by Eva Chase
The flutter that look provoked in my chest was definitely not worth paying attention to. “Thank you,” I said jokingly. “Today you can be my shield against having a panic attack in the middle of some country road.”
I drove out of the garage and onto the road, pleased to find that whatever complaints I could make about Jude, his instruction in the car had left me reasonably confident. Declan watched without comment as I navigated the turns in town.
“You don’t look like you need much help with this,” he said.
“I’ve only ever driven about ten miles on my own,” I said. “And that was fueled by being extremely pissed off at Jude. It’s easier to feel secure knowing there’s someone else here in case I run into some situation I haven’t encountered yet.”
“Not likely to be much trouble on these roads. Just don’t go driving into New York City.”
“Yeah.” My thoughts leapt back to the story Imogen had told me about Professor Banefield’s wife. I couldn’t do anything about that loss, but there was still a chance I could make sure my mentor didn’t lose his own life. And maybe the answer would be somewhere in my parents’ former home.
Jude had said they never had company over there. That’d make it an ideal place for hiding information they didn’t want their enemies knowing about. Ms. Grimsworth had mentioned my grandfather Bloodstone packing things up for storage, which I’d determined meant it’d be off in Maine at the primary family home, but I had to at least check.
The shade of the scattered trees along the side of the road slipped over us. Another, smaller smile curved Declan’s lips. “You know, this is how it should be. How it’s supposed to be. The scions looking out for each other, supporting each other, as we need it… It’s how the four of us have been since we were kids. I know you’ve had your problems with, well, all of us, but if we can get through this—and Malcolm can get over his vendetta—you have a family here.”
A lump clogged my throat. “My family was murdered.” By your people.
“I know,” Declan said quickly. “I didn’t mean—obviously it’s not the same. But it’s something. You don’t have any other Bloodstones to rely on while you’re figuring things out. I don’t think you’d be in the same kind of danger if you did. We can fill that gap, is all I’m saying.”
I had trouble imagining the other guys expressing the same sentiment, but I believed he meant it. “Is that why you’ve helped me even though it puts you in danger? Because you’ve decided I’m family?”
“In a way.” He paused. “You remind me of all the things I’d like to do and say if I didn’t feel my position was so precarious. Maybe it makes me a coward that it’s easier for me to ensure you can keep doing and saying all that stuff rather than making a bigger stand myself, but… it’s something.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to risk yourself or your brother for me,” I said. It wasn’t as if there weren’t things I’d kept to myself rather than risk admitting them to the wrong person. My whole plan to bring Bloodstone University down, for example. “He’s your real family.”
“I don’t think the bond of the scions is any less real. It’s just different.”
“I guess most families don’t have to suppress the desire to kiss each other.”
I’d spoken without really thinking that comment through, but Declan just laughed. “There is that. Not that it’s been much of a problem until recently. You… have added an interesting dynamic showing up all of a sudden, let’s just say. I’d suggest looking farther afield when it comes to the kissing thing, though. Plenty of eligible bachelors beyond the pentacle of scions.”
Considering that I’d kissed three out of four in the last two months, that comment seemed fair. Heat crept up my neck. “I guess the thing is that with everyone else I have to worry about what they really want from me. So far the guys who’ve tried to chat me up—or worse—only seemed to care that I’m a scion and not about me as a person. At least with you or Jude or… whoever, I know I’m not just a step up the social ladder.”
“But on the other hand, anything you have with us can’t lead all that far.”
“Maybe that’s okay. We’re in college. Isn’t that supposed to be the time for experimenting and figuring out what you want without worrying about making big commitments?” I hesitated, and my voice dropped. “I don’t really trust anyone at Blood U yet. But maybe the fact that I can’t have a real future with any of you makes you safe in that one area. Just mutual attraction, no expectations.”
Declan wet his lips. “You know, today, it can’t be—”
“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking—that wasn’t the idea. I really did just want to do something nice for you, as foreign a concept as that might be in fearmancer circles.”
“Sorry. I know I didn’t need to say that.” He looked over at me. “You might have shaken things up, and obviously the clash hasn’t been easy on you, but I think we’re lucky to have you the way you are.”
I let myself glance away from the road for a second to meet his eyes. The honest appreciation there set off a whole lot more than a flutter inside me.
Maybe that was okay. He was the safest one of all, really, because he didn’t want to want me. If anything ever happened between us, it’d be desire, pure and simple, not some other goal he thought he could use me for.
He reached for the radio, breaking the moment. “Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead.”
He found a local station playing jangly pop music that I wouldn’t have thought was his thing, but it reminded me of the songs I’d have listened to back home, three months and a lifetime ago. At least it was a pleasant memory of times past for once. The buoyant beats filled the car the rest of the way to the cottage.
There was no sign of anyone on or around the driveway, as expected. I’d gotten the contact information for the company that had been overseeing my family’s properties from Ms. Grimsworth to ensure we had no interruptions today. As a secondary measure, just in case, I cast a little magic toward the gate’s panel as I pressed my hand to it. “No one but me.”
