“Rue,” Elspeth said again.
I could feel Felix’s gaze. I could hear his ragged breathing. I was dying inside. Now they knew. They knew that I had protected only myself, that I was a monster, that it was my fault Chrysie had died then and was hurt now. It was my fault that Chrysie wasn’t a young witch, living with the future fate had intended for her. It was my fault she was a vampire.
“That is NOT your fault, Veruca Dominique Hallow-Jones. It would have been unacceptable to spell Chrysie’s space without telling her. You followed witch ethics as you should have. Chrysie was murdered because she was murdered. She was the victim of a monster. Not you.”
My hands were shaking. I had been carrying that for so long. I hadn’t intended to say it. I hadn’t intended to let them know what I had done or hadn’t done. I hadn’t intended to ever confess. Girl up, I told myself. Girl up right now.
I swallowed, gritted my teeth, and said, “Ok.”
Felix laid his hand down on the table. It was open and available. It was an offering of support. I shouldn’t need it. I should girl up and take responsibility for what I had done. But,but I couldn’t be strong all the time. I was dying inside with Chrysie up there broken and lost in her mind. I was dying not knowing where Branka was. My mother—gods—she was without her power, and it rocked my world. Daddy…my house was invaded by Hallow Family Council. I had called Finn for help. I was…I was the lost one.
“I’m coming,” Elspeth said. “I’ll be there when I can. Tell her I love her.”
“Ok,” I agreed.
“Rue,” Elspeth said, waiting until I answered her.
“Yes?”
“I love you, too.”
I closed my eyes against the emotion in Felix’s gaze, the truth in Elspeth’s voice, and the comfort I felt in that large hand wrapped around mine.
I let my head fall to the table and said, “I love you too.”
She ended the call. And I didn’t move. I didn’t want to let go of Felix’s hand, but I needed to. Maybe if I kept my face against the table and didn’t move, I would fall asleep and wake to find that this wasn’t happening. That this wasn’t real. Gods and monsters, if only that would be my fate instead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I had escaped to my lab to let the essence of frankincense meld with lavender oils. They would steep over a flame I controlled magically and the magic that was released would collect in the orbs I’d hung over the fire. There were mini-pentacles under my cauldrons mirroring the ones around Chrysie’s bed.
“Hey,” Felix said. He stood in the doorway when before he’d have stumbled in with a joke.
I met his gaze, and felt a flash of wanting, stronger than I’d ever felt before for anyone. What was that? Was it because I knew he wanted me? Was it because I’d been pretending to not want him? Looking at him like a friend and nothing more?
“What are you doing?” He finally asked when I said nothing else.
Gods, I was a cold beast. I just…couldn’t. And he didn’t expect me to anything. I suspected he was trying to bridge the awkwardness. Did he regret the kiss? The handholding? Did I? Did I want things to go back to when I hadn’t had a second thought every time I saw him? When he was just a friend and sort of cemented in that category? Was it just the fact that we were alive? Did he feel something for me? Did he not? Did he hate me now that he knew more about me?
“It’s not your fault,” he said as if he could read my mind. And the idea that he could made my cheeks blaze with color.
“It isn’t.” he insisted wrongly interpreting my blush. Thank the gods. He couldn’t read my mind. Which I knew. But I was still relieved.
“What isn’t?”
“All of this? Not yours alone anyway. Maybe we should have called someone, but given what we knew,who could we call? Who could we trust?”
“Saffron,” I suggested sarcastically. “My coven sister and trusted of my elder. Elizabeth the vampire who turned Chrysie giving her a second chance at life. Maybe Dr. Hallow who has been involved time and again in our stupid…adventures,” the last word was laced with sarcasm.
“Maybe,” he said. “But we found Saffron at the home of a dark witch and she came from a dark coven. How do we even know that our stupid finding spell led us to the chick who lived at that house and not Saffron?”
