He hated rom coms and comedies. He hated the folk music that Ashley adored and he’d much rather go on vacation to a cookie cutter resort rather than a road trip based more on the trip than the destination.
But, okay, sure, maybe they were a little incompatible, but that didn’t mean they weren’t best friends or meant to be together.
James rolled onto his back and started snoring so loudly, Ashley could already feel the stirrings of a headache blooming in the space between her brows.
With a sigh, she quietly slipped from bed and tiptoed to the fridge. The light from the fridge’s interior temporarily blinded her so she groped inside until her hands found the coolness of a wine bottle.
By the light of the moon, she poured herself a glass and went out to the back deck.
The night was just warm enough that she was comfortable in a tank top and shorts, but not so hot that it was stifling. Though the moon was waning, it was closer to full than not and the light bathed the backyard in silver strokes. It was nothing but grass back there and overgrown shrubs. When she’d asked James if they could invest in some landscaping, he’d said it was a waste of money.
“It’s already landscaped,” he’d said and pointed to the brick pavers that edged a flowerbed that was completely devoid of flowers.
She wanted something like the garden at Blackwell House. The winding pathways lined with low cut boxwood. Or the antique rose bushes that were hardy and fragrant. The creeping jenny and the reaching ivy and the caged peonies.
She wanted something more.
“Evening, love,” a voice said behind her and Ashley yelped, wine sloshing from her glass. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Dae?
Ashley squinted, trying to make out the face hovering in the shadows of the deck’s roof, heart surging to her throat.
Only Dae called her love.
But no, she was pretty sure it was Poe. His voice was smoother, lighter.
“Hi,” Ashley said. “What are you doing here? Is Dae okay?”
“Dae is fine.” Poe waved away her worry. “Well, mostly fine.” He sat in the Adirondack chair beside her, his teeth flashing in the light when he smiled at her. “Is there more where that came from?” he asked and nodded at the wine glass.
“Sure.” She moved to stand, but he gestured for her to sit back down. “If I know it’s there, I can pull from it.” With a flick of his fingers, a full wine glass appeared in his hand. He took in a breath, then sipped, rolling the wine around on his tongue before swallowing. “Ahh…grocery store wine, a 2016 vintage. So very delectable.”
“Hey,” Ashley said, wondering if she should be more offended by that. “I’m not an immortal djinn,” she said, deciding she preferred to join in on the game. “I can’t buy a bottle of wine today and expect to enjoy it in a hundred years.”
He laughed. “Touché.”
They both sipped their grocery store wine in silence. It was Ashley who finally broke it. “Why are you here, Poe?”
“I think I owe you an apology.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was the one who brought the girls to the bar earlier today.”
She lay her head back against the chair and sighed. “But you didn’t force Dae to sleep with that girl.”
“He didn’t sleep with her.”
Ashley sat up again. “He didn’t?”
“No. In fact, when I asked him if he might want to have some fun with one, if she were keen to, which many of them were…”
Ashley frowned at him.
“He turned me down,” he said.
Did that change anything? She wasn’t sure. Maybe. A little.
“They were still all over each other. Probably he would have slept with her if I hadn’t interrupted him.”
“I suspect he was still passed out when that girl climbed into his lap. We were in the basement. We were looking for the good tequila. Dae always hides it in the cellar. Anyway, the girl, Chelsea, said she was going to check on Dae. I didn’t think much of it. But apparently she had other ideas in mind.”
Ashley had jumped to conclusions and immediately distrusted him because…well, because she didn’t have a very good track record with men.
Oh God. She was mortified now. She’d said horrible things to Dae. She’d done the exact same thing to Dae that James had done to her. She’d judged him harshly and used her words to cut him down.
The look on his face, the hurt…
Poe drained the rest of his wine. In a blink, the glass disappeared. There one second, gone the next. The air smelled faintly of pine trees and winter air.
Ashley would never get used to that.
“I’ve only seen him like this once before,” Poe added quietly, like he wasn’t sure he should be sharing the truth of it.
“Like what?”
“Broken.” Poe stood up and straightened his jacket. “He’s sorry he hurt you in any way. If you can imagine, after several centuries, we’ve seen and done a lot. It’s hard to feel empathy, especially for mortals. In the past, Dae’s probably been the one with the least empathy. He takes more after Red in that regard. Dae only loves his family.
“Which is why he made your deal in the first place. He didn’t expect any of this. He didn’t expect you and he didn’t intend to like you.”
“What do you mean, that’s why he made my deal?”
“Well because of Red,” Poe said. “He didn’t tell you?”
Ashley surged to her feet. “No. He didn’t tell me anything. What about Red?”
“He’s dying.”
“But...I thought you were immortal?”
“We are. But we have an expiration date and Red’s is nearing. We’ve been trying to find someone willing to give up a wish to save him, but it’s proving harder than we’d like to admit.” He flashed another smile. “Humans are incredibly selfish, it turns out.”
“How would that work? What would the wish have to be?”
