by Eden Butler
He lowered his eyes, until they stopped on my hand resting on his chest. I could still taste him on my tongue. My scalp ached where he’d pulled on my hair. My mouth was still swollen from his kisses. And now I had to pretend that none of these things were real. I had to ignore them completely.
“Jani?” he asked, frowning when he looked back up at me. “What’s happening?”
Hell, I’d never see him again and I would not walk away completely without him remembering at least something about me.
“I’m sorry, Bane.”
“For what?”
I exhaled, relaxing when he didn’t try to fight off my hand on his face. “This,” I told him and kissed Bane. I poured into that kiss everything that I’d felt for nine months, everything I’d keep safe in my memory from the afternoon we’d spent together in that classroom.
He didn’t fight me, didn’t pull away and I tried not to smile or think too much about how fiercely he kissed me back. I pulled away before Bane could reject me, taking three steps back with my gaze planted firmly on his features.
“What was that?” he asked, smirking.
“That,” I said, picking up my bag from the floor, “was me saying ‘have a good life, Bane Iles.’”
He frowned, disappointment and confusion keeping him immobile, and I turned and left him in that classroom, alone with only the scent of my perfume and the memory of one single kiss.
The movement around us shifted and my shield dropped as the time sped back up. Before I could blink, before I could walk to Bane and explain why I’d let my father and his uncle convince me to take his memories, my sister and brother were at my side, hugging me, holding me and Ethan and Trevor ushered Bane away from the crowd, passing along explanations of a missing panther from the parish zoo as they left the town center.
He paused only for a second, glancing back at me and I hated the expression on his face. It looked like anger. It looked like pain. It looked exactly like goodbye.
Chapter Nineteen
The house was a hundred years old Victorian that sat on the edge of Crimson Cove. Outside what had been my childhood bedroom on Lake Pontchartrain and the shoreline that dipped close to Mandeville dotted along the horizon. Even as October ended and the cool snap of fall brought the drop in temperatures and the holiday season, the Cove shone like something picturesque—a Thomas Kincaid wet dream of perfection that had nothing to do with good fortune and everything to do with the pixy dust and fey charms planted in the ground and along the Cove over two hundred years ago.
Charmed herbology or not, I’d always loved the view from my old bedroom window. That had not changed since I’d been gone.
“I wish you’d stay.” Mai’s voice carried from the door where she leaned against the frame. She looked pretty that morning with her hair around her heart shaped face and the light breeze from the window in front of me blowing her bangs against her forehead. My twin walked into the room, pulling her sweater tight around her thin waist and reached for the opened window. “You don’t have to worry about Papa. You can stay with me.” Mai closed the window, locking it before she sat on the seat in front of the white frame. “I had the electricity turned back on and took it off the market.”
“Not selling?”
She shook her head, shrugging when I smiled at her. “It’s a nice little place, just big enough for me and, you know, anyone else who might come along.”
“Anyone like…”
“No one in particular.” But I caught the quick blush on her smooth cheeks and had heard her talking until three a.m. on her cell just outside the ledge that joined her room and mine. The name Lennon and a few giggles had flowed frequently from her mouth.
“You’re a terrible liar, Mai. Just god awful.”
“It’s not serious,” she promised stopping me when I tried walking away from that view. “And you didn’t answer me. Stay with me. Don’t go back to New York just yet.”
She let me pat her hand but didn’t stop me when I returned to the bed and the open suitcase sitting on top of it. “There’s nothing for me here or there, sis.”
“We’re here.”
“And you’re wherever I need you, Mai.” The bed shook when I sat on it and let my sister watch me fold and unfold my socks. “Me not being in the Cove doesn’t stop me from having you or Sam in my life.”
“And Papa?” Mai’s voice was low when she asked that, as though she knew she shouldn’t but still needed to. “He’s your father, Jani and he loves you.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Almost on cue, the creak behind me at the door brought my attention away from socks to the old wizard who stood at the threshold with his hands deep in his pockets looking between me and Mai.
