Sin & Surrender (Demigods of San Francisco Book 6)

by K. F. Breene

  I could just see Magnus’s ear lift, indicating he was hiding a smile. I had a feeling it lacked any humor. “Didn’t you? Hmm. In any case, the man will live, I hear, but he’s slow to heal despite the blood bond. He’ll be out of commission for a while. Zander is most grieved by this, of course—the injured party is the only person on his team with any knowledge of the web and websites and things like that.”

  Healing took energy. If someone was siphoning energy from the man, he would indeed be down for the count for a while.

  Was this Magnus hinting that he was helping me?

  I dropped into a light trance, looking for a little violet string connecting Magnus to the ailing man. The Line pulsed, feeding me with power, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. He was clear.

  “Spirit isn’t the only way to keep a man down, Alexis,” Magnus said softly. “Given you suspect me, though, it seems you don’t know the answer. Interesting. Also, my dear, you must look for spirit connections without drawing notice. You have enough power to exert your magic without calling additional power from the Line. You mustn’t always reach for it. Doing so in the presence of those who can feel or see it might come back at you in unpleasant ways. You need to be better at holding your cards to your chest. I can help you, if you like.”

  “The roast is ready to rest.” Kieran pulled it from the oven.

  “Fantastic. I’m almost ready.” Magnus’s hands moved quickly and expertly as he finished up the sauce and plated the potatoes.

  “Why would you suddenly want to help her, when not so long ago you wanted to kidnap her?” Daisy asked, and I didn’t call her down. I was wondering myself.

  “Yes, the kidnapping. I admit, that was shortsighted.” Magnus gave me a look, as if expecting reproach. “I saw an opportunity and rushed to take it before Aaron did. I wanted to control a situation that could not be controlled. I should have known better. But in answer to your question, I have always wanted to help her. Given the situation, however, it was impossible. I have a history with children, as I’m sure you’ve heard.” Magnus carved the roast and added portions to each of the dishes. “Let’s sit down to dinner, and I can give you a small history lesson, Alexis, if you’d like.”

  After everyone took a plate, Magnus led a toast to good health, and we all tasted the food. It was delicious, and I said so, which was when Magnus casually dropped his bomb.

  “I loved your mother, Alexis. I loved her like I’ve only loved one other. Unlike the other, my love for her was just budding. It was new, without roots. It was fast and furious, and before either of us knew it, she was pregnant.” He took a moment to chew and then sipped his wine. “I have a reputation, as I’ve said. A reputation I believe in. I’ve known horrors you couldn’t imagine at the hands of my own children. It was a lesson I learned soundly.”

  “So then…why am I alive?” I asked through a constricted throat. My mind was whirling. He’d known about me the whole time? I could scarcely believe it. It didn’t make sense.

  Magnus looked across the flickering candlelight at me, the lights in the chandelier above us low and intimate. The setting was homey despite the obvious wealth surrounding us. He looked lost for a moment.

  “It was hard to say no to your mom. When I found out she was pregnant, I left, hoping she’d see sense. Then she sent me a picture of the ultrasound, proclaiming it was a girl…” He put his forearms on the table, bowing his head over them. “All those sons scattered across time, but you’re my first daughter. Something about that…” His eyes fluttered and he turned to Kieran. “There is something special about a little girl, you’ll see. Maybe it is because you hope they will take after the woman you love. Or maybe they are God-kissed, I don’t know.” He returned his gaze to me. “I made a deal with her. If she hid your lineage and kept you out of the magical world, she could keep you. I would not harm you—indeed, I’d forget you existed.”

  “You helped me before Kieran exposed me to the world,” I said with a shaking voice.

  “Yes. I’ve kept tabs on you, over the years. At first it was to make sure your mother kept her word. Then because I was fascinated that she wouldn’t take any money. I’m sure it was because she didn’t want me in her life at all—she worried I’d eventually harden and fall into…old habits. And it might have happened, who’s to say? She lived a life of poverty to keep me at a distance. She kept you safe better than anyone else could.” He paused for a moment. “Even from me.”

