Beguiled

by Darynda Jones

  Annette and I both held our breaths and leaned closer.

  Gigi hesitated, then said softly, “Your father.”

  I straightened in surprise. “My… my father? But you don’t know who he was?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not even sure your mother knew, truth be told, and I’m guessing he wanted it that way.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe he had plans for you? Maybe he’s a warlock and wanted you for himself? The fact that you were born into a long line of witches could not have been a coincidence. Only a legacy witch would know what you were. What to do with you. How to protect you. We think whoever your father was, he chose your mother on purpose, knowing her family connections.”

  “But why not come for me when I was born? My own mother almost killed me to get the powers I possess. Why let that happen?”

  “She would’ve been weaker,” Roane said. “We’re just guessing, but your mother would’ve been weaker than you. Easier to control than you would’ve been.”

  Gigi nodded. “He’s right. A legacy witch may be able to possess your powers, but she will never be as strong as a blood heir. Maybe he wanted her to take them so he could then take control of her. We just don’t know, Defiance.”

  “Can you unlock the doors now?” Roane asked. “Percy is an added layer of protection for all of you, and I need to find the hunter.”

  I dismissed the spell with a twitch of my fingers and the doors unlocked.

  Roane climbed out, then went around to help Gigi.

  Annette hesitated, scanned the area one more time, then lunged out her door and hightailed it toward Percy’s front entrance.

  We followed at a slower pace. “So, hunters are real, but chasing rogue charmlings can hardly be a full-time job. What else do they do?”

  “Anything the warlock wants them to do,” Gigi said.

  “Wet work mostly,” Roane added, putting it more bluntly. “They’re trained assassins first and foremost. But they’re also good at collections. You don’t ever want to be indebted to a warlock.”

  “Wait.” I stopped. “Could he have caused the explosion?”

  Roane shook his head. “No. I checked. I kept losing his scent at Bridge and Webb, but he was nowhere near the house. Even so, he would never try to kill a charmling.”

  “Okay, but what about those around her? Those, say, protecting her?”

  They exchanged glances again, and Gigi nodded. “That he would do.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, narrowing my field of vision to focus solely on my grandmother. “You told me when I first came here that hunters had been dispatched the day I was born. That they would kill me in a heartbeat.”

  She arched a graceful brow and brushed at her sleeve. “Did I?”

  “Gigi. Why would you tell me that?”

  “Two reasons. I was trying to incentivize you. To help you get up the protection spell. It’s like a shield.”

  “I know what it’s like. And two?”

  “Because they would kill you in a heartbeat, just not out of the blue like that. They would never risk all that power slipping away. They would first take you to their warlock so he could perform the ceremony to transfer it. Then they would kill you. It’s a process.”

  That sucked. Though I knew she was exaggerating. The ceremony would kill me regardless. The hunter wouldn’t have to. “There’s something we haven’t considered. What if he’s not here for me? You said it yourself, charmlings have tried to escape their warlocks, right? Maybe one escaped and came here to Salem.”

  “That would be a horse-sized coincidence pill to swallow.”

  “But it’s possible he’s after another charmling? Or not after a charmling at all, right?”

  Roane helped Gigi with her coat.

  “I suppose,” she said. “If a charmling escapes her warlock and, in turn, her protective coven, other hunters would swoop in and try to grab her for their warlocks unless she’s powerful enough to disperse her magical fingerprints, as it were. It has happened, but they are always found. Sadly, charmlings are both the most powerful and most vulnerable witches in the preternatural world.”

  “No offense, Gigi, but your world is messed up. And warlocks suck.”

  “Yes, they do. Not as much as vampires, but—”

  “Wait, vampires are real, too?” Annette asked.

  Gigi chuckled. “Only metaphorically.”

  We headed for the kitchen as Roane checked out the house to make sure no one had entered while we were gone. “Are warlocks always male?” I asked Gigi.

  “Not at all. Your great-great-aunt Petunia was a warlock. Clearly, she was the black sheep of the family.”