Energy shivered through the warm metal. As long as that spell lasted, it should reject any other attempts to open it.
On the other side, Declan exhaled slowly as he took in the grounds and the buildings, his shoulders relaxing with the clang of the closing gate in a way they hadn’t quite while we were in the car. The sun beamed over us, glinting off the pond and turning the green of the yard and the hedges even richer. His family must have places just as nice, but I could tell he liked it.
I headed over to the house intending to begin my search, and he followed.
“What exactly are you up to here?” he asked. “This isn’t just a break for you.”
“No. Mostly I’m just trying to learn more about my family and what they did before my parents died. This seems like a good place to start.” I didn’t want to go into more detail about my hopes of helping Professor Banefield. I might trust Declan not to be involved with that plot, but he still had to report back to the other barons somehow or other, and who knew how they might be tangled up in this mess. “Feel free to take a walk around the grounds or find somewhere to just lounge around or whatever. Just enjoy having nothing to worry about for a little while.”
Declan looked as if he wasn’t really sure what to do with himself if he didn’t have some pressing issue to deal with, but he nodded to me and meandered on toward the pond. I stepped into the house and started a much more intensive investigation than I’d felt comfortable getting into while Jude was around.
The great room on the main floor had a ceiling two stories high and a view from its picture windows down to the lake, but not a whole lot to look through. Somehow I didn’t think my parents had hidden secret documents under the leather couch. Branching off from there, though, was a room that appeared to be a study, with bookcases filling two of the walls and a big oak desk by the window.
I’d only glanced in there with Jude. Today, I marched right in
and got to work.
Every book on the shelves—some of them old novels, some volumes of magical theory, some more mundane business and legal reference texts—I slid out and flipped through in case anything had been secreted away inside. Then I started on the desk drawers.
The ones on the left side only held basic items like pens and paperclips, blank notepads not yet used, an old personal phone book that looked as if it hadn’t been opened in decades. The yellowed pages crackled and started to tear as I flipped through it. Other than a few last names from the baron families, I didn’t recognize anyone in there. I slipped it into my purse in case it’d come in handy later.
The drawers on the right side were locked. I fiddled with them for a while, testing my magic against each one, shivering with the deterring jab of the spells on them. Finally, my fingers managed to press the right spot with the right nudge of magic on the top drawer. It opened to reveal what first looked like just a bunch of scrap papers. I dug through them, and my fingers brushed a leather surface toward the back.
I pulled out a small leather-bound journal. The first page showed a list of notations—names, dates, jotted notes about the topics of meetings or phone calls.
I paged through, again checking for any familiar names. Whether it’d been my birth mother or father who’d kept this record, they’d been in touch with Ms. Grimsworth a few times in the year before their death. The name Crowford came up once, but I didn’t know my Persuasion professor’s first initial to be sure this was him and not some other member of his family. The information was all dry facts, no hint at how the writer had felt about any of the interactions noted.
After several unsuccessful attempts at the other drawers, I gave up for the time being. My stomach was starting to gurgle. I checked the fridge and found the fruit and premade sandwiches I’d asked the maintenance workers to drop off on their last visit. Digging into a peach, I went out to find Declan and see if he wanted anything to eat.
I almost didn’t see him stretched out on the padded lounger on the deck. His arms lay loosely folded over his chest, his head tilted against the cushion as he dozed in the warmth of the sun. His lips had parted just enough to emphasize their soft cupid’s bow shape.
My heart twinged. I guessed he really had needed a chance to properly relax. More strain than I’d realized was there had faded from his expression, leaving it completely at peace. An image popped into my head of waking up next to that striking face, of pressing my mouth to his, with a rush of heat I had to shake off.
In some ways, he really was as caught in his circumstances as I was. He didn’t want the barony. He didn’t agree with half the stuff he saw around him.
When I got out of here, when I could send the joymancers to topple the university and anything else it led them to, I’d tell them to make sure the Ashgraves stayed safe. Maybe the fearmancer world wouldn’t be half so terrifying if all the barons had been like him.
The upstairs of the cottage held four bedrooms and a bathroom. Two of the bedrooms contained no personal items at all, so I figured they were guest rooms, presumably not used very often in my parents’ day. The next one held a crib and a changing table.
Last time, I’d glanced in there briefly, Jude had made a joke, and I’d walked on before the implications had really sunk in. Now, my fingers tightened where I’d grasped the doorframe.
This had been my bedroom. I didn’t have the slightest memory of it, but it couldn’t have belonged to anyone else.
For the first two years of my life, when we’d been here, I’d slept in that crib. My birth parents had changed me on that table. I’d watched that silver star mobile spin as I drifted off to sleep. I’d played with the stuffed animals sitting in their wicker basket next to the wardrobe.
