, I'm super paranoid about everything." Wasn't that an understatement.

  Marcus leaned his hip against the island beside me.

  "You're right to be paranoid," he said. "They have secret ways of knowing things and they use magic they forbid others to use."

  He reached out and closed the folder, shuffling them into a neat little stack.

  "You've been spending an awful lot of time over at the Alexander house this week," he commented casually. A little too casually if you asked me, like he was fishing for information.

  "Yeah," I stated. If there was something he wanted to know then he could come right out and ask for it. I was still reeling over the look in the woman's eyes and hoping Rain found her before the Council got their hands on her.

  Marcus cleared his throat as he shifted from foot to foot, nervously.

  "Is everything okay with you and Dash?"

  My cheeks heated in embarrassment as images of Dash on top of me ran through my mind and my skin burned. Was I going to think about having sex with him every time someone brought his name up? I seriously hoped not, because this was really not good. Marcus, like Rain, didn't need to know I'd had sex.

  Marcus took one look at my red face and immediately got angry. His fist clenched and he laid them down on the island counter.

  "Those idiots better be treating you right," he growled. "If you think they're taking advantage of you in any way, I want you to tell me immediately. In fact, I want you to know that you can move back into your old room any time you'd like. I would love to have the company and you know you're always welcome here. This is your home too."

  My shoulders slumped as I placed both my palms on the counter. If only my life were a lot less complicated, and I was in a place where I could move back into my pretty room with the window seat Tyson and I had slept beside each other on the first night he'd introduced me to Friday Night Lights. That had been my first real bedroom I'd had with anything other than a broken laundry basket on the floor with my used clothes piled in it, and a lumpy mattress that was on the floor as well. Marcus had bought me brand new furniture and all the fixings to go along with my room.

  I had loved my bedroom here, it had been the first real thing that was close to a safe space I'd ever had and Marcus had been the one to give it to me. But I could not, under any circumstances, move back in h
ere with him.

  Have you ever heard that saying 'don't look back, you're not going that way?’ Well, I already wasted too much time looking back at the past and not enough time reaching for my future. My place was with my coven. My place was at Dash's cottage and now, since I couldn't live there, at the Alexander big house.

  "They treat me just fine," I told Marcus honestly, and I realized in that moment that they actually did treat me very well, better than I probably deserved most of the time. "But... something happened and I think both Dash and myself will be staying next door at the Alexander house for a while now."

  Probably a good long while considering those robed masked people.

  He sighed but thankfully let it go.

  I drank two cups of coffee with Marcus while I helped him unpack boxes in his office, lining his shelves with books and knickknacks.

  After a couple hours of unpacking I asked him if I could borrow a car for a few hours. He said yes, like I knew he would. What surprised me though? He didn't even ask me why I needed to borrow one of his cars when my Range Rover, the one he'd bought for me, was parked in the driveway next door.

  Maybe he knew that a girl in a house full of men would sometimes need an escape and a chance to catch her breath every now and then. Then again, maybe he was just being Marcus, the wonderful man that he was, and he was doing what he could to take care of me.

  Whatever the case, I didn't care, I was simply thankful for it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I shut the door quietly behind me, afraid to make any noise even though I knew nobody would be able to hear me from outside the garage. The walls in here were heavily insulated and with the shade pulled shut on the one door to the outside closed, there was no way someone standing outside would be able to tell there was someone moving around in here.

  I pouted as I pressed the button on the key fob, unlocking the car Marcus had given me keys to, and stood still as I watched for lights to flash on the car the fob belonged to. I pouted because his beautiful black Mercedes was parked out in the driveway for once and I knew that whatever set of keys he'd given me did not belong to that car. I wanted to drive that car, badly, with my foot pressed all the way down to the floor as the world blurred past me.

  I feared I would now never get the chance to drive it and that made me ridiculously sad.

  I shook my head, shaking myself free of my useless thoughts. Envy and greed would get me absolutely nowhere. I thought that had been a lesson I'd learned long ago, but here I was lusting over driving a car I had no business wanting to get behind the wheel of. Couldn't I just be thankful for what I had? Why did I now strive for more?

  I shook off my thoughts as I hit the button on the key fob again. This time I paid attention to the vehicles in the garage so I wouldn't have to hit the button a third time.

  The tail lights on a black Suburban parked in the farthest corner of the garage that I had never seen before flashed when I hit the button. That was new and I didn't understand why he needed so many different vehicles in the garage when he was the only person who lived here now.

  I held the keys in my hand as I headed toward the Suburban, no longer giving a crap what vehicle it was that had bleeped to life for me. It didn't really matter what I drove at this point, just so long as I had a means to escape the madness going on in the house next door. I needed an escape, and Marcus Cole had given me one. Wishing that escape had come in the form of his Mercedes made me an ungrateful brat when the vehicle didn't matter just so long as it got me where I needed to go.

  And where exactly was it that I needed to go?

  Absolutely nowhere, just so long as I wasn't forced to stay here anymore.

  There were too many people in my life these days who wanted to keep tabs on me, keep me in their line of sight at all times. And as much as I loved them for caring, it was beginning to drive me toward the brink of insanity and sometimes made it harder for me to breathe.

