by Eden Butler
Watching Sam, seeing the tension bunching up his features, I suddenly realized that this conversation was the longest we’d had in a year. In the past, we simply fought all the time. Even after our mother died five years ago, we hadn’t managed a civil conversation. But then last summer, his wife, Adele, and their unborn child died in a car crash. The kid that killed them had been confused, barely legal, and since their deaths Sam and my conversations had simply become short and to the point. But this was different.
“Has Ivy or his men been snooping around?” I’d held my breath after asking that question. Ivy Beckerman was Crimson Cove’s chief of police. We all suspected he wouldn’t blink twice if he caught any weres shifting into their animal forms or spirits haunting the edge of the cemetery, never mind any chance encounters with a wizard doing something beyond human comprehension. There was something about the man that made him different from the other mortals. They only saw what they wanted. But Ivy was smart, observant; he saw things that the others didn’t. So far, though, he’d kept his questions to himself.
“No, not so much,” Sam said, once again focusing on his phone when it beeped, offering only a glance my way when he spoke, “but he did come by asking who busted in the store window.” Sam waited for that to make an impact.
“What the hell happened to the store window?”
“Some asshole pissed off that we hadn’t done our best to hide whatever bullshit they didn’t want the mortals to see, we think. Thanks to Ronan, we got a sledgehammer through the front window.”
That was unnerving. My father had managed to keep up the façade of running a respectable antiques store for decades. It was a decent way to front his real business—making sure the mortals never caught wind that a good majority of the Cove’s residents weren’t mortal at all; Papa was what the supernatural community called a “fixer.”
“How bad is it really, Sam?” That question came in front of a small, silent prayer that I could help my family from the comfort of my fifth-floor walkup in Brooklyn.
I should have known better.
Another of Sam’s exhales came out slow, this one with a labored drag of frustration, maybe the small hint of defeat. “Carter Grant has pulled his coven’s contract with us. He doesn’t want to be involved in any accidents we can’t quite cover up.”
“Shit.” That revelation warranted another swig and another disapproving shake of my brother’s head. If the Grants, a founding family and one of the oldest covens—and the one family our ancestors had pledged fealty to generations before—cut ties with us, then things were about as bad as they could get.
“We’ve asked a couple of the other Finders to help out, Jani, but none are as good as you. Papa says you’re our last resort.”
Whatever I was ten years ago—Finder of Lost Things, twin of a mighty healer, daughter to a man who swept our lives away from mortal eyes—I’d packed up in a steamer trunk my father swindled from a Tulsa antiques dealer and hopped a bus to New York. I’d been eighteen and thought Crimson Cove had seen the back of me. I hated being wrong.
It probably was tearing Papa up to know Sam was going to ask me to come home. He’d always maintained that once you left, that was it. No need to drag up the past with a trip down memory lane. Besides, he’d always told me “nothing but heartache for you here, Janiver.” But after the bomb my brother dropped, I had little choice.
“I’ll take the red eye.”
“About that, Jani…” Another alert. This time Sam read the message then immediately snapped his gaze back up to the screen. “You don’t need to worry about getting a ticket.” My brother swallowed, shifting his attention away from the camera like he’d rather do anything than explain himself.
Damn it. This definitely required more bourbon.
“Thing is, someone is coming for you.”
“Who?”
“In a few minutes, actually.”
“Samedi, who?”
“Should be there. Now.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Please don’t let it be him, I prayed.
I wanted to handle this issue my family had and be done with it. I had no intention of reconnecting.
Please, please, don’t let it be him.
“He was already in the city.”
“What are you talking about, Sam?”
“Look, Jani, something happened, with the Elam.”
The Elam? The talisman through which all the magic in Crimson Cove converged, which kept us hidden from mortal eyes and in check?
“Someone attacked and took it…” Someone had stolen it?
