Banishing the Dark

by Jenn Bennett

  She shoved the reader into her bag. “Maybe.”

  “That’s cool. My best friend, Jack, reads fantasy. I’m a visual person, so I like comics and anime. Movies.”

  A long silence stretched between them, until she finally said, “If you want my help, maybe you should start by telling me who your dad’s girlfriend is.”

  He sighed. “I can’t do that.”

  “Don’t tell me, it’s complicated.”

  “It’s—”

  “I already know you’re lying, because I looked at all your pictures online. I saw who your dad is. And your mom’s a celebrity.”

  “My parents are divorced.”

  “I also saw the picture of you and your dad and the owner of that Tiki bar, Arcadia Bell. That’s his girlfriend?”

  Jupe felt like he was being led into a trap but was powerless to stop. “Yes . . .”

  “I asked my mom if she could look up Arcadia Bell in the lodge directory. And she got all weird and freaked out and wanted to know why I was asking and who you were.”

  Crap. That didn’t sound good. “Did you tell her?”

  “No.”

  Jupe bit the inside of his mouth. “Why do you think she freaked out?”

  “I don’t know,” Leticia said, running the heels of her palms over her knees. “But she grilled me about it, and I had to lie and say some kid at school was talking about her. I tried to play dumb, but I’m not sure if she believed me. I don’t like lying to my family.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jupe said sourly. “I went to a lot of trouble to get out here again. I’m not sure if I can keep pulling it off.”

  After a moment, she said, “My mom told me to leave it alone and forget about it, so I figured it must be important. I sneaked onto her computer after she went to bed and searched the lodge directory myself. It’s a list of every member of the order, since it moved from France to the States in the early 1900s. And no one named Arcadia Bell has ever been a member. No Bell at all.”

  Ah, crap. He was torn between being thrilled that she’d gone to all that trouble out of curiosity over him and panicked that she now knew too much. He’d planned on quizzing her about Sélène Duval, not Arcadia Bell.

  “Who is she?” Leticia asked.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Fine. Then I can’t help you.”

  “Please,” Jupe begged. “I really need your help, but I just can’t.”

  She buckled the strap on her messenger bag. “Trust has to start somewhere, Jupiter.”

  He thought about everything Cady had told him and how she trusted him to keep her secrets. But then, what did her secrets matter if her mother came down from the Æthyr and stole her body? And then there were Priya’s warnings and his challenge to Jupe. Priya insisted that Cady’s order could be trusted, so it wasn’t as if Jupe would be turning her in to the FBI. Jesus, she didn’t even do anything wrong—why did she have to keep this secret, anyway?

  Maybe the better question was, how could Jupe help Cady if he kept her secret and walked away right now? He needed Leticia’s help. And sure, she was pretty and smelled good and had lots of nice curves. Hell, he even liked the way she argued with him. On top of all that, her knee was about an inch away from touching his, and that alone was enough to urge him into telling her anything she wanted to know. But Cady came first, and he really didn’t know what other choice he had. One day, he might have a brother or sister who’d look up to him as a hero, but not if Cady’s crazy mom won the fight.

  “If I tell you,” he said cautiously, “it might be the biggest, most serious secret you’ve ever heard. And my family might be in danger if the wrong people find out. Will you promise not to tell anyone? Like, maybe you could undergo some kind of magical oath?”

  She turned her head and leaned closer, until her face was right up in his and the scent of strawberry jam filled his nostrils. Her forehead tightened until her eyebrows were almost joined. “A few people in my lodge are under magical oath to protect a big secret. I think that’s bullshit. You can’t force a person to be loyal. If you’re going to trust someone, you trust them until they give you a reason not to. ¿Confías en mí?”

  Jupe’s Spanish lessons rattled around inside his head and overlapped with all the Mexican lucha libre wrestling he watched on Galavisión. He was pretty sure he understood her question, but he made a mental note to pay more attention in class.

