by Mary Martel
I shook my head, amazed by how far gone I'd been in my grief and choked up by her magic to have put up with that level of bullshit from her. Because it had been me who'd made her tea and poured it for her and had treated her like she'd been a real-life living, breathing princess and she hadn't deserved that kind of treatment from me and had used my grief and her magic to take it from me all the same.
I didn't know if she'd been the same way with Julian or Damien, but for some reason, I didn't think they'd have put up with that level of bullshit from her. Which really told me something because I knew that if Ariel had asked they both would jump at the chance to wait on her. Hell, Damien already did shit like that for her with her coffee. The girl could be a little demon in the mornings until you poured coffee down her throat, once that was done she was happy as all get out. She didn't even need to ask the guys anymore, they all just automatically brought her coffee in the morning. And it wasn't because they felt like they had to or even because she demanded it of them, because she didn't. It was because she was Ariel, the girl we were all slowly falling in love with, and we relished in doing nice things for her because she'd lived a life where nice wasn't something she'd ever been used to because it wasn’t something she’d ever had before.
Where Ariel had earned it from us by being her crazy beautiful sweet self, Annabell had magically manipulated and demanded it, forcing it from us.
The fact that she'd used her magic so willfully on myself and my brothers in order to bend us to her will and get what she wanted out of us should have had me terrified to be here alone with her and should have had me turning and running for the hills straight back to my Uncle so I could get him to take care of the bitch for me. If I'm being honest here, there was a small part of me that wanted to do just that and, in doing so, get as far away from her as I could get. I couldn't do it though because it was cowardly and it would make it so I never got over what the bitch had done to me. I had to face my fears in order to overcome them, to become a stronger man than I had been when I'd been weak enough to allow her to do damage to my life the first time around. I had to do it for Ariel. She needed me strong for her. Strong enough to take care of her no matter the situation. Strong enough to know that if it came down to a magic show with Annabell that I could best her and she'd never be allowed anywhere near my beautiful, sweet girl.
I took in a deep breath and searched for the courage to get myself through this.
My vision was filled with an image of hauntingly green eyes. They held a depth of secrets and torment that I found almost unbearable to take in. Two months ago, they were hauntingly pretty. Now, they held a coldness to them that saddened me.
I drew strength from them all the same.
My girl and her immense courage and resilience gave me the strength and my own courage to walk through that stupid formal sitting room to the door that would lead me deeper into the inner sanctum of the Motel and, thus, the Council itself.
Again, I didn't hesitate with the doorknob, I simply placed my hand on it, turned and pushed the door open wide. My heart beat heavily in my chest as I waited for someone to shout at the sight of the intruder and scream for help.
I was met with entirely different sounds and a sight I wished I could unsee and knew I would spend a whole lot of time wishing it were different and having my wishes not come true.
If there was furniture in the room outside of the bed, I failed to see it. My eyes were wide in shock and unfortunately focused on what was taking place on the bed.
I needed a bucket of bleach for my poor eyes so I could pour it over top of my head and blind myself from seeing anything further in this room.
Annabell had always been frighteningly thin, something she'd worked her ass off (literally) for. She worked out obsessively and she ate but a lot of the time she would later stick her fingers down her throat so she could vomit it all back up. The unhealthiness of it had always bothered me and I had tried talking to her about it but she'd always shut me down and refused to talk about it.
However, if I'd thought her unhealthy before I hadn't seen anything because this was a whole new level of skinny that had passed skinny and moved straight towards skeletal. Each rib stuck out with blinding clarity and, from her place on her stomach on the bed, I had a clear view of her bony, knobby spine that was clearly visible.
Adrian, who I never wished to see naked before, was on his ass in the bed with his thighs split wide, his hand gripped tight in Annabell's luscious red hair. Her face was buried in his groin and from the bobbing of her head and the sucking sounds she was making I knew she had her mouth on him and was sucking him off. Something I knew from past experiences that she absolutely loathed doing and thought was way below her princess station that she imagined herself to be a part of. She seemed to be enjoying herself just fine now.
An older man with a body full of loose skin stood at the edge of the bed with his back and his bare ass facing me. He had what looked like a painful grip on Annabell's fragile looking hips as he thrust powerfully between her thighs. Her entire body jerked forward with each thrust, as did the bed. The skin on his back and bare ass wobbled with each thrust he made. A long, dark, thick braid trailed down the center of his back and slithered around like a snake with each move he made.
Christ.
What the fuck was this?
I backed out of the room and closed the door softly, no longer wishing for my presence to be known.
I grimaced as I rubbed my hand over my tired and now too wide for my head eyes. Annabell wasn't just staying here with the Council, she was doing them as well.
That made things slightly more difficult for me and now I really didn't want the others to know of her presence here.
What would Damien or Julian think were they to know that someone they had been intimate with was now sleeping with more than one member of the Council? Would they be upset? Disgusted? Or, would they feel something along the lines as to what I was feeling right now?