“You don’t lead with that? My God, Sam…”
“I know…it’s just… Look…we really, well, we tried finding anyone else to help find it, but shit, sis, you’re the best and there is so little time and he was there in New York and…”
“Balls…” I said, already knowing what point my brother was skirting around.
This was bad. Very bad. No wonder my family was on the edge of panic. I emptied the bottle but kept it between my legs as Sam tried and failed to explain himself.
“I just hope you don’t—”
Three loud drums of a knock on my door had me almost jumping out of my skin. The temperature in the room suddenly shifted, and on the other side of the door I picked up two signatures: elemental magic that identifies a witch or wizard like a thumbprint. Unbidden, my pulse started racing, and I found it hard to breathe.
“Jani…” Sam’s warning was too little and way too late. Nothing would save him from the shit storm I’d level at him as soon as I landed back home.
“Not another damn word, big brother.”
One of the bodies out in the hallway radiated heat and a familiar spicy, rich smell that made my mouth water.
“Jani…let me explain.”
Sam’s voice was rushed, muddled as I left the bed and stood in front of my door, my hand hovering over the handle. I didn’t need to look through the peep hole to know who stood out in the hallway.
“Whoever stole the Elam used old magic. They needed an old bloodline to make the hex work.” I squinted, looking over my shoulder toward the laptop as I twisted the handle, then didn’t blink or breathe at all as my gaze lifted to see Bane Iles. He stood on the other side of the open door.
“Yeah,” he said, as if he had been listening to our conversation. Just as shocking as his appearance at my door was the fact that his face was bruised, and there was a cut along his bottom lip —injuries that shouldn’t be there at all. “And that blood was mine.”
Two
Bane Iles had ruined my favorite subject.
Senior year at Crimson Cove Regional, we’d started the semester with the Romantics—reading Shelley and Lord Byron, forgetting our town, the weird dichotomy of our lives among the mortals, by integrating into their schools. The language, the love of literature made me forget that I was the only girl in the small class of fifteen that wasn’t mortal. Cherrie Miles, a bottle blonde who wore her t-shirts torn at the neck and frayed to her chest, always asked how I managed to keep my light brown skin free of any blemishes at all, while Samantha Riley gave too close a squint at the smooth flick of my eye liner. They weren’t my friends, hadn’t bothered to make me feel as if they wanted to be, but even back then, at eighteen, I’d known the importance of tolerating their daily examination of my make-up and outfits. That took less effort than diverting the lewd cat calls I got from the boys the second I walked through the doors of that school my senior year.
Ricky Morris had no problem grunting at me like a wolf when I passed him in the hall. Evan Ames liked to call after me, mutter my name in a way that seemed somehow disgraceful and inappropriate. But all that stopped when Bane came down the hall after me; one glance and an angry glare sent the mortal boys scattering.
We were meant to mingle, to fit in. We were supposed to act like them, disappear within a crowd of them to pull attention away from ourselves. But mortals and magic did not mesh. Ever.
P
ercy Bysshe Shelley distracted me from those curious stares. Lord Byron annoyed me just enough that I was too worked up over his personal history to notice how often Cherrie and Samantha gawked at me or how Ricky and Evan kept silent around me, ducking Bane’s gaze when he caught them watching whenever he happened to pass by. The first few days, I thought the material would keep my focus from all the curious stares. And it had. I’d barely noticed the shrewd, critical—or leering—looks. Then, with one schedule change, that beautiful bastard walked right into the classroom and my attention on Romantic literature went the way of land lines and printed phone books.
The moment he stepped into the classroom, days into the beginning of the semester, Bane held the attention of every person sitting stoically still at his approach. One step, two more, and with each tousle of his thick, dark hair, with every click of his boots against the tile floor, the air seemed to evaporate a bit more. The room had gone soundless and cold like the wind stilling before a storm, readying for a torrential onslaught that flirts in the heavy clouds far above. Bane entered that room ten years ago with a casualness I’d never seen anyone else repeat. He’d been a boy too grown for his body, with limbs and muscle threatening to break through all that taut skin, as though another creature pulsed beneath his bones, something fiercer that would rattle everything boring and mundane about Crimson Cove. Just like the hurricanes that disturbed the Cove and broke the pines and maples from their root beds, Bane Iles came into my world ready to rip it apart.