  As he cracked his knuckles, trying to make up his mind, Leticia’s knee touched his thigh, warm and insistent. He glanced down between them. After a moment, he pressed his leg against hers in answer. She didn’t pull away. When he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, all at once, he decided he did trust her, and not just as a last resort.

  So he licked his lips and spoke in a low voice. “Have you ever heard of the Black Lodge slayings?”

  If I thought that after sleeping all afternoon a few feet away from Lon, I might wake up and accidentally find myself in the middle of a lust-bleary romp under the sheets—and admittedly, that’s exactly what I thought—I was w-r-o-n-g. He’d already gotten up, showered, given our dirty clothes to the maid, gone to the gym, and scouted out the on-premises restaurant where we could eat our early-evening breakfast.

  Overachiever.

  “I know we didn’t get enough sleep, but we’ve got an entire night to get through until we can head back to the reptile store tomorrow morning,” he told me before I’d even sat up in bed. “So I think it would be best if we spend what time we can outside the room, so we aren’t tempted.”

  “Tempted to . . . ?”

  “To fall asleep during the night,” he clarified.

  “Oh.”

  A girl might think she was being avoided. This girl certainly did. But I didn’t say anything. Nope. Not a word. I did, however, leave the bathroom door wide open when I got dressed, during which I did hear him swearing under his breath before he announced loudly that he’d meet me downstairs in the lobby when I was ready to eat.

  My smell-o-rama knack was still alive and kicking but not half as strong as it was before I slept, which was both a relief and a shame. It was working well enough to make me reject the food our waiter brought out and order something different. And after we wasted time window-shopping at a mall until it closed and then nearly falling asleep in a midnight showing of a crappy horror movie that even Jupe would have hated, I found myself able to identify a unique scent wafting from Lon. Not all the time. Just when I tried to play footsie with him under the restaurant table. Or when I walked too close to him. Or when I raised the movie-seat arm between us and leaned against his shoulder.

  I wasn’t certain, but I thought that scent was a little amorous. Sure, it crossed my mind that perhaps I was projecting my own wants, but by the time we’d sat around in an all-night diner caffeinating ourselves and doing all the research two people could do on a crappy internet connection and no sleep, I was willing to take the risk that I was right.

  It was past five by the time we made it back to our hotel suite. Sunrise was more than an hour away, but soon after, we’d have to leave for the reptile shop. I kicked off my shoes and headed over to Lon, who was looking miserable, flipping through channels in the sitting area of our room.

  “Where’s the tarp?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to practice transmutating.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Oh, really? Because you were all gung-ho about it back in Golden Peak. How am I supposed to learn to control it if I don’t practice? I think that was your argument.”

  He stared at the TV, stewing. “That was before random knacks started appearing unexpectedly.”

  “Afraid I might suddenly develop the knack to read your thoughts? Oh, wait. That’s right. You already do that to me.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t be a smart-ass.”

  “Give me the tarp.”

  “No.”

  “Fine. I’ll practice without
it.” I began unbuttoning my jeans, watching his gaze hover over my fingers for a moment until he groaned and got out of his chair to dig through his luggage.

  “Here,” he said, tossing the folded tarp to me. “Be stubborn, see if I care.”

  I retreated to the marble-tiled bathroom and called out to him as I snagged a boxed sewing kit the hotel provided along with a plethora of fancy shampoos and lotions. “I’m not the one who’s being stubborn. You’ve been avoiding me all night, and you won’t talk about the kiss. Makes me wonder if you regret all that stuff you said in Pasadena.”

  Indecipherable grumbling answered me. I strolled back into the sitting area and pretended not to look at Lon as I inspected the sheer curtain behind him, one that covered a patio over a dark palm-lined courtyard.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Finding a place to pin this up. It would give me some freedom to walk around without worrying I’ll smudge up the symbols. Since you’re watching TV, I’ll hang it up on the other patio by the beds.”

  His gaze darted to my unbuttoned jeans. I think. Maybe I imagined that. “No room to walk around back there,” he said. “You might as well do it here. I can sit somewhere else.”

