Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy)

by Gwen Mitchell

  “Maybe she was just trying to keep you safe. She always knew more than she let on. Hell, if she’d told someone instead of trying to handle it herself…” He stopped there. No reason to rub salt in the wound. He should have known something was wrong. He would never understand why Ce-Ce hadn’t trusted him. He was a Ward — defending those he loved was his purpose.

  I won’t fail again.

  Bri blinked back tears. “Maybe she had the right idea, keeping me in the dark. I felt a lot safer when I was an ocean away from all of this. What if…”

  He didn’t realize he’d grabbed hold of her arms until surprise blossomed on her face. His heart was pounding, but he kept tight control over his voice. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  And if she ran away again, he would follow. Halfway around the globe if he had to.

  Bri stared up at him and licked those soft, red lips. She looked torn between planting a big one on him and bolting. His blood turned to lava. He slid his hands to her shoulders, her neck, traced her jaw with his thumb. Fresh tears chilled his fingertips. He leaned in—

  She turned her head away at the last second. “Kean, don’t.”

  He heard the words, but the way she said them sounded like please. His body had a hard-wired response to that please. He wanted the kiss hanging between them, but he couldn’t afford to scare her away again. He needed to take it easy. He wrapped her in his arms instead.

  She tensed at first, but then all the fight went out of her and she leaned against him, releasing a shaky breath. “What if I end up just like her?”

  He realized what she meant and squeezed tighter. “You’re strong enough, I know it. You keep forgetting one thing.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not alone.” He brought their hands up between them and laced their fingers together, which got a small smile out of her. “C’mon, before Astrid feeds all our dinner to the animals.”

  She let him lead her back down the beach towards the path to Astrid’s, but turned down his offer to carry her up the hill. She hiked ahead of him instead. He didn’t complain, since he enjoyed the view so much. Those shoes were worth every penny.

  ***

  Astrid had cooked a feast big enough for a reunion of their ragtag family, plus the furry and feathered family, and then some. The best pairings from her private wine cellar flowed throughout all five courses, and Bri had never been so eager to clean her plate. By dessert, they had shaken out the last of their awkwardness and were making fun of each other just like old times.

  She pushed her chocolate-raspberry soufflé aside and wiped the corners of her mouth. “So, your culinary Voodoo, more than anything else, has convinced me to help kick off this magical investigation, but that begs the question: how? I assume you guys have some kind of plan.”

  Kean leaned back in his seat, his joking demeanor evaporating. “We find the bastard who got past my wards without so much as a whisper, and I destroy him.”

  “Since when have you been warding Ce-Ce’s?” Astrid asked.

  He waved the question away. “A while. The blood wards were down for a couple of days, but mine were still in place. They should have at least alerted me of an intruder.”

  “What does that mean?” Bri asked, before they lost her.

  “It means whoever did this is either very powerful or extremely skilled with spellwork, to sneak something past the most powerful Ward in the islands.”

  “Astrid.” Kean bristled.

  “You are, Kean. You know it.” Astrid got up and cleared their dinner plates. “At least, you were. Until now.”

  Bri studied Kean, the hard set of his jaw, the bunching of his shoulders as he clenched his fists. He’d been so angry when they told him about the study, and brooding for quite a while after. She’d thought he was upset that she wasn’t agreeing to all their plans. Now understanding dawned. He saw it as his job to protect them, and felt like he’d failed. That’s why he was so adamant about keeping her under guard.

  “Does that mean I shouldn’t stay there?”

  “You’re safe there now,” Kean said. “The blood wards revived when you came home. Those are unbreakable.”

  “Oh.” That was a relief, though she would have welcomed an excuse to stay the night at Astrid’s. She didn’t want to be alone with her ghosts. “So, the attacker was a Ward too? That narrows it down, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” Astrid said from the kitchen. “The rain and the rockslide sound more like the work of a Summoner.”

  Kean nodded. “We can’t rule either out. I’ll double check the wards, see if there’s a signature I can pick up on.”

  “I can ask the animals around the house if they saw anything unusual.”

