The letters to Joaquin were simply Diane’s way of rubbing her victory in Joaquin’s face. She wanted him to suffer. To pay. Her actions were so juvenile, so merciless and cruel, it was hard not to drain the life from her body right then and there, and I realized just how dangerous my magics could be. One split second, one wrong decision, and lives could be changed forever.
At least I knew Diane would do well in prison. And she would have her mom, so there was that. But there was one thing I could take from her that she would miss.
I stepped closer until I was about a foot away from her and said, “Guess what they don’t have in prison?”
She looked me up and down, cool as a refrigerated cucumber.
I let my mouth slide into a wicked grin and said, “Wine.”
Her eyes rounded for a fraction of an instant, as though just realizing the one thing she practically lived for would be in short supply for the foreseeable future.
“Bam, beotch,” Annette said from behind me. “You’ll have to drown your sorrows in toilet wine from now on. Yum.”
“Annette,” I said, admonishing her as the officer put Diane in the cruiser. “Wineaholism is a disease.”
“Whatev. Good luck with the DTs. I hear they’re a bitch.” The officer closed the door, and Diane turned away from us. “I wouldn’t turn water into wine for you if you were the last wineaholic on Earth,” she continued. That’d show her.
Houston pinched the bridge of his nose. I could hardly blame him.
We walked back to Joaquin. He sat in the back of an ambulance with Milo.
He turned to me as the first responder took Milo’s vitals. “If I had done it, if I had gone through with it…”
“I know. That’s all in the past now.” I gazed at Milo, adoring every curve of his face. Every curl on his head. Every spark of love when he looked at his father. Children were a special kind of magic all on their own. “And your future is looking really bright.”
“Are you ever going to tell me how you did that?”
I laughed softly, and whispered, “Smoke and mirrors.”
The clock started chiming just as we walked in the door and continued until it had reached the midnight hour. Gigi had waited up with Serinda, so we filled them in before heading to bed. The chief stayed at the scene but promised to stop in to see Gigi before going home. Honestly, the two were affianced. Why he didn’t just move in was beyond me.
Vowing to wait up for Roane, who’d gone to check on the wolves, I took a quick shower, mostly to get warm, then looked in on Olly. He hadn’t reported back, so I figured he hadn’t found the hunter again. I was right. When I peered through his eyes, he was stalking… a cow. My first thought was, Good luck with that, buddy. Then I reconsidered. He wasn’t a real cat. Could he really eat a cow?
Alarmed, I popped into his head again. Step away from the livestock, I ordered. Don’t even think about eating that cow, mister man.
He stopped mid-stalk and let out a mew of disappointment before darting back toward town. Little shit.
I curled up under the covers and fought the heaviness of my lids. The heaviness won. My eyes drifted shut, and the edges of a dream had just wafted over me when I heard a scream.
Feminine.
Shrill.
Blood-curdling.
I bolted upright, scrambled out of bed, and ran to the window. Another scream splintered the air, and I zeroed in on Parris’s house.
Though her lights were on, I couldn’t see anything, even through the sheer curtains.
I jammed my legs into a pair of sweats and pulled an ancient sweatshirt over my head that announced my blood type to the world—dark roast—before grabbing my sneakers and running to Annette’s room.
“Annette?” I said into the darkness, but she was snoring softly. No way was I waking her.
I went back and scooped up my phone then hurried down the stairs. After almost tumbling headfirst—twice—while attempting to run and put on my shoes at the same time, I sat on the steps to tie them like a normal person. I considered checking to see if Roane had made it back, but he would’ve heard the scream before I did. He could already be over there.
A third scream pierced the air, this one weaker. More pitiable, as though the woman was pleading with someone. It spurred me out the door and around our respective fences. I sprinted up Parris’s walkway and under the columned balcony to find her front door open.
“Parris?” I eased inside.
A bright-yellow light illuminated her foyer. The layout was very similar to Percy’s in that it had two matching staircases on either side that led to a second-floor landing. Only Parris’s house was all shiny marble and gold filigree with a massive chandelier hanging down from the third-floor ceiling.
I took another step inside. “Parris? Are you okay?” After an initial sweep of the immediate area, I took out my phone to dial 911. I found no evidence of a struggle, but somebody had screamed for a reason, and Parris’s door had been wide open. Anyone could’ve gotten inside.
A male voice came over the phone. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I heard screams coming from the house next door, and I can’t find the owner.”
“Are you inside the house now?”
“Yes. I’m going to check upstairs.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
I stopped with my foot on the bottom step. It was an odd question coming from dispatch. “Should I wait for a patrol car?”
“You could,” he said, “but you’ll be waiting a long time.”
Dread raced up my spine. I looked around, trying to find any sign of Parris. “How did you intercept this call?”
“Are you sure that’s the most important question at this juncture?”
The field of vision narrowed. “What happened to Parris?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
I hung up and pressed Roane’s number while backing toward the door.
