A Legacy Divided

by Holley Trent

  “I don’t think you should hold your breath waiting for a vacation, cousin.” Tess swirled her fingertips over the top of April’s dark downy hair, and naturally, Lora leaned in for a closer look. She hadn’t had a chance to see the babe yet.

  She let out a tiny sigh at the vision of the baby asleep with her pouty lower lip trembling.

  “Want to hold her?” Tess asked.

  Lora found herself nodding and holding out her arms.

  Tess nestled the swaddled tot against her chest and pulled the blanket up to cover the back of her head.

  “She smells like soap and lotion,” Lora whispered. “Milky breath.”

  And she was heavy, but that was to be expected given who her father was. Fairies apparently made big babies.

  “One day, she’ll spin your daughter into tizzies the same way I do with Nadia.”

  “Nah,” Nadia said. “At a certain point, our proclivities blur, and we just trade off each other’s bad habits.”

  “I’m not sure if you mean that to be a good thing.” Jody ran his thumb along his niece’s nearly invisible eyebrows and the quivering of her lip stopped.

  Nadia shrugged. “Ollie and Harvey would probably say it’s a bad thing, but that’s because they don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

  “That sounds like something Tess would say.”

  “I think she proved her point.” Ótama put out her arms. “Can I have the baby now?”

  “No.” Lora held April a little tighter because she hadn’t been there when she should have been. She’d been there for every other part of Tess’s pregnancy, but not the grand finale. Lora hadn’t been on hand to witness the birth of the next Afótama queen, and suddenly it seemed too important for her to have missed.

  She was angry that she’d had to miss it. Angry the event had been taken away from her and that she’d been used, threatened.

  It hurt that anyone would use her like that as though her only value was in her ability to create chaos, not love.

  It took her a few moments to realize that the sobbing noise she heard wasn’t coming from a freshly wakened baby, but from her. Ótama, ever the opportunist, swooped in to take April as Lora fell to pieces.

  “There, there,” Tess said, squeezing her hand. “It’s just hormones. Everything is probably going to set you off for a little while.”

  That made Lora cry harder. She didn’t even know what she was crying about, really. Certainly, it wasn’t just that she hadn’t been in Norseton on April’s birthday. Perhaps it was just too much of everything.

  Jody held her tight and close, and she tugged the blanket over her head, humiliated that she was not only falling apart but also that she was being forced to abandon the cloak of secrecy that had been a part of her and Jody’s relationship since the very beginning. She was being thrown into the fire and there was no way she could back out of it. For better or for worse, she was a part of the family.

  Nadia cleared her throat again. “So. We can get in and out of this room through the hidden panel behind the middle bookcase if we need to, but we’ll try to avoid moving around too much. We don’t want to let too many people in on the secret that those passageways exist. We don’t have the lushest of accommodations here, but that sofa pulls out into a bed, and the bathroom, at least, has a shower. I’m sure Jody will bring your meals up to you.”

  Lora accepted the tissue Jody tucked beneath the blanket and blew her nose. “How long do you think I’ll have to stay in here?” She nudged the thick fabric away from her eyes so she could read their expressions.

  “We can’t even begin to speculate,” Muriel said. “And I hate to be exceedingly practical, dear, but the better answer to that is probably ‘as long as you have to.’” Lips turning down into a frown, she straightened her spine and huffed. “Like hell are we going to get outplayed in this war. We may not have all the information we need yet, but we’re going to be smart while we’re gathering it. We’re going to clean house, tighten up the ship, and any other idiomatic saying you can think of.”

  “Not gonna be nice about it, either,” Maggie said with a harrumph.

  “What are you going to do about the Petersens?” Lora asked. “Normally, I’d be the one who’d fire staff here, if that’s what you’re angling toward, but since I gave my notice—”

  “I never accepted your notice,” Tess said. “Just count your missing days against your accrued sick time or whatever.” She looked at Nadia. “We offer sick time, right?”

  Nadia blinked at her. “You know who’d know that?”

  “Who?”

  Nadia pointed at Lora.

  “Oh.” Tess batted her hair out of her face and made a gimme gesture at Ótama. “Boobs are leaking. Give me the kid.”

  “Feed her less and your supply would regulate,” the ancient witch said tartly.

  “If I feed her less, she’ll be up all night squalling when she has one of those fairy growth spurts and I don’t have enough of a supply to keep up with her.” She tapped her temple and made wild eyes. “See. I know that because every fairy I’ve crossed paths with in five months has offered me all kinds of unsolicited advice. Did you know that they start teething on average by three months?” She let out a little hysterical laugh and held up three fingers like a toddler who’d just figured out how counting worked. “Three months.”

  Ótama stared dispassionately at her.

  “You can hold her later,” Tess said.

  “As soon as you’re done?”

  Lora leaned toward Jody and shielded her mouth from the room. She whispered, “Am I missing something here?”

  He whispered back, “If she takes April, she’ll hole up somewhere with her and make her very inconvenient to retrieve. She has a very strong maternal drive.”

  “Ah.”

  “I can’t believe I have to negotiate this,” Tess said. “I’m the one who did all the hard work of pushing her out. You know how many stitches my hoo-ha got?”

