“Are you going to get that?” Ashley said.
James’s fork clinked against his bowl. “I’m sorry. I told her not to call.”
He silenced the phone. A second later it pinged with a text message from Isla. Then another and another.
“I should—”
“Go ahead,” Ashley said.
James scrolled through the text messages and frowned.
“Everything all right?” she said.
“Isla wants me to call her.”
“And? Are you going to?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe I should, just to tell her I’m home now and I’m not leaving.”
“I don’t want you to talk to her at all.” Ashley gritted her teeth, the venom in her voice surprising even her. She was not stubborn or assertive. James had always told her it was her biggest fault. But not now. She would not live passively in her own life. “Tell her you are done talking and then block her number.”
James’s expression softened. “Well, I don’t know if I need to go that far.”
“If you want to be home, you need to end things with her. Cut and dry.”
James sighed. “Okay, you’re right.” He tapped on his phone. “There, her number is blocked.”
“Thank you.” Ashley exhaled, but she did not feel relief. She dumped the rest of her salad in the trash and put her bowl in the sink. She suddenly wasn’t hungry. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Ohhhhh.” James left the table and trapped her against the counter. “Want some company, babe?” He nuzzled at her neck.
Babe? He never called her babe. Like ever.
Did he call Isla babe? Why didn’t that thought hurt like it would have a week ago?
Ashley slipped away. “How about you make coffee while I’m showering? And we can have a cup on the back porch?”
He grabbed her hand and yanked her back into him. He nipped at her ear. “I can think of a few other things we can do on the back porch. Like old times?”
She laughed awkwardly trying to play along. That was the very last thing she wanted to do.
“I’ll be out in a little bit,” she said and pulled away. “Use the good coffee?”
“Okay. Yeah. Sure. Don’t be too long. I miss you already.”
Her stomach swam.
In the bedroom, Ashley grabbed her clothes and shut herself up in the bathroom. She felt like crying. She felt trapped and stuck. She felt like an imposter in her own damn life.
She turned the shower on to get the water running to help drown out the sound of her crying.
She couldn’t go back to Dae. Not now. Although he did owe her one more wish.
Except, she apparently sucked at wishes.
What she needed was a little time to think of the perfect wish with the right wording.
Right now, she would pick herself up, take a shower, remind herself that things could be far, far worse, and then she’d move on with her day and tomorrow would be better, and the day after that better still.
Wouldn’t it?
Chapter 33
DAE
Dae’s hangover was possibly the worst hangover he’d ever experienced in his seven hundred years. He’d drank too much too quickly. He’d been pulled out of the drunken haze too harshly. Regret was almost as pungent as his breath.
“Oddie!” he called.
He was at Blackwell House in the library sprawled on one of the tweed sofas. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to open his eyes.
“Oddie!”
She entered the room, her heels click-clacking on the hardwood floor. “Can I help you?”
He opened his eyes to slits. “Water.”
“You’re still invoked. Why can’t you just summon a glass?”
Because he didn’t want to risk summoning an ocean instead of a glass. Using magic when not at his best was a risky endeavor. But he didn’t say that. Instead he said, “Oddie, please stop tormenting me.”
With a roll of her eyes, she turned and went to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a glass pitcher filled to the top with water and clinking ice. She set it on the coffee table and poured some into a glass.
“What did you do?” she asked and sat on the edge of the coffee table.
Dae sat up just enough to down half the glass, then dropped his head back to the pillow. “I fucked up.”
Oddie snorted. “You don’t say.”
He winced. “Come on, Oddie, don’t be hostile toward me on a day like today.”
“But tomorrow is okay?”
“I suppose.”
She exhaled with a sigh. “Tell me for real. What did you do?”
Dae set his glass on the coffee table beside her and lay back, eyes closed. “It’s a long story.”
“All stories are.”
Dae told her then, from beginning to end. She sat there listening quietly, her arms planted on her thighs, hands clasped in front of her. She frowned when Dae got to the part about Ashley finding him in The Blackbird and how she’d found him and how it’d looked. She frowned deeper when he relayed Ashley’s second wish.
“I should have stopped her,” he said. “She was upset. I knew before she even spoke it that it would be the wrong wish with the wrong words.”
Once a wish was out, a djinn could not deny it. He or she could interpret it any way they wanted, twist it in a hundred different ways, but the magic needed to be spent one way or the other.
“Twisted wishes have never bothered you before,” Oddie pointed out.
“I didn’t twist this one, but I didn’t guide the magic either. The magic gave her exactly what she’d asked for.”
“So what’s different? Why do you feel bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you believe that, you’re lying to yourself.”
Dae looked at her. She had dark brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. Dae had always found it hard to make eye contact with her. He could never quite tell if she was looking at him or through him.
She had a ridiculously wise gaze for someone only in her thirties.
