Hell's Hinges

by S. M. Reine

  “Children that age barely learn anything,” he said.

  “That’s not the point. People just want you to babysit their kids.”

  “Clearly they don’t know me well,” James muttered.

  Elise laughed that unfamiliar laugh—one that sounded relaxed and genuine. It was downright human.

  “Don’t worry, James, I’ll never ask you to babysit my kids at your studio,” Betty piped up. “Mostly because I am never having kids.”

  “Sensible,” James said. “They all somehow smell like cheese.”

  Now everyone was laughing again. When Betty glanced his way, Lincoln managed a laugh too. And that felt as real, as normal, as everything else that they were doing. It was tempting to think that he belonged there. Maybe he really was just a visiting college student. Maybe it wasn’t fate that had dragged him to Elise Kavanagh’s doorstep but an innocuous hook up with a beautiful woman. Maybe this wasn’t all going to go completely wrong, very quickly.

  They stopped for gas halfway up the mountain. “I’m going to make a call,” James said. “Lincoln, you can fuel the Jeep, can’t you? I’ll pay inside.”

  “No problem,” Lincoln said, saluting him.

  It only took a minute for the pump to activate. Lincoln flicked the tab so that the handle would remain depressed as he stepped away.

  Elise was on the other side of the Jeep in conversation with Morrighan as she filled extra fuel tanks. “Yeah, it’s a Kawasaki,” Morrighan said. She had ridden up on her bike behind Thom’s vehicle, and now her helmet rested on the seat. The padding had left a red impression across her sweat-touched brow. “Do you ride?”

  “Whenever I can.” Elise trailed her finger along the bike’s leather seat. “Opportunities are rare.”

  The witch shook off the nozzle and holstered it. “Here’s one. You wanna take her? I’m about ready for a nap in the back of Thom’s ride.” She lobbed her helmet.

  Elise caught it. “I’ll take a shift on two wheels.”

  Morrighan must have trusted her high priest’s roommate a lot. She passed over the keys and left.

  For a moment, Elise and Lincoln were alone. The coven was elsewhere. Betty was raiding the convenience store. James was on his phone, pacing the sidewalk beyond.

  This wasn’t the right time to ask Elise for help. Their solitude would only last moments.

  “You sure that you know what you’re doing?” Lincoln asked, leaning his shoulder against the Jeep. “You look dressed for a day at the office, not for a day on a motorcycle.”

  “Why do you care?” Elise asked.

  Because I need your help. I need you back in my life. I need you to know who I am and make everything you broke better.

  “You seemed safety minded in the car, with the seatbelt,” he said. “I’m just surprised you wouldn’t be more careful on a more dangerous vehicle.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not worried about road rash. I’m a fast healer.”

  That was likely true. “Can’t even figure how you’ll get on that thing with a skirt that tight. Maybe I oughta ride it instead.” He reached out to touch the glossy metal.

  She stepped in front of him to block his hand. Instead, his fingers accidentally brushed her elbow. “Don’t touch the bike,” Elise said.

  She hooked her thumbs in her waistband and shoved the skirt down. Underneath, she wore boy shorts that molded to the bulges of her quads. She ripped the blouse open and tied it tight around her hair like a scarf, leaving her in a white tank that looked like a man’s undershirt.

  She plucked Lincoln’s stolen sunglasses out of his front pocket and slid them over her eyes.

  “Grab my skirt,” she said. “Take it to the cabin for me.”

  Elise mounted the motorcycle. She nudged the kick stand up. Twisted a gloved hand to rev the engine. Rubber squealed on pavement as she spun a one-eighty and tore out of the gas station. Gravel peppered Lincoln’s slacks.

  “Are you coming, Mr. Keyes?” called James. He’d come up from behind them and Lincoln hadn’t even heard.

  He felt like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “Just waiting for the Jeep to fill,” Lincoln said. He stepped back to the car. His whole body was humming with blood, pulse racing a thousandfold faster than normal.

  James was blocking the gas cap. His gapped collar flapped in the mountain air as he leaned an elbow on the side of the Jeep. “You know, Mr. Keyes, that Elise and Betty are very close.”

