by E. M. Moore
“Remember,” Liam said. “It’s not all him. Some of it is the familiar. Trust me. That thing is powerful, and old, and evil.”
Wonderful. “Can you pick up the speed?”
A motorcycle roared past us then. It was Randy. He was able to flit through the traffic faster than we were. Liam tried maneuvering the Jeep through the gaps in traffic Randy left like we were as small as the motorcycle, but it didn’t work as well. Too many minutes later, we ended up at the campus in front of Gabe. Randy had already parked his bike, so they both jumped into the backseat, not even Randy bothering to waste time to ask for one of the front seats.
As soon as their doors closed, Liam pulled out into traffic again, telling them the plan he had. Gabe leaned forward. “You okay, Mate. You look like shit.”
I rubbed at my chest again even though my head was feeling clearer the more time went by. “I’ll be okay.”
I peeked behind me to find Randy wound up tighter than a coiled spring. He had the worst temper out of all of us, and the fastest instinct to fight. It was a sign of how he’d grown up, the shit he’d had to endure ingrained that into him. Maybe if I’d been more careful, more cautious of other people…
“If that fucker doesn’t work with us, I can’t promise you guys anything,” Randy said.
I knew the feeling. I was usually the first one to think of Jax and how things could start to escalate quickly, taking us in the exact opposite direction we wanted to go in, but I was right there with him this time. Norah had been my responsibility at the time and now she wasn’t here.
“Did you try calling Dean?” Liam asked.
“You really think he’s going to answer?”
Liam shrugged, looking at Randy in the rearview mirror. “The familiar is cocky. He might just answer and if he does, we might get some clues as to where he’s taken Norah.”
Randy didn’t need more convincing than that. He pulled his phone out and called Dean. The phone rang and rang. Just before the voicemail switched on, a voice came through the other line. “Yes?”
My heart flew up through my chest, and I turned around in my seat to stare at Randy. He had the phone on speaker and we were now all just staring at the screen as if it was our lifeline. “We know you have her.”
“Well, I didn’t try to hide it.”
“Where are you?”
“Can’t tell you that yet. Trust me, it will all come out in good time.”
“Let us talk to her.”
“Mmm. No.”
Randy growled in his throat, but Dean only laughed. Though, it was more like the familiar controlling Dean’s body laughing. I hadn’t heard him sound as sinister as that before. He’d actually been cool with us. He was the reason we’d found out how to take the familiar off Liam in the first place. “If you tell us, we’ll help you get that familiar off you, Dean. We know how to do it. Remember, you gave us the spell? We can get it off you. Please. Tell us.”
The line was silent, and my stomach squeezed thinking maybe I had gotten through to the real Dean.
“I can’t do that,” Dean’s voice said. “You see, despite all my worry about my father and his greed taking over him, part of it was just jealousy. I really like all this power. My father was so power hungry that he hardly ever shared it with me, but now I have all the power I want at my disposal.”
“And Jay did that, right? You also know how that turned out for the last person Jay used to do his bidding.”
“That is true,” Dean said. “I guess I’m going to have to risk it. Trust me, you guys will be here sooner than you think. Perhaps not as soon as you want to be, but—”
“Is Norah okay?” Randy interrupted. “Let us talk to her.”
“She can’t talk right now.”
A sharp pain formed in my stomach. If they’d done anything to hurt her…
“Why?” Randy growled out.
“Well, she’s just sleeping. Don’t get too hyped up, Lacone. I couldn’t have her awake and sending you guys a message somehow. You guys are a coven, and I’m not sure how that all works yet. I suspect I’ll find out sooner or later though.”
A creak sounded on the other end as well as an echoing slam. The phone call ended right there. “Dean?” Randy asked. When there wasn’t an answer, he said it again. He made the screen wake up and noticed that the call had ended. Swearing, he forced the phone back into his pocket. “Son of a bitch.”
“We still have other things to do,” Liam said. “We’re not SOL.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” I said. “If we’re going to win this, we’re going to have to do it with magic.”
The long drive into Boston seemed even longer with the traffic we were up against. When we finally pulled up in front of the Reid’s house, we didn’t wait a second longer to jump from the Jeep and run to the gate. During the drive, I’d recovered enough that I’d felt almost normal as I approached the iron bars and shook them. Owen, the guard Norah had dealt with, stepped forward again. He quickly scanned our group, his eyes lighting with recognition. Seeing that Norah wasn’t there though, he frowned.
“We need to talk to Mr. Reid,” Liam said.
“Mr. Reid doesn’t want any visitors.”
“Listen,” Liam snapped. “You know that girl who was with us before? She’s in trouble. We want to help her, but if we don’t get to talk to Mr. Reid right now, we’re wasting fucking time. We need to see him right now.”
Owen’s eyes rounded. “H-he’s not here.”
“Fuck!” Randy screamed.
Even Owen jumped back.
“Let us in,” I said steadily. “We’ve already met with Dean and Mr. Reid. We’re not here to hurt them or to take anything from them, we’re just here to find out information we need to save Norah.”
