by Nadia Heaton
“I’m not ready to let you go yet.”
“I know.” Jermaine pulled Bethany into another kiss. “I’m not ready either, but what choice do we have?”
Fleur wondered if she should leave them; this seemed like a private conversation, but she didn’t want to be in the dark about what was happening. Anything Jermaine and Bethany decided would probably have bearing on her and Savion. If there was a her and Savion. Fleur didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“Let’s see how it plays out. Savion will be staying with Rashid, and he won’t be alone. If enough of the coven is there with him, perhaps I can get away with letting them see me and not having to go home.”
“If you have to go, I’ll come with you.”
Jermaine was already shaking his head. “You can’t. If they discover I’m with a mortal in anything more than a one night stand, they won’t react well. I won’t put you in danger. I’ll keep that phone you got me, though. We’ll stay in contact. I don’t intend to let go of you again, at least not for long.”
“You’d better not, or I’ll just come straight back and find you.”
Fleur turned her face away as they kissed again. It shouldn’t hurt this much to witness their happiness, but it did. She closed her eyes, trying very hard not to think of Savion.
18
“At least come back to the house to get some stuff.”
“I didn’t come with anything,” Jermaine reminded her. “Besides, if I’m going to Rashid’s, I should get moving. It’ll be dawn soon.”
Bethany nodded sadly, and pulled him into one last kiss. “I’ll wait for your call.”
“I know. If at all possible, I’ll arrange to stay here. It’ll all depend on what happens in the next few hours. I love you.”
“I love you. Hurry back to me.” Bethany clutched his hand for a moment before letting go.
Jermaine walked away, quickly disappearing into the night. Bethany stared after him. It didn’t look like she intended to move anytime soon. Fleur should comfort her, but she was so caught up in her own anguish over Savion that she wasn’t in kind of headspace to be caring for someone else.
The two them stood side by side, united in their misery. It wasn’t the kind of sisterly bonding moment Fleur had been hoping for. The sun rose, and Fleur enjoyed the warmth playing across her face. She wasn’t as tan as Bethany, not having cause to spend much time outside like her sister did. She wondered if Savion would prefer her with a tan or not. She quickly ejected the thought.
Eventually, Fleur managed to rouse herself. “We should go, Beth. There’s no point in staying here.”
Bethany gazed longingly in the direction Jermaine had disappeared in, but she nodded. “I guess so. Let’s walk slowly. We need to figure out how we’re going to avoid Lisette.”
Fleur chuckled at that. Lisette was usually right – talking about matters of the heart rather than keeping them was ultimately the most helpful thing, which was why she prodded them to do it. That didn’t mean Fleur was any less reluctant to give in, and apparently, Bethany felt the same.
They returned to the house with a feeling of doom, wondering who would be on the receiving end of Lisette’s pointed questions first. As it turned out, they were both off the hook.
Apparently, the bridesmaid dresses had arrived while Bethany and Fleur had been procrastinating their return. For someone who promoted facing issues of the heart head-on, Lisette could certainly be blind sometimes.
“Beth, Fleur, there you are! I was about to send Tristan to fetch you. You need to try on the dresses. The tailor wants us to get back to her with any needed adjustments later today.”
Fleur resisted rolling her eyes with difficulty. Lisette may have loved Teo once, but she didn’t anymore. When was she going to put a stop to this wedding? It wasn’t the first time she’d been engaged, nor would it be the first time she’d broken it off.
“Come on, let’s see those dresses!” Lisette seemed caught up in the fever of wedding planning, and Fleur couldn’t deny that it worked to her advantage, and to Bethany’s.
“These are hideous, Lis,” Tristan complained, lifting a frilled pink skirt gingerly, as though afraid of soiling her hand.
“Don’t be ridiculous, they’re beautiful! You’re going to look adorable, all of you.”
Tristan might look adorable, but Fleur and Bethany were both adults. They were going to look ridiculous. Fleur had never really understood Lisette’s taste.
