by Vivian Wood
“Go ahead, then,” Aeric said with a shrug.
“Okay. I just…” Echo hesitated. “If something goes wrong, I want you to stop me. Knock me out if you have to, okay?”
A muscle ticced in Aeric’s jaw, but he just gave her a noncommittal shrug. Echo decided to take that as assent, so she leaned over the scrying mirror to begin her work.
Echo used the knife to cut her left palm, trying not to wince at the pain from the dull little blade. She gave Aeric a nervous glance, then pressed her open palms against the scrying mirror and closed her eyes. Concentrating on Tee-Elle and their history together, Echo summoned the bonds between them.
The search unfolded in her mind, the scrying mirror’s inner workings appearing to Echo as an endless map of finely-wrought circuits all connected to one massive motherboard. Small and large sections lit up and dimmed as Echo worked to eliminate all the thousands of extraneous thoughts in her mind, pushing away everything that was not connected to Tee-Elle.
Sweat broke out on Echo’s forehead as something tickled her mind. She focused on it as hard as she could, trying to zoom in on the right circuit. A frustrated moan slipped from her lips when the strength of her spell overcame her and sent her spiraling, blowing past the connection she needed to find.
“Shit,” Echo said, opening her eyes.
Aeric was staring at her with something like genuine concern.
“You haven’t moved for an hour,” he informed her. “I was very close to rendering you unconscious. Rhys would have my head if I let you hurt yourself.”
Echo blew out a breath and wiped her forehead with her clean hand. She pulled her other hand away from the mirror, now sticky with drying blood, and sighed.
“I overdid it a little,” Echo admitted. “My magical strength has been uneven since I got here. Sometimes it’s boundless, other times it is very weak.”
“It is weak now, is it not?” Aeric asked. He set a bottle of water before her and waved at it, indicating that she should drink some.
“Yeah,” Echo said, uncapping the water and taking a long sip.
“It’s Rhys.”
Echo narrowed her gaze and drank some more water.
“What do you mean?” she asked, not sure whether she really wanted to know.
“Witches—”
“I’m a medium,” Echo snapped, not liking the word.
Aeric gave her an impatient glare before continuing.
“Mediums are a kind of witch,” he said, flapping a dismissive hand. “As I was saying, witches gain power and stability from their life mates. I am surprised you do not know this.”
Echo set down the water bottle and considered his words.
“I don’t have any mediums to ask,” she said.
“You must have inherited the ability from your mother,” Aeric told her. “It is how one gets the gift.”
“Well, my mother is dead,” Echo snapped. “She can’t, or won’t, tell me these things. Tee-Elle is the only witch in my family, and she’s got different abilities.”
“Gris-gris witch,” Aeric mumbled.
“What?” Echo asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” Aeric said, shaking his head. “I did not know of your mother.”
Echo lost her patience.
“It doesn’t matter. Go back to what you were saying before, about life mates.”
“Yes,” Aeric said with a nod. “Witches are like… lightning rods, maybe. They attract power from the world around them, but they attract it in large, quick draws. The life mate helps the witch balance, store the energy. Keeps the witch from blowing out her…”
Aeric paused, obviously trying to find the right word.
“Fuses?” Echo suggested.
“Fuses, yes.”
“How does the life mate do that and not get… you know, struck by lightning?” Echo asked, letting her lashes fall over her eyes. She desperately wished she was having this conversation with anyone other than Aeric, but she needed to know the answer more than she needed to protect her modesty.
Aeric grinned then, revealing shockingly perfect, white teeth.
“Mates are protected. You cannot blow Rhys’s fuses, Echo.”
Echo’s whole being blushed beet red, and she had to take several calming breaths to ignore Aeric’s sudden amusement.
“Let’s just get this over with, okay? I almost got it last time,” Echo muttered.
“One moment, before you start,” Aeric said, holding up a finger.
He dashed out of the room, returning a few minutes later with a bundle of cloth bunched in one hand.