  Jody sprang to his feet. “Well! We were talking about the Petersens.”

  Ótama was so stunned by the rapid change of topic that she gave up April without a fuss. He transferred April to her mother’s arms, giving her a tender peck on the forehead before letting her go.

  Lora smiled in spite of herself. She’d never pictured Jody and a baby anywhere near each other. She’d simply never imagined him being the broody type, but then again, he hadn’t had much of an opportunity. The birthrate in Norseton had been disconcertingly low for the past twenty years. There’d been too much stress in the community. No one had wanted to procreate.

  “We need to handle the Petersens with surgical precision,” Nadia said. “Lora, you’re off the hook. We don’t want you involved. Jody, do you still have access to the mansion’s personnel systems?”

  “I do, but it’s been a while since I’ve logged in. Mostly nowadays, the wolves handle the background checks and assign system permissions to staff as necessary. They’re very diligent and I was happy to delegate that task to them. You want me to lock Dan out?”

  “Yes,” Tess said. “Kill his keycard for the mansion’s outside doors, too. But before you do, download his entire activity log, including any remote accesses he may have attempted. It’d be suspicious if he tried to access the mansion systems from afar when his role as the head cook wouldn’t have necessitated him taking home work.”

  “So, what’s your projection from there?” Lora asked. “That he’ll realize he can’t get into the building using his codes, and he’ll be looking for one of us to ask why?”

  “Exactly,” Nadia said. “He’ll be unsettled and annoyed, and that’s exactly how we want him to be before we start peppering him with questions.”

  “As soon as we’re certain he’s distracted,” Tess said, “someone will go and work on his wife. We’ll see if she’s willing to roll on him. If he’s not around, she can’t look to him for cues.” She rubbed her chin contemplatively. “It’d have to be me, Jody, or Keith. We have specific skill s
ets that no one else in the community has, as far as interrogation goes. We’re better equipped to discern when people are lying or nervous or dangerous.”

  “Pardon me for the critique, Contessa,” Lora said warily, “but if you show up at her front door with Nadia at your side, her instinct is going to be to bolt. You’re not the sort of queen who’s made a habit of stopping by for social visits.”

  “You’re probably right. What about Jody?”

  Lora grimaced. “Same problem. Jody has a reputation of being the bearer of bad news around here.”

  “So, that leaves Keith.” Nadia blew a raspberry. “Man, he’s no diplomat.”

  “But the plan makes sense,” Muriel said. “Especially if he were accompanied by someone she would have expected to see, anyway. Hasn’t Asher been making the rounds saying hello to everyone?”

  “Yep. He’s disgustingly social.”

  “Well, then. Send him with Keith. Between the two of them, they should be able to get her talking.”

  “I’ll find them and get them up to speed,” Nadia said. “Jody, do you and the guys have a plan on what to do with Mrs. Petersen if she confesses her misdeeds?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a place to put her.”

  Surprised, Lora turned to him. “Where?”

  “Haven’t used it in a while, but we do have a jailing system here. It’s where the first gathering hall used to be.”

  “There’s just a memorial rock there now.”

  He nodded. “Well. That’s what we want people to think.”

  “You never told me.”

  He grinned. “You mad that I know something about this place that you don’t?”

  Lora huffed and tipped onto her feet with as much grace as she could manage. She didn’t know where she was going to go—after all, she was confined to that particular room for the foreseeable future.

  The action had the intended effect, though. Everyone else stood and edged toward the door. Ótama was so close to Tess that she was practically standing on her heels.

  “Keith is pretty easy to find,” Nadia said, “but let me track down Asher. He rarely answers his phone.”

  “You’ll keep me updated?” Lora asked desperately as they filed out.

  Jody slung an arm around her shoulders and chuckled. “Relax,” he whispered.

  “But, I can’t just—”

  “Yes, you can.” He guided her toward the desk and gestured to her computer and tablet and various other accouterments from her abandoned office. “If you insist on being productive, I’m sure there are some travel receipts for you to log or some spreadsheets to update or something. But if I were you, I’d just curl up on the sofa and find a YouTube rabbit hole to fall into.”

  That sounded like hell. She couldn’t just sit and be idle.

  But he seemed so insistent, and the way he was tenderly stroking her cheeks and smiling at her…well, she couldn’t really refuse him anything. At least, not face-to-face.

  She nodded and kissed the back of his hands. “Maybe for an hour or two.”

  “That’s enough for a start. I’ll be back before bedtime.”

  “You’re staying here?”

  “Of course I am. You think that after what happened, I’d ever let you out of my sight again long enough for you to disappear?”

  “No. I don’t think you would.”

  “Good. I like when we’re on the same page.”

  After a kiss that nearly made her knees give out beneath her, he left her to her devices.

  For a while, she paced around the library, feeling disordered and useless. She’d come into the mansion all those years ago and accepted a job with specious requirements and duties and had done everything she could to make herself valuable.

  She would never dare slate herself as being someone important in the Norseton world, but she was content with being useful and reliable.

  To her, that meant more than magic and power ever would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Asher

  “Come out right now! I know you hear me.”