“I don’t think I know what you’re trying to say in your vaguely worded response,” he said.
“You. Are. Lying. To. Yourself.”
Dae let out a groan of exasperation. “Stop torturing me, Oddie.”
“You love her.”
“I do not.”
Oddie just stared at him. He quickly looked away.
“She’s human,” he said.
Oddie said nothing.
“I barely know her.”
Still no response.
“Love is for the weak.”
A quirk of her brow. “Oh?”
“Look at what it did to my mother.”
“I don’t think your mother would agree with you.”
“Too bad she isn’t here to ask her if it was all worth it.”
“She wouldn’t have made the choices if she thought otherwise.”
What did Oddie know? She was only mortal.
“Have you thought about just telling Ashley?” she said.
“Telling her what, exactly? That I initially wanted to make a deal with her in order to manipulate her into giving me one of her wishes so I could save my dying grandfather who is almost a thousand years old? That I didn’t intend to like her? That it was all just a big misunderstanding?”
“Umm yeah. Exactly that. Just tell her the truth.”
“I absolutely will not tell her that.” Dae lay back down.
Oddie was quiet a minute, then, “She could die giving you that wish.”
His stomach twisted at the thought. His chest grew tight.
If someone had asked him two days ago to pick between Red and Ashley, he would have picked Red every time.
But now...
Even though Ashley was mad at him, even though she’d picked James over him, he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her for good.
He couldn’t stand the thought of never
seeing her again even from afar.
Before, the risk to a human life hadn’t mattered to him.
Now it did.
Without another word, Oddie stood up and walked out of the room, leaving him to his own misery.
Dae slung his arm over his face. His head was still pounding and his chest still felt funny, like he was trapped beneath a bolder, all the air pressed from his lungs.
What was he going to do?
He couldn’t save Red and he couldn’t have Ashley back.
Somehow he was worse off than when he started.
He had absolutely failed.
Chapter 34
ASHLEY
Though James had agreed to tacos earlier, when it came time to plan for dinner, he vetoed them.
“Tacos give me heart burn,” he’d said. Which was true, now that Ashley thought of it. How could she forget the nights after Mexican food where he tossed and turned in bed, waking her because he was so damn uncomfortable? How could she forget that she used to carry a roll of antacids in her purse for him for whenever he ate something a bit too spicy?
At what point did they stop paying attention to each other?
James decided he wanted pork chops and offered to go to the grocery store to pick up the things they needed and it took everything Ashley had not to ask him twenty questions about what route he planned to take, how long he thought he’d be gone, and whether or not he planned to call Isla while he was out.
She thought maybe he was planning to. She did not want to ask and know the truth.
“How about if I go with you?” she offered casually.
James bent down and kissed her forehead. “You stay and relax. I got this.” He spun the key ring around his finger and left.
While he was gone, she picked up the living room. She swept the kitchen. She put the dishes away and threw in a load of laundry. She wiped down the counters and took out the trash.
The clock on the stove said James had been gone for thirty-seven minutes.
Mentally, she calculated how long it’d reasonably take him to drive to the store and back with shopping time added in and—
God, she was going to drive herself fucking crazy.
She started readying the kitchen for cooking. She placed the cast iron skillet on the stove and got out the tongs. She opened the seasoning cupboard and dug inside for the salt and pepper, but her eyes stopped on the bottle of cinnamon sticks. She loved tossing a few in a pot of boiling water in the wintertime, along with cherries and orange slices and…cloves.
Without thinking, she grabbed the bottle and twisted off the lid and took in a deep breath.
A wash of heat ran over her entire body.
She missed Dae.
They hadn’t known each other long, but already she had come to expect him to pop up out of nowhere, turning her world cinnamon and gold.
She liked the way he grinned at her, like he was either undressing her with his eyes or imagining all the ways he could make her writhe beneath him. Because he wanted to.
She had, she realized, felt like Dae’s entire world revolved around her. That is, until it hadn’t.
Maybe his dedication to her was because she was his mark, her wishes his to grant.
Though she knew how crazy this whole situation was, she still wished he were here now.
And if he were, what would he say about her rising paranoia?
Don’t worry, love. I’m sure everything will be all right.
She leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
She only hoped that turned out to be true.
Chapter 35
DAE
Dae woke to darkness and a hand slapping his face.
He sat upright and snapped his fingers. All of the lamps in the library flickered on, casting golden light around the room.
The hand that had slapped his face belonged to Red.
“Too much spice?” Red said.
Dae rubbed at his temples. A dull ache still throbbed between his eyes, but he was otherwise on the upward swing. He just needed something to eat. A British fry up, maybe.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“A little after eleven.”
“At night?”
“No, it’s eleven in the morning. It’s pitch-black out because the sun decided to take the day off.”