I drifted over to the crib and looked into it. The sheet was neatly tucked, the furniture free of dust—the cleaner kept the place spic and span. Not a hair or a crease remained of my long-ago presence here. But just the sight of the room brought the idea of the family before the one I remembered crashing home.
I had had other parents, parents who’d set up this room for me, parents who’d cared for me. Parents who might very well have loved me, even if I found it hard to associate those tender emotions with fearmancers.
I shivered and backed away, leaving the haunted sensation behind as I moved to the last bedroom.
Just outside it, a framed photograph hung on the wall. My birth parents stood in a formal embrace in front of a marble wall. My mother in her deep blue gown looked like a slightly older version of me, with eyes a little closer set and dark chestnut waves that tumbled all the way to her waist. My father stood half a foot taller, broad-shouldered but narrow in his face, his hair a lighter brown both on his head and the neat beard on his pointy jaw.
They were posed the way you often saw in wedding photos, but their clothing didn’t fit—unless fearmancers had different traditions. I tore my gaze away and went on into the room.
It was clearly the master. A king-sized bed with a mahogany sleigh frame dominated one half of the room, the other holding a dressing area with wardrobe, vanity, and a couple of armchairs. Like the rest of the house, the room was spotlessly clean, the air carrying a faintly citrusy scent.
I started with the wardrobe, hoping my search upstairs wouldn’t be totally fruitless. The top shelf held a box that proved to be full of dry pressed leaves—who had collected those?
Groping as far as I could, my hand came to rest on a large clothbound book shoved right to the back. An old photo album, I realized as I tugged it out. The dates written on the cover showed a span of six years that ended a few years before my birth.
I sat down on the floor with the album and leaned against the wardrobe as I paged through it. My birth parents featured in most of the photographs, one or both of them. It started in their university days. There they were with a few other kids in their late teens standing on the green with Nightwood Tower in the background. There was my mother lounging on the dock with a friend, a big but elegant sunhat shading her eyes.
This wouldn’t tell me who their enemies were, but it might give me a better idea who my allies in the wider world should be.
I turned another page, and came face to face with a couple more familiar figures. The golden-haired guy with his hand on my mother’s shoulder was the spitting image of Malcolm, if maybe a tiny bit wider in the jaw and a tad more smoldering with his gaze. His dad, no doubt. And next to him stood a willowy woman with Declan’s smooth black hair and pensive eyes. She looked a little stiff, as if she hadn’t wanted to be in the picture.
The creak of the floor brought my head up. Declan stood in the doorway, his face still a little languid from his sleep, his hair windblown.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Have you found what you were hoping to?”
“I’m still figuring that out. I’ve found more than I had before, anyway. Have a good nap?”
He laughed with an embarrassed flush that only made him more attractive. “I didn’t mean to drift off.”
“It’s fine. You must have needed it. I’m glad my mission succeeded.” I grinned at him.
Something about his gaze felt more intense than usual, but maybe it was only the effect of that recent sleep. He took another step into the room—still several feet away, but my skin tingled with awareness of him anyway. “Is there any way I can help?”
I wagged a finger at him. “You are on strict orders not to do any work for what I’m starting to think is the first time in your entire life.”
This time his laugh came easier. “That might not be a total exaggeration.”
As I continued perusing the photo album, he wandered through the room. He drifted into the hall for a few minutes to consider the picture of my parents and then moved to the bedroom window to take in the view. Every now and then, I felt his gaze come to rest on me again, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to want to venture off on his own again either.
None
of the photographs were labeled. Once they moved beyond the university years, I didn’t recognize most of the places in them, let alone the people other than my birth parents. I set the album over by the door to take with me back to campus and hopefully do some cross-referencing—maybe I could get Declan to look through it on the drive home, come to think of it, when I released him from total relaxation.
One more glance through the wardrobe turned up nothing. I opened the vanity drawers and found them empty. With a huff of breath, I set my hands on my hips.
“Well, maybe I’m going to have to do some relaxing now too. I think I’ve run out of places to search.”
Declan turned to face me. “You haven’t exactly had the most peaceful time of it the last few months. You’ve got to deserve some down time as much as I do.”
“There’s just… so much I need to take care of, as soon as I can.” I grimaced. “Okay, now I probably sound like you too.”
He chuckled and ambled closer, and that impression of intensity tickled through me again. “Yes, you do. Why do you think I like you so much?”
“I was hoping it was my brilliant wits and irrepressible spirit.”
“Those too.” He raised his hand to touch my cheek, and my pulse stuttered with desire. I expected him to pull back again, to let the moment pass, but instead he leaned in, so slowly my heart thumped faster and faster, until I felt like I’d die if he didn’t kiss me.
And then he did.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rory
This kiss wasn’t at all like the one Declan had sprung on me in the library repair room, sudden and demanding. His lips brushed mine before catching my mouth more fully, the gentle motion setting off eager quivers all through my nerves. Even as I kissed him back, there was a tentativeness to the way he met my lips, as if he half anticipated the world to blow up with this transgression.