  “Did you know what she was all along?” Kieran asked, his plate finished and his hand on his stomach.

  “No. I doubt even her mother knew. When you entered her life, Kieran, I watched much more closely. I saw her bud, I saw her magic flower, and then the truth was revealed to me.”

  “Yet you didn’t try to grab her then.” Kieran wasn’t asking a question.

  Magnus let out a breath and leaned back in his chair. “I will be honest with you… I have no idea why. Shell-shocked, maybe? Set in my ways? I didn’t know you’d move so quickly? Or maybe I thought it would be in my best interest if you defeated your father. Take your pick.”

  Surprise flitted through the soul link but did not show on Kieran’s face. He hadn’t known there was beef between Magnus and Valens.

  “I should have taken her, though.” Magnus pushed his plate away. A woman bustled in, starting to clear. He gestured at her. “Forgive me—I love cooking, but I hate cleaning up. She is oath-bound to silence. She cannot repeat anything she hears.”

  “Why should you have grabbed her?” Mordecai asked.

  Magnus studied Mordecai for a silent beat before answering. “Because I am the best equipped to train her. Given she has no interest in ruling, she would’ve been a perfect addition to my team. No one would begrudge me letting a Spirit Walker live. No one has. You all know why, of course. You’ve fought with her. Not even Zeus’s prized Thunderstroke can compare.” He rested his elbows on the table this time, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. “I thought you’d eventually have to come to me when you hit a wall. I thought wrong. Please, Alexis, answer me this: who has shown you the way? I know it is not Aaron—he is losing his grip on sanity. Lydia…well. We know it is not her…”

  I remembered there was one other Hades Demigod, though he wasn’t active in politics. He was old and removed from the fast lane. Maybe Magnus would think it was him. Whatever he thought, I didn’t plan on telling him the truth.

  His eyes sparkled as they beheld me. “‘Secrets, secrets are no fun,’” he recited softly. “‘Secrets, secrets can hurt someone.’”

  Cold bled through me. Did he know?

  “Come. Let’s have some dessert and then hear more of that fine music. Who knew a Berserker could create such a melody? Perhaps you can join me in my study later. I have some pictures you might like to see.”

  Dessert was probably delicious, but I couldn’t taste it.

  Later, as Zorn sang in accompaniment to Thane’s playing, a sweeter melody than I’d ever heard, Magnus led me to his office with Kieran in tow. The leather-bound album he produced was filled with pictures of my life, starting in childhood. Many had been taken from a distance, and I recognized a few of the chaotic moments that had been captured. He’d been there, through all of that. He’d watched from a distance, taking snapshots of my life—or, more likely, having someone else do it.

  In the very front, on the first page, was an ultrasound of a swimming white blob amid blackness. Under it was a note written in my mother’s scratchy hand proclaiming, It’s a girl!

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I didn’t say anything.

  A fog settled over me as I tried to figure out where this left us. I wished the politics of the magical world weren’t standing in our way. I wished some of his past behavior had been different.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d ever felt love for me as a father would his offspring, but I was too terrified he’d say no. Given the circumstances, I was also scared he’d say yes.

  As the
night drew to a close and everyone prepared to leave, Magnus pulled me aside.

  “I must ask, Alexis. Who was the spirit you called today during your summons?”

  I frowned at him, the question eating through the fog. “I didn’t call it. I didn’t recognize the presence, either, but it seemed menacing. It wasn’t another Demigod?”

  He studied me for a long moment, and something flickered within his eyes. Something uncertain, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  “Not even Aaron would be so stupid. Watch yourself, Alexis. There are always shadowy dealings at these things, but I have a feeling you will be affected by this one. Guard your back at all times.”

  I nodded slowly, although he hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.

  “And one more thing,” he said, his voice low. “I realize that it is all hearts and roses with your Demigod right now. That’s to be expected. But if ever you find yourself in a lonely castle on a forgotten island, I am always here. My door is always open. You’ll have a place of your own and a team to lead. You will never be trapped like Valens’s wife was. You will always have someone who can free you.”