  “Elise is ahead of you,” Lincoln said. “I already got the ‘be nice to Betty’ threats. Don’t worry.”

  “Betty’s not my concern. I want you to remember which woman you came with this weekend,” James said. His voice dropped, quieter, and his cold blue eyes brightened. “And stop looking at Elise like that before one of us removes your ability to stare.”

  If someone had made that kind of threat to Lincoln as a young man, when he’d been more temperamental, he’d have risen to the fight. Those were the kind of words that earned a fist to the jaw. But even the wild hormones of youth didn’t win out against the patience of age. Striking James now would get Lincoln rapidly disinvited from the trip. He would lose access to Elise.

  “What are you, thirty-five? Thirty-six?” Lincoln asked. “You seem awful concerned with the lives of college girls for a guy who could run for president.”

  “That’s a hell of an implication. I merely lead Betty’s coven,” James said.

  And Lincoln’s dad had been a leader in the church community. Holy men were trusted, overlooked. It gave them access they shouldn’t have. Right now, Lincoln wanted to cut off James Faulkner’s access real bad.

  Find Sophie. Fix the Precept.

  “I promise I’m not fixing to make trouble.” Lincoln couldn’t without destroying the timeline. “I was just trying to be friendly. Sorry if I overstepped.”

  Some warmth crept back into James’s eyes. “Good.”

  “I call shotgun!” Betty cantered out of the mini mart cradling several oversized bottles of rosé. She nestled them in the back of the Jeep amid the extra blankets and pillows. “Only a few more miles until beach, privacy, and all the wine a coven can drink!”

  “You realize I brought a much better case of wine with me, don’t you?” James asked, helping her arrange the bottles safely.

  “Sure, but I can’t guzzle those,” Betty said. “I can guzzle my cheap rosé until the heat death of the universe without feeling guilty.”

  “And that might be sooner than you think,” Lincoln muttered.

  8

  J ames Faulkner finished the drive to Lake Tahoe in silence. He couldn’t keep up with Elise’s figure bobbing through traffic on the motorcycle, as if being a kopis had also given her a pavement-proof skull. He soon lost sight of her on Morrighan’s Kawasaki and was left to follow his dashboard GPS the rest of the way to King’s Beach.

  When they arrived, James found Elise braced at the edge of the sand, watching the lake, unresponsive to the cars pulling up behind her. She must have arrived at the cottages long before they did. He could only imagine the breakneck speeds she must have taken on the winding road to the private cove.

  James parked. “Why don’t you pick which cottage you want first?” he suggested to Betty as he turned off the engine.

  She was already out of the Jeep and halfway across the lawn. “On it!”

  “Unload,” James ordered Lincoln before following Elise to the beach.

  Elise squinted against afternoon sunlight, the freckles on her shoulders vivid from exposure on her ride. His feet sank into the sand. It was fine gold, softer than at Emerald Bay. He peeled off his shoes and stepped into the path of the waves. It was snowmelt, and so clear that it looked like glass slithering across the sand.

  He didn’t need to ask Elise to know that she, too, suspected Lincoln Keyes of malice. “What do you think he is?” James asked.

  “He’s something.” Elise had the helmet under her arm, weight cocked on one hip. Her expression as she studied Lincoln across th
e beach was unreadable.

  Lincoln looked as though he didn’t quite fit into his skin—at times surprising himself by his own movements, such as when he threw luggage so hard it knocked the front door of a cottage open. He didn’t look clumsy, though. When Lincoln got into the flow of unloading, his body moved with unsettling deliberateness.

  He moved a lot like Elise, in fact.

  A wandering kopis was the least dangerous possibility. For Lincoln’s sake, James hoped that was what was happening.

  “The most important question is, does he know who we are?” James asked. Plenty of people knew that there had recently been a woman who was the greatest kopis. All of them should have believed Elise to be dead.

  “I’ll find out.” She set down the helmet and cracked her knuckles.

  “We should be cautious in probing him. If he does know, though...”