  “Clearly.”

  She stopped and faced me. “And there are some warlocks who are kind at heart or who use their extreme gifts benevolently. To become a warlock, however, one must master the black arts. That usually denotes a dark heart.”

  “Do you know any warlocks?”

  She bowed her head and continued toward the kitchen. “I’ve… I’ve known one or two.”

  “Can I meet them?”

  “No.”

  “Can I meet them if I wear a disguise?”

  “No.”

  Annette stayed close behind us. So close, in fact, she ran into me. Twice.

  “It’s all good,” Roane said, walking back to us after his inspection.

  “Excellent.” Gigi padded past him. She touched his arm, and he bent down to let her kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll be downstairs doing some research.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  She nodded and disappeared around a corner as Roane continued toward us. The light from the kitchen silhouetted his form. His wide shoulders. His long arms. His tapered waist. He walked like a predator. Like the wolf that he was. He noticed my noticing and stopped directly in front of me. “You can make coffee if you need to. I checked it out.”

  “No arsenic?”

  One corner of his mouth rose, creating a tantalizing dimple under the scruff. “No arsenic.”

  “Thank the Goddess.” I shoved past him to get to the kitchen, brushing my entire body against his as though we were in a narrow passageway. “Sorry,” I said, faking awkwardness. The fact that one could drive a semi through the short hall under the balcony that led to the kitchen occurred to neither of us as I continued to pass. And slide. And rub.

  He lowered his head and watched as my breasts brushed along his chest. Then he lifted a hand to my hip. Pulled me closer. Brushed his mouth over my jaw. “I’ll let you know if I catch his scent again.”

  “You never answered me.”

  “You never answered me, either,” he countered.

  “What will you do?”

  “If I catch him?”

  “Yes.”

  He pressed into me, and heat pooled between my legs. “That’ll be up to him.”

  “I’m serious, Roane. From what I understand, they’re very powerful.”

  “He was created by a warlock,” he said, resting his mouth at my ear. “I was created by a charmling. I promise you I am more so.”

  “You can’t know that. Just be careful.”

  “I’d be more prone to caution if I had a fiancée to come back to.”

  I stifled a chuckle. No need to encourage him.

  We turned when we heard breathing close by. Annette stood there. “So,” she said, the tremor in her voice belying her nonchalant demeanor, “ballpark figure, how many demons are roaming the earth as we speak?”

  He grinned and squeezed past us since we’d sandwiched him in. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  “Please.” When he closed the front door, I turned to Annette. “Real coffee.” Decaf didn’t quite have the same effect.

  “Right?” she said with a snort, staying right on my heels.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” I pointed upstairs. “Nap. The coven is not due for another couple of hours, so nap. For real, Annette. You haven’t had any real sleep in, like, two days.�
�

  She sat at the table and pouted. “I’m having dreams. Very surreal dreams.”

  “Really?” I made quick work of measuring out the coffee grinds and turning on the pot. It started gurgling immediately, aka, my theme song. I sat across from her, her bow-shaped mouth almost pouty. “What kind of dreams?”

  She blinked at me. “Why? What did you hear?”

  “That you’re having surreal dreams. Wait.” I leaned closer. “Are they sexy-time dreams?”

  She snorted. “No.”

  “Dude, you are honestly the worst liar.”

  “Okay, they’re very… explicit.”

  I lifted my hand for a high-five. “You go, girl.”

  “Deph, this is serious. They’re about…” She gritted her teeth and gestured toward the cabinets.

  I frowned in confusion.

  She lifted a shoulder and leaned to her other side.

  I looked to the side and saw nothing but the island and a blown-up oven.

  She rolled her eyes and fingerspelled something. Goddess only knew what. And it took, like, a year. We’d tried to learn sign language in middle school. We managed a vocabulary of about twenty-five words, and most of them were dirty.

  “Annette,” I said, showing my palms.

  “Oh my God.” She took out her phone and texted someone. Now was hardly the time.