Empty, and glad it wasn't my dick she had her mouth wrapped around.
Chapter Four
Fortunes for the Unfortunate
A bell jingled over head as I pushed the door opened wide and stepped into the warm, candle lit room. I always thought it weird that there weren't normal lights turned on hanging over head but instead the room was filled with the dull, light glow from the flames of the candles that were strewn half-hazardly around the stuffy room. That’s not to say that there weren’t over head lights on the ceiling because there were, they were just never in use when I came here. Though, I wished they had been.
It had been a long time since I'd walked through that door and into the shop. Not since before the summer had started. It had once been owned by an old, decrepit blind woman who saw things almost better than I did despite the fact she was fucking blind.
Her picture had been in the paper recently in the obituaries and I had been curious as to what was going to happen to her shop now that she was no longer alive to take care of it, so here I was. The For Sale By Owner sign hanging in the window was not exactly what I had hoped to find when I got here and, for some stupid fucking reason I wasn’t going to think too hard on, had hurt to see.
My father used to bring me here when I was a little boy and then when I was in my early teens. The old lady had never seemed to age or change and she'd been so familiar with my father that after the first time he'd brought me here I had asked him who she was to him, thinking they'd been friends of some sort. My father had told me that no, sadly they weren't friends.
He'd said, "That woman doesn't have any friends, son, and not because I have tried to befriend her. And it's not for lack of trying on my part, trust me, I've tried and been turned down flat on my ass every time."
"But," I said, not understanding what he was saying, "she's like us, I can feel it. And she's female, I mean, she's an old lady, but she's still a lady. Doesn't that mean we're supposed to take special care of her?"
My father had sighed heavily before
kneeling down in front of me. "You're right," he’d told me, "she is just like us. But, for whatever reason, and that reason is hers alone and not ours to try and force out of her, she's hiding what she is from the world. We have to respect that and we have to respect her. And we should never tell anyone that we know she's like us, we need to keep that secret for her."
I remembered I had been confused as to why she'd want to hide herself from her own people and I had told my father as much.
"Sometimes, my son, the Council isn't always as it appears to be and sometimes there are reasons some of our females have to hide in the world away from them and away from their own people. If we come across one, we mustn't ever breathe a word aloud about them to anyone, do you understand me?"
I had nodded even though I really hadn't understood him in the slightest. It had seemed odd to me that I had been told from the age I could understand the meaning behind the words that all female witches were precious in every way and were needed to be treated as such and coddled to within an inch of their lives. To be told to now let this one hide herself away from the Council and to never breathe a word of her existence to anyone didn't make sense to me. But my father’s word was law, and I took what he said to heart.
I now had a better understanding as to why female witches would want to hide from the Council and I knew that the crippled old blind lady who’d owned the shop had been a witch in hiding from them, that there were more of them out there in the world that we had no knowledge of, and they were hiding from the rest of us.
Did that really make the ones who were out in the open to the Council and the rest of the covens as special as we thought them to be? I didn't know, nor did I care. It didn't change how I felt towards Ariel and I knew that the rest of the guys would feel the same way as I did.
My father and I had continued to come to the shop and spend money here even when we really didn't need to buy anything in particular, we did it because we were doing our part for a fellow witch and wanted to help her out in any way she was willing to allow us to, and buying her wares had been the only option available to us. After my father died, I continued coming here and buying a bunch of shit I didn't need to help out an old blind woman who didn't want anything from me simply because she had magic and my father had told me to do so.
And now she was dead.
The good news was, I no longer needed to spend a bunch of money on shit I did not need. The bad news was, I felt absolutely fucking horrible for being relieved a woman had finally kicked the bucket and riddled with guilt because I hadn't stopped in in fucking months to check in on her and now that I had I got to confirm what I'd read in the newspaper that she'd died and that tacky for sale sign in the window had been what confirmed it for me.
Guilt ate at me from the inside and I wanted to turn around and walk right the fuck back out of this damn place and never turn back. Knowing what my father would do had he still been alive stopped me from getting in my car and driving away, that and I thought Ariel would really get a kick out of the shop and would love spending time here.
Would it be weird to buy not only a store but an entire building for my girlfriend? Yeah, more than likely it would be. Did I give a shit about that? No, definitely not. Would Ariel be happy when she found out what I did? Absolutely not, but I was hoping she'd walk in here, fall in love with the place and get over her angry snit as she took in all the dust covered bullshit that had probably been sitting on the shelves since before I’d been born and decided she just needed to have it all.
Without taking in the sights of the rows of shelves stuffed full of shit I did not need, or the black cloth covered table with an ancient deck of cards stacked with care on top of it, I made my way to the middle-aged man standing behind the front counter.
An hour later after making phone calls to both the real estate agent and my bank and questioning the man who'd been employed by the old blind lady for over a decade, I walked out of the shop with my own set of keys to not only the shop but the entire building seeing as there was an apartment upstairs with a back entry and an empty office space next door.
