“You’re not really going to tie me up!?”
“It will keep us from any temptations while you lay here naked between us,” Jie said, and he fluttered his fingers across my swollen pussy again. He was a little more vigorous this time and I went silent as a wave of sensation swept over me and made my whole body tingle.
But then Thom brought the rope and it was over as quickly as it started.
“Stand up,” he said. “Legs tight together.”
The rope was very soft, and a little thinner than my pinky finger. He looped it around my waist and crossed it into a surprisingly complicated pattern over both my front and back, forming almost a woven barrier before tying my thighs together down to my knees. Then he lifted me back into bed.
My legs were bound together so tight I couldn’t walk out of bed if I wanted to, but they couldn’t even really touch me there without jamming their hands past narrow criss-crosses of rope. I relaxed more than I expected. Jie covered me with a blanket and I fell asleep before they were done getting ready for bed, but when I woke again, they were sleeping on either side of me. Thom looked young and almost innocent in sleep. Jie still had a little worry line in his brow, but a slight smile on his face, and so he didn’t look innocent at all. His hand was resting gently on my hip. When I realized it, my skin tingled anew.
Each night with these men was like nothing I had felt before.
I guess I was getting used to it. A little bit.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alissa
“You can just stay home today, Tulip. How does that sound? Read as much as you like, or explore the web. Or the internet. Are they the same thing?” Rayner looked irritable about the entire concept.
“That sounds wonderful.”
He had stepped into Jie and Thom’s room in the morning. They were just stirring.
“Dress her in something from the trunk,” Rayner said. “I think the old dresses will fit. When we don’t have to go out among the mundanes I would much rather see you wearing something elegant. I’ll make breakfast for you this morning. Any requests?”
“Um…eggs?”
“Eggs, fried in butter? And a sliced tomato fried as well?”
That was exactly how I liked my eggs. And I was the only person I knew who always sliced and sautéed a tomato alongside my eggs.
He flashed me a smile of triumph over what he already knew.
He knew me.
“I like the pink dress,” Jie said to Thom, opening the trunk. The smell of cedar and aging fabric wafted out.
“Pink don’t go with red hair! Lilac.”
“How do you have an opinion on this, anyway? Bertie didn’t wear dresses.”
“Three sisters, remember?”
The trunk was full of long, Victorian dresses trimmed with lace and ribbons, with puffed sleeves and faded but beautiful colors. “Where did these come from?” I asked.
“When Rayner met you, he had this idea of how you looked,” Jie said. “By the time he found you again, the fashions were completely different. Sometimes he wanted to remember you that way, but he had to go to a dressmaker and ask for a century-old style and they hated that. They’d try to talk him out of it or refuse until he convinced them it was for a costume ball, but back then every dressmaker knew if you lied about a costume ball. So he turned to the second-hand market, but then the stuff was all worn out. So ever since, we’ve saved gowns. Usually from the estates of female friends who have passed on. A lot of vampires collect old clothes. They have period balls now and then for showing them off. But this dress is for daily wear.”
I soon found myself trussed head to toe in Victorian undergarments, petticoats and corset.
“What about underwear?” I asked.
Thom gave me a grin that told me everything.
“But…” I faltered. They knew all too well how much…wetness I produced in their presence.
“Something for us to think about,” Jie said. “If a man can’t have what he wants right now, at least let him think of what is to come.”
“Nothing is to come!” I cried.
“Something’s damn sure to come,” Thom replied. “Sooner or later.”
Clad in a long dress of lilac trimmed in brown velvet and lace in a dark cream color, like it had been tea-dyed, I went to the library and they blessedly left me alone. I had to admit I felt very romantic in the dress. The fabric had a pleasant weight to it. Maybe this was familiar to me too. The books were mostly older, but I didn’t mind that. I liked old books, and they seemed carefully chosen. I spent a long while just opening them and looking for inscriptions like the one that said—
Christmas 1911
To Bertie—
This one’ll make you laugh
—Thom
Others were gifts to the vampires from people whose names I didn’t know.
Then I found one inscribed:
Dear Bertie,
I hope you enjoy this book verry much,
Ruthie
I ran my fingers down the page.
I knew and loved this little girl once. She gave me this book.
I was a man, then. But I was still in this same position, the pet and thrall of vampires. I wondered how I felt about it. I couldn’t imagine, and yet, the past was right here in my hands.
I could feel my mind stretching out, exploring new paths I could never have imagined when I was just Alissa, witch of the Order, and I knew I could never cram my mind back into that small box again.
No wonder it was so terrifying.
Of all the books on the shelf, I turned to a selection of books on China, as I was also curious about this other life in another country I knew little about. A Moment in Peking had Bertie’s name written in the front.
I curled up with the book for a while. Time vanished and before I knew it, it was time for dinner.
I had just sat down and picked up my fork when someone rapped on the door.
“I’ll get it.” Rayner walked down the hall to the front of the house. I heard the old door groan open and an anxious voice.
“My aunt said…you were the ones to talk to if I had any trouble,” I heard Dee say.