The idea hadn’t even occurred to me. What if…Gods…she was IN our house if it was Saffron. But no. No. There were too many graves. Relief flooded me followed by more worry. What if she was working with whomever it was? That witch was so powerful. She could have been the focus of a dark coven.
He didn’t stop there though. “It’s not your fault that Chrysie got taken and hurt. It’s not your fault that Chrysie died.”
I swallowed and tried to smile. I failed. I licked my lips, pushed my hair behind my ear, and immediately hated myself. Gods, thank goodness Bran was missing. If she had seen that, I might as well have fluttered my lashes and fainted in Felix’s arms.
Instead, I opened a drawer on my work table and pulled out Dominique’s knives.
“What’s this?” He touched the lethal blade of those knives and then looked at me. There was no censure in his gaze.
Which was why I loved him…gods what had I just thought? Did I love him? Did I love love him? Or just friend love him?
“They’re the knives that the last Keeper of the St. Angelus Thinning kept. They’re not magical.”
“What are they?”
“They’re deadly.” I had thought about them a lot since I’d learned they belonged to Dominique. I wondered why she had them. What she used them for. What her life might have been like. I wanted to see a picture of her. But I didn’t. I was too afraid I’d see myself in her. Too afraid I’d see the same vagaries of fate hanging over my head that had hung over hers. “We’re not better than this witch, Felix. Our whole coven together is nothing to her. She will wipe the floor with us.”
“So we’ll be unexpected.” Felix said it, and I looked up at him. It had been so long since I’d really examined his face that I wasn’t quite sure I was still seeing the same person. Had he changed? Was he serious? Wasn’t he the poker shark who’d tried to con me out of money right after we met? Wasn’t he the engineer of our potions market? Hadn’t he shown himself in the quiet moments of our life to be a pretty talented witch in the most unexpected of ways? And he was so pragmatic in that pronouncement. Unexpected.
But he wasn’t wrong. Unexpected was our only chance. That and the dead Dominique’s way. “And deadly without magic. Like my great-aunt.”
We didn’t notice the creak of the door. Or maybe there hadn’t been one. But the question from the doorway made us both jump, “What are you up to?”
The unwanted Dr. Martin Hallow stood so calmly. Perhaps as calm as this eye of the storm we were in. He was a member of the Hallow Family Council but not, I thought, powerful.
“Just talking about Dominique,” I said innocently, wondering why my life had so many adults in it who felt that it was ok to question me even though they had been in my life for less than a season.
He just nodded as if he felt welcome, but I was sure he caught our true reaction. “She was a good lady. Clever. Foul-mouthed. She was the cool relative when your mom and I were kids. The one everyone wanted to grow up to be. We didn’t though,” he said. He was remembering someone in the height of their life who had been killed by an evil witch. I, on the other hand, was thinking of someone who had picked up a supernatural job that she shouldn’t have.
“But you didn’t,” I said. “You lived instead.”
“Is that what you think? I was never Dominique-style material and always librarian material. Those were the dreams of a teenager who idolized someone whose life he didn’t understand.”
I waited. What was his point? His agenda? How was he planning to throw down some pithy bit of wisdom and then get us to do what he wanted? He crossed to the table where my cauldrons were brewing.
“That was some pretty clev
er magic you did in Chrysie’s room,” he was looking at me with those prying eyes again. He actually stroked his beard. Because I was mad and frustrated and sad about Chrysie, I didn’t laugh at him like he deserved.
“We did,” I clarified. It was, perhaps, magic that only we could have done, but I wish that they’d tried something. Instead of just mixing magic and medicine and hoping for the best.
His gaze circled my lab. The chemistry equipment might have been old for today, but when it had been purchased it had been the top of the line and it was capable of being used for the magic I preferred. My cauldrons were ancient hand me downs which was what a witch would want. Of course, it was only now that I knew they must have originally come from Hallow House. I had assumed my mother had picked them up from some witch sale. Instead, my mother must have packed well when she’d left. Two of my cauldrons gifts from her. One from my old coven leader Hazel. And several I had found in the house. I had huge batches of vampire potion brewing. I’d altered it for Chrysie in ways that would meet her development of vampirism. In ways that matched Chrysie’s natural magic. There was a new potion distilling that I hoped would call to Chrysie—it smelled of friendship and blood. I had the essence of a freaking Snickers Bar in one of the orbs ready to be hung over her bed.