After two rings, the same male voice came on the line. “Nine-one-one, why did you hang up on me?”
The air grew thick around me as I backed toward the front door. Walking through it was like walking through Jell-O. My eyes began to lose focus. I recognized the skips in time as I glanced at a cream-colored vase. It was there one minute and gone the next, only to reappear with the next blink of my eyes. The sensation was startlingly familiar.
I’d experienced this same kind of erratic imagery when I was in a state of suspended animation for six months, as though my synapses had malfunctioned. As though they were damaged, firing sporadically, and showing me things in the wrong order.
Back when the darkness tried to get in.
Percy held it at bay, but the parts that did seep into my psyche messed with my equilibrium. My sense of space and time, like a video that skipped and bounced, then played things either too fast or too slow.
I backed into the closed front door. The same front door I hadn’t closed. I turned the doorknob only to find it locked.
“You’ll never find her if you leave now,” the man said.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I was asleep. If any of this was real. The world tilted to the side, and I gripped the doorknob harder. “Where is she?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.”
He was clearly having fun. That did not bode well. I launched myself off the door and headed for the stairs again, just trying to stay upright until I could get to the balustrade. I clutched onto the handrail and took an unsteady step up.
“I wouldn’t go that way.”
I struggled to keep the phone at my ear and hold onto the balustrade. “She’s not upstairs?” I asked just as the railing vanished and my support dropped away. I fell to the side only to slam my ribs into the rail when it reappeared. The impact knocked my breath away.
“One down, two to go.” His voice wasn’t deep, and it sounded strangely familiar. I racked my brain trying to place it, but the stairs turned upside down and swallowe
d me before I could manage it.
Twenty-One
Underestimate me.
That’ll be fun.
—T-shirt
“You are horrible at the guessing game.”
My lids fluttered open to a dark figure silhouetted against a thousand-watt bulb. At least it seemed like a thousand-watt bulb, but when he moved aside, only a single candle glowed behind him. I blinked against the brightness, then felt the ropes cinched tight around my wrists, cutting off my circulation. My hands were tied behind my back, but something was wrapped over them. A cloth of some kind. Wet and acidic against my skin. Another rope circling my waist kept me semi upright in a chair, and my ankles were strapped together. “I think my luck is changing,” I said, my voice groggy and hoarse.
“Yeah?”
“It’s getting even worse. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“We make our own luck. Clearly, you suck at it.”
I blinked up, trying to place the voice, then I saw a brunette fussing over a table of disturbing instruments off to the side. “Parris. You’re okay.”
She turned like a runway model and beamed at me. “I am. Sorry about the screams. I took an acting class once. That’s where I learned to project. Did you know there are dozens of types of screams? You can fill a scream with every kind of emotion imaginable. But it does take a trained professional to get the nuance right, so don’t try it at home, kids. Who knew that ridiculous class would come in handy one day?”
The man—Harris—knelt in front of me. Harris! I’d only spoken to him a couple of times, and he was the most normal mundane I’d ever met. Well, other than the fact that he lived two houses down from his wife. “I want to know why my magics aren’t working on you.”
The world tilted again and I forced it to recenter like the pointer on a GPS. “I’d say it’s working just fine.”
“Nah. This is easy. A simple time-displacement spell. You’re basically living in two different moments in time, each a second apart from each other. It messes with the equilibrium. I’ve been trying for months to get inside your head.” He poked my forehead. “I finally had to lure you into the house to get them to work. A house I’ve been infusing with magics for weeks, just so I could penetrate that thick skull of yours.” He poked again. Asshat. “Parris said you did some kind of spell.”
“She did.” She walked up behind him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You told me.” His voice was edged with impatience. “So, you’re a witch like your grandmother was?”
“’Parently.” I worked at the restraints, my efforts having the exact opposite effect. The more I yanked, the tighter they got. “What are you?”
He snorted, stood, and walked over to the table that held the candle.
I could hardly see beyond the glow of the flame. The light was pulsing, strobelike, but my eyes were beginning to adjust. We were in a cavernous, cold room with fantastic acoustics. A basement, perhaps?
“You’re clearly a novice if you don’t know by now.”
Holy shit. “Are you a warlock?”
“Bingo. You know more than I thought. Did you learn from your grandmother?”
“Did you kill my grandmother?”
“You first.”
I fought a wave of dizziness as time slipped beneath me again, and said, “I feel like my question trumps yours.”
He let out an annoyed sigh as he heated water in a pan over a hotplate. Witchcraft in the twenty-first century, ladies and gentlemen.
“Is the hunter yours?” I asked.
He stilled and looked over at me, his image distorting, then skipping ahead a fraction of a second. “There’s a hunter in town?”
I’d take that as a no. “There is.”
He put down the spoon he’d been stirring with while Parris straightened the instruments on the tray like a nurse gleefully preparing for surgery.