“That’s correct. Come in,” Rayner replied.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rayner
By the time I showed Dee to the dining room, my clan had put their bowls of blood away and were just drinking wine while my Tulip let her food grow cold, watching us.
I pulled out a chair for Dee, but she shook her head and wouldn’t sit.
“What kind of trouble?” I asked.
“Well…a really clean cut white guy in a business suit—kind of a preacher vibe to him—drove up to me when I was walking back from Ray’s store and he asked me about you. If I’d seen you around lately. He offered me twenty bucks. I didn’t tell him anything. Then he asked if Aunt Wanda was home, and I lied and said she was. Then he asked me if I knew how to keep quiet. I didn’t even know what to say. I said I wasn’t a snitch or something like that, and he said that was good, because if I told anyone I’d seen him asking about you, he’d kill Kira.”
“What?” Alissa slapped her fork on the table. “It’s probably the Order. What if they really hurt her?”
“Shh,” I told her. “They won’t. You were right to tell us. These are, as you guessed, empty threats.”
The Order wouldn’t battle us on our own turf. I was sure of that. The technology was going to drain some of their power to begin with, and killing a human child who lived outside of their own town was a ludicrous threat. Dee lived in the real world and didn’t even know her aunts were real witches and not just mundane Wiccans. It might bring the human police down upon their village. No warlock or witch was going to kill a human in order to get to me.
“Where is your daughter now?” Alissa asked, clearly concerned for the fate of all children.
“She’s with Carly…”
Carly was a Sinistral witch who lived on the block. I nodded. “Good. Leave her there. Sh
e’s safe. Can you describe this man anymore? What he looked like? What he was driving?”
“An old Cadillac from the 80s,” she said. “Light blue.”
“That’s Father Joshua’s car,” Alissa said, and I could see her shrinking in terror right before my eyes. “I don’t think he’s ever left the village to come this far. He—he really wants me—“
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He can’t reach you here. The house is protected. I’ll take care of him.” I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the man who hurt her, and make sure he was wiped off the face of the earth and could never scare her again. “Silvus, come with me. Thom and Jie, you should stay with the girls. Dee, I suggest you stay here until we come back.”
“I need to go to Carly’s and check on Kira.” But she looked at Alissa and seemed concerned about how scared she was and what she was doing here with the four of us. I saw suspicion in her eyes. “So who the hell is Father Joshua, anyway?” she asked.
“I’ll explain,” Jie said. “Go get him.”
I kissed Alissa’s forehead. “I’ll be back very soon. Don’t worry. He came to us, the arrogant bastard. This makes it easy.”
“He’s very powerful,” she whispered. “And he has…weapons.”
“We’re very powerful,” Silvus said dismissively. “He is a child.”
I could tell Alissa thought our confidence was misplaced, but she’d soon see that we’d handled much worse than a warlock cult leader. We knew what we were doing, and I would bet a considerable sum that Father Joshua was the one underestimating us. Devout followers of Ethereals tended to do stupid things because they thought their good spirits would protect them against our evil. But he was the hypocrite who poisoned the mind of my Tulip. Her nightmare would soon be over, and with the head of the snake cut off, I could rescue her family and put everything to rights.
Before I left, I told Jie, “Just don’t fall for any tricks.”
“Fall for any tricks? I’m insulted.”
It was true. It was very…human of me to say that. I trusted my clan completely. Jie and Thom would keep Lisbeth safe in the house no matter what Father Joshua might try and pull.
We took the car the short distance to Ray’s store, Silvus using his wand to pick up traces of Ethereal magic Father Joshua might have left behind.
“Hmm.” Silvus crouched on his knees and elbows, tapping the pavement. “Father Joshua was here. At least, I presume. This is Ethereal magic, in a sense. But it has a very unusual feel to it.” He pressed his face to the street and sniffed.
“You look ridiculous,” I said. “Just so you know. The dog in that yard even stopped to stare at you. What are you picking up?”
“Well…” Silvus poked around for a long moment, unperturbed by dogs or the curtain poked open in another nearby house with a yard littered in old plastic toys. “There is a dark smell to it. But it’s Ethereal magic. No doubt about it. I used to get this same sense occasionally in the old days,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s the smell of…channeling dark magic through white means,” he said. “Like money laundering magic. You tap into evil magic via a ‘righteous’ mission, creating a back channel. It’s not a good thing.”
“I figured that much. I’ve learned at least a few things from you over the years.”
“Religious groups sometimes use this sort of magic to maintain power,” Silvus continued. “But it’s an advanced technique. And rather arcane now.”
“What, exactly, does it mean for us? Just get to the point, Sil. I don’t need all the magical musings.”
“It just means that our warlock friend has a way of converting black magic into white magic. Ethereals are not always ‘good’, they are just orderly and value justice and fairness. Father Joshua, I suspect, has been able to commit acts of evil by devoting himself to an orderly and just society. To the Ethereals, we are a force of chaos, so we must be destroyed.” Silvus gave me plenty of magical musings anyway, as I knew he would. “What it means for us is…we should be careful. I believe Alissa when she warned us about the purification spells. However, our Sinistral spirits thrive on freedom.” He waved a hand at me, beckoning me to slip a palm in his. “We should ask for their blessing. Magic works best when you state a clear intention and ask for aid.”