“Here,” he said, thrusting it out.
Without even asking, Echo recognized it as Rhys’s. She could actually smell his distinctive scent from six inches away, which was sort of creepy. Echo reached out and tugged the shirt from his fingers, less because Aeric was forcing it on her and more because she wanted to hold it. She wanted everything that belonged to Rhys for herself, didn’t even want his fellow Guardian holding his t-shirt.
“I think I might be going crazy,” she wondered aloud.
Aeric tsked and took the shirt back, laying it over Echo’s shoulders. Rhys’s scent invaded her senses, and some tension deep inside Echo eased; until this moment, she hadn’t even known the negative feeling was present.
“Better?” Aeric asked, looking smug.
Echo glared at him but didn’t answer, turning back to the mirror instead. She bit her lip and cut her other palm this time, slapping it down onto the mirror.
She opened her mind again, willing the broad circuit board image to appear. This time when she examined the network, her senses were much clearer. She felt the tickle of a possible connection right away, and she followed it without hesitation. Keeping her tracking smooth and slow, she closed in on a flickering section of circuits.
“Ah,” Echo breathed. A light flickered, a tiny piece of information ripe for the picking. Echo plucked at it, closing the light within herself, and images began to form in her mind. Echo found Tee-Elle first, then began slowly pulling back, giving herself a little more of the whole picture each time.
Tee-Elle, trying to pick a lock in a tiny, dark room. A three-story house covered in peeling white paint. The numbers 227 on the front door. The neatly-kept, familiar-looking street. The neighborhood, complete with a sign.
Welcome To Historic Algiers Point, it read.
“I found her!” Echo cried.
She let the vision fade, opening her eyes with a relieved grin. For a second, she was wildly confused. Then she realized that Aeric was nowhere to be seen. Rhys stood in his place, looking thunderously angry.
“Uh… hey?” Echo said, wrinkling her nose. “What are the chances that Aeric didn’t tell you my plan?”
“Zero,” Rhys said, crossing his arms. His eyes had darkened from emerald to near-black, and he seemed to be making a great effort to keep from unleashing the full measure of his temper on Echo.
Rhys grabbed her hands and turned her palms up, his jaw tensing as he examined the cuts she’d made with the Swiss army knife.
“You did not need to hurt yourself. I would have found your aunt without your blood,” he growled.
“When was that going to happen?” she asked, the words out of her mouth before she’d thought them through.
Rhys released her and turned to pace. Every line of his form was tense, and Echo could see him clenching and unclenching his fists.
“We already knew she was in Algiers Point. We would have found the house in a matter of hours,” he gritted through clenched teeth.
“Oh,” Echo said, wincing. She’d managed to insult his ability to do his job and insinuate that she didn’t trust him, all in one smooth sentence.
She watched as Rhys paced to the window, twitching the blackout curtains aside to let in a much-needed swath of sunlight.
“Tell me the house number, Echo,” Rhys said, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
It took everything in Echo’s power to keep fr
om just giving him what he wanted, just so she could soothe the wound to his pride.
“I want to go with you,” Echo said.
Rhys stilled, and for a moment Echo thought the vein pounding in the side of his neck might actually burst.
“Are you trying to kill me, woman?” he growled. “First you avoid my bed. Then you doubt my ability to do my job. And now you think I need a babysitter while I’m fighting?”
Echo bit her lip and shook her head.
“I don’t… I didn’t mean that, Rhys.”
Rhys turned to her slowly, pinning her in place with a steely glare.
“You are not going with us. You’re going to stay here, where I know that you are safe.”
Echo dropped her gaze to the table, tracing a whorled wooden knot with her fingertip.
“Look at me!” Rhys thundered. Suddenly he was next to her, pulling Echo to her feet.
Echo stared up at him, surprised at the vehemence of his insistence.
“Tell me that you’re going to do as you’re told,” Rhys demanded.
“I—” Echo faltered.
