Jack worked his mouth a few times before he actually spoke. “But he can…sell a salesman, that is, not seduce a red witch. Trick a trickster. I tried to con him into revealing some information, but he got to me instead. I’m not making excuses for my behavior. He met me when I was frustrated that Cara and I keep fighting, and he found a way to use my feelings against me, to twist them. I remember now that he tried, but I thought I’d blocked him. Guess he got sneaky somehow.”
Jack turned to Cara. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Cara, I’m sorry. I know that’s inadequate, but I don’t know how else to put it. What happened just now was my responsibility. I wasn’t strong enough to keep him out of my head, and he managed to manipulate the rough, possessive part of me. But, damn it, you know I don’t want to harm you. You’re my mate, and I love you, even if there are a million reasons you may never accept that.”
He shrugged, realizing how terribly inadequate his words were, how Cara’s expression grew more remote the longer he talked, as if she couldn’t even be bothered anymore to be angry with him, just wanted him gone. “I know I’ve fucked things up.” Anger surged, and the cougarside snarled with rage—not at Cara, but at the sorcerer and at Jack’s own foolishness. “But damn it, that wasn’t me just now. You were saying no, and I didn’t stop, and I’ve never done that in my life. The things I was thinking…they weren’t me. I can be a jerk sometimes and think with my dick instead of my brain. But I’d never force a woman. And I love you. So why…”
He stopped abruptly, looking at the faces staring at him. Condemning him. He couldn’t blame them for condemning him, but they knew him. Sam Many-Winters had seen him grow up, had been magically linked to him for years. Elissa didn’t know him that well, but she’d had no reason to distrust him until now. And Cara…Cara was his mate. Shouldn’t she know his heart?
Then again, why should they understand him when at the moment he didn’t understand himself?
Chapter Thirty-Five
“He’s your mate, whether you’re ready to admit it or not.”
“Lynx,” Cara hissed under her breath, “drop it.”
“Not that humans have mates, exactly, but he’s yours and you’re his. Not to mention sharing a spirit guide. Which you do, even though Coyote and Cougar teamed up to convince you otherwise so you didn’t just run off in a panic.”
“Don’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not ever.”
“You can see into his heart, child. So do it. End this drama. Either he’s telling the truth and dark magic has interfered with him, or he’s gone rabid. Either is dangerous, but the first we can fix. We can fix the other as well, but it gets messy.”
Cara allowed two words to sink in, dangerous and fix. Jack wasn’t a danger simply to her right now. He was potentially a danger to the whole town, and certainly to himself. He needed to be stopped. To be cured, if possible.
And her spirit guide said she—not Gramps or Elissa, who knew a lot more than she did about magic—could help.
The rest, the stuff about mates, the morass of emotions she didn’t want to touch with someone else’s ten-foot pole, were details.
This was protecting the public, guarding the innocent. It was what Cara Mackenzie did and what Cara Many-Winters wanted to do.
She made herself look at Jack, really look at him, with the magic of a shaman. He looked as normal as an insanely gorgeous man with a plaid puma-shaped aura ever did. But something didn’t feel or maybe smell right.
“Open your heart as well as your eyes,” Lynx said. “Touch him.”
That was the last thing Cara wanted to do. What if it set Jack off again?
But so far, Lynx hadn’t steered her wrong. Her spirit guide had been supercilious, cryptic and annoying, often all at once, but when things got dangerous, she’d had Cara’s best interests at heart. And unless this sorcerer was powerful enough to suborn a spirit guide, Cara doubted Lynx would steer her wrong now.
“Lynx says I can see the truth if I touch you, Jack. I’m going to do it. It’ll be easier if you cooperate.” Best cop voice. You couldn’t tell she wanted to cry.
Jack bowed his head, a clear gesture of submission. His thoughts beat against her but couldn’t get in.
She pulled down her carefully constructed shields. Mentally stripped off that imaginary uniform, removed the imaginary gun, removed the real one for good measure and tossed it back onto the table where it had been waiting when they returned. Gramps’ house was shielded. She had nothing to fear from the outside.
Only from what was inside Jack—and for that matter, inside her.
She placed her hand over his heart. It didn’t burn the way it had when she’d communicated with Phil’s ghost, but she was aware of Jack’s energy pulsing around her, twining with hers. It felt far better than it should have. Sensual. Erotic, even.
He felt like Jack, but Jack in a jumble, Jack in a jam, Jack guilty over the way he’d treated her and desperate to make it right somehow because he loved her. Jack frightened not of the outside forces they faced, but of himself and the darkness he believed the sorcerer had awakened in him. He believed what he’d just told them, believed the sorcerer had influenced him somehow. Yet she couldn’t find any of the telltale fuchsia-and-black traces she’d learned to recognize.
Just a patch of blankness.
No, not blankness. Something was hidden, something she couldn’t see or touch with her magic. Something she could poke around but not feel directly. It didn’t seem like any magic she’d ever encountered, less evil than bizarre, alien.
“Elissa,” she said, “there’s something in him that doesn’t belong, but it’s not sorcery, and I don’t know what the hell it is. Maybe you will.” She pulled her hand away from Jack and fought an urge to wash it.