  “So…what do I do?” Bri asked.

  “There are a couple of things we can try.” Astrid circled the table pouring coffee. “The simplest is to see if there’s more to Ce-Ce’s message. A Sight potion or a séance should do the trick. Might not get much from the other side now that she’s moved on, but she might have left a message somehow.”

  “I’ll take potions for one hundred, Alex.”

  “Sight potion puts you into a trance-like state, connecting you with your higher consciousness. If it works, then, like tuning an antenna, you can pick up any psychic messages left for you in the ether.”

  “Sounds simple enough.” She couldn’t believe she was saying that about taking a magic potion and entering a trance-like state. If she thought too hard about how much her reality was shifting, she’d get woozy. “Any potential side-effects?”

  “Yes.” Kean chose that moment to interject. “Anytime you chemically alter your state of consciousness, you’re taking a risk.”

  Bri raised one eyebrow. “Are you really going to give me the ‘this is your brain on drugs’ speech?”

  He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s more than that. If you let a drug take you there, your mind doesn’t always know the way back. You can get stuck, or lost.”

  “We can ground her.” Astrid reached out and squeezed Bri’s hand. “We will make sure you get you back, don’t worry.”

  “Right.” She imagined herself lost in the maze of her own subconscious. That sounded like a living horror flick. And that was the easiest option? The space between her shoulder blades broke out in a cold sweat. “When do we do it?”

  Astrid lifted the black kitten into her lap and fed him some whipped cream from her finger. “I just have to procure the potion. We can do it tomorrow night.”

  “We should wait for the full moon,” Kean said. “We’d be able to form a stronger connection.”

  The full moon was when Zyne power was at its peak. All major rituals were performed then, or else on nights of cosmic conjunctions and events. But the full moon wasn’t for another three days. “I’ll be in New York by then.”

  “Can’t you put it off? You just had two deaths in the family.”

  “She has to meet her international playboy fiancé there,” Astrid said, “or else he’ll just show up here with his whole entourage.”

  Bri glared daggers across the table.

  Way to put your foot in it, Edgewood.

  Astrid pressed her mouth firmly closed and sank lower in her chair, trying to hide behind a ball of black fur. Bri sipped her coffee, on a mental countdown until Kean popped like Mount St. Helens. As if sensing the imminent blast, the dogs abandoned their posts under the table.

  Five. Four. Three…

  “You’re engaged?” Kean asked. Zero inflection. He’d gone scary-still, staring at her left hand.

  She tucked it into her lap. Her face heated. “Uh…no. Not exactly. I mean…he hasn’t asked me. Yet.”

  Without another word, Kean unfolded from his seat, jerked up his flannel shirtsleeves, and loaded his forearms with plates. Plates Bri really didn’t think should be in his vicinity at the moment, though she wasn’t stupid enough to say so.

  She mouthed a “thanks a lot” at Astrid behind Kean’s
back and excused herself to the restroom to try and put out the fire in her cheeks. They glowed vibrant red, branding her as a betrayer. She’d done nothing wrong, technically speaking. Except that Kean had kept himself unattached, while she’d planned to move on with someone else. Permanently. She’d crossed an unspoken line.

  She splashed cold water on her face, took a few calming breaths, and tried to put things into perspective. Truth: she had planned to marry Eric. Keeping that secret from Kean would have been worse in his eyes. Truth: Kean would be her friend no matter what. Of course, knowing that and imagining how the news must have hit him made her queasy.

  Truth: you’re not so sure that’s what you want anymore.

  When she’d finally settled down enough to face the firing squad, Bri emerged from the sanctuary of the commode into an eerie indoor forest. The Pacific night sky poured in through the beveled windows. Tangled leaves glittered frosty silver in the moonlight. Several candles lit the small sitting area, and Kean crouched in front of the woodstove’s warm orange glow. Yellow eyes of every shape and size flashed from the shadows.

