by K. F. Breene
He would go to war with a more powerful foe to bring her justice.
I wiped a tear off of my cheek and went to grab the kids.
27
Kieran
Kieran sat down at the table slowly, pain throbbing through his middle. The front door closed with a soft click, Alexis and her wards leaving him alone. The trunk sat in front of him, magically treated to stay in the water forever.
“I miss you. Every day,” he said, speaking to his mother like he had those long months after she’d slipped into a coma. “I miss the good times we had together, when you took me horseback riding or fishing. When we read together or made up stories. I remember when you watched me learn my place in the waters of the lake, then the ocean. I didn’t know then how much that must’ve killed you, land-trapped as you were. I didn’t know, because you sacrificed your happiness for me. You hid your pain so that I could live free. You hid the itch, your longing for the ocean, so that I could experience it fully. For that…” He took a deep breath, emotion choking him. “For that, I owe you everything. I’d be nothing without your guidance. I’d be an empty, power-hungry shell, like my father. By sacrificing yourself, you saved me.”
He wiped away a stray tear and curled his fists, trying to regain control of his emotions.
“I never would’ve found your skin without her. Without Alexis. She’s a hero. More than a hero…” He bowed his head and re-clasped his hands. “She’s putting herself at risk for me. To free you. She’s putting you, a complete stranger, before her own safety. She’s the best sort of a person. One who sacrifices herself, like you always did.” He shook his head. “She’s dealt with me—with my…manipulation and manhandling, with my mood swings and prodding into her life—she’s dealt with it like a warrior. No fear. No apologies. I’ve never known anyone like her. I’m glad you got to meet her, even if it was like this.”
He put his hand on the trunk, the grief so fresh he could barely breathe. It felt like he’d just lost her all over again. But this time, he was sure he’d be saying goodbye forever. That she’d finally, after all this time, find peace.
“I’m at a crossroads, mother. I’d planned on staying distant from everyone while I carried out my vengeance, but I’m…” He took another deep breath. He hadn’t admitted this to anyone. “I’m falling for her. I think it comes from a good place, but that’s tarnished by the danger I’ve put her in, isn’t it? Dad knows I’m spending a lot of time in the dual-society zone—he talked to me about it earlier. For now, he’s content with my explanation about organizing the magical fair here, but soon he’ll want more thorough answers. And when he does, he’ll discover Alexis. It won’t be hard—she illuminates the world like the noon sun. He’ll discover her magic, and if I’m not strong enough to stop him, he’ll turn her into her worst nightmare. He’ll use her, body and soul.” He gritted his teeth, rage flaring within him, and ran his fingers through his drying hair. “Not to mention that I’m already possessive like he is. I would lose my mind if another man touched her. I don’t know if I could stop myself from killing him. And I can’t help but wonder… If she left, like you tried to do, would I do what Dad did? Would my pain morph into the desire to control her? To punish her?”
He pushed off of the table and stood in a rush.
“I don’t know what to do. I’d intended to push her away when this was all done, for her own safety, but now…”
He paused, and in that moment, a soft breath drifted across the table to him. Words barely heard. His mother’s soft voice.
“Let her go…”
28
Alexis
Frank’s voice reached around the side of the house, so much more annoying when it wasn’t muffled through a door. “It’s Donovan with dinner. What is this situation with the weather? I can barely see out here.”
I relayed the message to Daisy, who bounded up out of the weeds and jogged around to the front of the house.
“I better go…” Mordecai was bounding after her a moment later, two savages.
I stared out at the swirling mists, barely able to see the neighbor’s house looming beyond the fence. Kieran had been in there for about fifteen minutes, and part of me dreaded what would come next. Breaking that trap and setting his mom free was a surefire way to get Valens riled up.
Then again, her trunk had been moved. That would probably be enough.
“Looks like burgers,” Frank called out. “I do miss the taste of burgers.”
I rolled my eyes, then jumped as Lyra drifted around the corner of the house. She was actually going through the motions of walking, but it still looked like she was drifting. I was ninety-five percent sure she’d walked like this in real life.
“You must do as he says.” Her voice was sad but firm. My back straightened in defiance. I really did hate being told what to do. “You must follow his guidance. It’s for the best.”
“Hmm.” I sucked in my lips, still not comfortable arguing with this lady. “Mhm.”
“I thank you, for all you have done.” She stood beside me, and I got the feeling she didn’t want to sit down because she’d dirty her dress. Or maybe sitting in weeds wasn’t her forte. “You have shown him there is a place in the world for compassion. You have reinforced that there are good people, and if he tries, he can be one of them.”
I pulled up my knees and draped my arms around them. I didn’t know what to say.
“But respect his wishes, and do as he says,” she continued, taking a step back. “It is for the best. For both of you.”
Something uncomfortable lodged in my middle. “Why? What is he going to—”
But then she was gone, blinked away into the fog.
“We can go in.” Daisy’s head appeared around the corner. “Donovan brought a feast. Thank god. I am so hungry I could eat a whole cow. Come on.”
Kieran stood at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at gray nothingness. Donovan was unpacking the bags of groceries he’d set down beside him.
“Everything…good?” I asked.