“Mate, so help me, if you step foot outside this house, I will punish you,” Rhys told her. “Now tell me you will behave.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Echo nodded. Rhys studied her face for several long moments before releasing her. She thought he’d storm off, but instead he grabbed her wrist and led her out of Aeric’s rooms.
“Don’t come onto this floor again,” Rhys muttered as he guided her up to his rooms.
Echo held back the sigh that threatened to escape, merely nodding instead. Rhys took her into his bedroom and sat her on his bed, making her wait as he fetched first aid supplies.
Silence reigned as Rhys cleansed and bound her palms, tightening the strange tether between them with every touch. He was surprisingly tender, especially after seeing the dominant need driving him only a few minutes earlier.
Once Echo was thoroughly aided, Rhys sat on the bed next to her and put an arm around her waist, pulling her close. He tilted her chin up and sought her lips, giving her a deep, hungry kiss.
It seemed that her would-be mate was as affected by their unsatisfactory sleeping arrangements as Echo was, which made her giddy.
“Tell me the house number,” Rhys said as he broke the kiss.
Echo frowned, wondering if his kiss had merely been intended to entice her to divulge the information. One look into Rhys’s shimmering green eyes and the mating bond tugged at her heart, making her lips part without her consent.
“Two Twenty Seven Pacific Avenue,” spilled out before Echo could resist.
A touch of humor lit Rhys’s features as he dropped another kiss to Echo’s lips. He withdrew too soon, leaving her wanting.
“You should be in my bed when I get back,” Rhys said, his bluntness making Echo blush. “I think you'll enjoy it as much as I will.”
With that, he turned and headed downstairs, no doubt rounding up the other Guardians for their mission. Echo stuck her tongue out at his retreating back, then flopped back on the bed with an angry groan.
“Asshole,” she whispered, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Rhys was an alpha male, his dominance an essential part of his personality. He was bossy and demanding, and those things made him as attractive as he was aggravating. There was no use denying that the same things that made Echo want to pull out her hair also made her panties dampen.
Still, that didn’t mean that she had to lay down and just take it, right? What man wanted an unresisting, lifeless partner? Echo’s guy friends at Loyola University had a name for women who lacked a certain spark, whether in bed or in personality: starfishing, they’d called it.
Echo’s lips twisted as she repressed a giggle. She was many things, but a starfish was not among them. She sat up and looked around Rhys’s room, thinking. She puttered around for a while, trying to come up with a good idea. She thought of several things, then discarded each as being useless or too close to breaking her word to Rhys.
Finally, a light bulb went off in her brain, and she grinned.
What if… what if I could just watch, without being there? I wouldn’t even have to leave the Manor at all.
Echo jumped up and snuck back upstairs to Aeric’s rooms, deliberately ignoring Rhys’s command to stay out of them. She grabbed the scrying mirror and ran down to the ground floor, laying the mirror out on the big dining room table.
She didn’t need blood this time — her connection with Rhys was already so strong that she could practically feel him. She was pretty sure that would be enough to scry for him. Then she could just watch the scene play out, assuaging her anxieties without defying Rhys.
She lay her bandaged hands on the mirror, closing her eyes. A second later she yelped and pulled back, shaking her burning fingers.
“What the hell??” she cried, looking at her reddened fingertips. “They hexed the freaking mirror? Ugh!!”
Echo stared at the mirror for a few moments, then snatched it up off the table. The hex was likely linked to the wards on the Manor, as were most of Gabriel’s spells. Therefore, she needed to step outside the wards for a few moments in order to make her scrying spell work.
Grinning at her own cleverness, Echo practically skipped as she went out the front door. Broad marble steps spread out from the Manor’s front porch to the street, and Echo traipsed down them. The wards ended at the bottom step, so Echo perched herself on a bench a couple of feet away. Close enough to hide in case there was danger, far enough to use the mirror. Probably.
Echo laid the mirror out on her lap and spread her hands out over it, but a soft sound interrupted her work. She cocked her head, listening. It sounded like… someone crying?