Dae snorted. “Okay. Okay. For fuck sakes. Why is everyone so bent out of shape about me getting drunk?”
“Because it’s sloppy.” Red eased into the chair across from Dae. “What pain are you trying to numb anyway?”
Dae leaned back against the sofa and sighed. “I didn’t get the wish.”
“But you’re still invoked.”
“Yes, but Ashley is angry with me and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Whenever Dae needed guidance, he’d gone to his mother, and once she was gone, he went to Red. But while Red was a fountain of sage advice and ancient wisdom, he didn’t part with it easily. He liked to speak in riddles. He liked to twist you up and make you think you knew where you were going, when really he’d sent you in the wrong direction. He liked to see people make their own mistakes and course correct. It was a lesson he’d knocked into the brothers for centuries: Do not rely on anyone other than yourself.
“Can I ask you something?” Dae said.
“I can barely walk,” Red said. “I’m a captive audience.”
Dae laughed and then regretted it once a dull ache shot through his skull. He pressed at his temples. “Grandmother wasn’t your caeli, but still you loved her? How did you know? How did you know she was someone worth having?”
Red straightened and looked away, like he was caught off guard by the question. Dae followed his line of sight to the framed oil portrait of his grandmother hanging above the fireplace. Adelaide had died in the 15th century. Dae had known her for three centuries by then, but when she died, he was filled with regret for not knowing her better.
She was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met, powerful and self-possessed. And so fucking smart. She could have ruled any of the number of kingdoms that existed at the peak of her life, but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d let the men think they were in charge and secretly stole their power from them in the dark. She’d driven kings mad. She’d killed queens. She’d formed armies and waged wars.
But no one knew her name save for the djinn.
It was exactly how she would have wanted it.
“I met Adelaide on a battlefield,” Red said. “Did I ever tell you that?”
Dae shook his head.
“It was the Loon War. Your grandmother had been married to Dirk VII, the Count of Holland. They had a human daughter. Ada was her name. When the count died, your grandmother wanted Ada to inherit the throne. It was her right, she said. But the men of the time didn’t see it that way. I fought with England against your grandmother and we defeated them. We took Ada hostage.
“That night, when your grandmother came looking for her daughter, she found me instead and stuck a runed knife in my gut.” Red laughed. “When she realized I was djinn, she said, ‘Did you deal in my lands?’ I said I hadn’t. William, Ada’s opposition, was better organized. When I pointed this out to Adelaide, she stabbed me again.
“Although I was her enemy,” Red went on, “and although she had stabbed me multiple times, I was immediately in love with her.” He finally looked at Dae, his eyes glossy and faraway. “It was a feeling I had right here.” He pointed at his chest. “This kind of pressing heat when she was gone. And when she was beside me…within my grasp…” He sucked in a breath. “Adelaide was the oxygen that filled my lungs. The breath that gave me life.”
Dae’s eyes burned. He felt that pressing heat right now, the crushing weight of Ashley’s absence.
But he could feel the crushing weight of his grandfather too, the life slipping through the hourglass.
“I don’t want you to die,” Dae said.
Red stood up. His bones creaked. “We are no match for Death. She
will take what she is due. Let us not give her a reason to take more.”
When Red was gone, Dae vaded to his loft.
He went to the bathroom and stared at the picture of him and his mother taken over 150 years ago. The portrait had been her idea. She’d been fascinated by photography.
“Immortalizing a moment on paper is its own kind of magic,” she’d said. “Someday we will look back on this image and remember exactly where we were and what we were doing.”
She was right.
It’d been taken in San Francisco. The day had been hot. Dae had nearly sweated through his suit jacket. He could still feel the press of the brocade against his body. He could smell the cloying scent of clove cigarettes and the lavender oil used in the photographer’s varnish.
He could remember the way his mother’s shoulders shook as she tried to quell her laughter.
The photographer had said, “Please sit still, miss. You really must sit still!”
It was a miracle he’d managed to get anything from that sitting.
When Artemisia died trying to save Giovanni, Dae had thought her weak. He’d thought she’d blindly fallen for a man who did not deserve her sacrifice.
Dae had never understood the choices she’d made.
But now he did.
Love had not made his mother weak. It’d made her stronger than ever. She’d given up everything to try to save Giovanni.
And now Dae realized that a true act of love was knowing when to risk everything for it and when to let it go.
He couldn’t save Red.
And Ashley was not his to have.
Chapter 36
ASHLEY
Ashley couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed next to James listening to the rise and fall of his breath wondering if this was the rest of her life.
She tried to think back on her marriage and whether or not it’d ever been as good as she’d thought. She’d always said James was her best friend, but was that really true? He worked too much. He forgot their anniversary and her birthday. He barely spoke to his family, while Ashley had always desperately wanted one.
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