  “Makes no difference to me.” I told myself to keep my feelings guarded, but it really wasn’t a problem, because I was actually getting downright pissed about his bad attitude and unwillingness to talk.

  I unfolded the tarp and stepped up on the chair to close the heavier blackout drapes over the sheers. Then I wrestled the tarp up, accidentally smacking Lon in the head as I did.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Give me the corner.”

  He held it up as I anchored it to the drapes with safety pins from the sewing kit. A strong tug could pull it down, but as long as I didn’t manhandle the thing, it would stay. I dug out my caduceus and could have sworn I heard Lon mumble, “Please be careful,” as I siphoned electricity and kindled enough Heka to charge the tarp.

  After it fired up nice and bright, giving me solid protection from the floor almost all the way up to the ceiling, I said, “Why are you being so weird?”

  Instead of answering me, he just walked around the sitting area, holding his hand up to test the magick. “How far you think this’ll extend? Never mind, I stop feeling it here.” He moved a love seat there to mark a boundary. “Don’t go past the back of this.”

  “If you regret it, just be a man and say it.” I pushed my jeans over my hips and kicked them aside when they dropped to the floor. “I’d rather it be out in the open so we can move past it.”

  “I don’t regret it.”

  Aha! Must keep satisfaction in check. Maybe he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear me. I kept my back to him and pulled the clip out of my hair. “Then what gives? Was it not as good as you hoped, and now you’re having some doubts? Not feeling it?”

  No response.

  I supposed there was really no reason to get naked like I did in Golden Peak—we weren’t inspecting my markings again, unfortunately. However, there was also no reason to be uncomfortable in front of someone who had already seen all of me, so I left my panties on and did the girl trick of unhooking my bra under my tank top and pulling it out of my sleeve. Then I took a deep breath, shook out my hands, and transmutated.

  My vision turned to silver. My hearing went weird. And that familiar coolness spread over my skin, along with the strange itch of my horns growing and the disconcerting pressure at the small of my back as my tail pushed out over the top of my black bikini underwear.

  “Just hold steady, as you are,” Lon’s voice said over my shoulder with forced calmness. “Don’t try to reach for anything more than this. You’re doing great.”

  I inhaled slowly, making sure I felt no connection to the Moonchild magick. It was fine. I could tell the difference when I pulled moon energy. It was like pulling electricity, something that fired up my innate power. I knew I could do some magick without kindling Heka; therefore, I could definitely hold this form without tapping into the Æthyr.

  “You know, we’re friends,” I said, catching a glimpse of him behind me in a mirror that hung near the drapes. He was discreetly fidgeting with something around his neck. What was that, and why was he being sneaky? Sneaky and obvious, because I could tell by the angle of his stare where his eyes were. I flicked my tail to be sure. Uh-huh. Just what I thought.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, we’re friends.”

  “Good friends,” I said. “So, just like you advised me in Golden Peak, if you’re having some physical problems, you know you can tell me.”

  His eyes met mine in the mirror. He didn’t respond.

  “It’s probably natural for a man your age to have a few issues,” I taunted. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed to see a doctor if you’re experiencing . . . dysfunction.”

  The air shuddered.

  Flames flared up over his shoulders—a fiery crown, topped with stunning horns that spiraled into place on either side of his head.

  Arrow, meet bull’s-eye.

  I spun around to find him leaping over the love-seat barrier as if it was a trivial inconvenience. He landed with a thud in front of me. My heart thumped so madly inside my chest that I nearly dropped my serpentine form. And when he grabbed my shoulders as if he was going to shake the living daylights out of me, I could smell the arousal all over him, and it thrilled me to no end.

  “Happy, are you?” he said, reading my thoughts as he lowered his face to mine. “Think you’ve won? You think you can break me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Let me tell you a little story. I sat in a fucking hospital looking at a body that was black with blood and bruises, with shattered bones poking out of your flesh. I didn’t know if you were going to live or die. And when Mick put you under and you didn’t wake up, I didn’t know if you ever would—or what condition your brain would be in if you did. I nearly lost my mind grieving over you. And I nearly lost my spirit beating myself up over it, because it was my fault.”