Standing up, Echo set the mirror on the Manor’s warded steps before she turned and looked around. It took her a second to identify the source of the sound, but eventually she saw a small figure huddled on the ground, just on the other side of the wrought-iron fence lining the Manor’s yard.
“Hey,” Echo called. “Hey, are you all right?”
The figure turned, revealing a dark-haired little girl with a tear-stained face.
“Are you okay?” Echo tried again.
“I lost my mommy,” the little girl said, her face screwing up to produce a fresh round of sobbing tears.
“Okay, don’t worry,” Echo said, glancing over her shoulder. The front door to the Manor swung over, meaning that Duverjay was going to make an appearance at any moment. Likely he was about to physically return Echo to the Manor’s warded grounds, little girl be damned.
Pushing the gate open, Echo took a step toward the kid.
“Why don’t you come in?” Echo asked.
“I can’t,” the little girl said, giving a sad hiccup.
“Why not? I can call the police for you, and we can just sit on the steps here,” Echo said, glancing back at the house. Duverjay was indeed coming down the stairs, mouth opening, no doubt intending to shout at Echo for her impertinence.
She looked back at the little girl, and Echo’s mouth went dry.
There was no little girl, only a tall, grisly looking creature with slimy blue skin, wickedly curved claws, and more razor-like teeth than Echo could count.
“Shit!” Echo said, scurrying backward, but she was far too slow. “No no no!”
The creature seemed to grin as it caught her arms and yanked her back, hissing at Duverjay. Duverjay raised a silver crossbow and fired off a shot. The monster howled with pain, the sound growing impossibly loud. The whole world slowed for a moment, and Echo’s heart pounded as she realized that the creature was trying to pull her into another bolt-hole.
Echo stopped resisting the creature all at once, sagging against it. Surprised, the creature let her go for a moment, just long enough for Echo to clap her hands on it and release a frisson of power.
The howling stopped as her magic sizzled through the creature’s body, engulfing it in a blaze of light and heat. One second it ga
ped at her, teeth gnashing. The next second it was gone, destroyed.
Echo sucked in a deep breath even as her knees gave out. She was faintly aware of the fact that Duverjay had picked her up and began to carry her back to the Manor.
Her eyes rolled up in her head, the last thought in her mind being that perhaps she’d underestimated the butler after all.
12
Chapter Twelve
Rhys
Rhys stalked into the Manor, giving Gabriel a sharp glance. Gabriel had an arm wrapped around Echo’s tiny Aunt Ella, who looked as if she might keel over from exhaustion at any moment. Duverjay met them at the front door, giving Rhys an odd sort of bow.
“Your lady is upstairs resting,” the butler told Rhys. Duverjay had filled Rhys in on Echo’s near-disastrous escape attempt via text message, no doubt anticipating Rhys’s fury at the man’s failure to keep her in the Manor for a mere hour.
Rhys gave Duverjay a curt nod, and the butler made himself scarce. Rhys turned his attention to Gabriel, Aeric, and Tee-Elle.
“Gabriel’s going to take you upstairs to rest for a little while,” Rhys said, taking Tee-Elle’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “You and Echo can have breakfast together in the morning, as soon as you’re feeling up to it.”
“You’re too sweet,” Tee-Elle said, giving Rhys a faint smile and patting his arm. “That must be why my Echo likes you so much.”
Rhys’s gaze drifted up to the second floor, and he tried to keep his expression blank. Inside he was nothing but thunderously anger, but poor Tee-Elle didn’t need to know that.
“Must be,” Rhys muttered. “Gabriel, help her upstairs, please.”
Gabriel winked at Tee-Elle, making her laugh, and the two trudged up to the guest room on the first floor. Aeric had already given Rhys permission to put Tee-Elle there until something more permanent could be found for her.
“You’re probably going to have to beat her.”
Rhys’s gaze snapped to Aeric, who was looking far too amused.
“Shut up. I hope that when you find your mate, she tortures you twice as bad. Three times, actually.”