  Then my phone dinged. I grabbed it and read: Percival!!!

  My stunned gasp echoed off the walls for a solid minute. “Annette! You’re having dirty dreams about my grandfather?”

  “Shhh,” she shushed, looking around in paranoia. “He’ll hear you.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m not doing it on purpose, Defiance.”

  I couldn’t seem to unhinge my jaw. I just gaped at her. When I finally found my voice again, I whispered, “So, like, you’re having sex with a plant?”

  “What? No! I mean, kind of. Sometimes he’s a guy. You know what? Forget it. I’m just not sleeping well. And now there are malevolent spirits in the attic and demons all around us and a hunter trying to kill us. I liked it more when I was oblivious.”

  That made me sad. Not terribly. Not lost-puppy sad. “But you love this stuff.”

  “Yeah, when it’s happening to someone else.”

  “True. So, like, for real?” I wiggled my brows and gestured toward, well, Percy.

  “Stop.”

  “Is it… I mean, do you…?”

  “Stop. I should never have told you.”

  I giggled and got up to pour myself a cup of coffee. “It doesn’t even matter. You need to get some rest.”

  She draped her body over the table. Normally, Annette could sleep through a hurricane. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Percy was more than a hurricane. Maybe he was a tsunami. Yeah, baby. A Percy tsunami.

  “I’m going to do some research. Try to find out who our mystery man from the café was.”

  “Oh, great, thanks. I have a couple of things to do, too.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Like what?”

  “Things. Go. First, nap. Then research.”

  She let out a long sigh and went upstairs. I waited an appropriate amount of time, grabbed a flashlight, and hurried up to the mezzanine. I had a revenant being to confront.

  Nine

  I like it when people call me “ma’am.”

  I just wish they wouldn’t follow it up with

  “you’re making a scene.”

  —Meme

  I sought out the entrance to the secret passageways for two reasons. One, because I wanted to check on the thing in the attic. Bead-uh. The revenant being I’d trapped there when I was a kid, according to Gigi. Why would I do that? And why did I wake up there this morning?

  Two, I wanted to check out the caves beneath the house. I’d recently found out the secret passageways that led to the mysterious attic, the passageways that Percy could not go into, also led to an even more mysterious cave beneath the house. The passages were lined with shiplap from actual ships. Ships that had soaked in the ocean for years. The salt kept out all manner of ilk, the spectral kind anyway, but I worried the salt and brine could throw off someone with a really good sense of smell. Someone like a wolf shifter.

  And the caves were accessible from the outside. If someone knew about them, they could feasibly enter the house through the passageways undetected. But I didn’t know where all of the first-floor entrances were. The second floor had one in each room. Mine was off my bathroom. But I got lost in the passages easily, so I’d never discovered the ones on the first floor. Mostly because the passages were such a maze, and I rarely even knew what floor I was on. No time like the present, however.

  The caves were the only explanation as to how someone could get past both Roane and Percy. There were caveats to my theory, of course. Roane also had a wicked sense of hearing, for one. He would’ve been able to hear someone coming in unless they did it while he was out patrolling with his wolf pack at night.

  And how could someone actually get into the kitchen without Percy knowing and without Roane picking up the scent?

  I decided to eat the frog, as they say. To face my biggest fear. The being in the attic. Whatever or whoever Bead-uh was, it was bad enough that I’d apparently summoned a witch from the past to cast a spell on the house just to lock it up. Percy did not originally have gables, and now he had six with a room in each one.

  I eased the panel on the mezzanine aside, but before ducking inside, I noticed a handful of vines sliding toward me. He didn’t like me going into the passageways. A place into which he could not follow. He could not protect. I held out my hand, and a vine curled into my palm and around my fingers, the embrace warm and loving. “It’s okay, Percy. I’m just checking out a couple of things. I won’t be long.”

  He shrank back. I was a little surprised. The last time I’d gone into the passageways, he’d done everything in his power to stop me. Of course, at that time, I was being stalked by a Puritan jerkface.