Poe shrugged. “It’s never been done successfully. There is no precedent. One would have to be careful of the verbiage or risk their own lives. Death does not like to be cheated.”
“You say that like he’s an actual person.”
Poe said nothing, but the look on his face was answer enough.
“Death is a person?” Ashley exclaimed.
Poe walked down the three steps to the backyard. The moonlight played in the golden waves of his hair. “You didn’t hear that from me.”
She was about to ask if Death carried a scythe and wore a black robe when the French door to the house opened behind her. She turned to see James standing there in just his boxers. “What are you doing out here?”
Ashley looked back to the yard, wondering how the hell she’d explain Poe standing in the middle of it, but he was gone.
Only the moonlight remained in his place.
Chapter 37
DAE
Dae felt better the next morning, but his problems still remained. Red was still dying and the brothers were even shorter on wishes.
They sat in the breakfast room on the east side of the house. Sunlight poured in through the windows and the breeze that stole in smelled of roses. Oddie had served stuffed French toast, scrambled eggs, and fried bacon, but none of them had touched a thing.
The mood was somber.
Poe’s deal was done. His mark had used her last wish early this morning to get an apartment she wanted. An apartment that was apparently infested with black mold, little did she know.
Thorin’s mark had wished to have her promotion.
Mad’s deal had been done quickly, so his wasn’t any help. Not that he was having any of it anyway.
Dae was the only one with a wish left.
And sure, the brothers could make new deals, better deals. But Red was getting impatient, and so was Dae. He didn’t want to make the same mistakes of his mother, burning through his deals just to save one person.
They had reached the cliff’s edge
and they all knew it.
“So now what?” Thorin asked.
Mad stood up from the breakfast table, crossed his arms over his chest and went to the leaded glass windows that overlooked the garden. His back to the brothers, he sighed and said, “It’s time to let him go. Let him go out the way he wants to go out.”
Poe looked at Dae. “Your bunny still has one wish remaining.”
A violent chill ran through him. It was like Death herself was breathing down his neck warning him of what would come if he entangled Ashley in this.
He could not risk her.
He had already made that decision.
“Fuck no,” he said and was surprised at the level of vehemence in his voice. He’d been shooting for mild indifference and instead he sounded like...
A man possessed.
Maybe him and James weren’t so different after all.
He scrubbed at his face. “She’s pissed at me,” he corrected. “There’s no way she’ll do the Blackwells any favors.”
Poe cocked his head. “You so sure of that?”
“That she’s pissed at me? Yes. In case you’ve forgotten, she found me with a woman on my lap. A woman you brought to the bar.”
“Well I didn’t send her to your lap!” Poe said.
“Enough,” Mad said.
It was a fucked up twist of fate that they had the ability to grant anyone any wish they wanted, but yet they couldn’t even save their grandfather from dying a slow death.
Who would they be without Red? Their patriarch? The man who had outlasted their mother and father? Dae had known that someday he’d have to come to terms with losing his family, but fucking hell, did it have to be today?
Red was ill again, but no amount of rest or water would make it dissipate. Nothing would help this. This was fear. Before today, he wasn’t sure he could name that emotion. He’d never had any reason to be afraid of anything. He hadn’t wanted to lose his mother, but he hadn’t known how low her wishes were until it was too late.
He’d had no time to fear losing her before she was gone.
But what he did know was what that endless pain was like afterward. The grief. The despair. That odd, phantom sensation that hovered in the room, like his mother would walk through the door at any moment and Dae would realize it was just a horrible fucking dream.
That had lasted for years.
And although Dae knew he would have to relive that loss again, either with Red or his brothers, he was afraid of the hole inside of him growing bigger and bigger still until he had nothing left to live for.
Dae stood up. “I have to go.”
He clenched his hands into fists. He was restless and impatient and irritated. He wanted to scream and cry and tear the world apart.
He had never believed in Fate until now.
Now he knew the truth: he was cursed. Cursed with immortality and the inability to save those he loved.
His brothers looked at him. Mad turned, brow furrowed. “Wherever you have to go, it can wait. We should head up and talk to Red and start the preparations—”
“You can start without me.”
If he didn’t get out of here right now, he was afraid of what he might do.
The pain was starting to build in a bass beat at the back of his head. Not physical pain. Deep soul-crushing mental pain.
He needed to go.
He needed to go right fucking now.
“Dae,” Poe said. “Wait a second—”
But Dae didn’t wait for him to finish whatever it was he was trying to say. Dae was the only one of the four of them who was still invoked and so when he disappeared from the room, his brothers didn’t have the power to follow him.
Chapter 38
ASHLEY
When Ashley slipped into her pencil skirt, tucked in her blouse, and looked at herself in the mirror, she felt like a stranger in her own body.
She’d skipped out on work last week—had it only been last week?—and she still needed a job if she was going to be an adult who paid bills on time and ate food not dug out of a dumpster. But she really, really did not want to return to work.