I ignored the fear that hardened like cement in my chest and tugged at my restraints again. Then it hit me. I suddenly understood the wraps on my hands. I couldn’t do a spell. Something was stopping me.
“Why is he here?” he asked. He’d seemed so nice. Harris Hampton. Maybe even a little whipped. My ability to read men had just reached an all-time low.
I was never going to trust my gut instincts again. “I don’t know why he’s here. He said something about a rogue warlock practicing magic irresponsibly.”
“Irresponsibly?” He laughed. “That’s practically a requirement of the profession. You’ll have to do better than that.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what went wrong. Maybe something in his childhood. Not that I particularly cared, but it was something to think about. “Shouldn’t you have a cauldron for that?”
“Why?” he asked, stirring the pot with what looked like a ceremonial dagger. “I’m just making tea.”
“I’m more of a coffee girl.”
“Oh, you’ll like this one.”
Somehow, I doubted that. “It was you controlling that purple lady’s memories.” What was her name again?
“The purple lady?”
“That bitch lawyer,” Parris said. “Something Richter.”
“Oh, right. So easy.”
“And the clerk at the property assessor’s office?”
“Guilty.” He knelt in front of me again. “Why is there a hunter in town?”
“I don’t know if you are aware of this, but hunters don’t talk a lot. Though, admittedly, that was the first one I’ve met.”
“You met him? And you’re still alive?” He seemed bizarrely impressed, and a huge piece of the puzzle fell into place. He wasn’t part of the inner circle. He didn’t have friends in low places like I did.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, slurring my words only slightly as nausea swept over me. “Have they not let you into their secret club?”
He leaned closer, and I finally got a good look at his spray-tanned face as he whispered a heartfelt “Fuck you.”
“Are the other warlocks not playing nice?” The slap echoed along the walls before I even realized I’d been hit. Again, great acoustics.
In all honesty, the slap hardly registered. My world kept teetering this way and that, so a slap actually helped me refocus, if only for a few seconds. I fought to get the cloth off my hands. It was wet, the liquid abrasive against my skin. Like acid. Or holy water.
I snorted at my own joke, wondering if there was something out there that would hamper my ability to do spells. I’d have to hit the books when all of this was over. Dive deep into the world of witchcraft and magic. I’d known I was out of my depth from day one, but this drove it home like a Lamborghini on glass. “Why did you kill my grandmother?” I didn’t ask Harris. He was a dick. And he’d slapped my face. So, I asked Parris.
She straightened, thrilled to be in the spotlight again. “For Percival.”
I knew it. I knew they wanted Percy. But… “You killed my grandmother to get her house?”
“C’mon,” Harris said. “The woman was eighty if she was a day. She’d lived a good, long life.”
“And she just… would… not… die,” Parris added, throwing her arms out in helplessness.
“Are you wearing a nurse’s uniform?”
“We tried to be nice,” she continued, unfazed. “We tried to buy Percy from her, but she wouldn’t sell.”
“That house has been in her family for generations,” I said, taken aback by their callousness.
“Whatever,” Parris said.
I shook my head. It was the wrong thing to do. I slumped in the chair as the world turned upside down.
“For fuck’s sake.” Harris came over and shoved me upright.
“She never told me you tried to buy it.”
“Because I erased her memory every time. Believe you me, it wasn’t easy. Ruthie was a powerful witch. More powerful than most.”
“So… so you killed her instead?”
“Hand me that,” he said to Parris, pointing to a rope.
Parris picked it up and handed it to him. He wrapped it around my shoulders, anchoring me to the chair.
“Why would you do that? If you can control minds, why not just get Ruthie to sign it over to you?”
“I can’t control minds,” he said, tightening the rope painfully. It cut into my skin, but at least I could stay vertical. Kind of. “I can manipulate memories, which are in the past. Big difference.”
“Big,” Parris added.
“Huge.”
“Wait,” she said, her brows sliding together. “Have you ever screwed with my memories?”
“What? No, baby.”
I rolled my eyes. The world tilted again, but it was worth it. “He has, Parris. I felt it when I delved into your memories.”
She jammed her fists onto her hips. “You tried to read me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just trying to find out what happened to my grandmother, and I wondered if you’d seen anyone staking out the house or trying to break in.”
“I feel strangely violated.”
“No way,” I said, sarcasm dripping from each syllable, and I wondered if she was even capable of seeing the irony in that statement. “We figured out how you poisoned her but, again, why? Why do you want Percy so bad, and how is killing me going to get him for you?”
They exchanged glances and laughed.
“We aren’t going to kill you,” Parris said.
“We’re going to do what I’ve been trying to do since you got here. We’re going to drive you insane.”
“With black magics?” I asked, my fear palpable. I knew very little about them, but they seemed really bad in the grand scheme of things.
“No,” Harris said. “I’ve already tried that. Either you’re blocking me or someone else is. I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Beguiled Page 28