“Ah, you and your prayer circles, Silvus.”
“This is where the best warlocks work their craft,” Silvus chided me. “In the quiet moments.” He laced his fingers with mine. Secretly, I admired him more than I would ever admit. I knew his focus and patience were what had kept me alive, and allowed us to find Lisbeth. “O Sinistrals, you who value free will over order, I ask you to keep our spirits safe in the pursuit of freedom, most especially, our dearest Lisbeth, or Alissa. As the fire cleanses the woodland, and the storm brings life to the land, we may cause harm, and we ask that you shield us against any imposing forces that may try to stop us. So it has been, and so shall it be.”
We spoke the final words together, but I was ready to kick some ass.
We were in the human world. Magic only went so far, and casting spells within view of mundanes was strictly forbidden. This would be a physical fight and probably over in minutes.
“So where is he?” I asked.
“Close. This way.”
Silvus crossed streets with only a brief check for oncoming cars. If cars had time to stop for us, we just kept on going and made them brake.
“You said he was close?” We drove through a few neighborhoods. “He’s trying to lure us away from her. We should turn back.”
“The wards on the house are strong,” Silvus said. “Trust Jie. They’re safe.”
“We were just forming a plan to get past the wards on his village,” I said. “He can do the same thing.”
“No, not exactly,” Silvus said. “A house is easier to lock down than an entire village. But even more importantly, Lisbeth doesn’t want to go with him. Her family, hopefully, can be persuaded to leave with us of their own will. That matters, when it comes to magic.”
“Are we sure she can’t be persuaded by him?” I growled. “I’m trying my best to be a good husband to her, but I want my wife. She wants her little sisters back.”
“She is surely beginning to remember,” Silvus said. “At the ice rink…for a moment the two of you seemed just like you have always been.”
“Yes. But there is one thing I’ve never been able to give her.”
“A daughter…,” Silvus said.
“What if, one day, she would rather be with someone who can give her children?”
“Maybe we should allow her a child,” Silvus said. “This time around…obviously Bertie couldn’t have children. Li Mei was sickly. But these days, women can go to a sperm bank, or a Sinistral warlock might…”
“I don’t know.”
“I know it wouldn’t be yours, but—it would be hers, and so it would be ours.”
“I can’t watch her die,” I said shortly. “I can bear losing Lisbeth because I know you’ll find her again. I don’t want to be a father who will outlive my child. My blood or just hers, doesn’t matter. I know I’ll love it and it will make me think of…what could have been.”
Five hundred years of losing her, and losing the entire world she inhabited—all the friends she made, the neighborhoods we lived in, the shops and restaurants we frequented and entire ways of life—it was getting to me. Time moved so fast. One moment, we would have a baby and the next moment I would be caring for an old woman who called me her father.
No. I can’t bear it.
Silvus took my hand and squeezed it gently. “All right, Rayn. I won’t speak of it again.” He slammed on the brakes so hard my head knocked into the car and whipped into a abandoned lot with just one car parked there—the Cadillac. Weeds grew out of splits in the pavement. This was like many parts of American cities that had seen better days, brick buildings as old as Thom squeezed next to each other, now abandoned or nearly so. It was hard t
o tell an open store from a closed one. Nothing here was thriving, but the wide promenade between the rows suggested that once this had been a bustling shopping area.
Silvus looked at the largest building on the block, an old department store.
“He’s in there,” he said.
Suddenly, my stomach felt a hollow, nervous sensation that I last felt when battling a high demon. My radar for danger, finely honed over the years, whispered a warning.
“You’re not afraid of abandoned stores, are you?” Silvus asked.
“Something’s…strange,” I said.
“What are you picking up?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, not wanting to seem a paranoid fool. It was likely just my anger and frustration at my Tulip’s pain and fear. I was too sensitive to her moods.
Silvus looked at me with understanding. “This man doesn’t deserve a moment of your concern, Rayner,” he said, matter-of-factly.
When someone knew you as long and well as Silvus knew me, just one sentence could snap me back to rights. I nodded.
I cracked my knuckles. “Let’s put the fear of Sinistral into this arrogant boy.”
Chapter Thirty
Rayner
The door of the old department store was open a crack, the shining silver metal leading us to empty spaces, cleared of merchandise and almost all the shelves and fixtures as well. The rooms were large and well-lit by the tall windows.
“Ah. Brings back some memories,” Silvus said. “Nothing makes me feel old like peeling American plaster. In Baltimore, no less! One of the great ports of the colonies. In my mind, all of this is surely new and glimmering.”
I knew what he meant. When we came to America everything seemed to be booming, new and modern.
I had no idea when the department store had last been open. Some of the pink and turquoise wall colors had to be 1980s, but the building was old brick and plaster. Ornate ceiling tiles hung loose over our heads, drooping with moisture damage. The elevator was pure art deco with Bakelite buttons, the doors permanently wedged open to an empty shaft leading down to a dark basement. My eyes quickly adjusted to the shadowed bricks below.
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