He did that with one slow look my way.
And now he was doing that yet again as I stared at him standing outside of my big city door.
“Janiver Benoit.”
It wasn’t a greeting, not something Bane uttered to make me feel welcome. He spoke my name like a forgotten memory. One that maybe he should feel guilty about recalling but enjoyed too damn much to let that guilt settle in. At least, those cool, steel eyes, that not-really-there smirk, said that’s what my name off his tongue meant.
It was like seeing a beautiful caged animal behind bars; one that wasn’t really trapped, like it had sorted out just how to escape and wanted to toy a little with his keeper. But I had never kept Bane Iles. I doubted anyone could.
Bane had been beautiful—a silent, grumpy heap of maleness that made others back away whenever they caught sight of him. Girls ignored their schoolwork or the attention of any other boy whenever Bane walked down the hallway. He turned heads because he was massive, well over six feet tall. He kept those heads turned because he was beautiful. Bane and his younger cousins that had been sent to live with his uncle in their higher coven territory were like most of the Grants—handsome and hard. Rugged, but still refined. Bane, though, was darker, his complexion deeper, like the color of a tawny hawk’s feather, but his eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen. They almost looked like bright silver. They’d shone like crystal whenever he slipped into our English Lit class just seconds before the tardy bell rang.
Still, that easy calm that he’d pulled off as a kid—his face turned toward whatever lecture Mr. Matthews was giving yet his eyes slanted down at me—had strengthened with time, had leveled into something so smooth and effortless, I would have sworn it was instinctual. His limbs were too relaxed. His fat, tempting bottom lip dented just slightly in the center as though he couldn’t keep from tucking it just a bit between his teeth was just too perfect.
Everything about him—the mammoth arms barely concealed beneath that brown leather jacket, the long, slim fingers and thick veins along the backs of his hands, the endless stretch of his legs in those dark jeans and the relaxed cast of his body, the threat of violence pulsing behind his crystal eyes—was a giant contradiction of strength, violence, and sensuality.
“Ah, excuse me, sir, but the plane is waiting.” A smooth glance at the guard standing next to him and Bane nodded. Right. There was a second signature. I almost forgot.
“You packed?” he asked me, moving to step over the threshold until I stopped him. Bane wasn’t a wizard accustomed to people getting in his way, and I, with my arm blocking him from entering my apartment, gave him just enough pause to glance down my body, that gaze lingering a bit too long at my braless chest and unbuttoned jeans. “Red?” He grinned, catching a glimpse of my underwear.
I refused to let it show that him just standing there, looking the way he did, evoking the memories and sensations he did in me had thrown me in the least. That way led to madness and chaos. I’d never recover from either. “This isn’t the Cove. You don’t get to come and go as you please.”
He leaned against the door, ignoring his guard as the man nodded and walked toward the elevator at the end of the hall. “You know, Jani, I think you’d like how I come and go.”
“Thanks, not interested.” Lie. Total and complete lie, I told myself.
It took him exactly three seconds to smirk. It was more than a grin this time, but not an expression that a stranger would take as friendly. That’s generally about all Bane could manage in the way of a friendly or even mildly flirty grin. “Pity,” he said, still giving me the once-over.
“I’ve had about a two-minute warning that you’d be here. Give me twenty minutes.”
“You gonna let me in?”
“Let the man in, Jani,” I heard my brother call from the laptop. I had totally forgotten that he was still there. “He’s taking you back in a private jet for free.”
“Nothing is free,” I tossed over my shoulder, deciding to don a defense of indifference, maybe mild rudeness where this wizard was concerned. I relented enough to not slam the door in Bane’s face before I turned back into my apartment and slipped into my bedroom.