  I eased into the passageways and closed the panel. I was more familiar with this area. I found the stairs going to the attic and started climbing them, feeling a little like Alice in Wonderland. The stairs made no sense. They went up and down and then up again, over rooms and around closets until I could finally go no farther.

  I stepped onto the landing and turned in a circle. A high, pointed ceiling topped the cone-shaped room. And it had no windows. I turned to the farthest door on the right of the stairs and started toward it. Boards creaked beneath my feet as I eased closer, waiting for the knock or a loud bang like the first time I’d tried to get into the room.

  Sweat beaded on my upper lip as I raised a shaky hand and drew a spell on the door. Light, bright and hot, burst from the lines and seeped into the room. I pressed my hand to the wood and reached out with my magics. I felt exactly what I’d felt before. A vast nothingness. A perpetual darkness. An endless void. Whatever the room beyond the door held, it was not confined to the salt-laden walls.

  The last time I’d done this, the thing inside attacked me. Attacked my energy. Scratched and clawed at it, and I couldn’t pry my hand off the door. Then it rushed me. Trying to break through. That was about the time I practically fell down the stairs, I ran so fast.

  I waited, but nothing happened, so I sent my magics out farther. There had to be something there. Something other than the being I’d locked inside. But there was nothing. I felt only a cold, dark void. And I’d locked a creature inside of that for over forty years. What would that kind of isolation do to an intelligent being? Then again, what did the creature do to force me to conjure a prison just to lock it away?

  Whatever the case, I couldn’t find the being either. It was either messing with me or pouting in a corner somewhere. If I could find any corners in the void, I’d search there, but there simply were none.

  I dropped my hand and stood back. “Look,” I said, standing my ground, “you and I are going to have to get along if you want me to figure al
l of this out. I don’t know why I put you in there. I don’t remember. But if you keep messing with me, we’ll get nowhere fast.”

  Still nothing. I examined the antique doorknob. It had a skeleton keyhole underneath. I wanted to peer inside, but I’d seen far too many horror movies to do something that inane. Instead, I reached down and tested the knob.

  After Roane had tried everything to get the doors open over the years—locksmiths, sledgehammers, blowtorches—the fact that the knob turned and the latch released stunned me. I froze. My eyes wide, my pulse galloping at a breakneck speed, I stood glued to the spot. Fear swallowed me whole. If the creature tried banging on the door now, tried to break through it, would it succeed in escaping? Or would the salt in the attic keep it locked inside the room?

  If it did escape, would it kill me? Could it? It irked me that I had no memory of why I’d locked it in there in the first place. No clue as to what it was or what it was capable of.

  I stood motionless. I couldn’t move or breathe or think. My thoughts ricocheted through my mind, conjuring all kinds of horrible fates for me and everyone else in the house. Struggling to get a freaking grip, my lids drifted shut, and I slowly, painstakingly released the knob. The latch clicked back into place just as the creature slammed into the door from the other side. A thunderous boom shook the walls around me, and just like before, I stumbled back and fell on my ass.

  Another boom exploded around me, and this time I could’ve sworn I heard wood splintering. I looked at the door to make sure it hadn’t cracked, but it seemed as solid as ever. A third crash had me scrambling for the stairs and, just like before, I half ran, half fell down them.

  When I got to the second-floor passageway, I almost ran to my room before remembering my second goal: to look for evidence of someone coming and going via the passages from the cave. And I needed to find out where the first-floor secret entrances were. If it would be possible for someone, even a mundane, to enter the house without Roane or Percy knowing about it.

  After descending one million steps, give or take, I stopped to catch my breath, then found the door to the cave again. I opened it, and the musty scent of salt and brine hit me first. I stepped down onto the rock floor. Water pooled here and there, and the sound of the ocean wafted toward me. As did the cool breeze, but no way was I going back for my coat. Far too many stairs, and the trip up was about a thousand times harder than the trip down.