She dutifully pulled the dress on, going through the motions to be a good sister, not because she thought there was any chance of this wedding actually happening. At the very least, this distracted Lisette from zoning in on Fleur and Bethany.
The dresses were truly puke-worthy. They practically screamed girlish romance. The frills rubbed Fleur’s practical nature the wrong way. How was she supposed to eat anything in this without coating the dress in her food?
Bethany and Tristan held up a little better, but not much. Neither of them had ever been against romance like Fleur was, though. She’d decided long ago that she didn’t have time for that nonsense. Mirabelle was training her to take over as coven leader one day, and the last thing she needed were silly distractions like love.
Now, she didn’t know what she thought. Savion had changed everything, and he had Fleur completely turned around.
Lisette fussed with the dresses, insisting they try on the matching jewelry and shoes. Fleur went along placidly, until Lis finally seemed to be satisfied enough with the dresses to turn her mind to other matters.
“So, Fleur, tell me what happened last night.”
Fleur sent a desperate look at Bethany, who shrugged. No one could dissuade Lis when it came to her work. She took her specialty in love and lust very seriously.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh no, you don’t get to go all quiet on me now. I let you talk to Beth first, but now it’s time for you to spill. Come on, Fleur, you know I can help. The tea helped, didn’t it?”
Fleur wasn’t ready to admit that, so she started untangling two bracelets, keeping her eyes fixed downward. “Let it go, Lisette. I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.”
There was no way Lisette would give up, but Bethany seemed to take pity on Fleur. “Jermaine is gone. At least for now. He went to see Savion. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to come right back, or if he’ll need to go back to his coven for a while.’
“Oh Beth, I’m sorry.” Lisette immediately switched her attention to Bethany. “We knew this was coming, but Jermaine loves you. He’ll be back.”
“I know.” Bethany sniffed, and Tristan wrapped an arm around her waist. “I just miss him already. Everything seems so impossible, you know? Can it ever really work out between us?”
Fleur stayed where she was as Tristan and Lisette converged on Bethany, cooing soothing things to her. Fleur had never been good at this romance stuff, but she sent Beth a grateful look, knowing full well her sister had taken the attention off Fleur on purpose.
By the time Fleur had untangled the bracelets, Beth, Lisette and Tristan were all piled together on the couch. She couldn’t resist joining them. She may not want to talk to anyone else yet, but some good sisterly bonding could only raise her spirits. Fleur had used a lot of magic in the last day, and she’d need some time to recover if she wanted to be at full strength.
Of course, she didn’t think that there was going to be a confrontation with the vampires like Mirabelle seemed to think, but it never hurt to be ready. She was more worried she’d have to fight to protect Savion if the coven decided he was a threat. The thought of fighting for a vampire against her own kin made her ill, but so did the thought of anything happening to him.
Fleur turned the subject to the wedding, sensing that they all needed a distraction. “Did you hear back from the photographer, Lis?”
“Yes, we’re good to go for the wedding.” A flash of worry crossed Lisette’s face, and Fleur decided to brave the subject.
“Are you still sure you want to marry Teo?” she asked bluntly.
Lisette’s look of outrage was almost convincing. “Of course I am! How could you ask me that?”
Fleur just rolled her eyes. “No reason.” She wasn’t fool enough to take on Lis on her own turf. If Lisette didn’t want to talk about it, there was nothing Fleur could do to make her. The injustice rankled; Fleur would have to spend the next several weeks avoiding her sister if she decided she didn’t want to talk about her own love life.
As soon as they were done with the fitting, Fleur went to her room and locked the door with magic, trying to gain some time to think. Maybe she’d talk this through with Lisette at some point, but for now, she wanted to try to make sense of the mess in her head by herself.