“I hadn’t expected this level of ability,” Martin said while Felix and I watched him warily—waiting to see what Martin’s purpose was. “I’d heard you were good. What will you do when—” He stopped himself and my gaze narrowed.
“I do not want to be the Keeper.”
“Alright,” he agreed. “It would be possible to pursue brewing and the thinning.”
“The thinning is not my concern.”
“It has been the concern of this family for generations.”
“I claim Chrysie and Elspeth. I don’t claim some stupid handed-down death sentence.”
“Most keepers live long lives. And, that is not how family works,” Martin countered.
Did he really expect me to treat him as family? This man I had met only when I’d come to college? This man who had met me, knew who I was, and said nothing? Who’d left me to find out I was a Hallow from my admissions advisor as she chewed me out for being not good enough? He was a stranger. Not family. I didn’t care if he was scuffed and bruised from fighting for Chrysie’s life. I didn’t care that his arm was in a sling and he looked like he’d been on some nasty week-long bender.
Maybe. What did I know about families? I had my Daddy, my Mother, and Bran. We were pretty damn dysfunctional given my ability to sidestep truth potions. “Why did you help us find Chrysie?”
He paused for a moment, searching my face and then said, very gently, “Because I care about you and Chrysie.”
I glanced at Felix whose face was expressionless.
“What is all this?” Martin asked, gesturing to Dominique’s knives again. Maybe to change the subject because I was so very clueless about what he was talking about.
I shrugged. I did not owe him a damn thing, especially an explanation.
“Rue,” he said with that gentle voice again. I felt like he was going to tell me I had cancer instead of try to convince me to trust him. “You aren’t alone.”
“She knows that,” Felix said, finally speaking up.
And I did. I knew a lot of things. I knew that despite the fact that they were not related to me, I could count on Felix, Jessie, and Cyrus. I could count on Bran, my Daddy, and Chrysie. And if it suited her—my mother. Otherwise, Mother would throw me to the wolves making my faith in her far more tenuous. Mother would do anything to prevent my death. Probably my dismemberment. But anything that made you stronger…that was fine with her. Even if it was horrible.
Maybe I would test him. And then I did, a simple question. “What is the plan then?”
Martin’s gaze met mine and a flash of amusement crossed his face. Ah, I thought, so they’re not planning on letting us help. Lovely.
I answered for Martin, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it?”
Felix raised a brow and Martin shrugged, “You are students and very young. We shouldn’t have let you come last time.”
“You send Finn and his buddies out on little keeper missions all the time,” Felix said without expression. “Those are dangerous.”
He should know. His girlfriend was one of that team. I did not look his way or react to that statement. But Martin did. He shifted and glanced aside.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You’re using them. Not us.”
“They’ve trained for this,” Martin explained with a bit of a plea to his voice.
I picked up Dominique’s knives and played with them. “Do you remember that part in Dracula? When everyone is so busy protecting Mina they miss out on how she’s totally been the vampire’s snack for-freaking-ever? Because that is what’s happening right now.”
“That is a little melodramatic,” Portia said as she and Leander came into my lab. This time the door creaked, so I didn’t jump.
“You know what?” I snapped, finally so sick of them and their expectation that they could tell me what to do. “Let’s be melodramatic. If we’re going back to you telling us what to do and us ‘obeying,’ why don’t you leave?”
They glanced among each other. They wanted to tell me no. If they had thought they’d be able to pull it off, I bet they would have. But we’d already established that I wasn’t as easy to order around as everyone. Finally, Portia said, “We can’t just leave. Chrysie needs care.”
