by Amy Marie
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you not to worry. You know it’s not my style to lie to you. It bugs the hell out of me that she managed to fool the system. This is serious, and with the threat hanging over you, we need to be careful.”
“What if it’s nothing?” There was always that possibility.
“Could be, but I’d rather err on the side of caution.”
“Where are we going?” I finally turned my head to look at him, and he was smirking. What the hell? “What?”
“You have a date.”
“I what?”
“Lorde called while I was on the phone with Shane. I’m taking you to meet with your temporary owner,” he told me, his smile widening.
Licking my lips at the thought of seeing Lorde again, I willed my heart to slow down even as I rolled my eyes at Fizz. And then something occurred to me. “How do we know we can trust him?”
“Because I had him thoroughly checked out. Both when he won and today. I’m not taking chances, Max, but I do think he might be able to get your mind off of what happened.”
“I don’t—”
“If you really don’t want to see him, I’ll take you to the cabin, and you can brood there with only me for company.”
My cabin was the one place I owned that no one knew about, except Fizz. My parents hadn’t a clue I had bought ten acres with a private lake in Missouri. The place was self-sustaining and entirely off the grid, and one of my favorite places to be when I needed to unwind and get away. No phones, no computers. Only me and whatever I wanted to do.
“What about work?” I snidely asked, my small grin dampening the effect of my words and attitude.
“You are off work this week after passing out for two days, and after discovering Debbie wasn’t Debbie. I called Eve earlier and informed her of the change in plans. She canceled everything for the next two weeks.”
“Now, wait a minute,” I snapped and could feel my cheeks heating with irritation.
“No. We have to re-evaluate anyone new to the company, anyone who started in the last six months. I’m not taking any chances.”
“But Lorde is good?” I chuckled a little. Everyone was on lockdown, no one was allowed in, but Lorde had permission. Made all the sense in the world, didn’t it? Then again, even with the gaffe today, I trusted Fizz’s judgment. He wouldn’t put me in a situation where I was not safe, not intentionally.
What if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it? I wasn’t sure why I thought that or what prompted it. How would he not know? Almost immediately, a small voice inside whispered, “What if she was a witch? Witches have magic. Look what they did to your family?” I pushed my stray thoughts aside for now.
Staring out the window, I frowned at my reflection and lifted my hand to rub against my sternum again. The swan inside me wasn’t squawking and felt peaceful, unlike earlier. Fizz told me to trust my instincts, to trust the animal within me, and I would. For now, I pushed away the question and forgot about it, but it lingered in the back of my mind.
I was going to have to be alert and on guard.
Chapter 14
Lorde
For the last couple of days, I’d thought of little else other than Max. I regularly scanned my emails, praying someone needed me for business, hoping for a reprieve, and every night I fell into bed disappointed.
It wasn’t only that. I’d called Max on Sunday after I forced myself to get out of bed, only to be informed he was unavailable. He had to be exhausted after organizing and hosting a large gala. When my aunt had informed me of the invitation, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it turned out to be quite a bit larger and more ostentatious than I anticipated. Classy, but over the top. I supposed it needed to be in order to attract a particular type of crowd, and to get the attendees to open their pocketbooks. That old adage to get money, you had to spend money came to mind. If only he didn’t have to go through the song and dance like a monkey on a leash.
Thinking about that night made me think of him, his eyes staring back at me. He hid his discomfort well, but I could still see it in the jokes he made, the way his jaw twitched whenever someone stopped him to talk. Most of all, I could still see the pain and sadness, the loneliness in his eyes. Why? He was surrounded by people, men and women throwing themselves at him, yet he held himself back. He had everything and acted like he had nothing of importance. It didn’t make sense.
Max had no right to look like that, no right at all. He… I groaned and melted into the chair I sat in, sliding down until my body barely hung on the edge. His family ruined my family. Not him personally, but he still had their evil lurking in his blood.
I had continued to repeat this mantra on a daily basis ever since that first vision, but it was getting harder to believe it, and I didn’t understand why. All my life, I’d been taught to hate him, to hate his family with every fiber of my being. They were the ones who wronged us. They were the ones who started this war. We were only cleaning up and ending what they began. My mother reminded me about this multiple times a day, repeating over and over again the real story behind the fairy tale. I embraced her words or thought I had.
But his eyes.
I couldn’t get them out of my mind. So blue, so full of misery. I found myself wondering whether I’d imagined what I’d seen, if I’d imagined the energy between us. Although, that could have been our magic rejecting the other. His shifting abilities were a type of magic, one that had melded with his cells and flowed through his blood.
On a whim a couple years ago, I’d searched for the spell my ancestor used to change the princes and found myself scratching my head. In a tome that had been handed down from mother to daughter throughout the centuries, I read the ancient words. Actually, I had to take a quick snapshot with my phone because I didn’t want my mother to find out I had borrowed the old book.