“If we don’t hurry, something might happen to her,” Liam said. He steeled his voice. I knew he was saying it for affect, but it also could’ve been true. Besides all that, it was probably the best excuse we could’ve used with Owen. The guy was totally smitten with her.
He opened the gate. We didn’t wait for it to swing open, we just ran forward, jumping up on the Reid’s front steps and hurtling through the door. A girl in the kitchen screeched as we all ran forward.
“We’re not here for you,” Liam said. She had magic coming off her. She wasn’t quite as strong as her father and brother, but she had some magic—Reid magic. “We need you to open the secret door downstairs.”
She opened her mouth as she backed up against the refrigerator.
“We know you have a secret room in the basement. Your brother has already taken us down there.”
Owen followed in after us, giving the girl a quick nod.
Her shoulders deflated. “My father’s going to kill me.”
“He probably won’t,” Gabe said. He immediately caught her attention. It was the fucking accent. It was always the accent. He gave her a smile. “If it makes you feel any better, you can tell him we threatened you, but I really don’t think that will be necessary. We’re friends.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” she said, even though she was already walking toward the basement door.
“We’re the Order,” Liam said.
She turned, her eyes widening. Gabe chuckled. “The Order of the Akasha? And no, we’re not here for your family, it’s just that we think your family has something we need. Oh, and your brother’s in trouble, too. If you don’t let us down into that room, something might happen to him.”
That spurred her even more than Gabe’s accent. “Dean?” she asked in a frightened voice. When we nodded, she pulled the basement door open and ran down the steps. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned toward the door. It opened right up for her. What with that Reid blood and everything, it didn’t give her a hard time like it did us. We never would’ve been able to get into it without her.
“Thank you,” Gabe said. She nodded and stood off to the side as Liam rushed in first with Randy and I following quickly after. Once we were
inside, Gabe asked her if she knew where her father was and if she could call him and tell him we were there and that we needed him.
She told him her cell phone was on the counter upstairs and that she’d do it right away.
Afterward, he sauntered right in and I wanted to smack the smirk off his face even though it was always uncanny. That accent did everything for him.
“We’re looking for anything to do with djinns,” Liam said. “Start with the books that look like they’re old and dark. You can feel the difference if you concentrate. We need to figure out how to call the djinn because then the djinn can lead us to wherever Norah is. He’s wrapped up in this somehow, most likely Jay was trying to take the power from him and out of the Reid’s hands. Maybe he thought he needed more power because we were able to defeat Dupre? I don’t know. I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, but I know we’re headed in the right direction. There has to be something in here that tells us how we can call the djinn even if he doesn’t want to come.”
“Maybe the original calling?” Gabe asked.
Liam looked up from what he was doing. “Shit. I didn’t think of that. Good idea. If Mr. Reid can call the djinn using the original spell, he might have to come no matter what. Shit, Gabe. That was genius.”
I looked at all the books in the room. Who knew where the hell that spell was, but since it was the only thing we had to go on until Mr. Reid returned home, we had to run with it. At least we had a direction now and weren’t just flying by the seat of our pants. A good thing, too, because Norah was missing, and none of us were able to concentrate as well when we knew she was in danger.
I hoped to God she was okay. And if she wasn’t, there’d be hell to pay.
19
I inhaled. The stale smell of God knew what met my nostrils. I was lying on a bed of prickers, sharp points sticking into my arms. Blinking awake, I coughed immediately, the smell of whatever was around me making my eyes water and my nose tickle. Pushing myself up, I looked around. Wood. Straw. And yep, what smelled like the ripe old smell of manure even though it looked like no one had come into this barn in years.
Thick, circular beams stretched out across the roof overhead while the planks of wood that made up the barn walls let in tiny shafts of orange light from the sunset outside. In front of me was a wide-open space with a barn door pushed back on its rolling track, letting in the sights of trees and waist-high grass parted by an old driveway. Jay wasn’t intent on keeping me locked away then. Of course, he wasn’t. That wasn’t what this was about.
“Good,” a voice said. I jumped and looked to my right where I believed the voice had come from. In the distance, a shadow moved that was of human build. It wasn’t a shadow at all though. It was a person. “You’re awake.”
I cleared my throat, making sure I could talk with authority before I even attempted anything else. My hands were still bound behind my back in whatever magic familiar-controlled-Dean had used to stifle my own powers. “Jay, I take it? So nice to meet you finally.”
The guy chuckled. “I knew you’d be like this. Funny, quirky, maybe even a bit of a bitch…”
I shrugged at that. I had been known to do and say some bitchy things, but I wasn’t so sure he should be calling me out on that since he’d basically kidnapped me. If that wasn’t a bitch move, I didn’t know what was. “I guess it suits me.”
The shadow moved forward. I peered into the darkness trying to make out the figure. After all, who wouldn’t be curious to find out the face of the person who’d been trying to ruin their life for the past month or so? This guy was the one behind fucking Dupre and the crazy shit he did. Dupre wasn’t the mastermind of most of that stuff. He was the type to use a voodoo doll, hiding in the shadows to take care of business. That wasn’t Jay’s style at all. Interesting he had stayed silent for so long.
“I see you’re trying to get a glimpse of me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t worry. You don’t know me.”
