by Eva Chase
He made a noncommittal sound. “You watched me pick my way past a lock yesterday, didn’t you? Some of us don’t have a whole lot of choices. We do what we have to.”
I wouldn’t have pictured the boy I’d grown up with considering stealing his only option. “Who do you steal from?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not casing your joint. I don’t even do most of the actual stealing. There’s a guy who brings stuff to a warehouse, and I help with the… distribution, I guess you could say. But maybe if I make a good enough impression, I can move up. Get out of this freakin’ town. Get my mom out too.”
He put on this whole show of not caring what anyone thought, but he clearly cared about her. And he must have cared at least a little about me, or he wouldn’t have been here doing this favor.
“I am sorry,” I said. “For how things went after we left for Portland. Your mom deserved better than that.”
“Yeah,” Damon muttered. “She did.” Then, after a pause, he added, “I know you didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Just hearing him admit it felt like a major victory. I drew up beside him as we reached Master Cortland’s property. It was easy enough to hop chain-link. Damon landed first and offered me his hand, but I ignored it and jumped down on my own. The corner of his lips quirked up.
“Still don’t like to admit you could use a hand, huh?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Look who’s talking.”
That shut him up as we crossed the yard to the back door. He pulled out the metal picks from the cloth case he was carrying and knelt down by the keyhole.
“You don’t really need to be here, you know,” he said as he adjusted the rods. His eyes narrowed with concentration. “No point in you getting the heat if we get caught.”
“You’re only here because of me,” I said. “It’d hardly be fair if you got in trouble and I didn’t. I can take responsibility for my decisions, even if my family doesn’t seem to have the greatest track record there.” I glanced around, watching for headlights along the darkening road. “Anyway, there might be something in the compartment Seth found that he didn’t realize was significant and I would.”
Damon hummed under his breath with what could have been agreement or skepticism—it was hard to tell. Then the lock clicked over. He pulled the door open and swept his arm for me to enter ahead of him. “Ladies first?”
“Why thank you,” I said, with as much elegance as Philomena could have mustered. Which actually wasn’t that much, given her temperament. Elegance wasn’t really her style. As Damon closed the door behind us, I hurried to the front hall by the staircase.
Now that Seth had described it, it was easy to see the odd panel out, only half as wide as the others. I crouched down and pushed it the way he’d said. The panel popped open easily, revealing the notebook and the other books he’d mentioned.
A couple of glyphs marked the inside of the door—connection and power. If they’d been meant to keep it locked, the magic on them must have faded. I checked the other books Master Cortland had stashed with the notebook.
Was he using these for his research for my stepmother or some other project? I wavered and then scooped them all up. He’d notice someone had broken in from the missing notebook, so why not take everything?
“All right,” I said to Damon, kicking the panel shut. “No point in hanging around. Let’s get out of here.”
We strode back toward the door. I’d just reached the threshold when the notebook on the top of the stack burst into flames.
A yelp broke from my mouth. My hands jerked, tossing the books onto the kitchen floor. They fell with a thump. The notebook hissed, its cover already disintegrating, the pages crumbling into ash. The other books had flared up too. A sharp smoky smell filled the room. Damon’s jaw had dropped.
“No!” I dropped down, swatting at the flames, but they were already flickering out of their own accord. Leaving nothing but the burnt husk of the notebook. My proof, seared away. A choked sound escaped my throat.
“What the hell?” Damon said.
I drew in a shaky breath. “He had a protection on them.” Master Cortland must have had a spell laid to prevent any witching items from leaving the house. A wise move, actually, when he couldn’t work magic himself. A general catch-all could be laid down to last a long time—and it would prevent even him from bringing anything that would reveal us beyond that boundary, even if he were coerced somehow. Destroying the evidence immediately.
But the glyphs on the cupboard… I spun and checked the doorway. There they were, the same ones, faint but visible if you knew what to look for under the layers of paint. Shit. My heart stuttered. “There might be an alarm connected to those protections. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Damon grabbed my arm. We bolted across the yard together.
“He’s on vacation, right?” Damon said between sharp breaths. “That’s what Mr. Braniac said. Even if he comes racing back, he can’t get here right away.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But Mr. Cortland might have someone local on call just in case.” He had plenty at stake too. If the Assembly found out he was helping someone pervert a consort ceremony… There’d be hell to pay.
We scrambled over the fence and dashed down the road toward town. We’d just reached the first proper street when laughter echoed from up ahead.
Damon reacted with instincts that must have been honed from the Spark only knew how many petty criminal dealings. He snatched my elbow and jerked me into the shelter of a narrow walkway between one of the houses and its garage. We pressed against the rough shingles, watching the couple go by.
They looked like totally normal people. Meandering along hand-in-hand. Definitely not in a hurry to investigate a magical break-in. The panic gripping me eased off just a little. I glanced at Damon.
“I’m pretty sure we didn’t need to hide from those two.”
He let out a huff of breath. “You never know. Better to get out of the way than end up handcuffed.”