Her eyebrows screwed with concentration, Elissa placed her hand where Cara’s had been. Her aura expanded to surround Jack as well as herself. It pulsed green and red, faintly streaked with the blue that marked psychic powers.
The room grew silent.
The silence took on weight and form. Cara had to force herself to breathe. It seemed to go on for a very long time, but in reality it was probably less than a minute before Elissa let out a bloodcurdling shriek and pulled her hand away.
“What is it?” Cara ran to the other woman but hesitated, afraid to touch her as instinct prompted.
“Unseelie fae,” Elissa said through clenched teeth. “There’s a taint of unseelie fae on him. Thank the Powers it was just a brush, already fading on its own thanks to Jack’s damned, blessed dual stubbornness, and thanks to fae not understanding mortals too well. I suspect the spell wasn’t as strong as it might have been. Fae can’t comprehend how a mortal can be angry with someone and, at the same time, love them and be loyal to them.”
“Which means?” Cara and Jack asked simultaneously.
“The good news is that Jack really isn’t responsible for attacking you. He was under some kind of fae compulsion that was supposed to suborn him to the sorcerer’s purposes and apparently harm Cara in the process. Basically, we were set up by something very big and scary that we had no reason to expect to be here. Fae magic can twist the entire fabric of reality. Twisting a mortal’s thoughts is nothing to a powerful fae, and if Jack didn’t know what he was dealing with—and there’s no reason he would, because he was expecting a human sorcerer—he’d have no way to guard himself.”
Jack raised one eyebrow. “If that’s what qualifies as good news, I’m not looking forward to the bad news.”
“The bad news is we have to deal with a fae as well as sorcerers and a bunch of were-assholes. Oh, and the way the spell was set, I think the fae thought Jack was Rafe and Cara was me, which adds another level of terrifying.”
“Are fae really that powerful?” Sam said.
“Like manitou, mortals thought of them as divine beings because they were so mighty.”
Sam shrugged. “I’d rather hear they were like wussy Disney fairies, but at least we know. And we have a mani
tou on our side. Any idea why it’s in Canada? The fae are Old World beings.”
“They’re otherworldly beings,” Elissa corrected. “They don’t belong on this plane at all, but some of them like to visit. For the seelie fae, the neutral to good ones, it’s like a resort. They’re virtually immortal and easily bored, so they’re always looking for new things to see and do.”
“But even the good ones can be trouble. Altering reality because they don’t understand it might be a problem, stuff like that,” Cara said. “Official police policy is that if there’s the slightest suspicion of fae involvement in anything, even a traffic violation, you refer it up to the RCMP Paranormal Division without investigating it any further. The unofficial policy is you do that and then take a long leave, because you’re probably seeing dancing elephants in corners. Not that it happens much, but that they even have that policy…” She shuddered. “And from what I understand, we mostly run into seelie fae.”
“I would guess the unseelie are the bad ones, and we’re dealing with one of those?” Gramps asked. Elissa nodded.
“How do they see this world?”
“Like a buffet.”
Gramps shook his head. “Damn, girl, I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. But I sort of knew you would.”
“Another fucking unseelie working with another fucking sorcerer.” Cara jumped at the harshness and layers of pain in Elissa’s voice. “And I bet this one’s been around a long, long time.”
The door blew open. “An embarrassingly long time,” Grand-mère’s voice said on the breeze. “At least the sorcerer has.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Grand-mère followed a second later, not by walking through the door like anyone else would, but by materializing just inside the door, which never opened. She looked taller than normal and glowed spring green with energy.
“I rarely see green looking that angry,” Elissa commented to no one in particular.
Everyone except Gramps jumped, even Jack, who Cara thought would be used to Grand-mère’s tricks by now.
But even Gramps looked surprised when Grand-mère said, “Sorry about the dramatic entrance. I forgot I wasn’t corporeal in my hurry to get over here.”
“What brings you here in such a hurry?” Cara asked, although she had a sinking feeling she knew.
“There are certain words that travel on the wind of their own accord. Certain beings whose very names have enough power to stir the air.”
Grand-mère plopped down in Gramps’s ratty easy chair. She seemed to deflate, sinking back not just to her normal size but even smaller, like a spindly sapling. The green glow, though, stepped up, becoming brighter and stranger, reminding Cara of either antifreeze or lime Jell-O. “Children.” Grand-mère sighed. “I have been remiss in not telling you the whole truth. But even an old spirit can be embarrassed to admit her youthful errors.”
They cast wild looks at each other, trying to comprehend the enormity of Grand-mère admitting to error—let alone what the error might be.
“Sit down, children.” Grand-mère gestured as if it was her house. “Mind Sam’s poor hip. You might as well make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a long night.”
Sam nodded and waved one hand feebly. “Someone want to start a pot of coffee?”
Elissa chuckled, a sweet, surprising sound amid the tension. “I’ll do it. It’s bound to be better than yours.” Everyone joined in the laughter and offered suggestions of things that might be better than Sam’s coffee—from three-day-old Tim Horton’s with curdled creamer to pine sap. Even Grand-mère pitched in with, “Pine sap’s great in comparison. Then again, I’m part tree.”