  The Righteous Brothers eased into hearing, and she stifled a laugh. She moved toward the man she’d once imagined herself loving forever. Those had been an innocent girl’s wishes, dreams now bundled up in the pain of so much loss. Loss caused by her own cowardice. If she had chosen to stay instead of running away, would Ce-Ce and Tara still be here?

  When she was close enough, Kean reached for her hand. “Dance with me.”

  She dug in her heels as he tried to sweep her closer. “Where’s Astrid?”

  “Out for a run.” His lips, glistening in the firelight, rolled into a cocky smile. “You worried what’ll happen without a chaperone?” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers so intimately her heart stuttered. “Afraid I’ll take advantage of you?”

  He turned her hand over and kissed the center of her palm.

  A tingle snaked up her arm, wiggled down her chest, and coiled in her belly. When was the last time such a simple touch had affected her like that?

  “Give me some credit here.” Kean yanked her forward and caught her in his arms. He had her swaying to the music by the next beat, swaggering his hips in a way that made her want to throw her head back and laugh as if she was drunk. Maybe she was a little drunk. She’d been ready for a fight, not for this.

  “Is she safe out there alone?”

  “She won’t leave the property. She owns three miles of beach. Her blood wards are new, but they’ll hold. You have permission to relax.” Kean draped her arm around his neck, keeping them moving together. Bri shivered with a mixture of familiarity and anticipation. She breathed in the scent of his neck, and almost against her will, her body molded to his.

  “See, you remember.” Kean hummed softly in her ear, with the Righteous Brothers as backup. Bring back that lovin’ feelin’…

  She remembered all right. “That’s why I didn’t want to dance with you.”

  “Chicken.” Kean slid a breath closer, his fingers splayed on her lower back. With his other hand, he released the clip out of her hair. Before she could utter a protest, his fingers were massaging her scalp. She went practically limp in his arms.

  When his lips sighed over the tiny scratches on her collarbone, her senses came clambering to the surface. She pushed him away and struggled to catch her breath, to rein in her galloping heartbeat and runaway brain. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do what?” Kean’s eyes glittered with silent laughter. “Me?”

  Her cheeks went hot again.

  A low, male chuckle rumbled from his chest. He lifted her chin, his thumb tracing a sensual arc over her throat. “I have wanted this for so long.”

  She swallowed hard. “I want you too.”

  His fingers tightened ever so slightly.

  “But it’s complicated.”

  “It’s not that complicated.” Kean nuzzled behind her ear and started dancing again, a barely perceptible link keeping their motions in time. She couldn’t help but surrender to it. The man could move.

  Her imagination filled in the blanks, and warmth pooled where their bodies touched. “Are you going to argue with everything I say?”

  “Only until you stop being so difficult.”

  She laughed uneasily. “You’re such a stubborn ass.”

  Kean nodded, dropping kisses across her cheek. “I like hearing you talk like that.”

  The whisper of his breath on her skin, the way their bodies fit together…she’d locked away all the subtle nuances somewhere in the deep recesses of her memory. Forgetting had made it easier to pretend she had everything she wanted. Now, faced with the intimate reality, those details flooded her system. Miles and years between the two of them, and still just his lips close to hers — something as simple and as complicated as a dance — had her forgetting she’d ever left and not caring why.

  She rested her head on his chest and let his arms slide across her shoulder blades. “You never give up until you get what you want, do you?”

  “Nope.” Kean smiled and ran his fingers through her hair. His gaze slid to her lips. “And I want to kiss you now.”

  Her mouth fell open in surprise, and then he leaned in and filled the empty space with his. Bri came up on her toes to meet him. She melded to the front of his body, as if drawn by a magnetic force. Somehow he’d snuck right past her defenses, and she felt herself give-in, open to him in ways she had never been with anyone else.

  He groaned with pleasure and deepened the kiss. His taste filled her senses. Red wine, chocolate soufflé, and underneath it all, Kean. He tasted like the summer of seventeen, those two steamy months right before she left for college, when all that had mattered was the heat of their skin, the slide of their bodies against one another. The next thing she knew, he was backing her towards the couch.

  “I’ve missed you so much, baby.”