I was now, unfortunately, the not so proud owner of all of them.
At the curb where my Audi was parked I couldn't help but turn around and take a look at all I had bought.
A run-down building that had seen its fair share of better days likely eighty-five years ago stood proudly before me.
A rusty sign hung above the door.
Fortunes for the Unfortunate.
A great fucking name for a fortune tellers’ shop where they sold magical paraphernalia and you could get your cards read by a decrepit blind woman. I remembered what Ariel had told me about going on a date with some douche bag who wouldn't pay to get her cards read at a fair. She'd always wanted her cards read and, to my knowledge, hadn't had it happen yet. Here, I could teach her to not only read her own but others as well.
I couldn't keep the smile off my face if I tried.
Ariel was so going to love this place and I couldn't wait to show it to her.
Chapter Five
You’re such a bitch
Out of all the things I had envisioned myself doing today, this was certainly not one of them. I'd woken up this morning feeling like it was going to be a beautiful day and excited to reach out to my girl so I could tell her about the shop and maybe convince her to drive out there with me so she could see it for herself with her own eyes and I could see her reaction to it with mine.
Before going to bed I had almost texted her to tell her about our new building and the shop but I had refrained, not wanting to wake her up if she'd been sleeping and not wanting to keep her awake if she hadn't gone to sleep yet. Not when it could easily wait until the morning. So, I'd left it alone for the night.
This morning, I'd gotten up, showered and dressed for the day. Excited, I'd picked up my cell, intent on calling Ariel, only to come up short when I came face to face with an unread text message from Belle. A-fucking-gain.
After realizing I hadn't taken the time to switch out her name in the contacts I promptly set about doing that. She was now saved under Wicked Bitch and I thought it to be rather fitting for her seeing as it was now one of the many nicknames I had in store for her and Belle was certainly long since dead and gone.
But, unfortunately, the bitch was back and I had to deal with her.
Her text demanded I send her an address for our meet or she’d come to my house.
Without thinking too much about it, I texted her back an address. And immediately cringed at how stupid I'd been afterwards. I thought about texting back and changing the meeting spot but knew that'd be stupid because she'd never stop questioning over why I'd changed spots and what was so important about the first one that made me immediately change my mind.
I left it alone, consequences be damned.
***
I parked right out front of the semi deserted restaurant and immediately exited my vehicle. There was no point in sitting in there feeling miserable and sorry for myself, not when I could get out, go inside and be miserable but still get it over with.
After seeing her at the Motel in all of her hideous glory, there was no fucking way I was going back out there to meet with her and there was no way I was going to be alone with her in any place, not a park, not anywhere. At least here at the restaurant there would be other people who could be witnesses if I needed any, and with Annabell there was no telling if I would need witnesses after the fact or not.
The reason I'd picked this place was because Uncle Quint and I used to come here all the time. When he'd come to visit he would take me here to get a burger, just to go and do something with the two of us when he got annoyed with my dad bossing him around. It was before he'd taken on the responsibility of being my sole guardian, but he'd never been a happy go lucky easy person to deal with and had always been moody and bossy. It had just gotten worse after my dad died.
I had fond memories here with him, which is why I had originally chosen this
place. With Uncle Quint, I always felt safe. This place was so full of memories of coming here with him that it felt like a safe place to meet the crazy bitch. We were on my turf now, not hers.
Believe me, I wasn't stupid enough to think that meant this was my game we were playing and not hers. I'd never be that stupid. But maybe I could learn what the hell it was she really wanted from me so I could figure out a way to get rid of her ass once and for all without it hurting my family any more than she already had.
Sounded like an impossible task to me but one I was willing to give my all to.
The hostess greeted me with a smile I could have cared less about and, as she deflated at my lack of interest, I almost took pity on her and told her I had a girlfriend who no one else could compare to and to save her smiles for someone else. I didn't because it was none of her business and didn't want to chance Annabell overhearing me saying anything about Ariel. The less she knew about her the better off we would all be. I could deal with her stringing me along, to a point. What I couldn't deal with was her fucking with Ariel. Then the gloves would come off and I'd take her ass down.
Ignoring the hostess, I walked around her and moved in the direction Annabelle's heat was coming from. I found her sitting alone at a table in the empty dining room. I sat down across from her and didn't take my eyes off of her as she looked up at me from underneath dark, thick, lush eyelashes.
I realized then my mistake. She thought she still had me and came here to seduce me, I could see it all in her big eyes.
Fucking bitch.
"Your waitress will be right with you both," the hostess murmured in a voice laced with hurt.
I didn't give a shit about her hurt or the fact she'd obviously been upset by not getting her chance to flirt with me. I was used to it because women were always flirting with me and they always seemed to either get pissed or be hurt when I ignored their efforts. Like their feelings were all that mattered.