Papa looked a good deal older that morning than he had when I’d returned less than two weeks before. He seemed to walk slower, take steps that were more cautious, and I didn’t know if that had anything to do with the drunken phone calls or half-attempted visits Bane had made a few days after the Elam was restored to the amulet. Bane had made threats, I’d heard a few of those myself and, according to Sam, they were all leveled at Papa.
“Chérie,” Papa said to Mai, “let me speak to your sister for a little bit.” And the little coward left me alone with the old wizard, not bothering to shoot an apologetic smile my way as she left. It didn’t matter. I’d be gone in the morning and wouldn’t have to bother with hearing his excuses again. They’d come, I knew, but I’d make certain this would be the last of them that darkened my ears.
“Say what you will.”
“Bebe…”
“Don’t bother with sweet talk, Papa. It won’t work.”
He stood next to me, not watching, not doing anything but keeping his gaze forward, like mine, on the horizon and the shoreline beyond the window.
“I have made many mistakes, Janiver.” This wasn’t new information and it wasn’t something he hadn’t already said to me. “Samedi, Mai, what they did to you, was for your protection.”
“I know that, Papa.” I could no more stay mad at my siblings than I could at Bane. All of them made efforts to protect me despite what I’d been convinced of doing. Sam wanted me with Bane. He wanted us both happy because he had known what that meant once. My brother had held something perfect, a few months of bliss that I would likely never get the chance to understand. He’d still wanted me to have a taste of that. “To see what that feels like,” he’d told me the night before. “I wanted you to know what I still dream about every night, sis.”
Mai only kept what she knew from me because she knew how it would hurt me to know what our father had done my whole life, just to keep Carter Grant happy.
But my father, I could not forgive.
“You’re angry with me, I know this. You may well keep that anger for a long time, bebe.” His gaze felt heavy on the top of my head but I wouldn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure I could keep from lashing out if I did. Instead of pushing the issue, my father sat behind me on the bed and the mattress dipped when he rested his elbows on his knees. “I came here trying to build a life, trying like hell to make something of myself. The only way I knew to do that was to serve the higher covens, to hide away the accidents our folk made from the mortals. I suppose I’ve grown so used to serving them, to doing their bidding that I forgot what it was not to agree when they ask too much.”
“Even if it means your child’s happiness?”
Papa turned to me then, quick, as though my question was an accusation he hadn’t prepared for. It was a long while before he answered, before he moved at all but finally, the bed shook again and the springs creaked when he stood. “Oui,” he said, sounding defeated. “Even then.” His feet tapped against the hardwood as he headed for the door but Papa stopped short, just near the threshold. “One day, Janiver, I hope you forgive me.”
“One day, Papa, I hope I won’t need to.”
When that door closed behind him, when I knew that Mai would leave me to my packing, that no one would bot
her trying to convince me not to leave, only then did I let the tears start and leave quiet tracks down my face. I came to the window seat wishing I could swim out into that lake, that the lines would still sing to me out there as loudly as they had just a week before. There was quick comfort in their song and the temptation that song offered. But I had quieted the music by replacing the Elam, tempering the chaos the lines promised to bring. I missed it, that wild, raw energy. I missed the sweet crackle of its power as climbed closer and closer toward it in the woods.
And gods how I missed Bane. His smell, his touch, that sweet, thick laugh of his. I missed him like an amputated limb, like something I always had but never really thought to appreciate until it was gone.
Since he’d shown up drunk and in a rage on my father’s front stoop, only to have Trevor and a few coven guards dragging him off to parts unknown, I hadn’t heard from him at all. Neither had Sam. Neither had anyone we knew.