Skipping out of it with Dae at her side had been one of the most profoundly powerful experiences of her life. She’d finally felt like she’d seized control of her destiny and was doing something for herself instead of what someone else expected her to do.
And now she was crawling back to it.
“Ready, babe?” James said.
Ashley cringed. “Give me one sec.”
She spritzed herself with expensive perfume, swiped on matte nude lipstick, grabbed her bag, and followed James into the garage. They were driving together today. They hadn’t done that in months.
When they walked into Edmington & Walsh’s third floor, Isla looked up from the reception desk, her mouth hanging open. She snapped it shut a second later. Her pale cheeks glowed red with rage.
Was that a point for Ashley?
Not that she was keeping score.
They strolled into the office hand in hand and James leaned over and kissed Ashley’s cheek before departing for his office. It was still early so not everyone had arrived yet, but those who had were conspicuously silent and pretending not to stare.
Ashley dropped her bag at her cubicle then made her way to Matthew’s office.
He was already there behind his desk rifling through a file. When she entered he looked up, and confusion, then anger, flashed across his face.
“What are you doing here?” he asked and turned back to his paperwork.
“I apologize for walking out last week, but as I’m sure you understand, I just couldn’t be here. I couldn’t do it.” She clasped her hands in front of her and stood awkwardly behind his guest chairs. She wanted to sit, but he hadn’t invited her to so she continued to stand as her knees shook and her hands turned clammy.
“Did you start the rumor?” Matthew asked, his scowl deepening. “Everyone seems to think we left together last week and now I have upper management asking me if my family’s drama is affecting the atmosphere at work.”
“Rumor?” Ashley tried to pretend like this was news to her. She couldn’t very well tell him that she had walked out with him, except it was Dae Blackwell beneath the illusion. “I haven’t participated in office gossip or the spreading of rumors. I can assure you.”
Matthew looked up. “This is a fucking mess as it is, Ash. I don’t need the whole office thinking I was so fucking depressed about my ex-wife leaving me for another exec that I stooped so low as to fuck you.”
Anger rolled up her spine, leveling her shoulders and setting her teeth. She might not be as gorgeous as Isla or as fashionable as half the women in the office, but goddamn it she wasn’t a leper either.
And if this whole thing had taught her anything, it was that she was desirable. Dae had shown her that.
Despite the fact that she had come here to beg Matthew for her job, she found herself saying, teeth gritted, “Your reputation remains as it always was. Everyone still thinks you’re an asshole.”
He snapped his gaze to hers. “Excuse me?”
“Do I have my job or not?”
He grumbled and tapped hard at his keyboard. “Sure. Fine. I don’t have time to worry about rehiring and retraining someone.”
Ashley nodded and turned away.
It’d felt good to stand up for herself and now she had her job back. But for some reason, she still felt like it was a loss.
Wanting to cheer herself up, and to report the good news to James, Ashley bypassed the open offices and went down the hall to the executives’ wing. She was lost in thought about what she might make for dinner, running over in her mind all of the things in the refrigerator and cabinets, so when she turned the corner and saw Dae barreling into James’s office, it took her several seconds to even process what she was seeing.
Her heart sped up.
Wings of hope beat at her insides.
She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry.
What was he doing? Was he looking for her?
All of the horrible things they had said to each other ran on repeat through her head. She was still embarrassed by her reaction, by her stupid ability to jump to conclusions and not give Dae the benefit of the doubt.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him because she might not survive the mortification of the encounter.
But her curiosity got the better of her. She edged up to the door to James’s office and pressed her ear against it.
Chapter 39
DAE
Dae might have come to the realization that he had to stop hoping for a wish to swing Red’s way, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. And right now, he was so fucking restless he wanted to punch something or burn it to the ground. Either would suffice.
So he wasn’t at all surprised to find himself on the third floor of Edmington & Walsh. He was not at all surprised to find his feet moving beneath him as if of their own accord. And he was not at all surprised to find himself stalking into James’s office.
James sat behind his desk tapping at his keyboard when Dae stormed in and pushed the door shut with his boot. Dae was very happy to see that James was sporting a black eye the color of a storm cloud and when he looked up and saw Dae standing there, he couldn’t hide the flinch that rolled through him
“What are you doing here?” James said.
Dae rounded the desk. James lurched to his feet. Dae grabbed him by the collar of his suit jacket and hauled him up, slamming him against the wall.
James sputtered.
Dae said, “Listen to me very carefully. If you hurt her again, I will hunt you down. If you betray her again, I will hunt you down. If you so much as insinuate that she is anything other than the kind, compassionate, caring woman that she is to her face or behind her back, I will hunt you down. Do you understand me?”
James nodded violently. “Yeah. Sure. Of course. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Do you know how often I hear that?” Dae tightened his grip. “That’s the fucking problem, though, isn’t it? You didn’t mean to, so you should be forgiven? Bullshit. Stop thinking with your dick and start thinking with your head. Be a goddamn decent human being.”
Midlife Wish (Blackwell Djinn Book 1) Page 16