  I climbed into the Suburban, having had to use the base board to be able to haul my butt on to the driver’s seat, and tossed the folders onto the passenger seat. I closed the door and buckled up.

  I was sticking the key in the ignition when the front passenger side door swung open, causing me to scream and flinch into my door.

  Tyson held the door open as he leaned in, grinning at me.

  "Hey, girl," he said cheerfully. "You going somewhere?"

  I glared at him as I pressed a palm to my chest, covering my racing heart. It didn't help slow it down in the slightest.

  "You scared the shit out of me, Ty," I responded breathlessly. "What the heck are you even doing in here?"

  I hadn't heard the door open and I'd heard absolutely nothing coming from the garage. The place had been as quiet as a tomb until I'd pressed on the button on the key fob. How had he even gotten in here?

  "You should just be glad your new BFF's aren't here instead of me," he said as he climbed into the big SUV and closed the door behind him, sitting down on top of the folders like he hadn’t even noticed them there. "They're restless and going stir crazy over there, now that your dad’s shine has seemed to wear off and he seems just like a normal guy to them again."

  I frowned at him.

  "Rain is just a normal guy to them," I commented, as I watched him pull the seat belt down and around his body. He clicked it in and sat back in the seat.

  He shook his head as he smirked at me. "I don't think you see your dad the same way the rest of us do."

  Maybe he had the right of it on that one. I didn't necessarily have Rain up on a pedestal, but that wasn't saying I didn't see him through rose-tinted glasses, because I often times did.

  "I don't want to talk about Rain," I muttered angrily. Suddenly, I was angry again and being angry was really starting to piss me off. "I don't want to talk about Trenton and Simon either. In fact, I don't think I want to talk at all. If that's why you're here then perhaps you should just get right back out again and leave me be."

  Okay, so maybe I was being a bitch to Tyson for no reason that had anything to do with him, but I just couldn't seem to shake this bad mood I was in and I needed a target to aim my anger and frustration at. It was unfortunate for Tyson that he'd gotten into this ginormous SUV with me with only the two of us in the vehicle together. There was nowhere else for my anger to go, no other outlet to reach out toward.

  "Just get out, Tyson," I ordered in a quiet, controlled voice.

  "You know," Tyson began in an oddly somber voice that absolutely did not coincide with the smirk on his face, "those two aren't entirely your responsibility. Uncle Quint would have taken them in if you hadn't. You know that, right?"

  He wasn't the first person to tell me that, but, at this point, it wasn't something I needed to hear from anyone. I knew Quinton Alexander and I knew the kind of man he was. He was the kind of man who was worth everything. There was no way he'd turn out Trenton and Simon, no fucking way. They'd have a permanent place in his home and he'd eventually give them as good as he gave the rest of our coven, because we were all a messed up group of people who desperately needed each other. They took me on and it hadn't been easy. They'd take the brothers on the same way, not just Quinton, but all of them. Because their past made it so they fit in perfectly with us.

  They were damaged goods and that made them the perfect fit for our coven.

  I sighed heavily and repeated, "Just get out, Tyson."

  I did not want to talk about the people I'd brought into our lives without asking. I did not want to talk about much of anything.

  I wanted to escape. Escape my new version of reality. Escape the people who loved me. Escape my own life. Escape pretty much everything.

  "I'm not getting out, Ariel," Tyson countered, sounding tired.

  "Fine, whatever," I grumbled under my breath. If he wasn't going to get out then I wasn't going to waste any more time arguing with him about it.

  I reached up and pressed the button on the small square device attached to the visor and the g
arage door opened. I put the Suburban in reverse and backed out. I had never driven a vehicle this big before, so I took extra care to not hit anything on the way down the driveway. At the end of the driveway I hit the button again and watched as the garage door went back down.

  I hit the road and cruised past the Alexander house without looking at it. I didn't want to jinx it and with my luck someone would be looking out the window at just that second and see me driving by. Then my phone would blow up and I'd likely go insane.

  Tyson moved around in his seat and slipped the manila folders out from underneath him. He held them up and asked, "What are these?"

  I sighed.

  "There's a picture in one and a phone number in the other one," I said, telling him the bare minimum.

  He opened the folder and whistled under his breath. "She's pretty but there's something sad about her. Who is she?"

  "Has anybody ever told you before that you're nosy?"

  He laughed quietly, his shoulders shaking with it. I noticed he didn't answer my question, though, and that was answer enough for me.

  "How has Quinton put up with you all this time?" I inquired jokingly.

  Ignoring that, he repeated, "Who is she, Ariel?"

  "Marcus thinks she's a witch," I answered him, knowing he wouldn't let it go until I did. "And he thinks she's hiding from the Council. He found this picture and the phone number in Adrian's office."

  "A witch?" Tyson echoed in a voice filled with wonder. "There really are more females out there than we thought there were."

  Something in his voice bothered me and I hated to think it, but the thought crossed my mind anyways. If there were more female witches out there, then did that mean they'd want to take a good look at them and maybe regret taking me in and inviting me into their coven? Would they want another female if more came to light? Would they want to swap me out for a new, shinier, bright version, one without a fucked up past and scarred up body? Would this change everything for me when I'd just gotten comfortable in my life, was the rug going to be ripped out from underneath me?