There was indeed a spell, and it took me a while to decipher the language. It wasn’t anything I’d seen before. The thing that confounded me was the spell should have ended with the first blue moon. It wasn’t something which held any permanence. When that confused me, I located the spell supposedly given to the princess, allowing her to change her brothers back. Six full years, and on the eve of the start of the seventh, if they were given the sweaters knitted out of nettles, they would change back to their human form. At least eight blue moons should have come and gone in that time, so what happened? Not only had the spell remained, it became part of their DNA, passing on the mutation to every generation after that.
Pat would probably know what went wrong, but I didn’t want to ask her about it or anything else. Fear stopped me. Not only fear of my mother but fear of Pat. I didn’t know where her loyalties actually lay. She acted as if she’d rather I not follow through with my mother’s scheme, but what if it was nothing more than a test? What if I questioned everything, decided to stand down, and she turned out to be just like Mother or worse? I couldn’t chance it and didn’t trust anyone in my own family. Hell, I didn’t trust anyone, period.
And if I didn’t follow through…
The sound of an alert on my phone had me scrambling to find the small device under the books and papers I had strewn all over the desk in my room. Maybe it was a job, and I could get away from here for a couple of days. No such luck.
After two days of not hearing from him, Fizz, Max’s bodyguard, texted me to ask whether I was available to meet with Max today, and I fought between the urge to tell him no and run for the hills, and the desire to scream yes.
Instead, I set my phone down gently, afraid of what I might do to it if I didn’t. For all intents and purposes, I should accept. It was the perfect way to get into Max’s good graces, have some one-on-one time, and get close to him. Maybe, make him fall in love with me. My heart lurched.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned low and soft. What was wrong with me? Nothing in me should be lurching, dreaming, wanting, craving, or anything else. I was here for one reason and one reason only, maybe then I could
find some semblance of a life that didn’t include hearing or thinking about this bloody feud daily.
Yet, the thought of Max having no place in the future saddened me and made my chest ache with a pain I’d never felt before. Why couldn’t he have been some ugly wanker who robbed from the poor to feed his crack habit? Instead, he was handsome, seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and raised money for charity. Or maybe that was a ruse. Maybe, Max took the money from the charity and lined his own pockets.
Before the party, I’d done my research. Rags and rumors portrayed Max as a man who ran his company with an iron fist, took money from the charity his family started decades ago, flirted with anyone and everyone regardless of gender, and wound up in bed with half the population of the world. He had a chip on his shoulder and a bad attitude, and he resented having to be in charge at a young age. This was Max Lux.
Even as I thought that and briefly attempted to convince myself that had to be the reality, I knew it wasn’t right. His eyes told me he was a lonely man who wanted to do more for the people around him than anyone probably realized. He worked hard and had probably pushed himself to the limits to help organize that charity event. Throughout the year, Max went all over the city to make appearances in schools and libraries, sometimes traveling across the globe. I’d found a little snippet about that, although the tabloids wanted to focus on the bad boy image he’d had since he was nineteen when a fellow student claimed Max had roughed him up and tried to blackmail him for sex. The guy was a bloody moron. Max only had to crook a finger, and people would fall at his feet, no need to force someone to go to bed with him. Silently, I admitted that “people” might also include me.
Sighing, I picked up my phone and texted back, “I’m available. Where would you like to meet?”
My phone ringing less than thirty seconds later had me jumping and accidentally throwing my phone into the air. I barely caught it before it crashed to the floor. “Yes?” I answered slightly out of breath, believing it was my mother. She always had a way of knowing when things were or were not going her way.
“Good morning.” Hearing Fizz’s voice surprised me.
“Uh, yes. Good morning.” I felt like I had been thrown into the deep end and could only doggie paddle.
If he noticed how discombobulated I sounded, he didn’t remark on it. “We will pick you up at your aunt’s house.”
“Excuse me, but we?”
“I’ll be your designated driver today, aka your chaperone.”
“And does Max need a designated driver often?”
Fizz was quiet for a moment, and I got the overwhelming feeling, if he could, he would have reached through the phone and strangled me. Then he said, “No, he doesn’t, but I am his bodyguard, and I will be tagging along wherever you two decide to go.” His tone brooked no room for argument.
I swallowed hard and could feel my face burning with embarrassment. What did I have to be embarrassed about? It had been a valid question. “Right. Well, I will be awaiting your arrival.” Disconnecting the call, I set my phone on the desk at the same time I thumped my head on the edge of it, not sure if I was trying to knock some sense into myself or beat away my humiliation.
Only then did I realize, I never inquired about their arrival time. I hit my head again. “Bloody hell.” Now, I had to sit here, allowing my anxiety to build as I waited for Max to collect me because I was certain the longer I sat here, anticipating the visit, thinking about the day and the future, the more my panic would grow.
Dropping my head to the desk one more time, the sound echoed behind me, coming from the door. I didn’t want to see my aunt or talk to her right now, still unsure about her true motives. Could I trust her or not? I honestly didn’t know.
I was alone in this and blindly stumbling as I tried to feel my way around.
“Lorde?” Pat called out.
