The Castle of Water and Woe (Briarwood Reverse Harem Book 3)

by Steffanie Holmes

  Kelly told me how much she’d desperately wanted me to stay in Coopersville, but she couldn’t hold me back from my dream. “I always knew you were going to leave to go do amazing things, and I was so torn between being sad and happy when you couldn’t go to MIT. I felt like I could deal with this big gaping hole in my heart if you were there with me. But then you got that letter about Briarwood and I had to lose you all over again. I was so afraid that if we started to talk about it, I’d ask you to come back, and you would have come.” She squeezed my hand. “And I was right. I’m so sorry, Maeve.”

  “You can’t punish yourself for the way you feel or what you do when you’re grieving,” I said. “A wise person told me that you have to give yourself permission to do whatever it takes to get yourself through the pain. And then you have to forgive yourself for all the shit you end up doing because of it. Which means this.”

  I gestured around the hospital room, realising with a start that I could have been talking to myself.

  Kelly’s doctor came, jolting me out of my thoughts. He checked Kelly’s vitals and reported she’d made excellent progress. “We’re going to move you to the psychiatric ward for an assessment now, and depending on the result of that, you’ll be free to go.”

  Kelly’s body tensed up at the thought. “I’m not crazy,” she said.

  “Of course not,” he beamed down at her. He was quite a young doctor, with sandy blonde hair and quarterback good looks – the kind of guy on any other day Kelly would be flirting with. “But we’re legally required to give you a full evaluation before we can release you. We need to be sure you’re going to be okay out there, and we can make a recommendation to a specialist if you need further treatment. Much as your smiling face brightens the ward, we don’t want to see you back here if we can help it.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Kelly said, smiling her patented cool girl smile. “You’re so sweet.”

  Gag me with a stethoscope. But I grinned from ear to ear. At least my sister was back on form.

  I waited with Kelly for another hour. I kept glancing at the door, expecting to see Uncle Bob barrelling through it. I imagined a hundred different scenarios of what I would say or do when he started bossing the doctors around in his booming preacher voice. In some of them I punched him in the face. In others I called the police and they swarmed in and arrested him mid sermon. In another, he “accidentally” fell out a window (I quickly quashed that idea, after the pub incident), and my personal favourite, I ran him through on my sword. It was probably a good thing British Airways didn’t allow medieval weapons in their carry-on.

  The nurse come to take Kelly for her evaluation. Reluctantly, I left her and returned to the nurses’ station. Arthur sat in the same chair, his head tipped back at an awkward angle, his loud snores causing sighs of irritation from the seats around him.

  My heart swelled a tiny bit. I shook Arthur awake. The woman next to him mouthed thank you.

  “Maeve …” his eyes flew open and he sat up straight. “How is she? Is she okay? Are you okay?” He pulled me into his lap, cradling me in his arms the way my Dad had done whenever I was upset about something. In ordinary circumstances the gesture would have felt infantile and a little weird, but right now I sank into him, savouring his steady strength and warmth.

  “She’s going to be okay. They’re moving her to the psych ward for an assessment. Apparently it’s standard procedure when someone self-harms.”

  Arthur nodded. “I know. She could be a while. Did she say why…”

  His body stiffened. I squeezed his arm, around his elbow where the scars crisscrossed his skin. I wondered, but I didn’t ask. “She did.”

  I wondered if Arthur would ask what Kelly said. I wasn’t sure I was ready to voice my Uncle's assault aloud. But Arthur didn’t ask. Instead he said, “Do you need anything?”

  “Yeah, food.” My stomach growled with hunger.

  I led Arthur a few blocks away to Happy’s Diner. We always used to come to Happy’s after family trips into Phoenix. I ordered my usual – a cheeseburger, curly fries, and a slice of brownie cake – but everything tasted like cardboard.

  My phone buzzed. It was Kelly. “They want to keep me here another night!” she wailed. “I’m so sick of this place. Where are you?”

  “Happy’s.”

  “Wait there. I’m going to sneak out. I’ve already asked for an extra sheet, so if I tie them together I’ll be able to—”

  “No jailbreaking. You stay there and listen to your doctors,” I said. “I’ll be back to see you as soon as visiting hours start up again. And I might even sneak you in a piece of brownie cake.”

  “You’re the best sister.”

  “I’m really not, but I’m going to try to improve. I love you, Kelly.”

  “You too, Maeve.”

  I hung up and told Arthur what Kelly said. “So if we’ve got the whole night to kill, should I got find us a hotel?” he said, pulling out his phone. “We could splash out and get something really fancy, with a spa bath and a butler named Jeeves.”

  “No hotel, but we do need to rent a car.”

  “A car?”

  “Yeah.” I pushed the rest of my dinner away and wrapped up my untouched brownie cake into a napkin. “There’s something I have to do.”