Now that Jermaine was gone, Fleur wasn’t sure if she’d see Savion again, and the thought was more painful than she’d expected. She tried to convince herself that this was a temporary thing. It was normal to feel closer to someone after sleeping with them. Once the hormones faded, she would be back to feeling indifferent about Savion.
Except, she’d never felt indifferent about him. From the first moment she saw him, there had been something there, though Fleur had resisted his advances at every turn. When she’d finally given in to what she felt, she couldn’t blame hormones. It had been about so much more than the physical – though the physical had certainly been significant.
Someone knocked on the door – Lisette, she would bet. Fleur’s tangled emotions were probably projecting, and someone as experienced as Lisette in matters of love would pick it up easily. She ignored the knock and tried to think about something boring that would stop whatever waves she was sending out.
In the end, Fleur gave up on that and decided to go to sleep. She’d been up all night, and she was exhausted. Surely, she couldn’t project when she was sleeping. At least, she hoped not. After double checking that the magical lock was secure and resistant to picking from interfering sisters, she fell into bed, and was asleep in minutes.
19
Someone was disturbing Savion’s sleep, and that person was going to pay. He’d just slipped out of his dreams of Fleur into a deep, restful sleep, only to be pulled from it by an insistent knocking. He growled under his breath, hoping whoever it was would go away.
They didn’t go away; instead, they opened the door, making Savion curse Rashid for not installing locks on his guest room doors. He grabbed a pillow and threw it in the direction of the invader.
“Not a nice way to greet your brother.”
It took a moment for the words to penetrate. When they did, Savion shot up out of bed, staring with wide eyes. Jermaine was there, right in front of him, the pillow held loosely at his side.
“Jermaine!” Savion flung himself at his brother, engulfing him in a tight hug. “I was so worried about you! Are you ok? Where have you been?”
“It’s good to see you too, Sav,” Jermaine chuckled. “It’s a pretty long story. Perhaps you’d like to hear it a bit later, seeing as I so rudely interrupted your sleep.” His eyes twinkled with amusement as Savion snatched the pillow from Jermaine’s hand and hit him over the head with it.
“Not a chance, Jermaine. You’re going to tell me everything, and you’re going to do it now.”
Sadness flickered across Jermaine’s face as he sank into a chair. Savion perched on the end of the bed, ready to hear the story.
“I was injured in the fight with the witches, though I’m sure you knew that. I probably would have died if it wasn’t for Bethany. She’d been diving in the area, looking for me. We think that she may have led the coven to us, but she didn’t do it intentionally.
“When she found me, she begged her sisters to heal me. Against their better judgement, they agreed. They healed me and allowed me to stay with them until I regained my strength. To be honest, my strength has been fine for a while now, I just stayed because I wanted more time with Bethany. I know it’s not allowed, but I’m in love with her, Sav. I’m not giving her up. We’ll find a way to make it work.”
A week ago, Savion would probably have told Jermaine it was insane, and that he should forget about Bethany, but he didn’t. “How are you going to make it work?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jermaine admitted. “I suppose you have your arguments ready for why I shouldn’t?”
“No. Actually… I might want to pick up tips.”
Jermaine’s eyes widened comically. “What? What have I missed?”
“I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a pickle. One even worse than yours, if that’s possible.”
“Tell me.”
Savion hesitated for only a moment before he let it all come spilling out. Jermaine listened in silence, keeping his thoughts to himself until Savion was done. When he’d finally talked himself into silence, Jermaine did the last thing Savion would have expected. He laughed.
“Jermaine! Don’t you laugh at me, this is serious!”
That just made him laugh harder.
“Ah, I thought I was the worst… and now my brother has fallen for a witch! Well done, Sav, we’re both royally screwed.”
“You’re telling me,” Savion muttered. “At least yours loves you back.”
“When have you ever shied away from a challenge? She obviously feels something for you, or she wouldn’t have let things go as far as they did. She’s probably just scared. You can hardly blame her, you’re freaked out by this too.”