“Fine. You can come to take care of Chrysie and leave when you’re done. Unless Elizabeth says she can handle it. The rest of you, though, out!”
“Every time I feel like you might be something other than a little girl...” Leander started, but I cut him off.
“Save it. I really don’t care what you think of me or what you want. If we’re not included, then there is no need for you to be here. Go.”
“Leander,” Martin began, but Leander left without a word.
I looked at the other two and waited. They caved first and left.
“Why do we even try?” I took a deep breath and checked my potions before heading to the door myself and waiting for Felix to follow. The moment he did, I pushed energy into my wards and locked the lab from anyone but me.
* * * * *
Shapeshifters in the form of wolves arrived before the sun even began to rise. They put the little girl in a room that didn’t have windows and several curled up around her. I didn’t look at her or meet her eyes or talk to her. I didn’t want her to be a person. To be more than a name and a shape in the grave. Because otherwise I couldn’t hate her a little bit for being the one who had been saved while Chrysie was the one who was lost.
I had no idea what time it was, but my energy potion was still running strong through me. My anger wasn’t helping my ability to rest. Then there were my big worries—they way it seemed that we were moments from a bomb going off. A dark-witch-shaped bomb. The way Chrysie hadn’t woken up. And where in all the hells my sister had disappeared to.
I walked into the front room and curled into a chair by the fire, Martha lit the flames for me. I just let my mind drift as I stared at the flames, hoping for some insight on what to do. The door opened, but I didn’t get up. It was probably some of the wolves leaving. I hoped so. Martha felt like she was teeming with life, and I preferred the empty mausoleum feel that belonged to her.
“What are you doing here, Monica?” Felix hissed. “And why did you bring him?”
“We need to talk to Rue about the talisman,” Finn answered. The Captain of the pseudo team of keepers truly believed that the talisman would go to him if it were released. It might. I hoped it did. He tried so hard to be the keeper. Everyone else seemed to think it would go to me. Except…as much as it seemed that I protested too much…I really didn’t want to be the Keeper. I didn’t see how it was a good thing for me.
“No,” Felix said. “You’ll be leaving Rue alone. Besides it is n
ot even dawn.”
“‘Lix,” Monica’s smooth voice said. She was trying to soothe him. I’d never heard it not work. Monica played Felix like a violin—something Chrysie had never been able to stand. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen now that she was doing it again. “Please. Talk to her for us. Make her see reason.”
My ears perked up. I also couldn’t help but wonder if he loved Monica? Was kissing me some reaction of the moment? What was happening inside his head? And why was I worrying about it with Chrysie lying up in her bed in some sort of vampire coma?
“You know as well as I do that her mother has to break her link to the talisman.”
“But she hasn’t,” Finn said in that typical angry voice.
“And she’s not here. She’s in Washington State. Why don’t you catch a flight there instead of harrass—”
“Quit pretending she’s innocent in this ‘Lix,” Monica said, cutting Felix off. “You’re so entranced with living in the Hallow House and being accepted by real witches that you don’t even—”
“Stop,” Felix said. He said it so very quietly that you’d have thought it was begging. But he wasn’t. That voice was sharp with other emotion.
“Stop,” Monica mocked. “Stop. Please don’t. Leave it alone. When are you going to man up and—”
“Enough,” Felix snapped. “You need to leave.”
“Felix, please,” Finn said. I dared to peek around the chair and saw him cut in front of Monica. Both of them stepped closer to the doorway. With that step, Martha rocked.
Monica screamed. Felix grabbed their hands and yanked them through the door as Martha rocked again. I didn’t have time for them. I darted towards the center of the house and met Felix’s gaze.
“It held,” I said to him.
“We need to move,” he replied.
Finn was back on his feet as if he’d never fallen and he glanced between us and then cracked his knuckles and his neck. I sort of hated him and also really appreciated how he was so ready to join in. Until he started for the door like an idiot.
Lonely Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 3) Page 9