  FORTY-FIVE: ARTHUR

  I recognised the grim determination on Maeve’s face when she emerged from her sister’s room. It was a mirror of my own emotions when I told my Dad that I wasn’t going to live with him and he no longer had any power over me. It was the look of total acceptance that you were going to do a scary thing, but it was exactly the thing that needed to happen.

  What I didn’t know was why she looked like that, or what she was going to do.

  But what Maeve wished, I would deliver. I rented us a car (a classic 11962 Corvette, because damned if I was going to drive in America in some shitty Honda), plugged my old discman into the cigarette lighter, rolled down the hood, and with Blood Lust blaring and the sun setting behind us, we left Phoenix and the horrible hospital smell in our dust.

  Maeve laughed as the wind whipped her hair around her face. “I’ve never been in a convertible before!” she yelled over the roar of the music, earning herself a mouthful of hair for her efforts.

  My beard streamed out on either side of my face like some kind of deranged monk. My hair whipped across my eyes. I cursed myself for not remembering to tie my hair back. I wanted to stop and put the hood back up, but no way would I do that when Maeve was smiling like she was.

  I hated the circumstances around our visit, but I loved spending time with Maeve alone, away from Briarwood and all the crazy fae and the sex that made my cock burn with envy. I love that she loved my music, that she got it, the way she seemed to get everything about me. I wished more than anything that she could be mine.

  “Turn off up here,” Maeve yelled over the roar of the music.

  I did. As the Corvette’s headlights illuminated the sign that read WELCOME TO COOPERSVILLE, POPULATION 4,589, I got a stabbing feeling in my gut that this might be a bad idea.

  I’d been here once before, of course. After Corbin’s parents walked out of Briarwood, we had to take over duties as Maeve’s guardian. I did a year’s stint, watching Maeve from a distance as a janitor at her high school. I bumped into her once in the library and asked to borrow a pencil, but she was so engrossed in the latest Neil Degrasse Tyson book that she barely looked up. It’s no surprise she didn’t remember me the way she did Flynn, who was a student in her year and made a million friends and interfered with everything as only Flynn could.

  Driving back into the familiar town with her at my side felt surreal, like I was watching a movie of my own life, instead of living it. But that determined look hadn’t left her face, and I knew that she was here because of her sister, because something happened here that put Kelly in a position where she felt like there was no way out.

  The fresh scar on my forearm throbbed, shooting a jolt of shame th
rough my body. I’m glad Maeve hadn’t asked me to go into that room to see her sister. I would have gone if she wanted me to, but I then I’d be forced to confront something I wasn’t ready to let go of.

  Corbin did that to me when he caught me cutting at Briarwood. He took me to meet people at a local self-harm support group, and then he took me to his brother’s grave and told me that he wasn’t going to let another person fade away on his watch. It wasn’t so much the hollow, weakened faces of the people in the group that got to me, as it was the searing pain in Corbin’s fierce eyes. Even though I didn’t really want to stop – it was the one thing that seemed to contain the rage inside me – I couldn’t be the source of that pain for him.

  So I stopped. Only I didn’t, not really. I may not have been cutting my skin any longer, but if I felt the rage bubbling inside me I’d punch something hard until my knuckles bled, or burn the skin between my thighs with one of my flames. Anything to jolt me out of the dark place and be in control again.

  As I sat in that hospital chair, thinking about Maeve in there with her sister, I realised I didn’t have any control at all. I’m getting worse. Maeve’s presence was sending me into a spiral of rage and pain and guilt and desire. I didn’t know how to stop, if I could really, truly stop. But I vowed to try. If I couldn’t stop for Corbin, maybe I could stop for her?

  “Pull over,” Maeve said, directing me in front of her house. It was a small clapboard ranch-style house, similar to the others on the street, save that the shutters were painted red. A small wooden cross was glued to the front door, and an American flag hung limply from a pole in the front garden.

  I turned off the engine.

  “This is my house,” Maeve said, her eyes darting across the front porch.

  “I know.”

  Maeve frowned. “That’s right, you used to stalk me. I usually try to forget about that. Anyway, I guess I should say it was my house. Now Pastor Tim lives there, with his dorky sweaters and his stationary bike.”

  “Do you hate him?”

  “Yup. It’s not his fault. I’m working on it.”

  I wrapped an arm around her, pulling her head against my shoulder. My chest tightened. I stroked her short hair, expecting her to cry. She didn’t, but she stared at that front door in silence for a long time before she pulled back and said, “drive back to the main street.”

  I parked up under the shade of a desert willow and rolled the roof back up. Even though evening approached rapidly, the sun still beat down on us – hot and oppressive. Tongue of violent orange and fuschia streaked across the horizon. I’d forgotten how hot and dry it was here, and how much the sun dominated the landscape. English sun never scalded your insides like this.

  Maeve took my hand and dragged me up and down the street. At every corner or landmark she would stop and tell some story about her parents or her sister.

  “This is the school field where Dad taught us to ride our bikes. It was just supposed to be me, but Kelly couldn’t stand not doing something that I was doing, so he asked around the congregation and someone had a tiny tricycle they could lend us. So every time I fell off my bike, there was Kelly right behind me ringing the bell on her trike and telling the whole world how much better she could ride.”