Hamill, who apparently hadn’t been a traitor after all, but had been responsible for the sledgehammer in the store window, had taken, a bit begrudgingly, a position with my father’s business; comeuppance, Mai mentioned Papa saying, for the awful way Ronan had handled the Donaldson arrest. But even in the brief moments Hamill had passed me in the kitchen two nights ago, he hadn’t mentioned Bane or what had become of him.
It wasn’t until this morning, in fact, that I knew what the day would bring or why the town had gone so busy with activity.
“A wedding,” I’d overheard Mai telling Sam as they sat down to breakfast. “Last minute.” And then my sister saw me watching her, saw what must have been likely a bit of devastation on my features because she darted to me, pulled me to her chest and held me. “Oh, Jani,” she said, “you are the only person I know who makes heartache look good.”
I hadn’t had a drink in weeks. Not since the night Mai and I watched Trevor leading a drunken Bane away from my father’s house. We’d destroyed a bottle of Bourbon and I hadn’t bothered with it since. It burned too much now.
When I looked away from the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain, when the bells from St. Andreas sounded, ringing in another joined upper coven match, I felt sick. We had not been invited, luckily, and as the bells echoed around the Cove and the voices beyond this old Victorian laughed and congratulated each other and went on as though nothing was out of sync, as though my heart wasn’t fracturing into minuscule pieces so vast, so varied that it had no hope of ever being repaired, I packed my bags and decided to leave. Not for the city where my nexus would be blocked from the sweet, constant heartbeat of the ley lines, not for my sister’s cottage on the outskirts of the Cove where on any given day I could happen upon the man my fractured heart wanted so desperately to claim over and over.
I packed my bags and made for the beach and the tiny cottage I renamed L’Abri Reach. The Shelter Reach.
Chapter Twenty
“What, class, do you think Lord Byron meant when he said ‘Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray?’”
No one had listened to Mr. Matthews all those years ago, and I only thought of it now because the beach in front of me was empty, because my thoughts were scattered between the coming nightfall and the silence that surrounded me. Biloxi at night, right along my beach was soothing, calm and lent itself to random thoughts.
I’d thought of Matthews because the Byron quote had slipped in among the random thoughts.
“Jani? Any ideas?” Matthew had asked me. It had been the wrong day to ask me about Byron. I never liked the poet or his work. I especially didn’t like him when Bane kept glaring at Nicky Collins for asking me to borrow a pen.
“Not really, Mr. Matthews,” I’d answered, becoming increasingly interested in the doodle on my page and the loop that arched into the cursive “B”.
“No, Jani? You don’t have an opinion about Byron’s use of nature in his prose? Specifically storms…”
“His use of storms,” I grumbled, making that “B” bigger, extending it until it formed a heart. “It’s predictable. It holds no weight.”
“Storms?”
“Storms do,” I’d answered my teacher, glancing at him when he cleared his throat. “But he used rainbows. Storms, specific storms, would have been better. Thunder, midnight.”
“Why thunder and midnight?”
I hadn’t thought about my response. Just then Bane leaned on his arms, staring right at me as I spoke, heating up my skin with one glance. “It…it’s when magic is the most potent.”
That time I looked at Bane, returning his grin, getting a rare smile that made me feel a little drunk, punch drunk at least.
“Ah. I see what you mean. Magic, love…”
Matthews had gone on and on probing, questioning about Byron and I’d spent the rest of the class period with my eyes closed, pretending to sleep just to burn the image of Bane’s smile into my lids.
The lights from the dock down the beach flickered on, brought my attention away from my thoughts, away from the beach and the water that went on and on, stretching out into the Gulf. Sunset would bring with it kids on their Thanksgiving break, drinking, running along the beach, avoiding the cops cruising up and down the shoreline. I didn’t need the noise or the hassle, and pulled my canvas sneakers from the makeshift seat on the sand. I took a moment to dust more of the sparkling white sand from my jeans and hoodie.
The temperatures hadn’t been truly cool yet and the holiday was turning out to be a mild one, one that I’d spend on my own painting the molding and trim in the den of my newly purchased cottage.