The space was so narrow that his chest brushed mine with that breath. His fingers were still curled around my arm, firm but not rough. The heat of his body radiated over me. I swallowed hard, and his gaze slid from the street to meet my eyes.
I wasn’t the only one affected by our closeness. For a moment we just stared at each other, Damon’s pupils dilating into the deep blue of his eyes. My breath was still a bit ragged from the run, and I was finding it awfully hard to catch it. We could have walked right back out there, but that would have meant pulling my gaze away from him. Which felt somehow impossible.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For helping me tonight, even if it didn’t work out. You didn’t have to do that. You never had to do anything for me, but you did, a lot.”
Damon shifted, his hand trailing down my arm to my wrist. His touch sent a pleasant shiver through my nerves in its wake. “Don’t think I’m going to roll over and play nice just because you butter me up, angel.”
I grimaced at him. “I’m not trying to butter you up. I’m just saying what I’m honestly thinking. Isn’t that what you want—honesty?”
A soft, strangled noise worked its way out of his throat. He tipped his head forward, his forehead almost grazing mine. His mouth just inches from my lips.
“There’s so much I fucking want, Rose,” he murmured with a rasp. A full-out shudder of longing shot through me. But he didn’t bridge that last short distance. “More than you could handle.”
“I always kept up with you before,” I said. “All of you.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” He inhaled deeply. “I missed you too.”
He pushed away from me the second the words had left his mouth, so abruptly I almost thought I’d imagined them. But I definitely wasn’t imagining the flush that had colored the back of his neck above his jacket collar. He motioned for me to follow him with a jerk of his hand, n
ot bothering to look back. I shook off the chill he’d left behind with me and hurried after him.
The farther we went into town, the more my immediate fears faded. I didn’t think anyone would be able to tell who had been in the house. Maybe Master Cortland would be able to make a guess if he determined why we’d been after his notebook, but that would only lead him to me, not the guys. I’d just have to deal with him when it happened. It’d be difficult for him to prove anything without revealing what I’d been trying to steal and getting himself into a heap more trouble.
The other guys were waiting down the alley by the back of the Lennox Hardware store. The café’s patio was closed, but we weren’t here for an extended chat anyway. The others had just wanted to be ready to act in case I needed anything else.
My heart sank, seeing them waiting. I held up my hands as we came into view to show how empty they were. Seth frowned, and Kyler’s eyes widened. Jin straightened up off the wall he’d been leaning against and ambled to meet us.
“Not as simple as you were hoping?” he said with a crooked smile.
“No,” I said. “We couldn’t get the books. There was…” I trailed off, my gaze veering to meet Seth’s. A fresh flicker of warmth shot through me, just remembering his hands and his mouth on me last night.
He had some idea now. He hadn’t pushed for answers, and I hadn’t offered many, but he knew I had more power than he would have once thought was possible. And that other people, people like me, had that power too. But I hadn’t revealed that much to the other guys yet.
“There was a sort of trap,” I settled on. “It wouldn’t let the books leave the house. I know that sounds weird—”
“Fucking weird,” Damon muttered.
“It’s okay, Rose,” Ky said before I had to go on. “You don’t have to explain. We get it.”
Jin rested his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs rubbing over the muscles there with just enough pressure to release the tension I hadn’t realized was coiled inside them. “One way didn’t work,” he said in his usual relaxed tone. “So we move on to something else.”
I didn’t know what else. For a second there, all I really wanted was to lean back into him and forget all the uncertainties ahead of me. His hands moved from the base of my neck to the peaks of my shoulders and back again, the gentle caress flooding me with even more warmth.
How was it possible that I wanted all of these guys so much? I wanted Damon gazing down at me like he had right before he’d told me he’d missed me. I wanted Seth’s careful strength pressed up against me again. I wanted to rediscover the taste of Kyler’s mouth, to stay long enough to see how his eyes would light up at my touch.
It hung all around us like a hum in the air. I wanted all of them—and I could almost taste their desire echoing back at me. What was the point in trying to deny it? That was just the way it was. Maybe the way it’d always been, only our feelings had grown from childish affection to the deeper, headier emotion coursing between us now.
And I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with that knowledge. I wanted them, sure. But how could I have any of them? They were unsparked and I was a witch—a witch who still needed a fully-fledged consort. I wouldn’t even have the brief flares of magic they’d given me if I passed my twenty-fifth birthday without my spark properly kindled. The seed inside me would die and leave me with nothing but that terrible hollowness.
Maybe there was a chance—maybe it could work—but how could I risk my entire magical future just to find out?
Chapter Eighteen
Kyler
A cloud streaked past the rising moon, but I didn’t think I could blame that for the shadow that crossed Rose’s face. For a moment, standing there between the four of us in the alley, she looked so hopeless my heart wrenched.
“Mr. Cortland should be gone until after tomorrow,” I blurted out. “That’s the last day he had his mail held for. We could go back, try some other way—”
Rose was shaking her head. “The books are—we can’t take them. Consider them gone. And nothing but the actual books would have been enough proof to accuse a man with the standing Ma— Mr. Cortland has, in my community.”
