Ruby Morgan Box Set: Books 6-10

by LJ Rivers

  They kept talking, but their words blended into white noise. I sucked in a breath when a set of arms wrapped around me, familiar and strong.

  Brendan?

  “I’m here, my love,” he said. “I’m here.”

  I blinked and leaned into his embrace. “You’re in my head.”

  “No, I’m here.”

  My head hurt as if I’d been hit by a baseball bat. He couldn’t be here. I had to be dreaming. “You’re in France.”

  Hands squeezed my arms, and soft lips caressed my forehead. “I came home as soon as I heard.”

  Heard?

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry about Elaine.”

  I blinked again and looked up into Brendan’s eyes, slowly focusing on his watery, topaz gaze.

  “There you are,” he said.

  “Why are you sorry?” My voice came out quiet and hollow. “She’s missing, but she’ll be home soon.”

  “Babe, I don’t—”

  “Where are we?” I asked, scooting back an inch. Captain Marvel was staring past me, her golden hair dancing in the wind, energy pulsing around her body. “Oh. Charlie’s room.”

  “That’s right,” Brendan said, stroking my thigh. “You’re in Charlie’s bed. They didn’t feel right leaving you alone in your room, so you’ve all bunked here.”

  Slowly, I turned my head to find Jen and Charlie on a mattress next to the bed, a bowl of crisps and cookies between them.

  “Want an Oreo?” Charlie asked. “I got you some tea, too, though it might be cold by now.” She touched the cup and hopped to her feet. “Yup. I’ll go make you a fresh one.”

  I shook my head as Charlie scurried out of the room, then looked back to Brendan. “Why did you come? I thought you had to be at camp, training. Can’t imagine what your coach would consider a valid reason for leaving early.”

  His eyebrows dipped at the corners, and his eyes glazed over. “I cared for Elaine. She was—”

  “Was?” I pulled away and backed up until the wall hugged my back. “Was?”

  Jen came to sit on the bed. “It’s been over two days. The search was called off about an hour ago, remember? They couldn’t find any trace of her.”

  “Which means she got out.” I closed my eyes, my heart beating hard in my chest.

  Jen shook her head and inched closer. “If she got out, don’t you think she would have found her way back here by now?”

  Faster. Harder. My heart was running a sprint. “She could have amnesia, be lying in a hospital somewhere, and—”

  Grabbing my shoulders, Jen got on her knees between Brendan and me and forced me to look at her. Reluctantly, I did. “Charlie and the task force have checked all the hospitals, every jail, every camera by Waterloo—including the footage of you torching the Eye, though that one has mysteriously disappeared. They have scoured the river for miles in every direction.” She fixed her eyes on mine, and for the first time, it was as if I could sense the authority of her alpha radiating from them. “She’s gone, mon chéri, and she’s not coming back.”

  I tried to twist myself from her grip, but to no avail. “She’s just missing,” I cried.

  “I’m sorry, no. Your mum tumbled unconscious more than three hundred feet straight down. A part of you—the rational part—already knows what that means.” She breathed deeply, tears twinkling in her eyes. “Elaine is dead, Ruby. She’s not coming back.”

  I wanted to object again, to scream at her and tell her she was wrong. Mum was a survivor, a fierce Fae with force fields and years of experience wielding magic. She would have saved herself.

  But she couldn’t. She’d been wearing an electric collar that had stripped her of her powers, and when she fell—no, when she was pushed—she was defenceless. My drumming heart ceased to beat as I held my breath, then settled into a slow, painful rhythm. I exhaled in one long breath, and my chest tightened.

  “Gemma killed her,” I said between gritted teeth and a sob.

  “Yes.” Jen’s lips folded back over her teeth. “And I have searched everywhere for that bloody fox, but it’s as if she dropped off the face of the earth. I can’t pick up her scent anywhere. But when I find her, she’ll regret the day she ever stepped foot near you or yours.”

  The floodgates opened, tears I’d been holding back, waiting for the moment I could cry in happiness instead of sorrow, finally spilled out. Happiness over having found Mum alive wouldn’t come. Ever. She was truly gone.