“Yes, Aunt Pat?” I spoke, not moving from my seat. She’d been gone this morning when I woke up, which had been odd since we usually partook of breakfast together. No warning or note. Just gone. What had she been up to? She was an enigma all on her own, especially given the family she grew up in, which was why I was hesitant to believe her pleas for me to find my own path.
“Did you eat?”
I glanced at the clock and noticed it was almost eleven. “Yes. Where did you go?”
“Open the door. Seems silly to talk through the wood.”
Her words made me bite my lip to stop myself from laughing. Hanging around my friends in England, ensured I had the perverted mind of a teenager even while I’d left my teens behind almost a decade ago. Swallowing my laughter, and still through the closed door, I told her, “I’m getting ready to go out. Max is picking me up.” She’d find out that little tidbit when he pulled up, so it was fine to disclose it now.
“Really? That’s great! He’s a good man and handsome, but not as handsome as you. He’s perfect for you!” she exclaimed, practically screaming the words.
My jaw dropped open. Yes, she had hinted, but to be this bold and loud about it, maybe her feelings were genuine. Or maybe, they were too over the top, and she didn’t actually mean what she said. Damn! I’d gotten into my own head and didn’t know which end was up. It would have been better if I hadn’t seen his bloody eyes first. They drew me in, made me want to know and understand him more, made me question my purpose in life. I didn’t know who to believe or who to trust. It kept coming back to that.
And then I realized she never answered my question. “Where did you go? You weren’t around for breakfast, and I didn’t see a note.”
“Oh!” It was strange how one word, one syllable, could share a lot about a person at that moment. Pat sounded surprised and off-balance. Did she not expect me to come back around to my earlier question? Was she hiding something? “I had to run a few errands and pick up some herbs and roots.”
Errands that had to be run this morning? Ones which could not wait for a later time of the day?
I raked my fingers through my hair, letting my nails scrape along my scalp. Suddenly, I was questioning everything, and it put me on edge. Why? “Herbs and roots?”
“Yes, a friend of mine has been down with the flu, and nothing is working. I’m going to brew her up some tea that will help her to feel better. Really, it is hard to speak through the door.” If she wanted, she could have simply opened the door herself. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Her excuse was plausible, I supposed. There were plenty of things modern medicine couldn’t fathom or cure despite the strides made and our broadening knowledge in the last century. An example would be the flu. This virus would never be eradicated. It would continuously mutate and attack unsuspecting people because it was a curse placed on this earth during the Dark Ages. There was no stopping it, and it gained momentum with each passing year. Some never caught it because they possessed a natural immunity, a magic dwelling in their blood they didn’t know about. Certain potions or incantations could banish it for a time, lessen the effects of it in the future, but never cure it. Dark magic had been used just like it had been when the Black Plague wiped out so many.
“I told you, I’m getting ready to meet Max,” I repeated, peering through the window. Clouds filled the sky, making it appear gray and dreary.
“When will he be here?”
“I’m don’t know. Soon.”
“And where are you going?”
“Library.” It was plausible since this was nothing more than him fulfilling his end of the agreement. In the past, a library had always been involved.
I could see a glimmer of her shadow shifting from under the door, and then she said, “Well, have a good day. I’ll leave you to finish getting ready.” Her shadow disappeared, and I could hear her footsteps retreating. For the first time since she knocked, I breathed easily.
Chapter 15
Lorde
It took them another hour and a half to arrive at Aunt Pat’s, and when they did, Max didn’t get out of the car. Instead, Fizz
knocked on the door. “I won’t be but a moment,” I stated, peeking over his shoulder. Max was slumped low in the backseat, facing forward, and all of the windows had been rolled down. “Something wrong?”
Glancing back, Fizz looked at the car and then back to me. “He’s still tired from last week.” Fizz’s smile gave me the creeps for some reason.
“If he would like to do this another day, I don’t mind rescheduling.” Max appeared more like he’d seen a ghost and less like he was exhausted, but I didn’t know him well enough to call Fizz a liar.
Fizz shook his head. “No, this will be good for him. He’s been cooped up in his house since he got home from the party. The fresh air and interacting with someone other than himself or me will pull him out of the funk he’s in.”
“Funk?”
“Yes. He’s been out of sorts the past couple of weeks. This outing will do him good.”
“I see. Well, let me get my coat, and I’ll be right out.” I ignored the pang of worry that stabbed my heart.
Sliding into the car next to Max a minute later, I said, “It’s good to see you again, Max.”
Until I had spoken, Max never showed any outward reaction to my presence. He’d continued to stare out the window, still as a statue. “Lorde,” he gasped in surprise, as though I had appeared out of thin air. He shifted his gaze, and frowning, scanned the area.
Regardless of what Fizz said, I reiterated, “You look tired. If you would like to do this another day, we can reschedule.” Honestly, I was more worried now than I had been standing at the front door to the house. His complexion seemed gaunt and pale, dark circles were painted under his eyes, and his lips were dry and a little cracked. This appearance was nothing like the man I’d seen on Saturday. Had it really only been a couple of days?