A harsh laugh whipped out of me. “Don’t know you? So, why is it that you’ve been trying to get me for so long? If I don’t know you why even bother?” I stifled a gasp. Mr. Reid. It had to have been him in the shadows behind all of this. He had control of the djinn, and he didn’t know me. However, that still didn’t answer the question as to why he would be doing this.
“It has nothing to do with you, really. You just got caught in the crossfire. Hey, how’s that coven treating you?”
The shadow shifted to lean against a rotting piece of wall. The musty hay smell in this place was overpowering. Every time he moved, it kicked up a whole different layer inside the space. “Why do you care?”
He chuckled long and hard. “Oh, I care.”
I pulled myself up into more of a sitting position and checked the area behind me. One of those thick circular logs was at my back so I leaned against it. “You know what’s not cool?” I ventured. “When someone takes you, presumably to hurt you, but they don’t even tell you why.”
“You know what’s also not cool? When your friends completely desert you and then you have nothing.” His voice cracked out like a whip. “Nothing,” he seethed. “They took everything from me.”
This wasn’t about me. I didn’t know anyone enough to make them so angry. This sounded deep-rooted, and painful.
“Still don’t know who I am?” he breathed. “That’s…. Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised. They have you now so…”
I stared into the shadows, narrowing my gaze to try to see through the wall of darkness, but none of it worked. If I’d had access to my magic, I could’ve made a light or something else, but I didn’t dare to try to pull on my magic again with what happened last time. All it did was make the restraints tighter and stronger.
Gazing around the interior of the barn again, I looked for anything that might help me escape. These restraints weren’t going to come off, but if I could somehow get Jay out of the picture, I could run off. I didn’t know where I was, but it was better than just staying with this mentally unhinged guy.
He laughed darkly again, pulling my attention back to him. He said ‘they’ had me, whoever that was. Since he was intent on talking, I should keep him talking. If he was talking, he wasn’t hurting me and that was one of my main goals for the moment. “Who has me?” I asked.
“The Order.”
I stood up straighter then. “What about them?”
“You’re their fifth.”
“So?”
The shadow from the corner of the room came charging out at me. He stopped mere inches from my face, crouched down to my level. “So, I was their fifth,” he spat.
He was my age, dark hair. He had a good build and a handsome face. My stomach tugged as if I should know this guy, and I guess I did. I’d heard stories about him. Jax. The one who’d been stripped of powers because of what he did while a member of the Order. ‘Harm none’ was their motto, and he certainly hadn’t done that.
But the feeling in my stomach wasn’t just because I knew his story, it was a pull I recognized. No, it wasn’t as strong as my connections with the other guys, but it was there all the same. His furious mask softened a little as if he noticed it at the same time I did.
“Jax,” I said, confirming for him that I knew who he was. I wanted to roll my eyes and tell him how clever it was that he called himself Jay, but also slap myself in the forehead. We’d really missed out on that stupid clue.
“At least you know who I am.”
My first thought was of Travis and how he’d shunned me at first because of his relationship with the guy in front of me. They’d been best friends for years. Grew up together, hung out with one another, became members of the Order together. Despite all the evil things he’d done, the guy in front of me wasn’t all bad. Or, at least he hadn’t always been. “Travis is going to have a hard time with this.”
Jax’s eyes turned black. Not just from the poor lighting or because of some inner emotional turmoil, but they tu
rned legit black like a curtain coming down over them. A shiver ran up my spine and my first instinct was to move away, but there was a post at my back and the fact that my hands were tied together with magical restraints. Faced with pure evil and I couldn’t go anywhere.
“I think you’ll understand when I say I don’t give a good Goddamn if Travis isn’t going to take this very well. He knew me best.”
“Knew you being the operative words. Then again, I wasn’t there. I shouldn’t say anything, but from what I heard, you’d changed, Jax.”
“They put the mark on me. They let them strip me.”
“Did they have another option?”
“There’s always an option!” he screamed.
He sat back on the hay. He was only a mere three feet from me and the anguish inside him blasted off in waves. It was hard not to get pulled into it. On one hand, I felt like I knew him. Even my stomach was tugging me toward him, but on the other hand, he’d done awful things and it didn’t matter if they had a history with him. He was what he was now, not what he was before.
“What’s your plan here?” I asked, my voice soft. “What was all this about?”
He ran a hand through his hair and then brought his knee up to drape an arm over it. “I want them to feel alone. I want to do to them what they did to me.”
“What Travis did to you nearly killed him.”
He snarled, his lip pulling up into a sneer. “Why do you say that? Because he hesitated to jump you unlike the rest of them? I hate to break it to you but that’s just Travis. He loves girls, don’t get me wrong, but he’s always had this thing about not getting involved while he’s a member of the Order. He can’t bring them into this world, so he didn’t usually bother.”
I shook my head. He was wrong. Travis wasn’t in a good place because of what happened to him in the recent past, including what had happened to Jax. It had nothing to do with wanting me or not wanting me.
As I watched him, his eyes returned to their normal dark color, the black sheet dissipating. I had some ideas about what that meant, but I was hoping I was wrong.