  My heart melted just a little more. Daisy would never, in a million years, let me take him up on that, but the sentiment was nice.

  I nodded, my eyes misting.

  He spread his arms, as though going for a hug, then dropped them again before sticking out his hand.

  I laughed. He’d hidden it well, but clearly there was some degree of social awkwardness there. It made me feel better about my own shortcomings.

  “Remember,” he said as he walked me to the door to meet Kieran, waiting to escort me out, “watch your back, Alexis. I’ve effectively made it so that if I can’t have you, no one can, but that doesn’t mean accidents won’t happen. Your mother sacrificed a lot to keep you safe. Don’t let her sacrifice be in vain.”

  18

  Alexis

  The next afternoon I stood in the kitchen in my finest dress, with my hair and makeup done just so and a sickening feeling in my gut. My father’s warning had infiltrated my dreams, one nightmare twisting and turning into another. Sometimes it was just me facing off against a terrible, faceless foe. In the worst dreams, I was fighting in front of my kids, backed up against a wall. In all the dream sequences, I was in over my head, outmatched if not outnumbered. They were so vivid that they almost felt like a series of premonitions, inescapable.

  I leveled a finger at Daisy, standing across the island from me wearing her fighting attire and a bored expression. She and Mordecai had not been invited with me to afternoon tea with Zander’s wife, Juri. It was an exclusive invite (albeit a last-minute one), and Amber thought I should be doing backflips to celebrate. We’d already declined a handful of other invitations.

  My kids couldn’t come, my friends couldn’t come, my protection had to wait outside, but the cats had been invited to join me. I hadn’t wanted to be the bloody cat lady in the first place, and now they were invited to exclusive, posh parties instead of my human companions. It felt like someone was playing a grand practical joke on me.

  Worse, it felt like an awful time to leave the kids. Kieran was in meetings all day, so they’d have to go with the crew. To a Berserker fight.

  Thane’s challenge, delivered by courier, had arrived this morning, handwritten on elegant golden card stock. Five Berserkers—two women and three men, including Thane—wanted to battle it out to see who was king of the mountain. Or queen. Apparently they’d be fighting in a cage designed to contain highly dangerous magical beasts, something used for the magical beast fair held in the fall. Everyone was especially excited to see Thane’s beast at play, given his rare ability to control it.

  The thought made my body shake with the adrenaline.

  “Just because you’re getting the crew, doesn’t mean you’ll be protected, okay?” I told Daisy in a stern voice. “You will stay to the background, and if Thane gets through the electric wire, you will run and hide, you get me? You do not mess with Thane’s caliber of danger.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know. Thane isn’t going to get out of the cage, though. None of them will. They have it rigged for Berserkers.”

  Which didn’t exactly put my worries to rest, especially since another form of hate mail had been delivered sometime in the middle of the night. A splatter of red paint marred the stone pathway in the garden. A crude drawing of a Chester bow—the symbol of ignorant non-magical people everywhere—decorated the warm cement. It had been drawn in a different hand than the hate message a day before, but we’d gotten footage again, and the people scrawling the message had worn the same robes. According to Daisy, they’d also had on the same shoes.

  “Stay with the crew. Do not, for any reason, go looking for your admirers.” I leaned in. “Answering their challenge is not worth it. You are a teenager with no blood oath. You are not safe to try to kill your haters, do you get me?”

  “Yes, I get you. Ew! It’s not like Mordecai would let me slip away, anyway. He’s been on me like a turd on a toilet.”

  I had to pause, my face crinkling at the wrongness of the image. I waved it away. “Whatever. Just stay safe. I should only be indisposed for a couple hours.”

  “Why aren’t you giving this lecture to Mordecai?” she asked.

  “Because Mordecai is sane. You are not.” I grabbed my clutch off the island, gave her one last stern look, and headed for the door.