  “I’ll fix it fast,” Elise said.

  “I will,” James said. “You should stay away from him. He’s got an eye on you.”

  “I’m not stupid enough to fall for a handsome face.”

  He hadn’t meant to imply any kind of attraction between them, whether mutual or one-sided. He’d only been talking about the potential threat. “You think he’s handsome?”

  “Betty does,” Elise said.

  The blond had her arms around Lincoln’s neck and her body thrown over his back as he hauled luggage (and Betty) with a good-natured grin. He was strong enough to handle a curvy research scientist and several suitcases at the same time without getting winded.

  Lincoln glanced over at them. He looked right at Elise, and his smile...changed. Like he knew her.

  “Don’t go near him,” James said.

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” Elise said. She strode toward the cabins, returning the keys to Morrighan and pointing Thom toward his cabin. She kept turning her back on Lincoln. She didn’t seem to notice the way he stared.

  She truly wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he muttered.

  As soon as they settled in at the cabins, Lincoln tried to speak to Elise alone. It shouldn’t have been difficult. The coven wasn’t particularly large, and their private beach sprawled from the nearby trail to a dock where yellow kayaks were stacked. It encompassed rocky shallows and golden sand. Privacy should have abounded.

  Yet every time Lincoln spotted Elise alone, James Faulkner appeared before Lincoln could speak to her. It could have easily been accident that James entered their cabin to help separate his luggage from Elise’s—it was easy for roommates to get confused while packing, after all—but then Windsong fired up the barbecue and called to Elise for help. She went over to fiddle with the charcoal, and Lincoln did too.

  He walked up to her, feeling more scared than he had any right to feel, and somehow still not nearly scared enough.

  I know who you are. And I need your help .

  It should have been that easy.

  “This charcoal’s damp,” Elise said. “I’ll get rid of the old stuff. We’ve got a new bag in the car. Go get it.”

  “Aye aye,” Windsong said. He jogged off.

  Lincoln and Elise were alone.

  “Hey,” he began to say.

  “I can dry out the old charcoal,” said James, stepping up behind Lincoln. He was holding a palm-sized notebook, studying each page carefully as he flipped through. “Mr. Keyes, why don’t you tell Betty it’s almost time to cook burgers?”

  Lincoln wanted to argue, but both Elise and James had been staring at him, so he walked off to find Betty.

  The coven ate in a big group, arrayed around picnic tables in the half-shade underneath trees. Squirrels kept sneaking up to steal potato chips, and Betty was so delighted she wandered off to feed them half of her turkey sub. That would have left Lincoln alone at his picnic table with Elise, but James immediately took the bench beside him.

  He was never gonna get a chance to ask her for help like this.

  “What time do we need to start drawing the circle to have it ready for midnight?” Betty asked, wandering back as she shook the last of her chips into her mouth.

  James checked his watch. “I should start around three.”

  It was two-thirty.

  Lincoln’s heart jumped. Drawing the circle—that would take both James and Betty but not Elise. She would be sidelined like Lincoln.

  “If we’ve only got a half hour before the circle, that means we should swim right the eff now,” Betty said, ripping her shirt off. “Come on, Elise! Before James finds work for us to do!”

  Lincoln opened his mouth to protest, but Elise took off her shirt too, and they raced each other to the water. They were an exercise in contrasts: Betty, with her every pleasant roll exposed by the delicate bikini strings; Elise, with a halter that looked modest by comparison, but revealed the geography of her back’s muscles to the sun.

  “Come on, Linc!” Betty shouted as she plunged into Lake Tahoe. She left footprints that were soon filled with swirls of icy water.

  “I don’t have a suit,” he called back.

  “That doesn’t sound like a problem to me! Get in here!”

  “Not everyone’s a nudist like you, Betty.” Elise kicked water at her friend.

  Betty squealed and sloshed a safe distance away before splashing back at her. There was no distance great enough to escape an attack from the would-be Godslayer, though. Elise shoved with her hands together like a paddle, and Betty was so shocked by the cold that she fell into the water.

  “Oh holy fuckballs, my nipples are like knives!”