  Bri made a muffled sound of resistance and started to pull away. He gathered her closer, keeping her mouth too occupied to make any more objections. She clutched his shoulders, felt the mounds of muscle under her palms, and the only thing she could think was that she wanted to see the hard body underneath those clothes naked and sweaty on top of her in the firelight.

  Was she really doing this?

  He arched her back and traced the line from her ear to her shoulder with hot kisses as his hand slid up the back of her shirt, reaching for her bra clasp. She imagined the press of her naked breasts against his broad chest, his strong arms surrounding her. It would feel so safe. Even with all of her issues, and flaws, and her beat-up soul completely bared to Kean, she felt safe. Blame it on nostalgia, or the booze, or the grief — or the fact that her life could be in imminent danger — she was totally doing this.

  A witch cackled in the background, and then the whole house came alive in a screeching clatter, followed by a loud knock. Bri flinched, sliding out of Kean’s hands, and plopped onto the couch as he rounded on the front door.

  “This better be important.” He stalked across the room with his fists pumping and his jaw set.

  Bri smoothed her hands over her face and took a few deep breaths to get her thoughts to reboot. What the hell was she doing? As if she hadn’t made enough of a mess of things by agreeing to let her friends drug her in the name of supernatural sleuthing, was she really about to blow up this can of worms? Somehow Kean could still hotwire her body so well it short-circuited her brain. She needed some air. After she pulled her hair back up into a twist, she grabbed her purse and slipped on her shoes.

  “Evening, Sheriff,” Kean said as she came up behind him.

  The brown uniformed figure on the porch leaned to the side to look past Kean and right at Bri. He tipped his hat and smirked. “Why, Miss Briana Spurrier. When I heard you’d come back to North Wake Island, I didn’t believe it. I had to see for myself. You are quite the sight.”

  Gawain Preston — whom Astrid and Kean still called Pesty — Wanely had followed the three of them around
since primary school, though he’d never been a part of the gang. He was too much of a rule-follower. He was always sweet to Bri’s face, but she suspected that was more to piss Kean off than because he actually liked her. He’d grown about a foot since high school, and looked fit enough to compete in the Crossfit Games. His tan face was clean-shaven, showing a curved scar over his lip that hadn’t been there before.

  She tossed him a casual wave, her cheeks flushing at the thought of the rules she’d just been about to break. Seeing Gawain was just the splash of cold water she needed. “Hey.”

  “What do you want?” Kean practically growled.

  The sheriff hooked a thumb on his gun holster, pulling it low on his hip. “I’d like to have a word with Briana. In private.”

  “Now’s not a good time.” Kean started to close the door, but Bri caught his arm.

  “Actually, now is fine.” She gave Gawain a half smile, then turned to Kean. “It’s late. I’m tired. Tell Astrid thanks for dinner. I’ll come by the pub tomorrow and talk to her about the other thing.”

  Kean scowled as she stepped onto the porch, his ears turning red, but he didn’t try to stop her. She followed Gawain down the terraced path towards the gravel driveway and felt the heat of Kean’s irritation burning into her back. She shot him a warning glance over her shoulder. He answered with a determined look that said she wasn’t getting off that easy, and shut the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Gawain stopped Bri a few feet from her rental car and gripped her arm. “I wanted to give you my condolences and assure you that our department conducted a thorough investigation. Despite what you might hear around town, there was no sign that magic was involved — I would have detected it. Your grandmother and sister died in an accident. That’s what I believe, and that’s how the report has been filed with both the Synod and the county.”

  “I understand.” Bri pulled away from him and shivered. The damp chill stole away the lingering coziness of Astrid’s house. She understood perfectly. She was with Astrid on this one — something was off. Why was Gawain so anxious to write-off her family’s string of tragedies as a mere coincidence? Astrid thought he had his head up his ass, and Kean thought he was just incompetent, but Bri had an odd feeling the man before her was sharper and more dangerous than he looked. Her gaze drifted back towards the house, and she half-wished Kean had come too. She rubbed her arms. “Is that all?”