“Is this the part where we discuss your payment?” Bane asked, resting against the door leading into my bedroom as I tugged out my suitcase from the closet and started throwing clothes into a messy pile in the center of it.
“You mean you two haven’t discussed that without me too?” One glance in his direction was all I offered, and I tried not to get too annoyed at the way he moved his gaze around my place, looking over his shoulder into the tiny kitchen and sparsely outfitted living area. There was only one bathroom and one bedroom, and every wall in the place was a beige-gray with thick, pre-war molding, original lead paint and all. Only my bedside table held anything personal—a picture of me and my siblings two years ago, back before Sam lost his wife and Mai’s marriage went into the toilet, and one of my mother before she left Haiti for New Orleans and met my father.
The barren landscape of my apartment was by choice. The sterile wall color and vintage appliances and bathroom fixtures weren’t, but I usually only stayed here long enough to pass out or lock myself in my bedroom with my laptop in front of me as I worked.
“Would we do that, sis?” Sam asked, his voice a little too chipper for my liking.
“Plan on a conversation when I get there.” He might have looked worried when my face popped up too close to the camera on my laptop. I wouldn’t know since I hit the exit button and powered down the machine before he could argue.
“You’ll be paid well if you can get the Elam back.” Bane settled smoothly on my bed as I continued to move around the room gathering essentials, and he didn’t bother looking away when I tugged off my tank to put on a bra behind the half-open closet door.
In the mirror on the back of the door I noticed Bane working his hands together, one of only a couple nervous ticks I knew he had. He had more runes on his skin than I remembered, peeking out beneath the cuff of his long gray t-shirt and others that became visible when he discarded his jacket.
Mortals thought those were only tribal-style tattoos. We let them think that. In fact, we didn’t explain anything to the mortals, even if they happened upon our world. Generally, if they sorted out who and what we were, they were too terrified or too convinced their mind was playing tricks on them to understand the complexities of magic.
Bane defied explanation anyway. Mortals looking at him would see only what their e
yes told them was true—that the rugged face likely came from a roughneck gene pool; that his stature was the result of hours spent honing and sharpening his physique, that his tattoos were clever designs some artist fashioned out of his imagination on slow shop nights. But none of that was true. No artist inked doodles into glyphs and forms at random. Every line, circle, and etching on his skin had meaning.
The marks were runes, ancient symbols that engendered power, fine art that resulted from study, from sacrifice so that Bane would become more than a gifted wizard. He knew spells that time had buried, rhymes and hexes that evoked power, terror that mages and clerics of every conceivable study had blown into the winds of time. They were literally etched on his body.
My gifts did not demand the sacrifice of blood and pain. I had studied, not to Bane’s extent, but my runes were there—smaller, simpler, but still very much there.
Mortals would never know what the symbols meant, but that didn’t mean their own instincts wouldn’t keep them from the instinctual understanding they held to avoid underlying strangeness and possible danger. That much hadn’t changed in ten years.
I shut the closet door with a kick of my boot and zipped my leather motorcycle jacket up with a noisy scratch. Bane gave me the once over again, his gaze shifting up my body before he moved it back to my face. Bane also did like the way I was put together. At least, he seemed to always watch me like he did. Every square inch of my skin warmed beneath that close examination, and I realized maybe going back with him wasn’t the best idea.
I hadn’t left Crimson Cove because of Bane Iles—I had left despite him. He was just the sort of man that could have easily kept me in that tiny town with his perfect not-a-smirk and the slow, hungry glances of his eyes.
I’d left before Bane had convinced me to stay.
I’d left because staying was all I’d wanted to do.
“You look good.” That seemed a little too honest, something out of character for Bane to admit, and he seemed to regret it the moment he spoke. His frown, the heavy dip of his eyebrows made him look annoyed by his own honesty.