Kieran glanced back at me, a strange look in his eyes. He nodded and turned. “Yes. Do you need help to break the spirit trap? Should I bring in Bria?”
I squinted at him, because he sounded brusque and authoritative (in other words, normal), but his mother’s words were rattling around in my head.
“No, I can do it myself. I don’t need help.”
“Are you able to put the trap back on?”
I hesitated suspiciously. Was this what his mother had been referring to?
“So I can put the trunk back and hope it fools my father until we find the culprit,” he continued.
I had intended to think through his mother’s request, and the possible implications, but his words stole my focus. Could I do something like that? I could banish spirits beyond the line, or pull them back from it, but could I devise something to keep them here?
“I…don’t know,” I said, examining the trunk.
I heard Frank shout, “It’s that grim-faced one. He’s got more bags.”
“You’ve got more coming?” I asked.
Donovan glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah. Why?” His gaze hit the table. “Oh. We can figure out a place to sit, don’t worry.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Another one!” Frank shouted. “They’re really starting to pile up, now. This one is in a van. What are you doing in there? Are you having a party? Why wasn’t I invited? Your mother always invited me to parties. Oh, the times we had. Why, one time, in the full moon, we decided we’d—”
“No, no, no,” I said hastily, running for the door. I yanked it open. “Frank, don’t you dare continue. Shut it down, right now. I don’t want to know what you and my mom did.”
Zorn stood on the porch. His eyes widened, and he looked around at the yard. Thane, just coming around a big white van, stopped like he’d done something wrong.
“We’d dance near a fire in the BBQ pit and share a bottle of wine,” Frank finish
ed with a scowl. “Good gracious, young lady. You’d think I was talking about a pagan ritual or something.”
I sighed in relief, opening the door wider for Zorn. “I thought you were about to get lewd,” I told Frank, gesturing for Zorn and Thane to get a move on. Frank was in a weird mood—probably from seeing the beauty of Lyra. I was worried he’d start to reminisce about his conquests.
“I would never,” Frank said pompously. “My sex life with your mother was our business.”
“Gross!” I slammed the door. The guys would just have to forgive me.
“She was a feisty woman in her day,” I heard. “An independent, feisty woman. What she did behind closed doors was—”
I ripped the door open again, startling Zorn into stepping back. I allowed my magic to build and then pushed, forcing Frank off of my grass and out of my yard. Magic sang through me, but no breeze or pulsing Line materialized.
I stood there for a moment, thinking through what I’d just done. In effect, I’d manipulated a spirit. To do that, I’d had to lock on to him. To do that…I’d had to pick him out of the line-up of all the spirits I could feel.
I could feel souls. I’d been able to all along, without the extra power of the Line. I’d just never thought about it that way. My preference for visual learning, combined with my ignorance of how I was making things happen, had definitely hindered my growth. And now I knew.
“Is everything…all right?” Thane asked, stopping on the walkway with a wary expression. He held a black, circular grill.
“Yeah. A ghost was talking about his time with my mom.” I shivered. “I’d suspected, but…it’s gross when you find out that stuff about your parent, know what I mean?”
“Yes.” He took a hesitant step forward. “Is it…still here?”
I laughed and gestured for him to come closer. “No, I just banished him from my yard. What’s going on? Are we having a party?”
“You found Mrs. Drusus.” Zorn entered the house, and I almost didn’t notice him furtively glancing back at the fog-shrouded yard. It made me laugh that even Zorn was weirded out by ghosts. “We weren’t sure it could be done.”
“Ah. Well. You didn’t have a couple of crazy girls on the case.”
Thane jerked his head to the side. “I’ll set up in the backyard.”
I nodded and shut the door, turning back toward the kitchen.
“I hear you also discovered hidden hallways in Demigod Valens’s house,” Zorn said as he stalled at the edge of the kitchen.
Daisy barely glanced at Zorn before going back to slicing tomatoes at the table. Mordecai yanked leaves off of a head of lettuce. It looked like Frank had been right—burgers.
“Yeah. Valens has a really old spirit living in his house,” I said, sitting down at the dining table in the chair nearest the trunk. “And the spirit’s mistress lives in the hallways. Those two would drive you to drink.”
“Were there any others in there?” Kieran asked, his gaze roaming my face, his expression stone-like.
I shrugged. “Not that I saw, but it’s a big house. You never know.”
“Do you think you could figure out all of the entrances to the hallways?” he asked.
I shrugged again. “If the old guy will cooperate, sure. But I’d probably have to talk to him outside of the actual hallways. Once that Marlene gets after him, things start to deteriorate real fast. He’s totally at fault, though. I mean, she’s no picnic, but blaming his infidelity on everyone but himself? What a dick. I bet he doesn’t want to cross the Line because he’s afraid of what his wife will do. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Donovan’s hands slowed in packing ground meat into patties. “Can…exes find you across the Line?”
I leaned closer to the trunk and closed my eyes, feeling out the magic. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked,” I answered distractedly. “Kieran, maybe you should get Bria after all. Letting her spirit out should be easy, but without seeing what I’m working with, I don’t know that I’ll be able to put the spirit trap back on.”