Jin’s hands stilled against her back. I tried to ignore the way that simple contact ate at me.
She’d kissed me. So briefly, but it had been the best fucking thing I’d ever felt in my life. And then she’d run. She’d been upset and reaching out for comfort, and afterward she’d realized what a mistake she’d made. She looked so much more comfortable with Jin touching her than she had when she’d dashed for my door.
I wasn’t supposed to think things like that. She was still engaged, even if she meant to end it. But God how I wished I could have believed it’d be me she’d turn to, and not every guy here before me, if she was ready to move on.
“How do you think we should go on from here?” Jin asked.
Rose rubbed her mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe I can find out more from my stepmother, or my fiancé, somehow. There’s got to be proof on their end, somewhere, or they’ll slip up. Or we’ll think of something else.”
“We’d better go our separate ways for now,” Seth said, his gaze intent on her. “The longer you’re out here with us…”
My twin was right. The last thing Rose needed right now was to get caught running around with us, to give her stepmother ammunition against her. But just for a second, like a punch to the solar plexus, I hated him. I hated the way his words had made her eyes shimmer with affection. I hated Jin, for his hands now simply resting on her shoulders as if they belonged there. I hated Damon, for the glance she shot his way as if his reaction mattered that much to her.
But mostly in that moment I hated me. All the facts I had at my fingertips, all the data I’d dug up, and what good had it done her? What had I accomplished, really, that would actually help her get out of this mess we’d uncovered? I’d hacked into banks and spied on confidential mailings for her, and she was still just as trapped by her stepmother as before.
As eleven years ago when she’d been dragged away from us nearly for good.
Rose nodded and sucked in a breath. She blinked, the lamp out back of the hardware store catching on a glint of moisture in her eyes. The way she was looking at us… I couldn’t help thinking it was as if she believed she might not ever see us again.
She moved as if to step away from Jin, but then she spun around and wrapped her arms around him. His face blanked with surprise, but only for an instant. He hugged her back, tipping his head beside hers. The squiggle of jealousy in my gut squirmed deeper.
Damon started to turn away and head off. Rose detached herself from Jin and grabbed Damon’s sleeve. “You’ll survive this,” she told him, and pulled him into an embrace. Damon’s back stiffened, but his face seemed to wobble at the same time, that mask of indifference vanishing. He closed his eyes almost reverently and tugged her closer. Rose’s hand fisted in his jacket as if she never wanted to let go.
But she did. She released him, and Seth was already stepping forward to meet her. Something about the confidence with which my brother drew Rose into his arms made my throat tighten. When had he gotten so comfortable with her?
I stood there awkwardly, the last of the bunch. Rose squeezed Seth’s broad shoulder and then turned to me, because of course she couldn’t leave me out. I couldn’t imagine she had an unkind bone in her body.
She stepped toward me tentatively, and I extended my arms, abruptly unable to even meet her eyes. Embarrassed by how every particle of my body was jittering with eagerness at this chance to hold her, even if it meant so much more to me than it did to her.
I didn’t draw the hug out, just embraced her quickly and then pulled back. Rose’s hand groped after me for a second as if she’d meant to hug me even tighter. My gaze leapt to her face with a skip of my heart. Was that… pain flashing through her expression?
As if it’d hurt her that I’d barely accepted the embrace. As if it had meant something to her, more
than just a token gesture.
I opened my mouth, but my tongue tangled. There was no glib comment that could turn back time.
“I hope I’ll be seeing you all soon with better news,” she said, hunching her shoulders in her jacket. Then she was slipping away between the stores before I could figure out the right words to fix my mistake, which was feeling more and more colossal by the second.
A request for me to press the START button blinked on my TV. I picked up the video game controller, but the computer-generated enemies looming on the screen just made my worries niggle deeper.
There were too many real enemies threatening people I cared about. I hadn’t heard anything from Rose in almost two days, and as far as I knew neither had the other guys. At least a dozen times I’d picked up my phone ready to just text her some mindless message like, U OK? And then stopped myself when I remembered the look on her face when I’d pretty much rejected her embrace.
With a groan, I flopped over on the couch. Would it really be so hard to say something? Apologize, tell her I hadn’t wanted to overstep, and if anything I’d wanted to hold her too long, too tightly…
What if I’d just imagined that hurt, though? Wishful thinking? It wouldn’t be the first time. I didn’t have the best track record with girls. The last thing she needed was me hassling her about that when the marriage she was supposed to be planning was in the process of imploding.
My gaze came to rest on the one work of art on my wall that hadn’t come from anyone in this town. The little metal etching sent to me all the way from New Brunswick in Canada, from the one girl I’d had more luck than I deserved with. Marian.
It had been such a cliché. We’d started talking in the middle of an online game and somehow enjoyed each other’s conversation so much we’d just kept going after we beat the boss—who, for the record, we’d completely pulverized. Chatting on our headsets had turned into video chats and… more than just chatting. I’d called her my girlfriend. She’d called me her boyfriend. I hadn’t gone a day without seeing her face. We sent each other gifts like that etching on my wall.