I slipped through the gate, trailing sand behind me, and smiled at the last remaining fireflies that flew near the bird bath at the edge of the fence line. The cottage was old, built back when Craftsmen were cheap and everyone got a GI loan to purchase their first home. It had survived Katrina, though just barely, and needed a new roof, mending on the back fence and the chippy yellow paint needed a fresh coat. The crow I ate to cash Bane’s check was bitter, got stuck between my teeth, but I’d gobbled it down just to get this place and out of my father’s debt. I needed to start again, be away from the Cove, from the past and the sins that wouldn’t let me rest at night.
That’s what I told myself—that this cottage would allow me to begin a new life. I'd douse myself in a lot of elbow grease and DIY sweat equity, and eventually I’d leave the Cove behind me. Someday I might actually believe it.
It was my mantra—that this cottage would be a new beginning—and I repeated it to myself as stepped up onto the porch, as I opened the screen door and as I put my key into the lock. “A new beginning…” and then, shifting my gaze to the movement at my right, that mantra got replaced with a loud, shrieking curse. “Mother fuc…”
“Jani! Wait! It’s me,” Bane said, throwing up a shield with his hands as my hex ripped right over his head.
“Are you crazy?” I screamed, slamming the screen door, my gaze flitting out onto the empty beach and down the sidewalk. “I could have…” he stepped into the light and I went mute. Just seeing his face, the dark circles under his eyes, still with those beautiful blue irises, silenced me stupid. “What…what are you doing here?” I said, stepping back when he moved forward.
“I came to see you.”
“Why?” I asked, not thinking.
Bane seemed not to expect that. He scratched his chin and lowered his shoulders, a defeated, tired movement. “Can I…can we go inside?”
I didn’t think about how that might look. It didn’t occur to me that if we were in the Cove and Bane, a newly married man, came into my home with no one else to chaperone, that there would be gossip and lots of it. But this wasn’t the Cove and I didn’t care who talked. Hell, I didn't care if anyone was watching, period. At the moment the only thing I did care about was asking why he looked so tired and how the hell he knew where I’d be.
“Excuse the mess,” I told him, stepping around half empty paint ca
ns and tarps smudged with gray and white paint. “I’m renovating,” I explained leading him inside.
I’d spent a majority of the past week sanding and cleaning, and had finally moved on to painting. I’d tackled the monstrosity of harvest gold in the kitchen and dining room and had started in on the boring beige walls of the den this morning. Bane followed me, his gaze moving around the room, squinting at the rubbish rags and dried paint brushes.
“You’re doing this by hand?” I nodded, turning toward him by the large bay window at the front of the living room. “With no magic?” He frowned when I lifted my eyebrows, when instead of answering, I crossed my arms. “But that will take you ages.” I narrowed my eyes and he shook his head. “Why are you doing it the hard way?”
“Because it gives me time to think.”
Bane nodded, once again looking around the room, idly scratching his chin as though he needed some mild distraction to help him think. “Well, if that’s how you want to do it, I can respect that.” He pointed toward the hallway. “How many bedrooms?”
“Two down here, two upstairs.”
Bane nodded again, stepping away from me. “You’ll need to go into town so we can fetch some trim to replace the rotten wood along the corner of the front porch and fencing material as well. I did some rebuilding in New Orleans after the storm. I know my way around a hammer and nails.” He stepped toward the window, moving his head to get a better look at the garden. “There isn’t a thing I know about weeds or planting but I trained with a Scottish wizard five years back and he taught me fey magic for growing vegetables. Can’t be that different to making your roses climb.”
“Bane.”
He kept watching the garden, along the back fence, mumbling to himself as he looked out onto the property. “If you want to do it without magic, it’ll take more time, of course and you might not be ready to open by spring…”
“Bane.” He stepped back when I touched his arm, as though that slight graze of my fingers along his bicep burned him. “What are you talking about?”