  I was met at the door by Bertha, a bear of a woman, dressed in a crisp suit with a magenta tie and her hair chopped close. She was one of Kieran’s second-string people, pulled off Kieran’s detail with a couple of others to bring me to Juri’s lodge. The council’s approval of the mark meant I was a great deal safer, but Kieran still worried about me. So did I, truth be told.

  Bertha’s name was one she’d chosen after the “madwoman in the attic” in Jane Eyre. It spoke a lot to her personality. She had been overlooked for inner circles because of her appearance and all-around uncouth attitude. People didn’t like that she dressed like a man and swore like a sailor. Kieran had snapped her up.

  We didn’t need a willow of a woman who fit stereotypes—we needed a battle-axe who’d cleave through danger.

  As I exited, she turned to the side to let me pass, her hands clasped in front of her. Parker, a short, round man with a bulldog face, waited for me by a golf cart. He motioned for Chins, a stick figure of a woman with very little of her namesake. She stepped forward and held my dress as I climbed into the seat.

  “Load up,” Bertha bellowed.

  I chanced a glance back at the lodge as we got underway, my guts a mess of nerves. I really didn’t want to leave the kids. Magnus had called Daisy’s hate mail a challenge. That clearly meant she was in danger, as we’d thought. I wanted to be there for backup.

  Then there were Aaron’s Necromancers who might be trying to call Harding. We’d talked to Kieran about it, and worry had crept through the soul link. If they could control Harding, they’d have a potent weapon on their hands. If they couldn’t…I was terrified Harding might be pissed off that he’d been controlled. That had always been his rule when he’d worked with me—he had free will. If someone called him and tried to dominate him, I worried he’d retaliate, then maybe slip back into his old ways. No one would be safe, not even me. Maybe especially not me. If they could use Harding to get rid of me and even the playing field…

  “You look lovely, Miss Alexis,” Parker said, his voice rough, like rocks grinding beneath the sole of a boot.

  “Thanks,” I said, watching the pretty flowers as we lazily rolled by.

  A spark of frustration came from Kieran, who’d been in the same location for the past hour. That guy would be mentally comatose by the time all this ended. The meetings were draining enough, but he also had to strategize about developing personal relationships with other leaders.

  I knew the situation with Magnus was weighing on him. The dutiful father act had seemed so legit, with the pictures and the histor
y and his feelings for my mom…except it didn’t add up when you considered all the things he’d done over the many long years he’d been in power. The guy was ruthless and brutal—everyone knew that. It was why he’d never experienced a decline like so many immortal leaders did. He was of Hades, too, and Lydia had opened Kieran’s eyes to the trickery they could pull off. Guys like him had strategies within strategies. Kieran said he saw it in the meetings. Magnus had his fingers on the very pulse of magical politics.

  I sighed. A huge part of me wanted to latch on to the idea that Magnus was conflicted. That was something I could understand, because I felt that way too. I had loved spending time with him last night. He’d known exactly how to win me over. It had almost made me forget he’d once dragged my kids into the thick of a battle. But if he’d been watching me, he’d known about Daisy and Mordecai for some time. They hadn’t been strangers to him.

  He’d done it anyway.

  Yes, I wanted to believe he was conflicted, but logic said that it was likely an act. That he was Halloween dressed up like a Hallmark Christmas movie.

  Maybe it wasn’t Aaron or Lydia I needed to worry about. If the menacing presence that had appeared in spirit yesterday hadn’t been one of them, logic suggested Magnus had summoned it. Maybe the person I needed to worry about had invited me to dinner in order to distract me from the real danger. Him.

  The thought tore me in two.

  “You okay, Miss Alexis?” Parker asked as we headed toward a large lodge, equal in size to Magnus’s. Zander was one of the big dogs, so he’d have one of the largest living quarters, close to the summit building.

  “Yup. Just tired of politics, is all. This stuff isn’t for me.”

  Parker nodded and braced his hand on his hip as he drove. “Yeah. This shit’s for the birds. I’d rather stab someone in the face than in the back. There ain’t no joy in the latter, know what I mean? Ya can’t see their face when they realize their number is up.”