  Mum was dead.

  Jen stroked her thumbs through my tears and nodded, then slid back to the mattress on the floor and Brendan took her place.

  I grabbed his sweater and clung to him. “Mum—”

  “I know, Ru.” He put his arms around me and I sobbed into his chest. “I’m here, babe.”

  But she wasn’t. And she never would be again.

  I leaned against Brendan’s warm body on the sofa, his arms folded around me, and circled my finger over the sapphire on my ring. Charlie had the other end, and Jen sat on the recliner. Maria was singing “Edelweiss” on the screen, and it brought a faint smile to my lips. I’d been fine through the first few songs, and even managed a laugh during “The Lonely Goatherd”, but my tears came in waves at this point. One moment my eyes were sore but dry, the next they flooded again. By the time Liesl started singing, the waterworks were back on.

  “Mum used to sing that to me when I was little,” I said quietly. “She had such a beautiful voice.” Had. It ached deep in my chest to mention Mum in the past tense.

  “She did,” Charlie said. “Easily as good as, if not better than, Julie Andrews.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, recalling Mum’s voice while Christopher Plummer continued singing “Edelweiss”. I didn’t want to forget her voice, so I played it back in my head and tried my best to store the memory safely at the forefront of my mind, so I could keep it and never forget.

  Brendan kissed the top of my head as I opened my eyes again.

  A series of three pings came from the kitchen. “Popcorn’s ready.” Charlie bounced to the microwave and grabbed the popcorn, filling a bowl with it. She drizzled it with a pinch of salt and returned to the sofa.

  I sipped at my umpteenth cup of tea and briefly touched her arm in a silent thank you.

  “Whatever you need,” she whispered. She had been crying, too. Her face was puffy, and a few red blotches dotted her cheeks, but she was being brave. For me. Charlie—whose parents were very much alive, but hadn’t acted like proper parents for as long as she could remember—had found a substitute in Mum. And they had both fallen in love with each other. Now it was as if we had both become orphans again, even though we still had biological parents. “Whoever said blood has to be thicker than water?” Mum had said. Was it only a few days ago?

  As if on cue, there was a knock on the front door.

  Jen paused the film, then strutted to the hallway to open the door.

  “Is she home?” Auberon’s deep voice sent a shiver down my neck. I didn’t think I could deal with him right now.

  “She doesn’t want to see you,” Jen said.

  Brendan’s arms fell away from me as I sat. Groggy, as if I hadn’t slept for days, I stood and shuffled after Jen.

  Charlie took my wrist. She shook her head and moved in front of me.

  “Princess,” Auberon said. He stretched and slanted his head to look past Jen to meet my eyes. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Jen stepped closer to him and growled. “She doesn’t need you to stir up any more trouble now, Prince Auberon.”

  “She’s my daughter,” he said.

  “She’s grieving, and you’re not making it easier for her.”

  “Let me pass, wolf.”

  I could feel his fire burning as if it were my own, the heat rolling off him in readiness for an attack.

  “Don’t,” I said quietly, not sure if anyone would have heard, though Jen glanced back at me and took a deep breath.
/>   Charlie, however, produced her wand from somewhere in her jeans and held it out towards my father. “Stay here,” she whispered to me, then moved closer to Jen’s side. “You leave her alone, you hear me?”

  Auberon stared at Charlie, eyes wide, a lick of flame curling around his right hand and down the cane he was leaning on. “Human.” He spat the word. “And how exactly do you think you could stop me?”

  “Ruby just lost her mum,” Charlie said. “Eight years ago, she lost her dad, thanks to you. And you honestly think it’s appropriate for you to come here now? This isn’t about you. The world does not revolve around the oh-so-mighty-and-terrifying Prince Auberon of wherever you came from. If you care about Ruby the way you claim, you’ll give her the space she needs to mourn. In peace. And having you around is never peaceful.”

  “I—” Auberon faltered and turned his gaze on me, the flame shifting and slowly drifting back under his skin. “I tried to help.”