  Lincoln laughed. “Who talks like that?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at the bench where Morrighan should have been sitting.

  She’d already run off to put on her swimsuit, too.

  Instead, Lincoln sat beside Thom Norrel, the visitor from Carson Creek Coven. He sat on the table, feet resting upon the bench underneath him. He wasn’t wearing shoes. A black mesh button-down hung loose around his lean torso, and his legs were hugged by leather. Lincoln wouldn’t have been caught dead dressed in leather in Nevada during the summer. Thom must have been real dedicated to his girly aesthetic to wear it when it was over ninety degrees.

  “They’re energetic and young,” Thom said. He looked like he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Betty. “They have no reason not to enjoy this beautiful day to its fullest.”

  “Beautiful hot day,” Lincoln said.

  “I’ve been places much hotter.” Thom surveyed Lincoln openly. “It feels like we know each other.”

  “I doubt it. I’m not from around here.”

  “You’re not,” he agreed. “Nor am I.”

  “We don’t know each other.” And Lincoln didn’t want to know him. “I’m just here to hang out with Betty.” He nodded toward the blond, who was throwing her bikini top at Elise. They hadn’t been joking about Betty’s fondness for nudity.

  “You’re an outsider,” Thom said.

  Prickles washed down Lincoln’s spine. “More than you know.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know.”

  The prickles didn’t stop. It was like frisson, over and over—an uncomfortable mist that made him need to inch away from Thom. Lincoln had never felt anything like it, the head-swimming, heart-pounding pressure. “You’ve gotta be a pretty strong witch.”

  Thom braced his elbows on his knees, gazing out at the lake. “Why do you think that?”

  Because sitting next to you feels like swimming in a bee hive . “You’re an interim high priest, and they’re sending you off to work with James Faulkner. He’s a big deal.”

  “I’ve heard he’s something of a magical savant, but rumors surrounding him are few.”

  That was because James Faulkner wasn’t going to become so ambitious as to master the universe for a few more years. “I only heard a little through my family’s coven. You’ll have to ask James if you want more information.”

  “I did not come to Reno-Tahoe
to learn more about a one-time dance instructor’s spirituality.”

  “Why did you come?” Lincoln asked.

  Thom was watching the women in the water. The whole coven was out there now, except for James. Elise was in the middle of it all. A normal twenty-something having fun with friends. “You should join them,” Thom said. “I have a swimsuit you can borrow. You can borrow anything you need from me. You need only ask for it.”

  “There’s no way you’ve got anything that’ll fit me. And if you did, I’d look like a fool.”

  Thom’s dark eyes looked black, even though the sun shining directly on his face should have lit up the brown in his irises. “Try me.”

  It didn’t sound like a challenge. “I’ll borrow anything you’ve got, I guess. Doubt Elise and Betty are gonna wanna share a cabin with me if I wear the same clothes all weekend.”

  “I’ll look at what else I have.” Thom held out a hand. “For now, take this.” He dropped a tiny red gem into Lincoln’s hand, which hung from a thin black ribbon.

  “Why? What is it?” Lincoln asked.

  “A token,” Thom said.

  “Of what?”

  “From me to you,” he said.

  “I don’t want it.” Lincoln tried to hand it back.

  Thom dropped off the table, straightening. The corners of his eyes creased as though he were smiling, but his face was otherwise expressionless. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been surprised, Lincoln Marshall. You surprise me.”

  He sounded an awful lot like the Traveler.

  Those prickles burned anew down Lincoln’s spine as Thom walked away, without ever taking back the gem. Lincoln clutched his fist around it hard enough that the facets dug into his palm.

  It wasn’t until Thom vanished into one of the cabins that Lincoln realized what he’d said.

  Lincoln Marshall.

  Nobody should have known his real last name.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he said.

  How was it possible?

  Lincoln hadn’t forgotten that Sophie still needed a rescue, but he’d let some part of himself forget that he didn’t belong. He’d forgotten the danger. Pressure built at the nape of his neck again, and he looked up at the sky. Junior was already circling again. His heart leaped at the sight of it.