For a few minutes, as Elissa bustled around making coffee, then took the baby from Jude so she could nurse, things felt blessedly, deceptively normal.
Far too soon, Grand-mère cleared her throat in a way that echoed through the stratosphere. “After waiting for so long, I find myself impatient to tell a story. Settle down, everyone.”
Then Grand-mère began to speak, and Cara didn’t care about anything other than the story Grand-mère told. From the first words, the old manitou’s voice cast a spell—probably literally—over Cara, narrowing the world to Sam’s house but at the same time opening it up to whatever Grand-mère described.
“Since the French first came to this place, there has been trouble, and when the English joined them, the trouble became more complex. The mundane troubles you know from your history classes, children.” She glanced at the Americans. “The details are different in your country, but you know the larger picture. Cultures clashing, one with more material power and the other with roots in this place, with tragic results that linger to this day. Yet among all the ugliness and hate, individuals found their ways to understanding, friendship and even love. What you might not know is that the magics of the cultures interacted in similar ways, for good or ill.”
“Makes sense,” Jude said. “People are people, and at some point they’ll want to fuck each other or fuck with each other. If they have magic, it’s bound to get even messier.”
“There had always been skinwalkers. The first humans here tend toward shamanic gifts, rather than witch’s or sorcerer’s magic, and some beings will always choose the darker path. But faced with new enemies, who had both technology and magic they did not understand, more and more shamans who might have chosen otherwise felt that the skinwalker’s path might give them a weapon against the Europeans. It didn’t work well, but that didn’t keep angry young people from trying.” Grand-mère shrugged like a tree would shrug. “What the skinwalkers learned was that the European sorcerers, called loups-garous in French or weres in English, had more in common with them than either did with their own people. The skinwalkers and the loups-garous joined forces against both human and Different, native and foreigner, because they were rejected by all decent people.”
“So that’s part of the story,” Jack mused. “An old enmity that’s lasted until today. I can see where a bunch of bad-ass sorcerers and broken shamans might gang up on everyone else. But this is more personal. Someone in this village pissed someone off royally.” He screwed up his face. “I wish I could remember more of my conversation with Chenier. I know he dropped clues about what his deal was. There was definitely history with this village—but the fae magic must have wiped some of the details away, and the duals and word-magic thing took care of the rest.”
Grand-mère made a face that might have passed for a smile to someone who wasn’t paying attention. “I shouldn’t complain that my children are perceptive enough to see three chapters ahead in the story. But let me tell it in my own way.
“Now among the English and French people who came to this land, there were a greater number than the norm of Differents—witches, sorcerers, duals. I suppose they hoped to find, in the new society forming here, a more accepting place than the rigid old world, or at least a place where a wolf could run in the forest or a witch could work her craft far from interference. Inevitably, these Differents met those who were already here. Sometimes the results were tragic, but, more often than with the ordinary humans, they learned to live together.
“In due time, through fighting and fucking and talking and a few wars I never bothered to follow, a new society formed here, and a new country that called itself Canada instead of Nouveau France.” Cara inwardly gasped to realize how much history Grand-mère had condensed as if it had taken no more than a few weeks.
From Grand-mère’s ancient perspective, perhaps it hadn’t.
“Somewhere during this tumultuous time—I couldn’t tell you exactly when—a manitou who was certainly old enough to know better met a young French sorcerer named René Chenier.”
“That’s him!” Jack exclaimed. “He gave me his real name, which means he’s either damn arrogant or figured I wouldn’t live long enough to use it against him.” He blinked slowly as realization hit him. “But how is he still alive?”
Grand-mère turned her face away. The air around her bec
ame hot and red, as if it blushed from the force of her embarrassment. “I fell in love with him, or thought I did, and I shared his bed.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Grand-mère!” Cara couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “That’s disgusting. He’s not even human!” She realized what she’d said and backpedaled swiftly, aware she, as a human, was in the minority in the room. “Which is fine if you’re not human in the first place, but Chenier was and isn’t anymore, and that’s nasty.”
Grand-mère shook her head. A vestige of a smile played on her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Ah, child, he was human, then. Human and handsome, as you and Elissa may have noticed. In those days, I’d had little contact with sorcerers, and I was intrigued by his powers as well as his person.” Her brown face turned several shades redder and more barklike. “In turn, he paid me court, as if he was madly in love with me. I knew it wasn’t precisely the truth, but he played the game well, and I enjoyed it.”
The air flushed even darker around her. “In those days,” she added, “I chose to appear different than I do now.” Her appearance briefly shifted to a much younger version of the Grand-mère they knew—deep green hair instead of green-streaked white, unlined face, features of inhuman but undeniable beauty. Jude gasped at the sight, and Rafe reached out his hands as if in recognition. “Too much work to keep it up these days. I’m sure you girls understand, and you just have to deal with makeup, not magic,” she said casually as she faded back to her normal appearance.
Both Cara and Elissa obligingly laughed, but internally, Cara called bullshit. Low-maintenance was one thing, but no female of any species would choose to look decrepit instead of beautiful unless there was some damn good reason. Probably something complicated and deeply personal and echoing a world of pain.
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