  He had, I was sure of it. Or at least he had helped me. Again. “Hold on,” I said. “He did pull me out of the Thames, I think.”

  The girls didn’t move, but stood their ground, shoulders squared. If Auberon had wanted to, he could have disposed of them with a wave of his hand. He knew it, and they knew it too, and yet they faced him. Brave, I thought. A half Mag and a pure human, the bravest of them all.

  “Did you look for her?” I asked, my own fire stirring in my veins.

  “Everywhere,” he replied. “Not a trace, though. I truly am sorry, Princess.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy.” I paused, then added in a sigh, “But thank you for trying.”

  Jen snarled and clicked her teeth at my father. “Now, leave.”

  “She just thanked me. Surely, I—”

  Charlie stabbed her wand out, and a rain of blue sparks flew from the tip as it connected with Auberon’s chest. He staggered and jerked, then fell to one knee.

  “That was just a warning shot,” Charlie said, raising her chin.

  “I won’t be far,” Auberon wheezed. Slowly, but deliberately, he stood once more. He took two steps back and vanished into the shadows.

  Charlie and Jen stayed where they were for several heartbeats before Charlie placed her wand back in what appeared to be a customised pocket in her jeans, and they both turned to me.

  “I love you, guys,” I said as they took my arms and led me back to the living room. “You’re nuts, but I love you for it.”

  “We love you too, Miss Barrymore.” Charlie winked.

  “Angels,” I said, and held my pinkie up.

  They curled their pinkies with mine and replied in unison.

  “Angels!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mr Tettey was a scary man, at least to a six-year-old Fae on her way back from Blacon Elementary. I had been to ‘the green store’ many times with Mum and Dad, but one day just after the summer had ended, Mum had asked me to go there by myself. She wanted me to pick up a few things on the way back from school. She put a note with three items on it and five coins in the side pocket of my school bag. By the time I left school that afternoon, I had memorised the three items, which Mum had the foresight to write in block letters, just like the green ones on the Asda sign.

  Mr Tettey placed a wedge of blue cheese, three strange fruits called figs and a packet of green tea in a paper bag. He pushed it towards me on the counter. “That’s three pounds forty-eight.”

  And he smiled at me.

  Mr Tettey had no hair on the top of his head, but a grey circle around it. His moustache was also grey, but with streaks of brown and yellow, which Dad said was because he smoked. Mr Tettey was the tallest man I had ever seen, and although both Mum and Dad said he wasn’t a giant, I was convinced of it. But neither his balding head, nicotine-stained facial hair nor towering height was the scary part. It was his smile. It never extended past his mouth.

  “His eyes never smile,” I told Dad one day as we sat outside our house. “He wants me to think he’s happy and kind, but his eyes tell the truth.”

  At that moment, Mum leaned out through the kitchen window and asked if we wanted ice tea. I pointed at her. “See, Dad? Mum’s whole face is smiling. I would know she was, even if I only saw her eyes.”

  More than fourteen years later, I had taken the first and only selfie of Mum and me, sitting on the train headed for Covent Garden. Just when I snapped it, another passenger got up to exit at Piccadilly and bumped his hip into my shoulder. The resulting picture showed most of my face, but only the upper left part of Mum’s. But even if I could only see her left eye, peeking at me from the edge of my phone, her smile was every bit as visible as if her whole face had been captured.

  “I have no more tears,” I said to Brendan. “Is it possible to cry one’s inner well dry? Like, physically, I mean?”

  He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “I think it’s possible to exhaust it for a while, even if it might not be accurate on a scientific level.”

  “I can’t see how I’m supposed to go on without her.”

  “We’ll find a way. Together.”

  I couldn’t tell if he meant all of us or him and me, but figured it didn’t really matter. He had come home to be with me in my time of agony, and that meant a lot. I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I hope so.”

  Charlie came back from the kitchen and placed my Pink cup on the table. The smell of lemon and mint rose from the steaming cup, which usually made me crave the hot beverage. My stomach gave me a stern warning to leave it, or else it would return it in an instant.