  “Lon—”

  “I introduced you to Dare. I brought that horror into your life. Me,” he said in a hoarse voice. “And if you died, I didn’t want to live. But I didn’t fall apart. I sat there night after night for weeks, praying and hoping and believing you’d be okay. And now that I have you back, I will do whatever it takes to make sure you stay okay. So you can tease me all you want, but I will not budge.”

  I inhaled a shaky breath and fought back tears. Way to go, Bell. Now I felt ashamed and confused and angry, all at once. And I hated him for it.

  “You hear all that?” I bit out.

  “I hear it.”

  The steely grip on my shoulders loosened, and before I realized what was happening, he was running a hand down my arm, down my scaly skin. When he got to my hand, he entwined his fingers with mine and pressed my palm right over the straining fly of his jeans. He was hard. Big. And hot as damnation against my too-cool transmutated skin.

  “Feel that?” he said. I couldn’t answer. “Every time you give me one of those coy looks of yours. Every time you wrinkle up your nose in that snarky little way of yours. Every time you brush up against me ‘accidentally.’ Yes, I knew exactly what you were doing, and I’ve been in hell all day long.”

  I whimpered. But when I tried to get a better feel of things, he tore my hand away. “Not going to break me. Come here.” His arm swung around my back. He dragged me to the sofa and sat, pulling me down to straddle his lap. “You think you’re making a connection to the Æthyr, you tell me that very moment, you hear me?”

  I nodded, not really understanding what I was agreeing to. Then he let out a long breath and looked me over. His fingers lightly stroked over my arms. The insides of my elbows. My palms. He splayed his fingers over my stomach, up my sides, his index fingers hooking beneath the thin fabric of my tank top and pushing it up, up, up, notching it over my breasts, which rose and fell under his languid scrutiny. He traced the long, flat
scales between, and when his thumbs stroked over my nipples, I planted my hands on his shoulders and gasped as if I was dying.

  And maybe I was a little. Dying, or living for the first time since I’d left the hospital, it was hard to tell which.

  His hands circled to my back. He stroked down, down, down my spine . . . until his touch grazed over my tail. For a moment, I was caught between a weird, unexpected embarrassment—he was touching territory no one had touched, not even me, barely—and an ecstatic anticipation, for exactly the same reason. But when his fingers slid to the underside of my tail, I forgot all of that. Waves of pleasurable chills rolled in, ebbed, and rolled in again as he stroked down the length of it, bringing it around between us to see the rings of black and white stripes.

  “Amazing,” he whispered as it curled around his hand and wrist. “So goddamn amazing.”

  Before I could respond, he shifted his free hand to my leg and slid his way up to my inner thigh, eyes intently fixed on mine. “I’m going to touch you now. Can you handle this?”

  Holy freaking Harlot. My senses went bananas.

  “It’s sort of a forest down there,” I warned, panicking at the last second.

  “Fantastic,” he murmured, as if I’d just given him a birthday present, then pushed my panties aside and slipped his fingers between my legs.

  If all the rest of it was good, this was divine. He touched me as if he’d aced Pleasuring Cady 101. I mean, seriously, he wasn’t messing around. No awkward searches, no guesswork, no fingers going everywhere but where they should. Where had he been all my life? I couldn’t have done this better myself. And all the little whispers of encouragement he gave were the icing on the cake.

  I wanted to hold back and make it last, but I got greedy fast, and before I knew it, I was bowing off his lap, cheek bent to his, every muscle straining. And in my ear, his low voice said, “Come for me, Cadybell.” That was it. I tipped over the edge and cried out, utterly and completely lost.

  It took me a few seconds to come back down and a few more for the heat of his proficient fingers to slip away. At that point, the only thing on my mind was returning the favor. Well, first it was a whole lot of Holy shit, that was amazing and a little bit of I can’t believe that just happened. But next, when I was able to think properly, I slowly reached for him.