“I am, but I’m not the one who ran away.”
“Put some more faith in her, man. You know it was Fleur who made the decision to heal me? Beth persuaded her, and Fleur told her other sisters how it was going to be. She tolerated having a convalescing vampire in her house, and I can’t think of any other witch who would do that.”
“So what should we do?” Usually, it was Savion making the decisions, but he could sorely use guidance right now, and talking to Jermaine soothed his worries in a way nothing else did.
“We need to think bigger. Bethany and I have already discussed this at length. If we look at it from the perspective of trying to get our covens to accept our individual relationships, it’s never going to work, not long term. We need to start ending this hatred between vampires and witches for good.”
“Jermaine, that’s an impossibly huge goal! What on earth makes you think we have even a hope of doing that?”
“We’re the first people in hundreds of years to have both views of it, one from each side. Having you and Fleur on the team will only help our cause.”
“You’re forgetting that Bethany isn’t a witch. She may not be able to help broach the divide between witches and vampires as much as you think.”
“She’s grown up with witches. She knows them intimately. Trust me, she’ll be a good spokesperson and go between.”
“Even if we did manage to end the fighting, though, Bethany is still a mortal. You’d still be told to stay away from her.”
“Not when she’s already given her vow of silence to witches. That puts her under the same category as them.”
Of course, Bethany would have given her vow of silence. Witches and vampires may not have much in common, but they were both careful about hiding their identities from humans. Any human who was going to be brought into the secret had to give their binding vow first.
“Alright, so all we need to do is end an age-old feud. Great. We can do that… How do we do that, exactly?”
“First, we approach the LeBlancs as official representatives of our coven. We offer a treaty with them. Nothing will be finalized until everyone back home agrees on it, but we can get a provisional draft written out.”
Jermaine clearly had thought about this. Savion liked the idea of staying in the area longer, and especially of having further contact with Fleur’s coven. “We’ll hear it from the others for going ahead without them when we get home, but I say it’s worth it.”
“Great, then garb up and let’s go.”
Savion felt his eyebrows climbing up his f
ace. “Go? Jermaine, it’s the middle of the day! I’m exhausted.”
Jermaine chuckled. “Right, I forgot. I’ve been keeping a human schedule at Bethany’s. Man up, brother, this is the time the witches will be awake. They won’t appreciate late night visits from you.”
“I know.” Savion remembered exactly how well his last late night visit had gone, and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. Besides, they were asking for something unprecedented. They could use all the advantages they could get, and that included not annoying the coven by arriving at hours that were unsuitable for mortals – or witches.
The two of them got dressed in long robes and sunglasses that would protect them as they made their way to the LeBlanc household.
“Should we wake the others? I came straight to you; none of them know I’m ok yet.”
“Let’s not wake them yet,” Savion decided. “It’ll go down better if it’s just the two of us at Fleur’s house, and you know they’ll insist on coming with us.”
He and Jermaine ran most of the way to Fleur’s house, but switched to a human pace as they got close, not wanting to appear threatening. Savion unconsciously quickened his pace as they got closer. He wondered if it would be Fleur who opened the door. How would she react?
He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn’t see it coming. Both Savion and Jermaine were suddenly blasted back across the road. Savion’s vampire reflexes had him on his feet in a moment. His instinct was to rush toward the source of the threat, fangs first, but common sense held him back.
“Jermaine? You ok?” He didn’t take his eyes off Fleur’s house, trying to spot attackers.
“I’m fine.” Jermaine moved close to Savion’s side. “What do you reckon?”
“Well, approaching obviously didn’t do any good. You reckon they can hear us?”
“With magic, yes, but I’m not sure they’re listening.”
Savion raised his voice. “We’re not here to fight. We just want to talk.”
A witch appeared out of thin air – literally. Either she teleported, or she’d been using some kind of concealment spell that she’d just dropped. Savion recognized Mirabelle.