  “You have to try, Ru,” Charlie said soothingly.

  She had proven time and again that she was my best friend—no, my little sister—but the last few days had cemented her devotion stronger than I thought possible. The same was true for Jen. They had made sure one of them was with me at all times, comforting me, talking to me, and listening to my wailing. They didn’t even let me sleep alone, insisting that all three of us slept in Charlie’s room, me in her bed and the girls on a mattress on the floor. They would take turns crawling into bed next to me and hold me tight as I cried my reservoir dry.

  When Brendan came home yesterday, he was happy to take my bed and leave me in the safe hands of my sisters as I fought the nightmare.

  It would never leave me, I was certain of that. The hole in my heart after Dad died was impossible to mend. And the hole Mum had left would be equally permanent. Only bigger. I hated myself for thinking it, but Charlie and Jen had convinced me—or tried, at least—that it was a natural reaction. It didn’t mean I loved Dad any less than Mum, but there would always be a special connection between her and me. And we had the same blood, even if both my flatmates underlined that Dad was just as much my parent as Mum. All good thoughts and all good sentiments. And true, I supposed.

  But I had watched her die.

  That was the basis of my nightmare. The image of her body falling towards the dark, muddy river three hundred feet below kept pounding inside my head every waking hour. And every rare moment I managed to sleep.

  I had missed her with my force fields.

  “I don’t want to be too technical and cold about it,” Jen had said one afternoon; it might have been yesterday or the day before—time was a blurry concept, “but you were standing pretty far away, and it would take a miracle to hit a moving target at that distance. We’re talking velocity, angles and lots of other factors.”

  “A miracle,” I muttered. “Or magic.”

  At some point in time, I might be able to see the truth in Jen’s words—and Charlie’s echo of them—but at the moment, I could only see the two orbs flying over Mum as she plunged to her death.

  Her death.

  Had I really accepted that she was dead? The three of us had gone down on Sunday afternoon to talk to Travers, who was in charge of the Mag-Ops part of the investigation. He had met us by the outer barrier, which was three blocks away from Jubilee Gardens and the smouldering remains of the London Eye. Charlie had a
sked him to bring news from the search and rescue team, but Travers had gone one step further. Commander Denton, I think her name was, the Met officer in charge of the search, told me they were using two remote controlled submarines in the search, in addition to several diving teams. She seemed eager to emphasise the amount of resources they had in play.

  Benefits of being an LOM, I supposed.

  By Tuesday morning, they had called off the search, and Travers had personally come to our flat to inform me of the decision. He looked like he had been on site ever since Saturday night, which Charlie later confirmed. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled having thanked him for his efforts, but I’m not sure I had actually uttered the words or merely thought them. According to Jen, I had collapsed in the hallway, and they had to carry me to Charlie’s bed.

  Was that when I had accepted it? And what did it mean to accept it?

  “Ru?”

  “Hm? Oh, right. Thanks, but I’ll wait a bit longer, Char. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “OK, but after that I’m going to get tough on you.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I love you, you see.” Her voice faded, and she gave a sniffle.

  “I know. And I love you, too. As did Mum.”

  Did. There it was again. The past tense. I had accepted it.

  The front door opened. A few seconds later, Jen stood in the doorway, shaking her head. She had been out for hours, hunting Gemma. The murdering fox.

  “Nothing.”

  I nodded. “It’s OK. She’ll resurface at some point.”

  Charlie wiped her tears. “We’ve got every informant looking and listening. ‘Astrea’ is working harder than ever. I’ve cloned her across a whole cluster, all with different digital scents to look for.”

  Jen scoffed. “You know how insulting it is to me when you compare that computer programme of yours with my kind?” She winked at me to show she was kidding.

  I couldn’t help but draw my lips slightly apart, feeling how the smile stopped long before it reached my eyes.

  From my room, Amy Winehouse suddenly started singing about how she refused to go to rehab. I burst out laughing, unable to help myself. As I doubled over, clenching my belly I waved at Brendan. “I—It’s Dunc,” I said between gasps.