  We picked up milkshakes from a diner called Ruby’s and sipped them on a rickety deck overlooking the sprawling desert, now lit by pale moonlight. Maeve told me a story about coming here with Kelly and her friends from school once. The girls started a conversation about their movie star crushes and Maeve launched into a rant about all the ways Star Trek disobeyed the laws of physics. One by one all the girls moved to another table and in the end Maeve was just sitting in the corner by herself reading a book.

  “I was such a dork,” she said, slurping her milkshake with that faraway, determined look in her eyes. The desert heat had eased a bit now the sun had disappeared, which was good because I was starting to die in my long-sleeved Blood Lust hoodie, but no way was I taking it off and letting Maeve see the plaster on my arm.

  We finished our milkshakes and got back in the car. Maeve directed me to a dirt road leading out of town. I followed her instructions, wondering what memory we’d be visiting next.

  We stopped by the gate of a grand old farmhouse, the experior immaculate and the windows gleaming even with the desert dust settling on the path. Four American flags were lined up along the front fence.

  Maeve got out of the car and slammed the door. She shoved the gate open and stalked up the path. My gut swirled with apprehension. What are we doing here? This is something to do with Kelly, but I have no idea what. Is Maeve going to do something illegal?

  I was halfway up the path by the time Maeve pounded on the door. It flew open, and a short, pale-faced woman in a floor-length cotton dress with long lace sleeves answered the door. I half expected her to put on a white bonnet.

  “Maeve?” she gasped. “What are you—”

  “Where is he?” Maeve demanded. “I want to see him now.”

  “He’s in his study, but I can’t disturb him after dinner—” The woman shrieked as Maeve elbowed her way past and disappeared into the house.

  Shite. I broke into a run. The woman leapt back, terror in her eyes. I barrelled past her, following that streak of pink hair and that determined glare. Maeve turned a corner in the hall and charged through a door. I stormed after her, my heart hammering in my chest.

  “What is the meaning of this?” A deep voice bellowed.

  I reached the door. Maeve stood on one side of a large dark wood desk, squaring off against the enormous man behind it. He had at least a head’s height on her, and several heads girth. His hand gripped a thick bible so hard the knuckles glowed white, and the shaft of moonlight through the window illuminated the malevolence in his eyes. “How dare you barge in here and interrupt the Lord’s work?”

  The woman behind me cowered at his booming voice, but Maeve didn’t flinch. “Hello, Uncle Bob. You look very busy so I won’t keep you. I just came to tell you that it’s over.”

  “What’s over? What are you doing in my house? I hope you didn’t come here expecting a handout, because I have nothing to give you. Just because my brother got taken in by some British harlot’s sob story doesn’t mean I’m responsible for his mistakes—”

  “You hit her.” Maeve’s eyes flashed. Her whole body shook with rage.

  Shit.

  In those three words, I understood everything. I was staring at the cause of Maeve’s sister’s attempt on her life. I was staring at the woman I loved protecting her own.

  She was so much like Corbin, flying in to save the day. Except that Corbin would never confront a person who hurt someone he loved. Instead, he tried to give his friends the tools to heal their own wounds.

  But Maeve Moore – who looked every inch the High Priestess with her feet planted wide and her hands balled into fists and her eyes not giving an inch to this towering giant – she was here for justice.

  “Your sister lives under my roof, and she needs to learn to obey my rules. I am her elder. I know what’s best for her, and she needs to learn a little respect.” He gestured at Maeve as though she was a fly he was trying to swot away. “It’s easy to see where she got her disobedient attitude from. My brother was not forceful enough with his women—”

  “You hit her,” Maeve repeated, the words slow and hard and dangerous.

  “Now, Maeve, don’t go blowing these things out of proportion.” The woman bustled forward, her hands clasped near her throat. “Bob gets a little exuberant sometimes, but he would never—”

  “You,” Maeve spat at her. “You’re just as guilty as he is. I know he’s an ugly brute and you’re scared, but you, Aunt Florence, offered to take Kelly in, knowing what this man would do to her. And I will never, ever forgive you for that.”

  Florence’s face paled. But my attention was drawn back to the uncle, who moved around the desk, approaching Maeve and towering over her with a stance I knew from my martial arts tra
ining was designed to intimidate.

  I stretched out a hand and hit him square in the middle of his barrel chest, stopping him mid-stride. “You’re not getting any closer,” I said.

  “Arthur, I can handle this,” Maeve hissed.

  “I know. That one was for me.”

  “Who the hell are you?” The man swivelled his attention to me, the burly male who he thought was his biggest threat. His first mistake.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maeve raise her hand above her head, her palm pointing toward her uncle. The air in the room shifted, rising in temperature and sizzling against my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “I’m a friend of Maeve’s,” I said, putting on my most menacing voice. “I’m here in case you decide not to listen to her very sensible requests.”