Zorn disappeared from my peripheral vision, clearly having gotten a silent command.
I put my hand on the trunk and closed my eyes, allowing the Line to materialize. Following my intuition, I pulled the Line and its power closer as I gathered my magic, intending to use the lighting of the spirit world as a guide the way I had in Valens’s hidden hallways. That had been a handy trick.
A gale-force wind ripped through the kitchen, making my soul flap within my body. Power and electricity surged through my middle and then out through my limbs. The protective cocoon around the trunk pulsed and moved, inviting me to open my eyes and see it.
Like I’d expected, the magic surrounding the trunk moved like oil on water, sliding over the wood in an intricate dance. I pulled more power and heard a groan. A chair fell over. The table shoved to the side. A door jiggled.
Yanked out of the moment, I was just in time to see the whole room fleeing except for Kieran, who was backed up against the corner of the counter with a grim face and hard eyes.
“Oh.” I waved my hand at the newly evacuated kitchen. “You all felt that, huh?”
He didn’t open his mouth. Just nodded.
“My bad. Why don’t I…go into the bedroom.” I rose. “Oh. But good news—I don’t need Bria. I figured out how to see the magic without the necromancer aids.”
“You just have to clear the room to do it.”
“It isn’t totally practical yet, but…baby steps.”
“That felt like baby steps, yes.” He was laying on the sarcasm a little thick.
“You’re the one who wanted to do this now…”
He started forward. “Let’s move this to your bedroom.”
Butterflies filled my stomach and I tried desperately not to read into that comment.
29
Alexis
An hour later, I sat on the ground in my small bedroom with sweat rolling down my face, trying to recreate the spirit-trapping spell on my jewelry box while Bria created differently colored billows of smoke by my side. Kieran sat on the bed with his fingers clasped, watching my efforts and occasionally dealing with my surges of power that kept chasing Bria from the room.
I wiped my forehead and sat back, staring at the mishmash of weird that now coated the mostly empty jewelry box. A look at the trunk prompted a sigh.
“I can’t make it look the same.” I dropped my hands onto my knees. “But I’m pretty sure what I created will do that same job. It’s kind of like eternal banishment.”
“What does that mean?” Bria asked, wiping her nose. One of the lit incense sticks had apparently given her a runny nose. She didn’t volunteer which one, or accept my offer to put it out.
“Well…” I chewed my lip, thinking it through. “It’s essentially a banishment spell. Something I use to send spirits packing. Not across the Line, just away. I erected that into a sorta standing situation, one on each side of the box. Each wall repels the spirit away. In this tiny box, the spirit would be pinging around inside of there all the time. A real shitty situation. But in a room, it would just be tossed away from the walls or ceiling.”
“What about the ground?” Kieran asked.
“The ground acts as a natural barrier,” Bria said, wafting more smoke my way. “If you were to kill someone by burying them alive in more than three feet of earth, their spirit would be trapped with the body. It’s why cultures typically leave dead bodies out for a least a couple days—for viewings, wakes, that kind of thing. It gives the spirit time to figure out what they’re doing.”
“I didn’t know any of that,” I muttered.
“Do you think another magical worker would know you switched out the spells?” Kieran asked.
I pulled my lips to the side in disappointment, knowing when I was beat. “Unless it was a real idiot, yeah, they’d know.”
“They’d also know someone with a pretty unique skillset was banging around,” Bria said with a sly glance at Kieran. It wasn’t
hard to miss her double entendre, and unfortunately, she was too far away to smack without being seen.
“I agree,” he said, either missing her jab or not caring. “Take off the trap and leave it as is. Possibly the magical worker will think his own carelessness was to blame.”
“It’s not like he would say anything.” Bria pulled a crumpled-up tissue from her pocket. “Valens wouldn’t know one way or another, and the magical worker wouldn’t want to admit to letting the most important spirit get away.”
“Unless he intended to stuff her in a body down the road…” I let my words trail away.
“We can find this S.O.B. before then.” A determined look crossed Bria’s face. “We’re on to him now. A tiny bit of digging and—”
“No.” The word came with a crack of command, the effect snapping my back straight and sending a jolt of fear racing through me. Kieran was intense, there were no two ways about it. “You’ll leave him to me. This is the end of it. Bria, you will continue training Alexis, but Alexis, your task is at an end. After tonight, there will be no more investigation.”
My mouth dropped open, and a different sort of fear crawled in. Memories of job searches, crappy positions, and starving kids raced through my head. The kids were working their tails off, but they were happy now. They had full bellies and a purpose. I had a purpose.
If that was coming to an end…
“I will pay you a year’s wages, Alexis,” Kieran said softly, clearly reading my expression. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think you’d solve this so quickly. Additionally, you have a bonus coming for your quick work, written in by your business manager.”
“And after that, I can get you work, no problem,” Bria said, winking. “We can get out of this murky pit of despair, too. Maybe hit up Australia or something—”
“No.” There it was again, only this time, something in his tone sounded tortured, pulling my gaze to him. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, like he was stopping himself from commenting further. He gestured stiffly at the trunk. “Release her skin. Let her go.”