  Oh no.

  Asher thought he’d stumbled onto the perfect hiding spot in Norseton—a rarely used reading nook in the village’s secondhand bookstore. Stacks of crated historical romances and a musty old curtain obscured the corner. He’d used its bench during his first visit to the quiet store because he’d needed someplace to sit and fix his loose bootlace. Now he was more or less using it as his own personal hermitage.

  But he’d been found, apparently.

  He sighed and slipped a marker into the copy of His Lady’s Wanton Desires.

  After his crash course in sexual expression in recent days, he found the lady’s idea of wanton to be…cute, at best. Still, the passion couldn’t be denied. He suspected he’d find saucier trysts in books written after 1980, but he read what the store had in stock. He liked supporting local businesses.

  Nadia pulled the curtain aside.

  “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  “Process of elimination. You weren’t at the bakery, the office supply store, the fancy soap place, or at the tailor’s.”

  “Am I that predictable?”

  “Yes, to me, you are, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” Nadia peeled the book from his chest and squinted at the title. Smirking, she handed it back.

  “Don’t mock me. I enjoy the predictability.”

  “Oh, I’m not teasing at you. I’m amused by some people’s idea of wanton.”

  “I was just thinking that.”

  “Sometimes, sweet is nice, I guess.”

  He nodded. The truth was, though, that he’d gotten so he didn’t really expect sweet from anyone. “I definitely don’t need anything inciting me right now,” he muttered. “No use getting worked up if I can’t slake the urges. Fucking fairy hormones.”

  She raised a brow.

  “Oh.” He grimaced. “Didn’t mean to say that aloud.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard you say the word fuck.”

  “Useful little word, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed.” Nadia folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall. “No one would fault you for having the occasional hookup. Certainly, it can’t be that hard for you to find someone. You fairies have a certain appeal.”

  Asher discreetly shifted the fall of his pants. He hadn’t been able to resist imagining Mallory playing the role of a certain wanton lady. “Yes, well, so do you Afótama.”

  Nadia’s other brow inched upward.

  He sighed and waved off the conversation. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he couldn’t stop obsessing. He’d epically sabotaged his rapport with Mallory by being caught with his pants down with Keith, and the worst part was that he didn’t feel like what he’d done with Keith had been wrong, just…ill-timed.

  There was something wrong with him. Somehow, he had to smooth things over with Mallory before she shut the door on the opportunity. The idea of someone else stepping in and trying to bond with her or those children made him want to throw things.

  He’d fucked up royally.

  Or had let a royal fuck him up. He wasn’t sure which.

  “How about a distraction? We need you to do a little job for us,” Nadia said.

  “I’d love to help. What do you want me to do?” Keeping his head low, he unfolded himself from the niche and eased out of it.

  “I love how acquiescent you are. Everyone else gives me such a hard time.”

  He smiled at that. “I imagine that has something to do with the company you keep.”

  She gave him a long, scolding blink.

  He shrugged and tucked the book into his back pocket. He didn’t want to think too much about the company Nadia kept, because then he’d have to think about grumpy, manipulative Vikings, vanishing nurses, and the utter mess Asher had made.

  If I hadn’t been so damned needy.

  He growled from frustration.

  Nadia edged closer
to him, pushed onto her toes, and looked over the book towers toward the shop owner. He was on the phone, industriously acquiring new books to resell. She whispered to Asher, “We’re rooting out the Petersens. We’re calling this phase one.”

  “And you want me to help? What do you want me to do?”

  “First and foremost, we need you to get Keith inside their house.”

  “Oh.” He frowned.

  Nadia must have caught the deflation in his tone because the look she pinned on him held a multitude of questions.

  Fortunately, she didn’t ask any of them.

  “We need to see how enmeshed Mrs. Petersen is and find out what she knows. We just need to get her talking.”

  “Then maybe Princess Simone would be a better operative for you. She has the kind of magic that compels people to be truthful.” And Princess Simone probably had no particular desire to garrote Keith on sight.

  “Hmm.” Nadia’s gaze took on a far-off look. And then she shook her head. “Nah. Too suspicious. Simone’s not here often enough, so Mrs. Petersen would probably be confused about why she’d get a visit from her.”

  Asher grimaced. Nadia was right, of course. She was a reasonable woman with a good head for planning things. He took a breath, let it out, and opted to say nothing until they’d reconvened on the sidewalk. Before the door closed behind him, the shopkeeper called out, “I’ve got a crate of old Silhouettes coming in tomorrow. Published in the early nineties, I think. If you want first dibs, swing by at around two.”

  “I’ll be here.” Asher waved and let the door close.

  “Is there something wrong?” Nadia asked. “I can’t read your feelings like Tess might be able to, so I’m relying on my gut.”

  “Can I be candid with you?” He needed to tell someone what was bothering him or he’d burst.

  She stopped them in front of the ice cream truck that had a special vendor license to operate in Norseton. Most visitors didn’t know what was unusual about the place and residents generally knew not to be weird when the outsiders were around. Other vendors were unique in some way themselves and equally invested in keeping the secret.